• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, February 2, 2024

As culture wars rage, polarization hardens, clustering congeals, it is a fair question whether there are any persuadable “swing voters” to target in the coming election. Rick Wilson, co-founder of the notorious Lincoln Project SuperPAC of Anti-Trump, disaffected Republicans thinks so. Modern programmatic nano-targeting can find and optimize to these audiences. But it requires explicit, in-your-face, even rude creative, he argues. 

When Rick addressed MediaPost’s annual Marketing Politics event last month TLP’s “God Made a Dictator” video had just blown up on social media. The deftly made piece somehow manages to channel both Paul Harvey’s narrative cadence and Lena Wertmuller’s visual aesthetic. [How is that for two 70s references?] But Rick’s point throughout the session was that classic persuasion tactics still apply in political messaging – storytelling grounded in the values of the voters. But there is little room for nuance this time around. 

MediaPost has been hosting this annual gathering of Republican and Democratic campaign committees, PACs, and agencies in DC for a decade now. In a remarkably non-partisan way, we explore with them the ways that campaigns leverage the digital targeting and media levers also available to the larger world of brand and performance marketers. It started as a pet project of the editors here, and this year became our largest and most successful single-day event MediaPost has hosted in years. Next year – our post-election roundup.