• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, January 17, 2017

Following Donald Trump’s surprise election, ad executive Lena Petersen kicked around what it meant with her Chicago colleagues at MediaLink. “We joked Trump was our first O-T-T candidate.”

But it is no over-the-top joke. Petersen, MediaLink’s chief brand officer, was appearing on a MediaPost panel Tuesday that asked the provocative question: Is Donald Trump really something like “President Uber,” a disruptive brand who filled a market void the rest of the politicians never noticed existed?

With her was Andrew Kasprzycki, EVP and managing director at Starcom Worldwide, and Joe Mandese, MediaPost editor.

The answer seems to be yes, with one big asterisk.

Kasprzycki, whose clients include disruptive lodging app Airbnb, says brands like Uber, Spotify, Airbnb and Dollar Shave Club fill gaps in the market, but their urgent need is to “ring the cash register every darn day.” That gives those famous but brand-new brands a sustainability requirement that might differ than Trump’s.

“It’s too early to know if he’s a massive shift or a bit of a fad.”

Added Petersen later: “You have to have a great product.”  

Mandese asked: “So bottom line, does he make America great again?”

The ad agency panelists gave Trump good marks for navigating the disrupted waters relatively flawlessly. Petersen said Trump’s camp was nimble enough to recognize polling data that rushed him to Wisconsin on the weekend before the election, while Democrat Hillary Clinton kept a more conventional campaign schedule.

As Democrats kept their eyes on data like “likely voters,” Trump’s side played a “direct-to-consumers” angle.

“If you can’t act fast, you’re soon to be disrupted,” she said. 

Petersen, Kasprzycki and Mandese are part of a one-day Politics Marketing confab in Washington.

Earlier in the day, Robert Aho, partner at BrabenderCox, a Republican political consultant firm, chatted with two other political advertising pros that usually work with conservative candidates and issues. He discussed what was learned in 2016 from down-ticket strategies.

Ben Angle from National Media Research, and Elizabeth Kalmbach from KSM Media agreed that in 2016, it no longer seemed risky or odd to put money into digital ad venues.

“Something had to give and frankly, it was about time,” said Kalmbach, KSM vice president and group media director. Angle said media analysts who try to measure the tone and substance of political ads often miss the action going on in local markets.

Kalmbach said her clients gave her maximum flexibility about where to place ads, offsetting minimal budget.

Running a campaign for a right-to-life issue in Michigan, Kalmbach had two particularly strong commercials that went against conventional online ad rules. They were 120-seconds long, for one, and soft-themed as opposed to many Right to Life ads that are more negative. Those ads got earned media traction and performed so well with audiences, she also booked them on TV.

Her takeaway is that sometimes, agencies hired to create ads for online video “go about it differently” and come up with ads that are more thoughtful than TV spots that by now are more formulaic.

pj@mediapost.com