It has been a big weekend for the Trump campaign. On this post we are discussing the data and marketing implications of the Oklahoma campaign rally.
There are 3 key points here.
In the pre-show streamed on Facebook Live the speakers, including the Arizona governor, spent a lot of time talking about Biden. If marketing has taught me anything it’s that it’s usually not good practice to talk about competitors. This is for two reasons. The first is that by talking about your competitor you are giving them your attention, which is exactly what you don’t want to do. Secondly, you are confirming that they are actually a threat.
Secondly, far fewer people walked into that venue than were expected. By some estimates 1,500 people attended. The 6,200 combines the attendees plus staffers, and people paid to attend.
The absence of attendance shows the presence of concern for our health safety during Covid-19. People are still being cautious.
Third, it’s evident that people organized on TikTok played a role in trolling the Trump campaign. This shows that marketers have the ability to use influence on platforms like TikTok to gain momentum, and cause action. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people registered for the rally with no intention of going.
On the third point, this is the first time TikTok is playing a direct role in politics in the US. It shows that GenZ are action takers willing to make things happen that they deem important. And finally, this continues the narrative that TikTok is having a great year. Revenue at TikTok is up 130% to $5.6B on the first quarter of 2020. $500MM is revenue is directly attributable to the US.
Finally, as we think about data collection a key point of opening up registrations for the Trump campaign is the data haul. They want to capture presumably interested voters, so the campaign can nurture relationships with emails and text messages. An abundance, or even majority, of contacts to people who are trolling the campaign reflects a bad data signal. I wonder if the Trump campaign will try to purge the records collected for the rally, or if they’ll try to parse out the ones who may actually vote for Trump.
A boon to the campaign data is still their app, a data hungry beast that collects far more data that Biden’s campaign app. The Trump app has been downloaded almost 800,000 times. What is newsworthy about the app is the data it collects: phone number, email address, zip code, full name, and the device’s Bluetooth functionality. The campaign’s states goal is to collect the phone numbers for up to 50 million Americans.
Only time will tell if this rally is evidence of a turning point against the Trump campaign, or a bump in the road. For marketers the Oklahoma rally shows the power of platforms, generational influence, and the use of data to help or hinder efforts.