Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins

Summary

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Podcast Summary

On with Kara Swisher — Special Episode: Create or Destroy: Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins featuring David Axelrod

Release Date: June 18, 2026
Host: Seth Matlins (Create or Destroy)
Guest: David Axelrod, political strategist and media commentator
Producer: Vox Media Podcast Network

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Episode Overview

This episode delves deeply into the intersection between political campaign strategy and business marketing, using the lens of value creation and destruction. Host Seth Matlins (marketing leader) welcomes renowned political strategist David Axelrod (President Obama’s former chief strategist and advisor) for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about building brands—be they politicians or companies—and how storytelling, authenticity, and community are central to lasting success. The discussion also confronts the erosion of the "American brand" and explores what lessons both politics and business can draw from one another, especially amidst contemporary polarization and technological transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Candidates as Brands and the Art of Political Storytelling

• Branding a Candidate (04:55–12:15)
  • Axelrod is candid about his reluctance to equate candidates to brands but acknowledges the "comparative advantage" mindset.
  • Quote: "I'm always reluctant to speak of candidates as brands, but there's no doubt that they are." (David Axelrod, 05:50)
  • The process focuses on distilling authentic traits that resonate, not necessarily the most dramatic or novel ones, but those most meaningful to persuadable voters.
  • Use of Obama’s 2004–2008 rise as a case study—crafting an optimistic, inclusive message ("Yes, we can") to unite disillusioned voters.
    • Quote: "Yes, we can was ... both optimistic and it also was about them and not just us." (David Axelrod, 10:10)

2. Messaging in a Divided America

• On "Big Tent" Politics and Message Cohesion (12:16–15:48)

  • Challenges Democrats face: larger coalition, many interest groups versus the Republicans' more cohesive base.
  • Axelrod advises focusing on commonalities rather than microtargeting every niche.
    • Quote: "What is a story that holds us together? ... that allows us to have a sense of community rather than a sense of adjacent parts?" (David Axelrod, 15:47)

• Can a Unifying Campaign Work Today? (16:01–19:55)

  • Social media and algorithms now exacerbate division, but there may arise a backlash—possibly by 2028—against the "silo-ing" of society.
  • Quote: "We have faux community, but we don’t have real community... I think now it could just be that I am an unapologetic idealist... but I think people also hunger for community." (David Axelrod, 16:21)

3. Being 'For' Something vs. 'Against' Something

• Optimism vs. Antagonism in Messaging (23:13–26:15)
  • Obama’s 2008 campaign was about being 'for' change, Trump's politics about being 'against' opponents.
  • Axelrod clarifies: opposition should target destructive systems (algorithms, unchecked AI, money in politics), not each other.
  • Quote: "I think actually decency is going to have its day... Humility, empathy, integrity, honesty, the ability to unite rather than divide. I think those are going to be at a premium in 2028." (David Axelrod, 25:06)

4. The American Brand: Restoration and Realpolitik

• Brand America: Erosion and Possibility of Repair (26:15–33:27)
  • The American brand has always been aspirational and somewhat contradictory, but its recent devaluation by isolationism and demagoguery is severe.
  • The exclusion of immigrants and retreat from foreign aid are symptoms of this loss, undermining soft power and moral leadership.
  • Quote: "One of the tragedies of the last few years is the degree to which immigrants have been demonized... instead of that great inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty, you feel like she... should be holding out her hand and telling people not to come." (David Axelrod, 27:30)
  • Obama’s 2008 election viewed as a restorative moment for the American brand—proof of progress and self-correction.

5. Data vs. Intuition in Messaging

• The Limits of Analytics, The Power of Qualitative Insight (33:47–36:57)
  • Axelrod’s background includes qualitative research (inspired by his mother’s pioneering work in the field), not just polling and data.
  • There’s an art to understanding what people care about; overreliance on empirical testing can stifle creativity and authenticity.
  • Quote: "Campaigns and messaging and campaigns is an art as well as a science... we are burying ourselves in analytics in a way that destroys the art of marketing." (David Axelrod, 36:13)

6. Is Political Strategy Just Marketing (and Vice Versa)?

• Storytelling First, Marketing Second (36:57–39:13)
  • Axelrod prefers the title "storyteller" over "marketer" out of reverence for public service but concedes that persuasion is the heart of both politics and business.
  • Quote: “We are trying to make a sale... you can have a product that lives for decades. In an election, you’ve got a matter of months... and people are going to make a choice.” (David Axelrod, 38:04)

7. Strategic Decisions: Successes and Mistakes

• Learning from Campaign Missteps—and Staying On Brand (41:35–50:41)
  • Sharing campaign war stories, Axelrod underscores the need to stay authentic. A negative campaign moment off-brand led to losses in 2008.
    • Quote: "We went after [Clinton] in a very traditional kind of way... that was completely antithetical to... our brand. And we lost both those [primaries], and we deserve to lose both those." (David Axelrod, 46:08)
  • Importance of responding to attacks within one’s established message and brand (e.g., Tom Vilsack’s direct-to-camera ad focusing on values over attacks).

8. Advice for Brands, CEOs, and Marketers

• Crafting Consistent, Authentic Stories Even Amid Short Attention Spans (50:36–52:49)
  • “Understand what your authentic comparative advantages are... try and develop all your messaging within that frame... Don’t try and reinvent your message again and again because you will not develop any kind of brand loyalty unless people really come to believe this is what it’s about.” (David Axelrod, 51:04)
  • Tell stories that validate your messaging, draw from genuine origins, and connect to customer/voter needs.

9. Culminating Question: What Would You Create or Destroy?

• Axelrod’s Wish (53:14–54:29)
  • Would destroy algorithms’ ability to pit society against itself.
  • Would create social media platforms that uplift, not divide—betting on a “revolution of common humanity.”
  • Quote: "I would destroy the ability of algorithms to use data... to try and inflame us against each other. ...and I would try to create social media brands that appeal to the better angels of our nature and not the worst." (David Axelrod, 53:14)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I'm always reluctant to speak of candidates as brands, but there's no doubt that they are." (David Axelrod, 05:50)
• “Yes, we can was ... both optimistic and it also was about them and not just us.” (David Axelrod, 10:10)
• “What is a story that holds us together? ...that allows us to have a sense of community rather than a sense of adjacent parts?” (David Axelrod, 15:47)
• “We have faux community, but we don’t have real community... people also hunger for community.” (David Axelrod, 16:21)
• “I think actually decency is going to have its day... humility, empathy, integrity, honesty, the ability to unite rather than divide. I think those are going to be at a premium in 2028.” (David Axelrod, 25:06)
• "One of the tragedies of the last few years is the degree to which immigrants have been demonized... instead of that great inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty, you feel like she... should be holding out her hand and telling people not to come." (David Axelrod, 27:30)
• "We are burying ourselves in analytics in a way that destroys the art of marketing." (David Axelrod, 36:13)
• "We went after [Clinton] in a very traditional kind of way... that was completely antithetical to... our brand. And we lost both those [primaries], and we deserve to lose both those." (David Axelrod, 46:08)
• “I would destroy the ability of algorithms to use data... to try and inflame us against each other... I would try and create social media brands that appeal to the better angels of our nature and not the worst.” (David Axelrod, 53:14)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:40–01:04: Episode set-up—reimagining marketing, the business/politics analogy
• 04:55–12:16: Candidate as brand; Obama campaign brand-building
• 12:16–15:48: Challenges of broad coalition messaging in Democratic politics
• 16:01–19:55: Social media, polarization, and the hunger for community
• 23:13–26:15: Being for something vs. being against something; optimism vs. division
• 26:15–33:27: The American brand—erosion and what would restore it
• 33:47–36:57: Qualitative research, limits of big data, and the importance of ‘feel’
• 41:35–50:41: Lessons learned from campaign mistakes; the importance of being on-brand
• 50:36–52:49: Advice for brand storytelling and consistency
• 53:14–54:29: Axelrod’s "create or destroy" answer—algorithms and hope for social media

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Conclusion

This episode provides a masterclass in the convergence of political and business marketing, laying bare how success in both domains hinges on authentic storytelling, a keen understanding of what people value, and the hard work of building community. David Axelrod’s experience across 150+ campaigns, and especially his pivotal work for Barack Obama, spotlights the enduring importance of core values and consistency—even as technology, data, and division reshape our world. The parallel between the political "ground game" and direct customer contact in business is drawn as a crucial but often underestimated component of true value creation. The episode concludes with Axelrod’s fervent hope for a future where algorithms unite rather than divide, and where brands—be they political or commercial—lead with humanity.

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Transcript

[Kara Swisher]

Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is on with Kara Swisher. And I'm Kara Swisher. We're bringing you an episode of the new podcast from the Vox Media Podcast network called Create or Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins. In this episode, host and marketer Seth Matlins speaks with political strategist David Axelrod, who is President Obama's chief strategist and senior advisor. David is currently a senior political commentator for CNN and the co host of Vox's Hacks on Tap podcast. Seth and David talk about how to fix the American brand, which David sees as having been devalued but not beyond repair. So stick around.

[David Axelrod]

What is a story that holds us together? What is the story that most of us share that allows us to have a sense of community rather than a sense of adjacent parts?

[Seth Matlins]

I'm Seth Matlins, and welcome to Create or Destroy Reimagining Marketing. It's my new show exploring how every decision a company makes, not just the marketing ones, but everyone either contributes to value creation or destruction. And it's about how the only value that ultimately matters is how valuable your customers think you are. All of which is why marketing has to be reimagined as an organizational mindset, not just a function. Each week I sit down with CMOs, CEOs, founders, cultural thinkers, the people who are building breaks, breaking and reimagining how businesses grow or don't, for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show, it's a marketing show. Creator destroys the show that argues they've always been the same thing. This week I'm thinking about the business of politics, because the parallels between political campaign strategy and business value creation aren't metaphorical. They're structural and abundant. At a fundamental level, a campaign's an enterprise where every decision what you say and don't, who you hire, how and when you show up or don't, what you refuse to say, the baby or the donor you kiss or don't, either builds value with voters or destroys it. And voters, they're customers who all only get to buy what you're selling on just one day. And you need 51% of them. To unpack these parallels, I'm sitting with the legendary political strategist and consultant David Axelrod. He was chief strategist and senior adviser to President Barack Obama, the founding director of the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, and he's currently a distinguished fellow at the University of Chicago, a senior political commentator for CNN and the co host of the Hacks on tap podcast. Across 40 years and over 150 campaigns, David may have thought more deeply about how you move people to take action at scale than almost anyone alive.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Seth Matlins]

So David, I want to I want to start by asking you a couple of questions about brands. It's going to come at you in two parts and and specifically about what you've learned about their role in value creation and getting people to turn out and buy in that moment. Right? That is a GoTV effort. First, first part of the question is I want to talk and get your take about the candidate as brand, right? And how as a political strategist do you think about this and and what are the steps that you take to take a candidate that maybe we don't know particularly well and turn them into something of a brand, or to use George Lakoff's context, you know, frame them as something of a brand and turn the product that's the candidate into something more sellable than perhaps they'd be without it.

[David Axelrod]

Well, this won't make me unique, but I once was screamed at by Steve Jobs because he, at the beginning of the Obama campaign, he, after telling me that my industry was crap and so on, he asked me what our communications plan was and I started talking to him about it and, you know, he interrupted and so on. And I said to him, steve, you know, selling presidents may be just a little different than selling computers. And he hung up on me. So I, you know, I'm always reluctant to speak of candidates as brands, but there's no doubt that they are. And the process that I went through with candidates is trying to understand what their comparative advantages were with the folks who were going to decide the election. In other words, I would focus on not the people who I knew were always going to be for us or the people who were always going to be against us, but those people who were persuadable because you can say a hundred things about someone that are all real and authentic, but what are the two or three that are the most meaningful and how do they cohere in a message that people can grasp? And that's the process that I always applied in campaigns. And certainly that was the case in the Obama campaign.

[Seth Matlins]

Who is this Obama you speak of?

[David Axelrod]

Well, you know, that's what everybody was asking at the time. Yeah. Back in the day. But you know, when Obama, he really, you have to look at his rise from 2004 through 2008 began with his Senate race. And it came in a time when the country was deeply, deeply fractured by the Iraq war. And by a sense that Washington was just at each other's throats. The parties were at each other's throats, they were gridlocked, they were very self interested. And here comes this guy from the outside who challenges the whole gestalt of Washington, the whole red versus blue, who's up and who's down kind of theory of Washington and the idea that we can never deal with any big problems because of it. And so the first ad, Seth, that I ever did for Barack Obama was in his campaign for the U.S. senate. And it was a biographical ad. And a lot of it was about things that he had done in his life. First African American president of the Harvard Law Review, things he had done in public life where he took on an issue that people thought was unachievable and helped achieve it all building up to him saying, and now they say we can't change Washington. Well, I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message. To say yes, we can, and yes, we can became the sort of tagline for much of what we did moving forward. In fact, it's one of the words that's embedded in the side of the Obama center that's opening in June. And what we were playing against was not just opponents, but against a whole political climate at the time where people were deeply jaundiced about the system, about the ability to get things done, and where politicians were not trading high and were seen as sort of self interested. Parties were seen as self interested.

[Seth Matlins]

Almost seems nostalgic today.

[David Axelrod]

So yes, we can. Yes, we can was. It was both optimistic and it also was about them and not just us and what we wanted people to.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt, but when

[David Axelrod]

you said, yes, people, yes, you know, in 2008, it always, I'm always reminded Hillary's slogan was I'm with her. That was a tagline they used a lot. And his was yes, we can. And it was not about him. It was about them. It was about what we could do together. And there was just a yearning for someone who could, who could lead such a movement. So I always think back to that race in 2008, and, you know, we were the insurgents. We were the grassroots candidate. We were challenging what essentially was the big brand in Democratic politics. Hillary Clinton. The Clintons. But they made a series of strategic decisions, one of which was, you know, there were posters everywhere saying, I'm with her, to try and tie into the fact that she would be the first woman. We, we didn't ever reference the fact that he would be the first African American president. We figured if people were motivated by that, they would know. Yeah, it was. It wasn't. We didn't need to remind them.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah, but.

[David Axelrod]

But the tagline of yes, we can made it about everyone, not about him.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[David Axelrod]

And it was very positive at a time when people were very, very down and jaundiced about what politics was and what it could produce. And so, you know, that kind of. It was built on the essence of who he was and the story we told about him from the beginning. And so we had a solid foundation for the theme.

[Seth Matlins]

I want to come back to Hillary's campaign in 08 in a minute, but I want to ask you about something you said earlier, which is in building the brand and refining the message. We're going to talk about you as a storyteller as well. You talked about trying to figure out what resonates with whom. Now, about two or three years ago, when I was still at Forbes, I set out to write a piece that I never did about why the Democrats by and large, suck at marketing, at least when compared to the other party. And they just do. One of the things that my research led me to from a bunch of people who are far more informed about it than I was, is they, they, they all agreed with the premise. And what they said is it's because the Democratic tent is so big, there are so many constituent groups that you have to appeal to that figuring out what to say to every that, that, that pulls everybody in as opposed to what you have to say to pull in this group and this group and this group and this group, all based on identity is, is a real challenge. Right. The Republicans tend to have in America obviously, a, a, a more cohesive base. And, and so the comms chall. And I'm wondering a if you think that's right, but B, given to the extent you do think it's right, given how many identity groups there are, how many different types of people make up the Democratic coalition, how do you figure out what's going to resonate with.

[David Axelrod]

Well, I mean, it's a question of whether you think that the, you know, whether you can assemble piece by piece, your base or whether you emphasize those things that speak to the largest number of people. And our theory was always that we would do that. I mean, you know, we would have conversations with different constituencies. But as I said, we never emphasized the fact that he was a black candidate. That was obvious to everyone. And we really kind of stayed away from a lot of sort of divisive social issues or niche issues because there were some big issues that everyone shared, concerns that everyone shared. And what we were pitching and what we believed was that we should speak to the common experiences of large numbers of people who were struggling in the economy, who were opposed to the war, who were fed up with politics as usual rather than this sort of micro targeting that I think is a flawed way to approach campaigns.

[Seth Matlins]

And do you think it's that way, both at a national campaign and a local campaign? And why.

[David Axelrod]

I mean, look, primary elections are different than general elections. And you know, they're all, they're, they're different circumstances. And I'm not saying that you should not, you should not, you know, try and appeal to groups of voters who are important in A. In a party or in a, you know, or generally. But you should not do that to the exclusion of a larger story. What is a story that holds us together? What is the story that.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

That.

[David Axelrod]

That. That most of us share, that allows us to have a sense of community rather than a sense of, you know, adjacent parts?

[Seth Matlins]

Do you think. Do you think that that approach is. Will that approach work at a national level, moving forward in a country that, you know, as I said before, it, like, nostalgic for 08, when people were divided like that seems like, you know, the halcyon days of division.

[David Axelrod]

Yes.

[Seth Matlins]

As opposed to today.

[David Axelrod]

Well, I mean, one thing we're fighting, Seth, is we live in an age of social media. We live in an age of big data and algorithms that thrive on separating us and shoving us into silos. I actually think we're reaching a point where it's possible that a candidate in 2028, for example, could actually run against all of that, because I think there's a hunt. I think that people. We are sort of, oftentimes, against our wishes, even our awareness, we are being shoved into silos. But I also think there's a weariness with the kind of siege mentality of our politics today, the sort of constant battling that we have. And I think now it could just be that I am a, you know, un. Apologetic idealist about what democracy can be. But I. I think people also hunger for community. And we've lost community. We have faux community, but we don't have real community. And I think people are. And, you know, the president is sort of a human algorithm. He finds those things that divide us and.

[Seth Matlins]

Or inhuman algorithm. Sorry, bias is showing.

[David Axelrod]

Well, yeah, it's not very subtle, but his view of leadership is exactly that. You find your community and you animate them by creating strawmen and draw everybody outside the circle who's opposed to you in ways that galvanize people. I think that there is. There is every election, I can tell you. I mean, this is my very, very strong feeling, based on my experience. Every presidential election, interestingly, oftentimes, mayoral elections, too, but every presidential election, especially when the incumbent is leaving, is about the incumbent who's leaving. And it's never that people want to replicate what they have. They always want the remedy to whatever they see or the deficiencies in the person they have. One of the deficiencies that Donald Trump has that is. That is deeply felt, is he is a very, very divisive person. And I think that a candidate who tries to draw, you know, our draws together is going to have is gonna is gonna develop a following. So I I think the answer to your question is yes. I I think it's possible that especially by making, I mean by making the the, the algorithms the social this algorithms the social media platform. For criticism. And I think that there are a lot of people who may feel that it's time that we reign some of that in and that we find our common humanity.

[Kara Swisher]

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[Seth Matlins]

I, I hope you're right, but implicit in what you're talking about is, is something that a lot of the marketers and in my audience will, will be familiar with, which is, you know, the, the, the binary of should we be for something or against something? Right. So, you know, back in 08, Obama was four. Right. He was four. Change. He was for the change that the collective in the community could bring and what could happen and be done from that. Yes, we can. To your point about the current administration and really the way he's operated for, you know, at least the last 10 years.

[David Axelrod]

Yes.

[Seth Matlins]

He's against. Right, right. He's against whatever's not for him. And, and I'm wondering, do you go in. You know, you referred to yourself as an, I think as an eternal optimist. I'm not sure.

[David Axelrod]

You said it's an idealist.

[Seth Matlins]

Idealist. Yeah. As an idealist, do you, do you consider the. Yeah, we can be against something too. Now you've talked about against, against the algorithm.

[David Axelrod]

Yeah. No, no, look, I think, I don't, I think that there is plenty to be against that doesn't pit you against your neighbor.

[Seth Matlins]

Right, right.

[David Axelrod]

You know, so, I mean, there are forces that should be challenged. You know, we are in money that translates into power that should be challenged. You know, the algorithms should be challenged. The fact that we have AI rolling out as quickly as it is without any serious policy about how we're going to create some guardrails in a mechanism that is taught to think like people but has no moral or ethical construct. I mean, there are, there are all kinds of things that we should be against in the service of reform. That is really important if we're going to advance as a country. But pitting ourselves against each other Neighbor against neighbor. You disagree with me. I think you're going to destroy America. I think you're evil. I don't recognize your common humanity. I think people are tired of that. And, you know, I can't make an empirical case right at this moment, but I see a lot of focus groups and I hear a lot of discussion, and I feel there is a weariness of it. I think actually decency is going to have its day. I think people are so tired of who Trump is and how he operates. That humility, empathy, integrity, honesty, the ability to unite rather than divide. I think those are going to be at a premium in 2028, and the person who emerges is going to reflect those qualities.

[Seth Matlins]

Well, I certainly hope you're right, but it's a great segue to. Actually, the second part of my first question, which was about brands, which is I used to say back in the day that I had two favorite brands. Santa Claus in America, Santa Claus. Because where else could you see parents lining for hours to put their children in the lap of a strange man just because he was wearing an outfit, a red outfit with a beard? Like, that's the power of a brand. But also America, because even back in the day, we still stood for something, despite the contradictions in some of our attitudes, our behaviors. Rather, again, coming at this with a very biased, progressive perspective, to me, it seems the last 18 months have done more to tarnish the American brand than at any time in my not so short life. And I'm wondering what you think the value of the brand of America has represented. The actual value in terms of, you know, policy and politics and getting shit done around the world. And if you see a way back from it.

[David Axelrod]

Well, look, I think the American brand has been, you know, flawed as we are, because we're human and we haven't. And we haven't always lived up to our best ideals, but we've done awfully well compared to other societies in the long march of history. And it's reflected honestly in our success. One of the tragedies of the last few years is the degree to which immigrants have been demonized. There's always been a sense that America is a place where you can make it and we'll have the freedom to make it. And now we are basically, instead of that great inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty, you feel like she, instead of a torch, should be holding out her hand and telling people not to come. That is a very destructive impulse, and it certainly undermines our brand. And there are many other ways in which that is true. I speak, by the way, as the son of a refugee from Eastern Europe who came here with nothing when he was a child. And one generation later, I was the senior advisor to the President of the United States who happened to be an African American man. So that is part of the American mystique. In fact, I will tell you that when we were talking about Obama running for president, Michelle Obama said, what do you think you can bring that no one else can bring? And he said, well, I don't know, but there are a lot of ways to answer that. But he said, there's one thing I know. He said, when I take that oath of office, millions of young people look at themselves differently and their prospects differently, and the world will look at us a little differently. His election was an affirmation of America at its best. The ability to progress, to self correct. The idea that, that really anybody can succeed. All those things have been tarnished. There are practical things about us being a world leader in terms of research and development and technology and all of that, that's all at risk. I mean, there's a lot. But at the core of it were the values that we're celebrating in the 250th year that. That cherishes freedom. Freedom to worship as you would, freedom to pursue your dreams. And we need to use the occasion, rather than celebrate the mad king we have today, to celebrate the values that animated those founders 250 years ago. And. But I'm not going to, you know, I said I'm an idealist. I'm not a nut. I understand that we have greatly devalued the American brand. I keep telling people that the blast radius from this administration is going to be felt for generations to come, and it's going to be the work of all of us in the future to rebuild that. The destruction of USAID and foreign aid. And I know foreign aid is politically a very, very freighted subject because people, this notion that we're giving tons of money away to philanthropy. Yeah, yeah, but. And it is, in a way, philanthropy. We've saved millions and millions of people all over the world from starvation and disease. We've also, in doing it, won the goodwill of those people. We've also, in doing it, prevented conflict and disease that would ultimately wash up on our shores.

[Seth Matlins]

That's why I think of it less as phila. I mean, obviously there is some philanthropy in it, no doubt, and as there should be. But I tend to think of it more as cause marketing, which is, you're doing well by doing good. Right. There is a benefit to us by doing what we do for others. And I think, I think that the. You know this better than I by exponentially. But we've reduced things not to their least common denominator, but to their actually, you know, their absolutely stupidest denominator. And foreign aid is seen as, as, you know, we're not getting anything back.

[David Axelrod]

Well, and it was done. It was done in, like, overnight by a bunch of, you know, gamers and Elon Musk, who knew the, the cost of everything and the value of nothing. And I think it will go down as one of the stupidest decisions, foreign policy decisions in the history of the country. But here's the fundamental issue is that Donald Trump has a philosophy, and that philosophy is the world is a jungle, and the strong take what they want and the weak fall away. And rules and laws and norms and institutions are for suckers. And, and that is a very dangerous philosophy. That is the philosophy of Vladimir Putin. And to the degree that he has bent the US Government to his philosophy and operated that way, it's been a blow to American democracy, but also to America's brand in the world. Because people, you know, why are we the default currency? And why are we, you know, we were viewed as the reliable country, a country that people could count on even if we had disagree, they had disagreements with us to operate a certain way.

[Seth Matlins]

Right.

[David Axelrod]

And that has been, you know, there's been great doubt caused by. So that is something that we're going to have to work to repair, because as we're learning in Iran, having the biggest army is not the end of the story in a very interconnected world.

[Seth Matlins]

I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, kind of in passing. You see a lot of data. You've seen a lot of data for, you know, the, the, the breadth of your career.

[David Axelrod]

Yeah.

[Seth Matlins]

I'm wondering two things. How do you use data to figure out what people actually value as opposed to what maybe they think they should value some? Right. Because, you know, what's, what's the famous quote, which is the moment you ask the question, you change the answer. And what I'm really interested in is like, are there moments when you've absolutely ignored the data and found, you know, a lot of value accretion because you did?

[David Axelrod]

Well, I'll tell you something. My mother was a newspaper reporter who ultimately, when her newspaper folded, became one of the pioneers in qualitative research.

[Seth Matlins]

Oh, is that right?

[David Axelrod]

And she was the qualitative director for Young and Rubicam.

[Seth Matlins]

Really Legend.

[David Axelrod]

And. But so I grew up, like in this focus group culture, and when I became involved in politics, I was a real devotee to qualitative because ultimately. And part of this is, you know, I'm a journalist by training, too. I want to hear in people's own words what's going on in their lives, what's important to them, you know, what are the challenges they face. We, during the presidential races and the second one in particular, you know, Joel Benson, who was our pollster, also

[Seth Matlins]

ran

[David Axelrod]

this ongoing ethnographic kind of project where people were just journaling. And we learned so much from all of that that helped shape the qualitative. But the qualitative wouldn't have been. I mean, the quantitative, I should say the polling, but it wouldn't have been nearly as rich. Campaigns and messaging and campaigns is an art as well as a science. And you need to have a feel for what people are telling you. And I worry a little bit that we've become so empirical that we test everything and if something does a tenth of a percentage point better than the other thing, then we're going to go with that and so on. And I think that we are, we are burying ourselves in analytics in a way that destroys the art of marketing.

[Seth Matlins]

I'm wondering, agreeing with you completely. And there's a great quote from a great. I think he must have been an ad man, British ad man, David Abbott, that I'll paraphrase, which is if you a B test two things that suck, one's still going to win. And I'm wondering, and I didn't know that about your mother and, you know, I imagine dinner table conversations were pretty rich and interesting. Do you think of yourself as a marketer?

[David Axelrod]

No, I think of myself as a storyteller. Yes. I mean, I was in the marketing business for sure. And you know, I only resist terms like marketing and brands because out of reverence for the mission of, of what politics should be. And I never wanted to. You know, there was a great book in 1968 called the Selling of the President by Joe McGinnis about how they marketed Richard Nixon and so on. You know, that. And it was a really interesting book. And they did, they, they kind of, they sanded down the rough edges on Nixon. They put him on laughing. They did some things to make him

[Seth Matlins]

hand rested and ready.

[David Axelrod]

Human. Yes. More human for his, for, for voters. At the end of the day, they, they won the race through not so subtle racial appeals, but which was very much consistent with who Nixon was.

[Seth Matlins]

Yes.

[David Axelrod]

But so I, I resist those terms. But obviously when you. We are trying to make a sale, I mean and it's very intensive because you can have a product that lives for decades in an election you've got a matter of months, maybe in a presidential race, years, but generally a matter of months and people are going to have a choice and they are going to decide.

[Seth Matlins]

And it's binary.

[David Axelrod]

And it's binary. And so you really need to think about that. And so I always used to work back from what do I want people to be thinking when they walk in that polling place, what I want them to think about, not just my candidate and the other candidate, but what is the choice about. And I try to drive those conversations that way, you know, which I think

[Seth Matlins]

at least from my seat makes you a marketer. And of course you're a marketer.

[David Axelrod]

Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I'm wondering, I'm a self loathing market.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. Yeah. Aren't we all?

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[David Axelrod]

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[Seth Matlins]

I'm wondering, what parallels do you see two or three maybe between the, the selling of a candidate and the selling of. Of toothpaste. Right. Which is, you know, where do you see the parallels or where do you see the disconnects?

[David Axelrod]

Well, the, I mean, the parallels are what I just referenced, which is people are going to make a choice. There, there, there are a lot of brands of toothpaste. So what is it? What are the qualities about your toothpaste that appeal, that would appeal incrementally to, to. Yeah, it's different because you don't have to wait, you don't have to get 51% of the market in when you're selling toothpaste. So it's a little, a little different in that way. But you do need. The whole thing boils down to comparative advantages on things that people most value you about that, about toothpaste.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah.

[David Axelrod]

And so what is it about your toothpaste that matches up with their essential needs and desires relative to toothpaste?

[Seth Matlins]

What I think is, is interesting about the references. You know, if you compare a lot of the marketing that a lot of toothpaste, just to stick with it do, they're all kind of marketing the same thing, which is, you know, a better smile, fresher breath and whiter teeth. And, and, and I think the, the product and service, the inhumane it not inhumane human product and service marketers, too often they're just saying the same effing thing over and over again, not finding that source of competitive differentiation or kind of that strategic way in which is actually where I want to go next. Which is in the description of your podcast, Hacks on Tap, which for our listeners is available everywhere you listen and on YouTube if you choose to watch.

[David Axelrod]

In the description brought to you by

[Seth Matlins]

Vox Media and brought to you by our shared partners at Vox Media, you invite the listener to know, quote, what's going on behind the scenes and where strategic decisions are Being made. Yeah. You say pull up a stool. Where are strategic decisions being made?

[David Axelrod]

Well, in a good campaign, there's usually a, a strategic hub. There is a, you know, I, I'll use the Obama campaign as a, as an example, but, you know, my business partner, David Plouffe was the manager and managed, you know, a lot of the operations of the campaign. I was the, you know, the kind of message strategist. I managed that part of the campaign. But there was a core group in, in my group that involved a pollster. I did an interesting thing. I think it was, it was interesting to me anyway. But normally you'd hire a pollster and that pollster would do both the qual. Qualitative and quantitative. I hired a pollster, Joel Benninson, and a qualitative guy, David Binder, who was a brilliant, brilliant qualitative researcher. He does polling as well. But I hired him only for purposes of doing qualitative. And he was on the road doing three focus groups a night, you know, around the country. But when we had to make key strategic decisions, Plouff would be there, I would be there. You know, some of the, if we wanted the research guys in there, they would come. But it wasn't a large group. And oftentimes in the campaign it boiled down to Plough and me and the candidate. And that's the way, I mean, someone has to drive the train. Yeah. And if you have. The one sign of distress in a campaign is if 20 people are sitting around a table trying to make a strategic decision.

[Seth Matlins]

Yeah. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I'm, I'm wondering. And let's, I mean, you've run what or. And advised something like 140, 150 campaigns over the last period of your career.

[David Axelrod]

Yeah.

[Seth Matlins]

You got a story. And let's, let's think at, at a smaller, smaller than potential of where you made a. You look back, you're like, that was the wrong strategic decision. The consequences were just not what you anticipated, I imagine.

[David Axelrod]

I'm not a woman, but like childbirth, you remember the pleasure and you try and forget the pain. Yeah. You asked me for nada. Let me give you a presidential example because it travels. We had a two week period in March of 2008 when we were running against Hillary Clinton and Texas and Ohio were voting on the same day. If we had won either of those, she would have had to. And they said, we'll drop out if we don't win. Win those. We spent a lot of money and time and effort trying to win in those two weeks. But we also changed what we were doing. And we went after her in a very traditional kind of way. We hooked her up to nafta, and it became a very sort of familiar and dreary kind of campaign for those two weeks that was completely antithetical to the main met, to our brand. It was off brand, it was antithetic to our brand. And we lost both those, and we deserve to lose both those. And we learned from that. But I'm sure I can think of analogous situations from smaller campaigns as well, because in these kind of dynamic situations, you're constantly making strategic decisions, maybe more so than in brand advertising or brand messaging, because of the kind of the pace of political campaigns and the calendar of political campaigns. And you don't often have. I mean, I guess you do somewhat, but it's less common to have the, you know, one toothpaste going negative on the other toothpaste. It happens. But, you know, we. You are constantly under fire from the other side. And if you're not, it's because you're not doing very well. So that's something you have to respond and react to. And how you do it is really important. You know, I ran a campaign for Tom Vilsack, who became the agriculture secretary later, but governor of Iowa, and it was forever an attack that Iowa Republicans ran against Iowa Democrats, that Iowa Democrats opposed the death penalty. And they came at us on that, and they used the example of a small child who had been molested and killed. Some horrible story. And they said, you know, if Tom Vilsack were governor, he would not give that person. It may have been a fictitious story, the death penalty. And there was a panic among Democrats there, and they said, you've got to fire back. You got to hit him back on his crime record and this and that and. And my instinct was, no, that's not part of our brand. That's not who we are. Vilsack was very much in the same kind of category as Obama. He was tonally in that same place. And instead we did a direct to camera in which he said, my opponent is running ads that, you know, are offensive to me as a. As a husband and as a father. You know, that's his plan to win this election. He says, but I don't. But, you know what I want to talk about. And then he went on to talk about their lives and where they differed on stuff. And. And it finished with him saying, my opponent's counting on 11th hour attack ads to win this election. I'm counting on you. And it was very, very powerful, you know, so part of it is understanding how to respond within the context of your message.

[Seth Matlins]

So actually on that. And we just have a couple of minutes left and I've got two questions for you. So the first is I referenced this earlier and you certainly have. You've described your entire career as being at its core about storytelling. I asked if you thought of yourself as a marketer, you said no. A storyteller.

[David Axelrod]

Yes.

[Seth Matlins]

And figuring out what the story of each candidate campaign in the moment.

[David Axelrod]

Yes.

[Seth Matlins]

And then telling it. I'm wondering what advice, as one of the great storytellers of the last decades, you have for the CEOs, CFOs, and CMOs in my audience on how to tell stories, whether you're selling toothpaste or presidential candidates in today's world where attentions are shrinking and it's not that attentions are shrinking, the competition is ever expensive.

[David Axelrod]

Well, yes. And the habits, consumer habits in terms of information is so fractionalized now. But listen, and this may be sound like, like a cliche because it's used so often, but understand what your authentic comparative advantages are. Understand what your authentic brand is and try and develop all your messaging within that frame. Don't, you know, try and tell a consistent story about why people would be drawn to you. Don't try and reinvent your message again and again and again because you will not develop any kind of brand loyalty unless people really come to believe this is what it's about, this is why I'm drawn to it. And then understand the people you're talking to and their lives and how the two things fit together. When I say I'm a storyteller, the story of your candidate offers validation to the messages that you're going to deliver. Tom Vilsack was an orphan who was adopted by a very troubled family. And his father ended up selling everything he owned. He found out after the fact to help him go to college. And education was a huge issue in Iowa. He told that story, but then he talked about Iowa and he said, I'm going to do for Iowa what my dad did for me. I'm going to put education first. And that became a steady theme throughout our campaign. And people believed it because they heard

[Seth Matlins]

his story because of where it was coming from. I do think one of the lessons for brands today is to be more humane. But I'll have, I'll, I'll get interviewed about that. Last question for you, sir. It's the way we end every episode, which is if you had all the power in the world, what's one thing you'd create tomorrow, not next week, but tomorrow. And what's one thing you'd destroy? It doesn't. You can answer it through any lens, any aperture, anything that comes.

[David Axelrod]

Well, just to follow through on what I said before, I'm, I'm kind of obsessed with, with us right now. I would destroy the ability of algorithms to use data, big data, to try and inflame us against each other. I would try, you know, and I'm not a technologist, I don't know. And then conversely, I would try and create social media brands that, that appeal to the better angels of our nature and not the worst. And I would market them that way, you know, and again, I have no idea if that could, you know, I mean, I'm now flying in the face of a lot of deep research that says that, you know, negativism and antagonism and hate and anger and conspiracy theories, world work. But, you know, I'm just, I'd love to see us have a revolution of common humanity against all of that. And I'd like to see vehicles to promote it that can prove the theory that I'm advancing here.

[Seth Matlins]

Let those be the last words. David Axelrod.

[David Axelrod]

Thank you, Seth.

[Seth Matlins]

Thank you so much. We're listening for you. Enjoyed it on Hacks on Tap.

[David Axelrod]

Thank you.

[Seth Matlins]

Bye, man. Thank you. Before we go, consider this. A US Presidential campaign is trying to persuade a couple of hundred million people to choose one product over another in one moment, on one day. A pretty large scale marketing challenge. And most every campaign runs a national media driven air war of messaging, ads and posts while simultaneously conducting a ground war that has the candidates and surrogates knocking on doors, showing up on tv, showing up at diners in towns most people can't find on a map, shaking hands in living rooms in Des Moines, eating bratwurst at county fairs in Wisconsin, and kissing babies in church parking lots in South Carolina. Because somewhere in the long history of democratic politics and RIP American democracy, the people who do this for a living figured out that scale doesn't replace intimacy. It depends on it. The national campaign helps make your positions known. The handshake helps get you chosen. And you need both. Because voters, the same people you might call consumers or customers, can feel the difference. Difference between a candidate who showed up and one who assumed showing up wasn't necessary. Political operatives call the show up in person work the ground game. And the lesson from 250 years of American politics is that the ground game isn't a supplement to the air war. It's a thing that converts the air war into a result. So here's the question for every CEO and CFO listening when your company decides to cut marketing, close a store, replace a human with a chatbot, or automate a process that used to involve a human, there may be very good reasons for doing so. But do you understand you're also making decisions about the ground game's role in value creation or destruction? Because right call or not, every one of these changes what the customer experiences, feels and remembers. Which means every one of them is either creating or destroying value. Business is just like politics, except you have to get people to vote with their dollars all day, every day, not just during an electoral cycle. So the question worth asking is whether anyone in the company is accounting for what the relationship between the air war and the ground game creates before decide to change it. Today's episode was produced by Art Chung, Julian Villar, Jim Mackel, Manolo Moreno, Brandon McFarland and Ashley Futterman from the Fox Media Podcast Network and the Wisdomist Company.

[Kara Swisher]

Thanks for listening to this special episode of Create or Destroy Reimagining Marketing with Seth Matlins. We'll be back with a new episode of on with Kara Swisher on Monday.

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Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough off, so why make it harder? With a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other, introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all in one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, E commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you try Odoo for [e-mail] that's o d o o dot com.