3 Tips for When a Campaign Flops and the Soul-Searching Begins

Author: Whitney Munro

From politics to product launches, success requires an audience-first approach

There is perhaps no harsher critic than a political analyst with hindsight, and this time around it’s the Democrats who are facing their wrath. Critics from within the party are calling the Democrat brand out-of-touch and broken. There has been an avalanche of I-told-you-so’s, and calls for serious soul-searching on what went wrong. The answer is more simple than Democrats might care to admit.

The Democrats broke a cardinal rule during this campaign cycle – they forgot their audience and how to talk to them. They took entire states of people for granted, and made assumptions about who voters are, what they want, and how much attention voters were paying to their message.

It’s a mistake I see all too often as CEO of a national boutique consulting firm: Even the most savvy industry leaders struggle to create audience-first campaigns. When a new client comes in the door with a message problem, odds are they’re making at least one of these three mistakes:

Mistake 1: Making the message about themselves

No two people care about the same things. Consider the Democrats this cycle: “Our messaging and our policy to most Americans seems to be aimed at a small group of people that fit certain pre-ordained categories,”  Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) wrote on X after election night. Those categories are determined by the strategists in the room – and while they identify with the categories, it’s dangerous to assume others do, too.

At my firm – FLEX Partners – we often see clients develop strategy around the message they want to hear, rather than putting themselves in their audience’s shoes.

Group think is a deadly trap that must be avoided if you want to persuade. Your audience isn’t the echo chamber in the room with you. You already have their vote.

Mistake 2: Judging your own audience

When Rep. Smith took to social media after the election, he hit on another important point, that the party’s message and policies are “too narrow in its focus, and it doesn’t help that whenever anybody questions this, the typical response is [that] the person questioning it has to be some combination of ignorant, bigoted or racist.”

Whether it’s a consumer product company or a political campaign, we are all activists working to persuade people toward an action. It requires being open and welcoming, meeting the audience where they are, and showing grace in disagreement.

Successful activists take the time to identify segments within their audience, what preconceived notions these segments have,  and what scares and motivates them. They take it seriously, they don’t judge it, and they hold the optimistic belief that humans are always capable of change.

If a message flops with a target audience, don’t blame them for it. If they’ve never heard of a candidate or a ballot measure, don’t assume they are ignorant – they’re just busy living. To judge is to miss an opportunity to learn more, to educate, and eventually – to create change.

Mistake 3: Selling rather than helping

People know when they are being sold to, and clearly, the politics of moderate Democrats are more nuanced than the Harris campaign realized. People wanted a real conversation about kitchen table issues, and what they got was a culture war no one asked for.

Even Teamsters President Sean O’Brien understood that this was about the economy, stupid! “You know, social issues are important, but at the end of the day, it's putting food on the table, being able to afford a home, and despite, you know, the rhetoric of ‘this is the best economy ever,’ you know, it really hasn't been,” he told Fox News.

The Harris campaign had a real opportunity to lay out a plan to address these concerns head on – to help voters. Instead, they chose to sell – to distract with flashy celebrity endorsements and to sell cultural fear.  When your audience tells you how to help them, listen – and act on it.

Politics is not unique. Like any other sector, it relies on following the timeless principles of all successful persuasive campaigns: Listen to your audience, accept who they are, and believe what they say.

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