Setting political views aside, let’s delve into the recent 2025 US presidential election campaigns and explore the valuable lessons marketers can adopt to create influential communication.
Analysing the 2025 presidential campaigns reveals key insights for appealing to a broad audience. However, it’s worth mentioning that campaigns with niche products or services may require different approaches to achieve results. Nonetheless, many of the principles outlined below are universally applicable, as they tap into prevailing social trends.
With Harris and Trump collectively spending $3.5 billion on their campaigns, there’s much to learn from how such significant investments were utilized to sway public opinion. Their marketing efforts spanned diverse platforms, leveraging an extensive range of tools to convince voters that they were the best choice to lead the U.S. toward a brighter future.
Let us look at a key points which companies could use to create more effective marketing.
1. Focus on strengths, not weaknesses
Negative campaigning often backfires. Both Trump and Harris diluted their appeal when they attacked their opponent, it’s always more dignifying presenting strengths instead of pointing out someone weaknesses. For marketers, this underscores the importance of building a positive brand narrative around strengths rather than attacking competitors, it’s acceptable to highlight your advantages over other companies but this needs to be done strategically.
2. Know your audience
As Trump won the race to the Whitehouse you could say the republicans effectively tapped into voters’ immediate, personal concerns, such as economic hardships like the high cost of groceries, gas prices and overspending on foreign aid, rather than abstract or global issues. Marketers must deeply understand their audience’s pain points and priorities first, to craft compelling campaigns and not get too distracted with virtue signalling, there is a need for practical and actionable benefits.
3. Consistent messaging is crucial
Trump’s campaign maintained consistent messaging with slogans like “Make America Great Again” and questions like “Were you better off four years ago?” A clear, unified message builds brand recognition and emotional resonance. Sharing your strengths in a memorable and recognisable way can set you apart form your competitor.
4. Leverage emotional narratives
Campaigns that tie messaging to emotional and tangible benefits, such as improved finances or quality of life, are more impactful with voters. Marketers should aim to evoke relatable emotions and connect to everyday experiences to converse with their audience effectively.
5. Use social media strategically
Social validation is a powerful tool and can be used in many ways to establish credibility. Both campaigns demonstrated the power of tailored social media strategies. Trump focused on community-driven platforms, while Harris tapped into cultural trends. It’s clear that campaigns need to utilise social media to harness support and build a loyal following which they can later on target products and services to.
Trump’s behaviour has caused a lot of division and controversy, this has provided much free publicity and distracted voters dissecting his core agenda, a form of misdirection which appears to have worked in his favour. Creating intentional controversy around a product or service is not recommended as this carries risk, but doing something bold and different with a marketing or ad campaign can generate publicity by disrupting the marketplace and can deliver a lot of brand awareness.
6. Adapt to popular culture
Harris’ efforts to integrate cultural trends, such as ‘Brat Summer’ and appearing on popular podcasts, exemplify how aligning with current cultural phenomena can humanise a brand and engage younger audiences. Being perceived as current and relevant can boost interest.
7. Diversify media channels
Both candidates explored non-traditional platforms like podcasts to extend their reach. For marketers, diversifying media outlets and testing alternative platforms can uncover new opportunities for audience engagement. Audiences interact with so many different media that it’s important to explore which one connects with your audience in the most effective way, then use that channel going forwards.
8. Build communities and foster loyalty
Both candidates ability to create loyal online communities demonstrates the power of shared interests and values in strengthening brand affinity. Marketers can benefit from nurturing engaged, self-sustaining communities rather than solely pursuing advertising. Building a loyal following based on the positive experience they had with your brand is a great way of building a community which can grow over time.
Although voters only have two options to choose from – Democrat or Republican, which makes it easier for campaigners. Companies normally have several main competitors and much smaller marketing budgets which means every decision needs to be well considered, tracked and reviewed for optimum performance.
The US presidential election has made it clear that having a memorable focus which addresses your audiences pain points and makes use of different platforms to reach them can help build a following and is a successful formula in influencing people decisions.
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