Marketing in America: 2020 Election Insights
This is going to be about insights from the election that can be used for marketing. It’s not about politics but the marketing insights that comes from the most recent US election.
What do Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Washington, D.C. have in common? They all passed measures making cannabis more accessible and legal. Oregon outright legalized possession of everything. There is a wave forming. I think it’s going to accelerate for cannabis legalization.
The next insight I have is quite simple. No one really thinks about Asian Americans. This is an opportunity for companies to increase sales by understanding Asian Americans better than other competitors. Doesn’t take much effort either in having an edge.
This graph was on CNN. Notice how they could have added two more boxes but no one bothered to find out what Asian Americans are thinking. I saw this over and over again throughout coverage on the election.
The second thing I noticed is that Biden won largely because of decreased support from White men. His support among Black and Latino men and women actually decreased compared to 2016 with Hillary Clinton. The same goes for White women in America. I have feeling many marketing teams will make assumptions about the election without looking at the deltas in the data points. But there are insights in the trends. I’m going to be taking some time to ponder them internally. I think this is a situation where reading generic articles will get you further from the truth of what people in America feel and believe.
Here’s a chart about Ohio. It’s not a surprise that covid19 is on top. What’s more interesting to me is opioid addition being right under it. I expected unemployment to 2nd to covid19 under main problems facing Ohio. But that’s not the case.
For people involved in cannabis products. I think there is an insight here towards to accelerating legalization of cannabis. There is a tricky balance though. Cannabis is clearly more safe than opioids as a pain killer for instance. But you don’t the product to be associated with opioids. However, it can be used as a legislative and lobbying argument and I think it’s a winning one.
Next, I’m going to cover priorities of problems of the country as a whole. The quote below is from a Reuters/Ipsos survey
Republican registered voters are more likely to say that the economy and jobs (29%) are the most important problems, followed by 15% who volunteer other issues, and 14% who say healthcare is the main problem.
In contrast, Democratic registered voters say healthcare is the most important problem (29%), followed by the economy and jobs (23%) and other problems (21%).
The media loves to overplay racial disharmony - it drives strong emotions and ratings. But the main divide is America is not race. It’s about prioritization of the economy vs healthcare. Shutting down everything hurts the economy but improves healthcare. This is the big insight in my opinion for marketing. Can your brand be perceived as solving one of these two problems? Or both simultaneously? Because that’s what’s most important to people as we get to the end of 2020.
I have a feeling a lot of brands are going to dip into politics. But they are going to do it the wrong way. They are going focus on things that are A) unrelated to their brand and B) unrelated to what people care about. Most marketers and growth professionals live in prosperous major cities. Especially the ones that read my newsletter. It’s important to remember that life is harder for most Americans right now.