2016 will live long in my memory because of two political results that shocked the world. The actual effect of these results remains to be seen but what is clear is that Brexit and Trump have certainly divided very strong opinions. Living in London and witnessing Brexit first hand was like nothing I had seen before. People that do not regularly engage in political discussions of any kind started having very strong political opinions, sharing news stories on social media and going as far as arguing with their close friends. I heard numerous stories of families falling out over the dinner table also.
The ‘Remainers’ felt particularly aggrieved as their arguments tended to be more fact-based and rational vs (in most cases) much more emotional arguments from ‘Leavers’.
Despite these heated discussions, not many people, even the ‘Leavers’, actually believed that the Leave campaign would win. And if, like me, you watched Brexit and the US elections unfold with complete disbelief (and some sadness on my part), then you may well be questioning what is happening in the world. Personally, what really saddened me was facing the hard facts that Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump equate to a very large percentage of people choosing the ‘anti-establishment’, with a distinct and scary disregard for multiculturalism and an underlying desire for change.
So what can us marketers learn from the Brexit and Trump campaigns? Is there something useful we can take from it? Well, what is clear from both is that emotion beats rational arguments in most head-to-head campaigns.
A better political campaign could have swung 2% towards Remain, I'm certain of it (I'm not, but it's an interesting theory to consider for us marketers). Consider this. Was the word ‘remain’ itself the ultimate problem? It's inactive, it signifies no change, staying where you are, decaying. When people vote, they vote to affect something. They vote for change. At our agency, we put all our strategic planning efforts into nailing down a single-minded proposition. In an ideal world that would boil down to a single verb. And in this case ‘remain’ is quite possibly the worst verb that David Cameron’s campaign team could have chosen.
I fully understand that the word ‘remain’ had to be included somewhere in the campaign to connect it to the wording on the ballot paper ('I vote for the UK to remain in the EU') but the story of the Remain campaign needed to lead with positive foundations. Surely this would have been enough to win over 2% of the population...
Vote Leave: Take control
The Vote Leave campaign on the other hand was extremely effective. It won despite the Remain campaign being odds-on favourite to win even up to the very last minute on the evening of the polls. It had the backing of then Prime Minister David Cameron, most MPs, very influential and respected ‘business celebrities’ such as Richard Branson (who went as far as writing an open letter of plea in several British newspapers) and a range of global leaders including then US President Barack Obama.
What the Vote Leave campaign did so well was leverage negative emotions of voters around issues of immigration, unemployment and the struggles of the UK’s national treasure, the NHS (National Health Service). They campaigned using fear (the ‘why’ to their story) with talks of EU immigrants raping and murdering British citizens and that we no longer had control over our own legal system.
They promised to plough £350m a week into the NHS without a rational explanation as to how that would realistically be achieved. Just one of their many untenable promises, alongside the irrational xenophobic arguments and economic ambiguities that lead to their triumph. But regardless of their many contradictions, they presented a strong and compelling ‘how’ element to their story that ultimately meant that they played the emotional advantages far better than the Remain campaign did. In marketing speak, they identified their audience, understood how to engage them and told them exactly what they wanted to hear.
Make America Great Again!
Back on U.S. soil, Donald Trump also played on fear and anger and vowed to return the USA to its mid-century industrial past. He vowed to ban immigrants on the basis of their religion and said he would build a wall between the USA and Mexico to keep out the ‘bad hombres’….and the rest… you know the story! Despite strong rational arguments for immigration and the positive impact it has had on America, the dangers of restrictive trade policies and arguments for increasing gun control, Trump’s campaign played to emotions that won over facts.
Again, it is another clear proof-point for us marketers that, when choosing between emotion and "reason" to construct our campaigns, emotion is far more persuasive in getting an audience to engage with, trust and believe in a brand that they are going to buy from. Both campaigns prove that a good story is more important than factual and rational analysis. It shows us that people will vote for a story that they want to be true, regardless of the credibility of it – and this can overwhelm rational arguments.
As marketers, our stories need to be authentic, based on real insights and situations that our audience find themselves in on a day-to-day basis. Start with their needs and problems (‘the why’), not what we think is the answer for them based on the benefits of the product/ service we are trying to sell. The narrative should lead from the ‘why’ to a compelling ‘how’ that again relates to them, not what we are trying to sell. Essentially we have to tell the story of how we can make their lives better, but still acknowledge their fears. By starting with the audience instead of the product and making them the centre of your story, it will lead to a truly emotional connection and improved brand engagement.
I’ll leave you with outtakes from Michael Margolis a TEDx talks presenter who, after years of consulting with companies such as Bloomberg, SAP, Greenpeace, and others, developed 15 storytelling maxims:
- People don’t buy a product, service, or idea; they buy the story that’s attached to it.
- Your brand is far more than a name, a logo, or a tagline; it’s the stories that people tell about you.
- Every story exists in relationship to everything else around it.
- We all want to look back at the story of our lives and know that it made sense.
- The stories we tell literally make our world
- The power of your story grows exponentially as more and more people accept your story as their truth.
- If you want to learn about a culture, listen to the stories. If you want to change a culture, change the stories.
- Leaders lead by telling stories that give others permission to lead, not follow.
- Storytelling is our most basic technology, turbocharged through 21st century innovation.
- We all seek to experience life in heroic terms.
- Nobody likes a change story, especially a change story we have no control over. What people really need is a continuity story. (Farage and Trump may argue against this one!)
- Our fate as a species is contained in the story. Both tyranny and freedom are constructed through wellsupported narratives.
- Storytelling empowers because it escapes the need to claim absolute truth.
- Reinvention is the new storyline.
- Storytelling is like fortune-telling. The act of choosing a certain story determines the probability of the outcomes.
