Gary Briggs | Marketing Observations and Lessons Learned From the 24' Presidential Election | Part 2

Summary

CMO Confidential Podcast Summary
Episode: Gary Briggs | Marketing Observations and Lessons Learned From the 24' Presidential Election | Part 2
Host: Mike Linton | Guest: Gary Briggs | Release Date: February 25, 2025

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Introduction

In the second installment of his insightful conversation with Gary Briggs, Mike Linton delves deeper into the intricate strategies and pivotal lessons gleaned from the 2024 Presidential Election. This episode uncovers the sophisticated use of marketing techniques in high-stakes political campaigns, offering listeners a behind-the-scenes look at how massive marketing budgets are allocated, the speed at which campaigns operate, and the critical balance between paid media and organic content.

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Strategic Use of Paid Media in Political Campaigns

Gary Briggs opens the discussion by highlighting the strategic deployment of paid media as a tool to outmaneuver political opponents. He emphasizes the tailored approach campaigns take to target specific demographics and edge out rival messages.

“The way that does that occurs and I think this is one of the main insights for, you know, non-political marketers... is the ability to create content at scale, at quality.”
— Ken Young [01:30]

This segment underscores the importance of precision in messaging and the role of sophisticated media buys in shaping voter perceptions.

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Speed of Execution and Learning in Marketing

A recurring theme in the conversation is the paramount importance of speed in both executing marketing strategies and learning from campaign data. Briggs and his co-host discuss how rapid content creation and agile response mechanisms can significantly influence campaign outcomes.

“The people who win in marketing is whoever learns faster. It's a huge distinction that certain companies have.”
— Ken Young [02:59]

Briggs elaborates on the competitive advantage gained by teams that can swiftly adapt their strategies based on real-time feedback, a lesson that transcends political campaigns and applies to corporate marketing alike.

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PR Strategies and Crisis Management

The episode delves into the realm of public relations, particularly how campaigns navigate unexpected crises. Briggs recounts the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and its profound impact on the campaign's media strategy.

“There was this assassination attempt against Trump and I'm like, oh man, I gotta, like, I gotta get home... we had to pull all our advertising.”
— Ken Young [10:30]

This anecdote illustrates the delicate balance between maintaining campaign momentum and responding appropriately to unforeseen events, highlighting the critical role of PR in managing public perception during crises.

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Media Saturation and Advertising Strategies

Briggs provides an in-depth analysis of media saturation, discussing how the overwhelming presence of political ads can both influence and desensitize the electorate.

“It's like the ever more more is more and not taking the chance of not reaching somebody... we're just hitting them with as many messages as possible.”
— Ken Young [14:21]

He presents staggering figures on Gross Rating Points (GRPs), emphasizing the relentless pressure to saturate media channels to ensure message retention among voters.

“We were buying in the last weeks in Philly, 2,500 [GRPs]. What is the total supply of GRPs in Pittsburgh in a week? The answer was 86,000 press rating points.”
— Ken Young [16:01]

These insights reveal the sheer volume of advertising required to make a significant impact in key battleground states.

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Marketing Lessons from the 24' Presidential Election

Gary Briggs extrapolates several key marketing lessons from the election, focusing on the necessity of speed, adaptability, and integrated media strategies.

“Getting content out in the world and getting responded to by people in is more important than beauty most of the time.”
— Ken Young [18:23]

This philosophy advocates for a “move fast and iterate” approach, prioritizing responsiveness over perfection to effectively engage with the target audience.

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Advice for Marketers and Career Insights

In a candid conversation about career development, Briggs discusses the value of high-pressure environments for younger marketers. He encourages embracing challenging roles that foster rapid learning and adaptability.

“For younger people, I think it is a great experience... being thrown into something you're not fully qualified for in a short amount of time with not a lot of support.”
— Ken Young [19:50]

Briggs warns against the growing tribalism in hiring practices, advocating for recognizing the transferable skills gained from intense campaign experiences.

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Conclusion

As the episode wraps up, Gary Briggs shares a poignant personal anecdote about witnessing a pivotal debate moment, encapsulating the unpredictable nature of political marketing.

“I thought this is all going to change. It's just a matter of, you know, when. And I think that's... that experience... was like no other career experience I'd ever had.”
— Ken Young [22:13]

Mike Linton concludes by reinforcing the episode’s key takeaways: the critical importance of speed, the necessity of media saturation, and the enduring value of integrated marketing strategies. Listeners are left with a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic interplay between marketing and politics, enriched by real-world examples and expert insights from Gary Briggs.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Speed and Agility: Rapid content creation and the ability to learn and adapt quickly are essential for successful marketing campaigns.
2. Media Saturation: High volumes of targeted advertising are crucial to ensure message penetration in key demographic segments.
3. Integrated Strategies: Effective campaigns require a seamless blend of paid media, PR, and organic content to maintain narrative control.
4. Crisis Management: Proactive and strategic responses to unexpected events can significantly influence campaign outcomes.
5. Career Growth: Challenging roles that push marketers out of their comfort zones can accelerate professional development and skill acquisition.

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This episode of CMO Confidential provides an unparalleled glimpse into the high-octane world of political marketing, offering valuable lessons that resonate beyond the campaign trail and into the broader landscape of corporate marketing strategies.

Transcript

[Mike Linton]

The CMO Confidential Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com welcome to CMO Confidential, the podcast that takes you inside the drama, decisions and choices that go with being the head of marketing. Hosted by five time CMO Mike Lind.

[Gary Briggs]

Discover the future of AI powered digital experiences. Adobe Summit is live in Las Vegas March 17th through the 20th. If you can't make it to the conference in person, join Summit online free from anywhere. Access inspirational talks from global brand leaders like Coca Cola, Unilever, Marriott and more in live streamed insightful keynotes and Adobe Sneaks co hosted by comedian Ken Young. Select from over 30 expert led sessions. Register for [e-mail] Go CMO Confidential welcome.

[Mike Linton]

Back to CMO Confidential and part two of our episode with Gary Briggs. Pick up where we left off in episode one discussing the usage of paid media as a tool for out dueling your opponent.

[Ken Young]

We would run bespoke ads into that feed just to mess with him. So and I'm sure they were doing the same same to us. But you know, so, so the, the way that does that occurs and I think this is one of the main insights for, you know, non political marketers are probably most of the people that might, you know, people you and I used to work with, the people that might listen to this podcast. That is the thing that's stunning to me about politics is the ability to create content at scale, at quality. And I think the thing that I feel about I'm going to skip over to our former commercial world. You know my general sense about marketing is the you as a marketing organization are responsible for managing the conversations about your brand and your products in the world and you're doing that in political campaigns for sure. And then you're doing at a rapid rate and scale and I think the ability to run messages fast and learn fast. My sense is the people who win in marketing is whoever learns faster. It's a huge distinction that certain companies have. For example, if you were to ask the head of sales at you know, Google Meta TikTok, who are their best advertisers? They're the advertisers who learn faster.

[Gary Briggs]

You know, with AI, with AI and all the splintering of media, we're taking a long time to think everything through late is by definition going to be more expensive and most likely wrong.

[Ken Young]

Correct. Yeah. And and you're, and you're, you know, you look stale and you look like you don't have any momentum, good business, et cetera. So that's the thing that I think is most distinct. One of the things that's most distinctive about total campaigns is, is the speed of execution and the speed of learning.

[Gary Briggs]

And wait. You know, a lot of times when you're a corporation, you have to get so many sign offs before you do anything truly creative.

[Ken Young]

Right.

[Gary Briggs]

I mean, legal has to see it. You have to run this through. You know, you gotta do competing bids and all this other stuff to make stuff sometimes. How is this process different? Because there's no way you could have that kind of. Unless everyone's in one little pod, you could not get through fast enough. Tell us the process.

[Ken Young]

Yeah, I mean, I can't say in our case, it, it was perfect. I mean, linear. So particularly television. Traditional television is way more scrutiny. This is true in lots of traditional companies too. Gets way more scrutiny than digital does. I would say that in the case of digital, you know, Jen, who's the campaign director, Jod. Has a very good working relationship with Rob Flaherty, who was the digital director. They worked on the Biden campaign together. They were in the White House together. And I just think they had a shorthand and I think Rob, you know, pretty flawlessly. I think granted there were, you know, there are issues that I'm sure folks will bring up in comments, but had a really good read on the candidate, the candidates, you know, both Biden and Harris, and also had a really good read on Jen and her sensibilities and as well as like, you know, David and others. And so I think that allowed them to create content and run it at a speed that, you know, didn't require the scrutinization that, that you, that we saw. Now television is just different. I mean, it's been a while to, you know, the amount of messages that go through digital that people just skip over versus the, you know, you ran this one ad in this one place on television and it just creates a news cycle. It's, it's, it's a little, well, it's not little. It's a lot imbalanced. It's still, it's still kind of crazy. But as a former boss of mine, I think yours, Bill Cox, say to me, yeah, you know, brings. All they care about is the film, you know, and so it does generate.

[Gary Briggs]

A huge amount of interest. And it's like, it's like an iceberg. But you're only seeing the top of the iceberg. And you don't care about the bottom of the iceberg, but it's the bottom of the iceberg that usually sinks the ship.

[Ken Young]

Yeah. You know, in the case of this campaign, just to kind of cut you notwithstanding a few of the ads, particularly in the case of the Trump and the super PACs around Trump running what's called the trans ad, which is the everyone it talks about, you know, not much was kind of coming in, day out. But what really was, you know, I think highly, highly influential in this campaign was, was all the organic content, the non paid media content that, that people were dealing with. If you look at how people split based upon news source, if you look at how people split based upon education.

[Gary Briggs]

That'S a great example of the organic content having, having a, making a huge impact.

[Ken Young]

Well, you saw this. I mean, I think what Trump is mad genius about is driving narrative day on day and, and so within organic content it could be something having to do with something that would come up around. It doesn't, doesn't have to have truth to it, but it could. You know, and this is true broadly in campaigns, by the way. It's not just a Republican thing or a Democratic thing, but you saw this as it relates to things around the border or immigration or you know, that be misinformation about Harris's record as a prosecutor in what she was in California as ag, for example. Those are things that just can cause basically a small new cycle, but that becomes important to a particular group of people who then respond to it. This happens constantly in campaigns and it's like.

[Gary Briggs]

So this is like a PR thing now, right? Like the arcade.

[Ken Young]

I mean it's pr. It's so, you know, it's so intertwined. No, I mean I think about this.

[Gary Briggs]

In terms of pr, which becomes the news, which then becomes a driver of the creative that gets done in the media that gets bought in a vicious circle. Is that. I'm thinking about it. Yeah.

[Ken Young]

I mean if we kind of think about, I'm kind of jumping over to, to architecture. But you know, you and I were kind raised in, in what I would call center hall colonial marketing, which is, you know, general hallway. There's, there's that door that's you know, the outdoor advertising people, there's the events people, there's the PR person, you know, and, and then you know, Proctor made this whole thing about 360 and you know, it's all points and stuff. I mean the networking of what's going on in the consumer's mind, and the amount now that the consumer's pulling content to themselves rather than you just pushing content to them, it. That's what, that's the world we're in. So this delineation of, oh, that's a press thing, or that's a events thing. I mean, it's all of that. And, and so the thing that, that is stunning of the, of the brain space you have to kind of get to when you're running campaign is what the hell do you pay attention to and how do you stay on your message? And this is, again, the thing I think is Trump is extraordinary at is he's constantly driving the narrative because he's constantly reinventing what the narrative is. And so from a planning standpoint, you know, you said, hey, we're just going to talk about the economy. You know, this, there was this joke during the first Trump administration, it's Infrastructure Week. You know, we're just going to talk about infrastructure this week. It's not, that's not reality and it's, it's quaint, but it ain't true.

[Gary Briggs]

Got it. Let's talk about the PR a little bit, because there was, you know, the assassination attempt. There was Harris kind of saying she wouldn't change anything on the View and Colbert, Colbert, I mean, and that, that pr. How did, how did you manage that? Because that's also part of this neural network of stuff hitting the consumers.

[Ken Young]

Sure. So, so look, I mean, I could tell you some stories around. I mean, the Trump assassination attempt was horrific, really awful. You know, I, I certainly was campaigning against him. I didn't want him to win. But, but that was really awful and terrible. Terrible to see. I could tell you a quick story about that and then I'll, but I'll come back to that on, on narrative. Certainly when Vice President Harris was on the View and, and answered that she wouldn't do anything different, we knew that was a big issue. We were running to have her be an agent of change, particularly because we were very much aware of this. I alluded to it earlier, but the right track, wrong track, how people were thinking about the Biden Harris administration and trying to separate her from the president show momentum around a new generation. She's 20 years younger than her opponent, and a lot of work we were trying to do in terms of separation, that was working. That was a massive setback in my mind. I think that particular answer, you know, again, back to the earlier point, we have, to their credit, the Trump campaign seized on that very fast. I mean, they, they, you know, what's really, really stunning. I'm going to go back to talking about speed and then I'll talk about, go back to talk about the Trump assassination attempt in the, in the Trump Harris debate. Okay. So that debate we knew we had done really well and it was helping us with momentum and driving again, differentiation between Biden and Harris because the contrast could not have been bigger with her performance in that debate versus how President Biden did in his debate. That debate was done at 11:10 minutes to 11 on the east Coast. So we're all in Wilmington, Delaware by the way. So that's where the campaign was based. And we're all Wilmington, Delaware. We're in a friends at a house of a woman on our team watching. At 10 after 11 we were on the, on a call BC with three of the agencies we used to make television ads. That's 10 after 11 at night. I woke up in the morning at 5:30. I had three television ads in my inbox.

[Gary Briggs]

Wow.

[Ken Young]

That ran one of which ran that afternoon. So this gives you a sense of like the speed at which this is all operating. I'll jump back to just mention about the trempasseth. I mentioned earlier that I wasn't particularly busy and the other practical matter we had, frankly we were running out of money. The donations started to really dry up after the debate. Not in the first week but in the second and third week they really started to dry up. And I think it was in the second week when the assassination attempts preferred. And there's a minor league baseball team in Wilmington. Yeah, it's Saturday night, I'm there for the weekend. I'm not going to see my wife who's on the west Coast. And so I'm like I'm going to go see a baseball game. So you know, look, get a burger and a beer Saturday night, summer day, why the hell, you know. So I didn't bring my work phone for lots of security reasons, lots of badging in the office. But we had separate phones, separate computers. I hadn't brought my work phone because I wasn't that busy. And I was like I was in my shorts, I'm not going to carry it. And it's around, I believe it's around 6:15 at night or so. And there's a bunch of young people just behind me in this minor league baseball stadium saying everybody's drinking beer. And they all start talking about assassination attempt. And my personal phone is where I kept the signal app which was, you know, encrypted messaging. And I got a note from Some of the campaign that there was this assassination attempt against Trump and I'm like, oh man, I gotta, like, I gotta get home. Because we had to pull all our advertising, right? You know, we shut down all our advertising, I think for a week, if I remember correctly, pulled everything. And by the way, we did that again in North Carolina, in parts of Georgia and Florida, remnants of Florida that feed into Georgia when the hurricane and the floods occurred in the Carolinasville. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, that, that was really horrible and not pulling the ads. But you know, just the wake of that and then obviously, you know, we, that, that that was going to change the dynamic of the race quite significantly, which it did.

[Gary Briggs]

Hey, so when, when you were looking at buying all this media and all this messaging, does anybody ever look at oversaturation and say, God, we've done 50 ads to, you know, Gary Briggs this week. Maybe we don't need anymore. Or is it just you don't take the chance, you just keep the pedal to the floor as long as you have money.

[Ken Young]

It's way, it's way more the latter. Look, I think there's still a lot to be done of cross channel integration modeling around saturation. I'll give you a specific example. Like so, so the, the shorter the answer, because I know kind of, you know, there's only so much time a podcast can last, but I'll give it shorthand. You know, there is a general sense of more is more and not taking the chance of not reaching somebody, particularly as it relates to television, which again, I think gets oversaturated. In my commercial experience. I never bought in the US and overseas we sometimes did more, but I never bought more than 450 gross. About 450 gross rating points.

[Gary Briggs]

A huge amount of gross rating points.

[Ken Young]

Huge amounts. For those who don't follow this and in their daily lives, that's 90% of a population getting a message five times a week. We were, we just, our campaign was buying in the last weeks in Philly, 2,500. About 2,500 gross rating points in Philly, 25 in Philly from US, 2,000 from the Trump campaign, 2,000 from actually future forward in our case was by in some cases 3000. In the last couple of weeks they hit as high as 3,000. Preserve America pack, Make America Great Again pack. These are all the Trump packs, the Elon's pack, which I'm Preserve, Preserve Democracy pack I think is what it was called again, you know, 1500 gross rating points, et cetera, et cetera. I asked at One point in the last couple weeks. How many gross rating points in a week is there in Pittsburgh?

[Gary Briggs]

Exactly.

[Ken Young]

What is the total supply of GRPs in Pittsburgh in a week? The answer was 86,000 press rating points. Could probably about 15,000 of those. I think that's on the low end. Was political advertising from just the presidential campaign, by the way, Pennsylvania there also wasn't.

[Gary Briggs]

You had all kinds of other political campaigns running.

[Ken Young]

There's a massive Senate campaign going on where Casey was running against McCormick in Pennsylvania, which was dumping lots of money there too. So, you know, you talk. I'll talk to someone in New York or the, you know, or, or California for that matters. I saw an awful lot of political ads. Like what? It was like, you know, you got no idea.

[Gary Briggs]

No idea because you've been here. There's probably no regular in some of those cities.

[Ken Young]

And I think that's, that's where I think the modeling needs to come in, which is, you know, the way testing occurs in television in political ads is it's point to point. Mike Clinton, I'm going to pay you to watch this ad and you're going to tell me what you think about that ad. It's very different than Mike Clinton seeing ads on an Eagles game. Yeah.

[Gary Briggs]

In Philadelphia or Pennsylvania.

[Ken Young]

Philadelphia. In a pod with a bunch of other ads sitting around with other people perhaps, who are like, what the heck was that? Or just the bombardment of, of seeing one. You know, see a Harris ad, then you see a Trump ad, then you see a Harris PAC ad. There. There was no, there's no separation.

[Gary Briggs]

Yes. Well, yes. Okay, so let's talk about what marketing learnings can our listeners take away from this other than like shock and awe of what actually is going on?

[Ken Young]

Yeah, I, I literally. I mentioned it earlier. I think, I think learning at speed and producing content at speed is, is really important. I do. Look, I had the chance to make. You've had the chance to make some of these ads that are anthemic and famous and, you know, end up on the reels of, you know, festivals and all that. There's a phrase which I know it's not popular to mention them this week, but at Meta Perfect is the enemy of good enough.

[Gary Briggs]

Yeah.

[Ken Young]

Getting content out in the world and getting responded to by people in is more important than beauty most of the time. And granted it's different from a particular company's business and why you might want to make something that's perfection, if you will, to use that analogy. But I think speed trumps most things.

[Gary Briggs]

I would agree with that and I also think there's a part you just said about the saturation, which is a lot of times consumers are not paying as close attention as you, probably every time. And the idea that every single thing has to be perfect or the, your, your reach out is terrible. It's probably not that.

[Ken Young]

I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna jump over to one of my conversations I had with Mark Zuckerberg when I was working at Facebook at the time now meta. We were trying to launch an ad campaign and there was lots of comments going back and forth and you know, the, the, you know, the last 72 hours before you try to get something approved and back and forth and back and forth. And finally I just said to him, help me help you. You know, I mean, ch. Like we gotta stop touching this thing. It's gotta get out in the world.

[Gary Briggs]

Yeah, you gotta make some choices. So is this a good career path for somebody younger to take a job in one of these things or does it, does it warn you for the corporate world?

[Ken Young]

I don't know, to be honest about that. I, you know, I would say the optimist of me for younger people is it is a great experience. I think the passion around it, the general sense of purpose around it, and then importantly the learning you get from being thrown into something you're not fully qualified for in a short amount of time with not a lot of support. I never saw a job description where I was, I mean, you know, when I joined, you know, it's not like Jen sat me down and you know, went through my, my bullet point and we had weekly reviews and now, you know, great. I'm in a much different phase of my career, but for younger people, I think it's a, it's a great experience. Does it, does it affect you in terms of your career? I hope not. You know, I'm, I'm particularly worried about the tribalization of our country. I'll just say 85% of people, you know, 70 to 85% of people agree on most things as it relates to policy, but we're in this tribalism right now that I think is really unfortunate. So this idea that, you know, I'm not going to hire that person because they work for that candidate or the other candidate. I hope we. That, that doesn't. Because I gotta say that the people I worked with and what they've osmotically learned from being in that environment is worthwhile to a lot of marketing organizations.

[Gary Briggs]

I would agree with that. And that is the first time on our show that osmotically has ever been used ever. So congratulations for, for breaking through on that.

[Ken Young]

I haven't check if that's actually a word that somebody.

[Gary Briggs]

I'm going to use it. Yeah, maybe I want to make a joke about the Osmonds, but. But I won't. So, so which, which brings us. Because we're, we're at time and this has been a fantastic show. It's our last question. You know, it's a two part choice. You can take one or both parts. You just have to take one practical advice we haven't discussed yet and. Or funny story you haven't told yet that you can tell on the air.

[Ken Young]

Gosh.

[Gary Briggs]

Yeah.

[Ken Young]

I mean it's not really story but, you know, look, I, I thought about five, ten minutes into the debate for Biden, I knew we was going to all change.

[Gary Briggs]

Yeah.

[Ken Young]

You know, it was one of those things where the, the reason that the Biden campaign and the leadership of the Biden campaign, including the White House, chose to have the debate early, ironically, which is an overused word, but it is truly the case here is because the race had not changed since January. You know, I think it had, but it had not changed. And the historic nature of that night, you know, being in a room with. I was in my apartment with five other people, four other people that I worked with. We were all watching, you know, to state the obvious is what you and I joked about way younger than me and. But when I saw that, I thought this is all going to change. It's just a matter of, you know, when. And I think that's. That I will always remember that. That experience of watching that and what, you know, then transpired afterwards. It was like no other career experience I'd ever had.

[Gary Briggs]

And changed the entire marketing plan that was on the table. I mean, there's a lesson there for marketers too, which is that was a massive shift in the product news.

[Ken Young]

So saying something. Yeah, that's. That's for sure.

[Gary Briggs]

Right. Well, I think that's a great way to end the show. Thank you, Gary. And thanks to everyone for listening to CMO Confidential. If you're enjoying our shows, please like share and subscribe. Look for more of our shows on the I Hear Everything network, Apple podcasts, Spotify and YouTube, which include it's a Bird, It's a Plane. Holy shit, it's AI. Parts one and two. The Warby Parker case. I can see clearly now with my cltv. Cltv glasses on. Marketing in the service business. The art of selling confidence. And Gary's first show, which featured marketing and technology and the intersection of those two. Hey all you marketers, stay safe out there. This is Mike Linton signing off for CMO Confidential. Discover the future of AI Powered digital experiences. Adobe Summit is live in Las Vegas, March 17th through the 20th. If you can't make it to the conference in person, join Summit online free from anywhere. Access inspirational talks from global brand leaders like Coca Cola, Unilever, Marriott and more in live streamed insightful keynotes and Adobe Sneaks co hosted by comedian Ken Young. Select from over 30 expert LE sessions. Register for [e-mail] Go CMO Confidential.