• by Paul Parton , Op-Ed Contributor, 4 hours ago

I recently participated in a discussion about modern political marketing with an estimable group of international academics. The central question for the session was whether modern political marketing - and particularly the type of political marketing that crossed into what we would consider the commercial marketing world – was creating cynicism among the voting public. Much discussion ensued and studies were presented that highlighted what appeared to be a good degree of discontent with the presence and form of modern political marketing.

But what struck me most was a comment from an Italian professor who suggested that we shouldn’t be too surprised by it because the commercialization of political marketing stretches back at least as far as Cicero and the Roman Forums.

That was a new reference for me but apparently one that is quite well known in political circles.  Quintus Tullius Cicero did indeed write his Commentariolum Petitionis — the "Little Handbook on Electioneering" as a strategy memo for his brother Marcus's campaign for consul in 64 BC. The parallels to modern marketing are uncanny.

He urged Marcus to acquire skills or qualities he lacked and create the illusion that he was born with them. He counseled him to distinguish between the people who appeared powerful and those who had the power to change the course of elections – because they controlled large voting blocs. He argued that promises should be tailored for different audiences and that it was neither uncommon nor undesirable to sacrifice truth or integrity for competitive advantage. He spoke to base identification, voter targeting, coalition-building, opposition research, and the power of what we now call ‘negative advertising’. And he advised that voters will be far angrier with a candidate who refuses to make promises than with one who breaks them once elected.

As the Italian professor suggested, the insight was clear…not much has changed really.

Human nature, our passions, and our motivations are as universal and unchanging as our biology. And, in turn, the approaches we take toward nudging people to change their thinking or their behavior are also universal and unchanging. So, it’s not surprising that the bedrock theories and principles of marketing and communication — the ones that work — haven't changed much over time. Distinctiveness beats differentiation. Mental availability drives choice. Brand-building creates future demand. Reach matters more than frequency. They are marketing truths based on universal patterns in human behavior that have been measured, replicated, and validated across decades and categories. Cicero wouldn’t be surprised by any of them.

But not everything is quite so timeless, and this is where many marketers get stuck.

A recent New York Times article on Lena Dunham, and her new book “Famesick,” described this dynamic, “Dunham arrived, in threadbare flats, at the last gasps of the monoculture and the first breaths of the social internet. New media startups like BuzzFeed, Vox and Vice News were collapsing news into entertainment and creating jobs for young writers for as long as the Facebook algorithm would support them, and scrambling the lines between celebrity, critic and fan.”

Let me repeat one of those lines…“The last gasps of the monoculture and the first breaths of the social internet.” This may be the most useful description ever of the seismic shift in our media ecosystem in the last 15 years. And it’s one that our industry still hasn't fully digested.

The article describes Dunham coming to prominence at the height of what was called “Ladyblogging” in the early 2010s. But those bloggers begot the vloggers. The vloggers begot the creators, begot the podcasters, and the Substackers, and Patreon and OnlyFans. And those in turn manifested the attention economy we all live in now. The over-caffeinated, fame-thirsty, adrenaline-fueled media spectacle that makes up our everyday diet of information and entertainment. A world where the half-life of cultural relevance is measured in hours, not weeks. Where a brand can become famous overnight and be forgotten by Tuesday.

And this dopamine-seeking media environment has created the central tension in modern marketing. The new search for the media sugar rush vs the demonstrated success of persistent narratives, grounded in authenticity and brand truth. Not brand versus performance. Not creativity versus data. The real tension is between the timeless and the timely.

The timeless truths of how humans make decisions haven't changed since the Roman Forum. But the ecosystem in which brands must make themselves known, desired, and talked about has changed beyond recognition. The foundational marketing principles and theories still hold. But the pathways to achieving it have fragmented and accelerated in ways that authors of those foundational principles could never have imagined.

The marketers who will win in this environment are the ones who can grasp both worlds at once. Who can ground their strategies in what we know works — popularity, distinctiveness, emotional resonance — while simultaneously understanding the new dynamics of culture, conversation, and earned attention that define how brands enter people's lives today.

The winners will be the ones who connect the new to the old. The timeless to the timely. The brands that are growing fastest right now aren't the ones with the most established presence or the biggest media budgets. They're the ones that have figured out how to connect an authentic brand truth to a cultural moment that gives people a reason to pay attention.

Many of Cicero’s principles are timeless but he knew that the message had to be tailored to the audience and the moment. And our media moment has changed beyond recognition in a very short period.

The past is prologue. But only if you know how to read it.