Here's the problem in a nutshell: Poor customer satisfaction. Ignore that problem and you will turn a successful product launch into a wholesale disaster.
Political campaigns are marketing exercises. The sale is closed when people vote. It's been this way in American politics for generations. If you don't accept that, nothing else I say is going to make sense.
Like millions of people, I bought the product.
Like millions of people, I believed in the product.
Like millions of people, I helped sell the product.
That last step is the difference between a political campaign and a social movement. If I had to do it over again, I would do it all over again. If you asked me will I do it again, I'd have to say probably not.
Back in the Spring of 2006, I wrote.
If you accept that presidential elections are popularity contests first and policy debates second, then 70% to 80% of the sale is convincing people you are committed to advancing a clear, credible and consistent message.
Reworking the numbers after the midterm elections validated what I had said. This analysis led me to add a fifth element. That made it possible to identify what motivates over 85% of the vote in presidential elections:
- Clarity (28%)
- Commitment (31%)
- Credibility (16%)
- Consistency (05%)
- Connection (05%)
At the time, I believed that solidifying our gains required a candidate to communicate those qualities. In addition, we had to undermine Republican claims of "connection" and "credibility" because those factors are multipliers.
People like to say they "vote the issues," but that simply isn't true for most people. People on Daily Kos or similar sites can argue policy issues endlessly, but we also watch C-SPAN. The vast majority of people don't do either. Issues are complex and the details are constantly in flux. Personalities are a lot more stable (generally) and we all have experience with them. It makes sense to focus on that if you are electing someone you know is going to be making decisions that affect you without any direct input from you.
Bush's base support eroded after Katrina because he lost credibility. He was still clear, committed, and consistent as always. People who supported him still liked the guy. But people like Shep Smith over at FOX started taking an arm's length approach. Independents were even quicker to ditch him. Three bucks a gallon gas took the wind out of the triumphalist chant of "kick their ass and take their gas" pretty quickly. People started wondering why the hell we were over there.
That set the stage for Republicans. They were stuck with that negative entering the 2008 elections. McCain's campaign was on life-support for most of the general election. What put the kibosh on his hopes was the failure to connect compounded by his lack of clarity. How are you going to connect with a guy who doesn't even know how many houses he has?
Based on the exit polls, it was clear people believed Obama was more like them than McCain by about a 2-to-1 margin. In other words, he connected. His message was consistent and clear. Unlike Kerry, he didn't have a slogan of the week. He tried pushing the "I'm fired up" line, but "Yes we can!" won by popular acclaim.
I think the slogan resonated because it reflected the sense of connection supporters had with Obama's campaign. People felt invested in this fight. The "enthusiasm gap" got a lot of notice. You saw it most clearly in the number of voters contacted by each campaign. Obama supporters contacted a lot more people than McCain supporters did.
We won and everyone thought we were going to see some serious change. Exit polls showed people who supported Obama were excited about the prospect of real change. The truth is, Obama was consistently clear that change would happen slowly. People who didn't hear that were letting their hopes and dreams cloud their judgment. That's not necessarily bad, but it is relevant now.
The customers bought the product. The problem is no one has delivered yet. Someone has to manage their expectations. Fail to meet expectations and customer satisfaction will suffer. If customer satisfaction suffers enough, customer retention becomes a problem. If customer retention becomes a problem, your barrier to competition erodes. That is not good for long-term viability.
Customer retention is critical. First, it costs anywhere from 10 to 20 times more to sell something to a new customer as it does to sell something to an established customer. Cost of acquisition helped kill eToys. Second, loyal customers generally don't buy competing brands. You're a Mac or a PC. Coke or Pepsi. Football or futbol. Republican or Democrat. Finally, satisfied customers are your best sales people. Exceed expectations and you have customers selling your product. Word of mouth advertising is nothing new. It is still a key factor in any successful campaign. This is where the base is key.
Customer loyalty is an important way to build barriers to competition. Switching cost is a distant second-best barrier to competition. Not all costs are measured in money. People who identify themselves as members of one party or another are going to have a higher psychic cost to switching. People who identify themselves as "independent" aren't going to have as much trouble. The people with the lower switching costs are also the people most influenced by word-of-mouth advertising, especially if they are hearing from enthusiastic supporters.
A lot of people make up their minds in the closing days of a campaign. A lot of people are victims of the last conversation they had on a topic. If enthusiastic supporters aren't knocking on doors and dialing for dollars, then chances are the last conversation these people are going to hear is one on TV. Based on ratings, it's clear which cable news network is getting the most viewers. It ain't PBS.
Without a base of enthusiastic supporters, the cost of winning independent voters is going to go up while their switching costs will go down. Consequently, customer retention is going to suffer and the barriers to competition will erode. The only question is will Democrats double down and drive themselves into the ground like eToys or will they reverse themselves like Coca-Cola?