• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, February 2, 2024

As someone who has spent most of his career covering how advertising placed through paid-media campaigns influences how Americans feel, think and behave, I've always been also spent a fair amount of time looking at the role of other forms of media, especially news.

And not surprisingly, one of the categories most dependent on thew news cycle is political marketing, which has to both react, as well as "get out in front of," if not actually steer it.

So when the team at PR measurement platform Memo sent me a copy of their just-released "2024 State of Media & Readership" report, my eye was immediately drawn to the eye chart analyzing the presidential campaign news cycle to date.

Not surprisingly, Donald J. Trump has dominated much of it, which is impressive given that he is competing for the journalism news well with a sitting president. But Trump isn't just any candidate, and much of the media's attention has been focused on his criminal indictments, civil actions, and his -- um, unconventional -- approach to campaigning through the Republican primary.

I imagine Trump reading Memo's report and gloating over how bigly his numbers are, and the truth is, even if they are related to some relatively negative news, his name is front-and-center, which is all he ever wanted.

If you want to track how the cycle ebbs and flows over time, Memo will be updating it weekly here.

There's some truth to the name-recognition metric, but how much and in what direction it move the needle remains to be seen.

Its veracity as an election KPI is probably as accurate a the classic adage -- "say whatever you want as long as your spell my name right" -- which has been misattributed to everyone from P.T. Barnum to George M. Cohan, so it might as well be attribute to Trump. Because in some ways, he is the P.T. Barnum of our time.

Little-known fact: Barnum did hold office. He was mayor of Bridgeport, CT (1875-76) and served in the Connecticut House of Representatives from the Fairfield District (1866-69).

Like Trump, Barnum was a member of the Democratic party who switched allegiance to the Republican party.

Like Trump, Barnum was a showman.

Unlike Trump, Barnum is famous for allegedly saying, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Trump just believes it.