The language experts from maslansky + partners take on the smartest, savviest, and sometimes stupidest messages in the market today. CEO Michael Maslansky and President Lee Carter bring their experience with words, communication, and behavioral science to the table—along with a colleague or client—and offer up a “lay of the language.” Their insight helps make sense of business, life, and culture, and proves over and over again that It’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.

It’s been one of the most unconventional and consequential presidential elections in American history. Amid the confusion, division, and turbulence, we spotted some valuable insights and important takeaways. This special live episode of HearSay will help you make sense of the outcome so you can thrive in these post-election days, with lessons from both sides that you can leverage for your own work. 

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Lee Carter:

Well, thank you all for joining us today. We’re really excited to be having this conversation. I think many of us are still trying to make sense of the election. Others of us have processed it, but we wanted to do a few things today. First, we wanted to help make sense of what just happened and what it means for your business, employees, customers, industry, etc. Wanted to discuss the language that got us where we are, messages that thrive while others faltered and really learn from all of that and see how we can apply it to our to our lives. We’re going to talk about some of the key moments that everyone’s going to remember. And then finally, we’re going to talk about the impact this election is going to have on all of our businesses and the opportunities ahead for us to to engage and change conversations as we’re moving forward. So thank you all for joining. Looking forward to a great conversation. So the first thing I want to do is talk about is making sense of the election outcome. So I know that there’s a lot of lessons of communication where you talk to, but I want to. I want to ask each of you guys each of my partners here to share a little bit about what you think the biggest take away was from the election. 

Michael Maslansky:

All right, easy. We should be able to distill it down and not. I’ll just say thanks to everyone for joining. Looks like we’ve got a great group on here. And also if you have questions, feel free to throw them in the chat as we go and we’ll try and we’ll try and tackle them. But I think you know my–If I had to take my one big take away, it’s that in the battle between facts and feelings, that feelings won this time, as it almost always does in in an election context, then that you know a lot of the support for Kamala during the election and then some of the complaints. After the election where that, you know, people weren’t paying attention to the facts, there was a lot of disinformation or misinformation about the facts that if you took an objective view of how the economy was doing, of whether people in states. In the middle of the country were were actually being affected by immigration. If you looked at the data on inflation that the the only conclusion that you could draw objectively from a fact perspective is that the Biden administration and Harris were doing a great job and they deserved, you know, another term in office. And then on the other side, I think were the feelings and the feeling that the economy is a feeling and the feeling for many people was that the economy was not great. And immigration, I think in many ways was a feeling that there was this open border that was allowing people to come in that even if it wasn’t affecting people, the feeling was that other people were being prioritized over them, over Americans. That and on so many other things that there was just this, this feeling on the side of President Trump and in every election. It is the side that captures the feeling, the zeitgeist, that wins. It is never the side that has the best facts on their side, and we say that’s clients all the time, right? The facts will not set you free. That was certainly true here. And I think an important take away from this election. 

Ben Feller:

Yeah, I want to build on what Michael said. And first of all, thanks to everybody for joining and glad we’re doing this. I still have anxiety for my years at the White House and never really leave, so might as well put it to good use. Listen I think the lesson for business is coming out of this. As Lee said, we’re all trying to make sense of it is that you better have extraordinary clarity about what your what your customers want and find the message that works, not decide what you want to say and see if it lands. I mean, we heard Vice President Harris say repeatedly we’re not going back, and part of the problem was, as we found out that people did want to go back, they wanted to go back, not necessarily to some of the chaos of the Trump years, but in their mind, when they felt more economically secure and, you know, people often feel to make this one of our feelings, they feel powerless to make change. They don’t control their pay, they don’t control their hours. They don’t control whether their insurance company is going to cover their claims or whether their trains going to show up on time, but they do get to control what they care about and what they cared about was what I think was really a cost of living crisis election. And, you know, President Trump said Harris broke it all. That was his closing argument, and people cared about the economy, and they cared about immigration and and Vice President Harris. In the short time she had obviously a very difficult spot for her to really start campaigning in earnest with 100 days to go. But her campaign was part of that opportunity economy, and that didn’t feel very tangible to people’s reproductive freedom. It was a big reminder about Trump’s dictatorial fascinations. But it just wasn’t what people needed to hear. And I think we saw some of the fury in rallies and so forth. But there was also a fury right underneath the surface that people had that they just did not feel good. About the economy and it goes back to the same 2 bedrock points we talked about with our clients all the time. It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. So you better know what they’re hearing and you can have everything else right. And Harris had a lot of things right. But if your words don’t resonate, it’s not going to matter. 

Keith Yazmir:

And we’re all kind of heading in similar directions here. We’ve been talking about and I’ve been saying since 2016 that Donald Trump, for whatever you think of him has been a great diagnostician. During this period he has identified in a very specific way, challenges that a lot of Americans are feeling and that clearly resonate with his identification. It feels like there are a lot of Democratic strategists and politicians and voters out there who have horrible memories. This was just four and this was in 2016. This was eight years ago ended four years ago and the the Democrats did not key into that. They continue to think that there’s got to be some other America out there, and that’s the America that’s going to get us back into the office. This was a change election. And the idea that the Harris campaign was unable to go in that direction and embrace that and tell us what? That change was–is something that that was was a huge negative for that side. And yes, we know the arguments that well, she’s vice president of the sitting president. If the Democrats were serious about democracy being on the ballot and about the risk of fascism then you gotta do better than, “Oh, but I can’t disagree with the sitting president,” and move away from there. The time was to take the gloves off and to say, “How am I going to make change? Here’s how I’m going to make change.” Not a thing that comes to mind, that she can think of that’s going to make change, the change election. She did not run as a change candidate. 

Lee Carter:

Yeah, well. I think one of the biggest questions that I’ve been getting since, is “So the polls got it wrong again?” And I actually say the polls did not get it wrong again. I think we can all find polls that are going to reinforce what we want to hear. And so in the days leading up to the election, we saw that poll come out from Iowa and people were holding on to that saying there’s this, this big voter bloc, that we don’t know, the silent Republican. It’s not just the, you know, that’s gonna vote for the Democrats. And there was all of this. Donald Trump had never performed better in the polls than he did in this election. He was ahead nearly the entire way. Kamala had two amazing leads, but then he led in almost every swing state and he won, and he was leading in the in the popular vote right up until the day of the election and in the averages. And so while I think the polls were off a little bit, it was within the margin of error. And I think we saw the writing on the wall and we didn’t want to see it. And so I think one of the big lessons for me is that we have to listen, not for what we want to hear, but the voters and customers, and the world is telling us around us and right now the world is telling us around us that they don’t like the way things are going. They don’t like the way the government is run. They don’t like the way business is done. They don’t like the food that we put in our body. They don’t like the way that they’re being forced into what they want to do. And they well, and they’ve said loud and clear what they want right now. And it’s going to be interesting for all of us how to incorporate that into our jobs and actually engage. I’m really encouraged in this moment right now because I’m seeing more people having conversations. 2016 it was like you gotta walk away from the table and it’s, you know, you got the enemy. I was really encouraged when I saw this morning, you know, morning. Joe and Mika were talking about how they went to Mara Lago this weekend. And it’s time for us to start having these conversations. So despite the fact that I think there was this tough lesson to learn, I think there’s a lot of promise ahead. 

Michael Maslansky:

Well, I mean, I think the–I agree with everything you said, but I think the–it was still a very close election. I think it was a coin flip up until near the very end and the question was what percentage of the population was kind of firm in their decision that a convicted felon is somebody that they cannot vote for versus the percentage of the population that was convinced that the Biden administration had made policy decisions that were kind of fundamentally wrong and hurt them economically, and that at the margin. You know which side of the line were you going to fall on, and that for a lot of people, I think it was a very close decision that there really were a lot of swing voters in this race. A lot of people who didn’t make up their minds until the very end. Whether that was, you know, weeks before the election, days before the election or in the booth and that from a polling perspective, you know, every one vote that flips from one side to the other is a two person flip, right? I mean it’s the–and so all of a sudden if you get a small shift in the vote, it ends up showing up as a reasonably large number of people from a margin perspective, I think what’s the final number going to be like under around 2% that he won by? You know, like if polls could get actually within 2%, which is actually 1% margin of error on the performance of either candidate it’d be pretty extraordinary they’re not set up to do that, particularly in a race that is this kind of fluid as this one was? And so I don’t think blaming, you know which you were not doing Lee, but I don’t think the polls were really wrong. And I think we could have been having a very different conversation, you know, today talking about the things that, you know went the other way. I don’t know how much they would have. They would have drawn kind of changed our fundamental conclusions about what the right thing to do for each candidate would be, but it could have easily gone the other way. 

Lee Carter:

Yeah. So let’s dig in to talk a little bit about the lessons that we can learn about communications from all of this. I think this year’s campaign, like many serves as a master class for all of us and communication, and there’s a lot of insights that we can glean from both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on. And I think that the truth of the matter is a lot of the success of this campaign came down to some language and some storytelling and some lack of language that we want to talk about. So I’d love to know from you guys what you think is one key insight that you wish everybody on this call would take away a lesson from the campaign trail. 

Ben Feller:

Yeah, for me, you know, Vice President Harris was leaning into this idea, understandably, that Trump was unhinged. You know, unhinged, unstable and unchecked. Those are the three uses that her campaign was trying. And again, to stick and I think really a lot of the shock value was gone, it just didn’t work including new, you know what happened after the last election with the January 6th insurrection and the felony convictions it, it may have mattered to some degree, but ultimately it didn’t matter because what mattered most to people was their own lives and the economy. And I think even though it was a close election. As you guys have lined out, what really stood out to me was how much Trump made gains across America, even though the ultimate margins weren’t that big, he made gains in 90% of the counties in America. He made gains among young, bolder young voters and older voters and union voters. Voters with college degrees without college degrees. It really also stood out to me that he outright won the Latino male vote. You know, Hillary Clinton won that by 31 points just eight years ago, and now Trump won it by 10. So that’s a 41 point swing in eight years. And what that says to me is that there really was this diversity in the election of how much people wanted to go in the other direction, and Trump, despite all of his many language flaws, he does have a consistency in 2016 it, as we all remember, and we still see, making America great again. But one of the corollaries of that was he was the champion of what he called forgotten Americans. And I think at that time it was largely built on the white vote. But what we saw in this election was that a lot more people felt forgotten. Even if Harris won. Overall, he made a lot of gains, which made a difference. And I think, Lee inside that there’s a lot of derisive terms that we’re now thinking about differently. You know, the whole way that polling is done of college educated versus non college educated, it’s sort of you know I saw a lot of coverage that that segments people like non college educated is somehow less than where Trump. You know, once you get past fly over country, well, fly over country as most of the country you know, there’s like these dismissive terms that I think go to a lot of people sensibilities and they felt more heard by Trump than Harris and they wanted to be seen and they wanted to be heard and I think they let it be known. 

Lee Carter:

Yeah, I agree with that wholeheartedly. 

Keith Yazmir:

That I think that in terms of lessons learned that we all might be able to to apply. There’s something we deal with all the time in our own agency here at Maslansky and Partners and with our partners just around the human tendency to see the world in a way that kind of tends to assume that the world sees the world in a similar way. There’s a cognitive bias called false consensus effect, which pretty much ladders up to that, and it’s not about not being a smart marketer, it’s not about being a smart. And in this instance kind of political operative, it’s a human tendency. It is very hard to get around and it’s one of the things I think we find the most gratification in working with our clients to help get around just cause we’re on the outside. We don’t have those same rose colored glasses because we just have to work somewhere else. But building on Ben, what you said the focus on who mattered to which campaign and in this cycle was just fascinating, and it goes back actually several cycles for the Democrats. We talked with our clients in the business world about swing voters. We talk a lot about swing voters, and we’re not talking about the same people that CNN and Fox News are talking about. We’re talking about for you as a company, who are the folks that you are both interested in and have an ability to sway one way or the other, you’re going to have the people that love you. That’s great. Probably most of your resources and your spending are not going to be to convince them to use your services because they’re already doing it. You have the people that will never buy from you. That’s great too. Where can we actually invest? And what the Democrats have done over the last several cycles is in my mind and I used to work in Democratic polls… An insane lack of looking at their swing voters because they’re swing voters. Yes, Pennsylvania, yes, North Carolina, but they keep treating like Latinos as a group. And of course, that’s insane. They’re not a group. It’s a bunch of people who happen to come from a background that is incredibly diverse as well. African Americans, as a group, even the working class as a group and there’s been a lot of assumptions made on the democratic side of “Oh, of course they’re with us, right?” But the concept that you wouldn’t look into more closely those groups in terms of what do they actually care about? What are other Americans care about? A lot of similar things. Let’s look at how to communicate to folks. So I think that there was a weird blind spot in terms of really saying not who do we have to be reaching out tao as much as how do we have to be reaching out to them as well in ways that are going to bring them along. Now that said, I would say to Ben, “Yeah.” But I also am wary like about this idea of shifts because the media and the pundits and the pollsters everybody loves saying, “Oh, look at where the country has moved…” until another election and then another election and then, “Oh look at where the country has moved…” and it’s often contradictory. After Obama won, the idea was the Republicans are in huge trouble. They’ll never win another national race again, right? So I think part of this is it’s an election. This is what happened in this election. How can we think through strategically but also in terms of what the context is to have a different effect?

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, I no, no. I was just gonna say, I mean, I think it feels like you were actually agreeing with Ben.

Keith Yazmir:

I often do. 

Michael Maslansky:

Hmm. Before you said, you know, just because, I mean, I think if you say like, they were treating Latinos and the black population as a monolith–

Keith Yazmir:

I was agreeing on that point. 

00:19:06 Speaker 2 

But actually, they’re not a monolith. They have moved. They’re significant proportions. Just a study I read this morning about the percentage of Latinos who don’t consider being Hispanic or Latino very important to their identity, and they were much more likely to vote for Trump than for Harris. And I think that idea that, you know, that there’s certain populations that were treated as monoliths and not really understood in the world that they’re operating in today and that you know what, maybe the economy and having a job is actually more important than my identity, which I may be third generation, 4th generation or I may be frustrated at the fact that I earned you know my way in. And now somebody’s coming behind me. Very legitimate kind of perspective to have and to look at immigration as something that isn’t fair to me and my family because of how we got here, but I think it’s also, you know, the the idea of kind of what the challenge was that Harris had to overcome was I think, you know, we talked a lot about the fact that old narratives die hard. And I think in addition to the incumbency narrative, Keith, that you were talking about earlier, which I think she would have had to run much harder again. The other negative narrative that Kamala had was a negative narrative as an extreme liberal. And you know, it’s been interesting to me to watch, you know what has happened from her defenders, who said, well, she didn’t campaign on these issues in 2024. Or, she said she now supports fracking. The interesting thing is though, the well that may be true. She certainly did not do enough to overcome the baggage that comes with a negative narrative, right? And so we see, you know, I’ll go to Wells Fargo, which was a great example of a situation that we worked on for many years and they apologized once and then they said we’re done. We apologized. How could you not have accepted our apology? And that all of a sudden now you should take that one moment and move forward into kind of a different future and it didn’t work that way. It never works that way. And I think the same thing is true here where, you know, you had Kamala Harris had developed this reputation as being far to the left. And even though she changed her position and articulated a new position in some cases, she never forcefully disavowed her old positions. She never explained. You know why she changed those positions or really left them in the rearview mirror in a way that would allow her to overcome the negative narratives and so when the ads started coming out, that showed her on camera defending transgender transitioning in jails, it was a really powerful ad that tapped into this old narrative and kind of reinforced it. And any work that she may have done or any campaigning that she may have done on other issues couldn’t compete with the fact that the evidence kind of that reinforced this old narrative was so strong that if you had to think about, “Who was Kamala Harris today?” I think people who weren’t paying that much attention were much more likely to be persuaded by the ads, and I don’t think it’s unfair for them to have been persuaded as much as such. 

Keith Yazmir:

It’s hilariously, not hilariously, but on the other side there was 100% different reality right now in 2016 and well before Donald Trump announced to the world. This is who I am. Like it or hate it, and he continued with that to the extent that more recently when there was the Madison Square Garden rally and there was all this blowback and people are like, oh, it’s the nail in the coffin. First campaign. This was not a wild divergency from what most people expected. From Donald Trump and folks around him not defending, not doing anything to that except saying he is anything if not consistent with who he is, not with his policies. He’s kind of all over the place but that’s who he is and nobody who was going to vote for him, who ended up voting for him, was shocked at that. Nobody. 

Lee Carter:

Yeah. I think you know there’s a few lessons in to build on different threads that you’ve all put down there. I think there is something about tying into something bigger. That’s really important. And then I think about the forgotten man, the fly over states that. There was something that Donald Trump really focused on there that tapped into a truth that exists, that there’s these forgotten Americans, that people don’t have faith in or believe in anymore. And he didn’t just talk about them. He talked about this idea of fairness. And so much of his messaging framed around this idea is the system is rigged. It is unfair whether you think about the economy, it’s unfair when you think about immigration. It’s unfair that some people come here the right way and some people get the wrong way and there’s some people getting handouts that you’re not getting and that your cities are getting worse. And he tied into this and then he positioned himself as an answer to this problem about fairness, which is I am here to fight for you. They’re coming after me because they’re coming after you and I am the one that’s gonna fight. And I think that was so, so powerful, not just because he did it, you know, and stood up, fight, fight, fight right after the assassination attempt. But because that was his narrative, he tied into this zeitgeist that something that was very, very true, all of us right now in business, there’s huge narratives about US1 profits before people. There’s truths that people have about us that we have to deal with and figure out how are we going to navigate them. I know that’s one big lesson that we all need to learn. The second thing is we’re never going to win by telling people they’re wrong. Kamala Harris went out there and tried to say the economy has never been stronger. So has Joe Biden. She went out and tried to say every financial services firm, every economist rates my plan better than his plan. Inflation isn’t bad. It’s fine. Nobody believed it because it wasn’t their truth. We’re entering in a world right now where we have RFK Junior maybe going to be the head of Health and Human services, and we’re going to be starting to talk about all kinds of things. Are we going to win these debates by telling them they’re wrong? Absolutely not. We have to understand what people are really concerned about, their safety, their security. The companies are putting profits before people and we need to understand that truth if we expect to win. Another thing that I think we really need to learn is that we’ve got to make problems solvable. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden used this term all the time–threat to democracy. It was huge and scary and unwieldy. And it was hard to even get your arms around. When Tim Walls came along and started calling Donald Trump weird and Kamala Harris had this moment where she said he’s an unserious man with serious consequences, those attacks made the problem solvable. So how do we make these things, these big attacks, solvable? And then the other big lesson I think we all need to remember is when there’s a question that people have about you, you need to answer it or you cannot pass go. Michael, I know you talk about this all the time about the whole, like, dressing the underlying concern. Turn people’s underlying concern about Kamala Harris is the economy, to them feels bad right now. It’s the Biden Harris administration. The Biden Harris economy. What are you going to do differently than what’s happening right now? If you can’t answer that question, you don’t get to pass go. So what are the questions that people are asking of us? That we need to address so that they’ll believe us and buy anything that we have to say, and I think those are some of the big lessons from me. 

Michael Maslansky:

Well, I think you’re wrong, Lee. 

Lee Carter:

That never worked ever, Michael. 

Michael Maslansky:

No, it does not work. 

Ben Feller:

To yeah, just that, you know, we we can’t overstate the dynamic at play in this particular election with Harris becoming the surprise candidate so late in the campaign and I think I don’t think that she missed the feeling that voters have or the need to address it in a way that wasn’t just academic statistics and everything you mentioned. I think she felt, my sense, was an inability to look straight in the camera and say, “I get it. It’s a terrible position to have to choose between your rent and your groceries. That’s the entirety of this election. Here’s exactly how I’m going to fix it. In these three ways, in the 1st 100 days, this will help you with your home. This will help you with the gas bill. This help you with the grocery bill and I’m sure it’s all going to do it better than Trump. And here’s why.” And the reason she couldn’t do that is because to do that would be disloyal to President Biden. It’s like Keith said, she can’t be the change. You know, she’s in office. And so I think that there was a moment there when she became the the nominee, that she always felt like she was sort of pushing up against what she wanted to say or what she could say. And so it felt like 1/2 measure. 

Michael Maslansky:

I blame the Biden administration for that a lot that the his legacy depended on her being able to throw him under the bus. For one thing, it didn’t have to be 10 things, right, but it had to be one thing and the fact that there was no sacrificial lamb where she could say, you know what, we fought it out like crazy on this and I lost. But I’m gonna do it differently. I think had a really negative impact on how she was perceived. 

Lee Carter:

But see Michael, I would build on that. And say there’s a way to do it without throwing Biden under the bus. And I think we talked about this at our last one, which is, which last conversation about the election, which is you could have done this sort of two step process. Joe Biden and I took over country was in disarray. We had COVID the economy despite the fact that had been strong. And COVID was in shambles. We had to stabilize it and stabilize everything. Phase 2 is about growth and that’s what we’re about to go into. And she could have done it. That she could have done it, but she finally got close to that and her speech in. The ellipse and she did that and I thought it was a very, very smart way of doing it, that she, she framed it up. I think the sad thing for her is that her Liberal speech and that speech got stepped on by Joe Biden’s garbage comment, and then Donald Trump coming out with–

Michael Maslansky:

A garbage truck. Yeah, but I don’t. I mean, I think that that would have been much better answer than what it was. But I still think that–

Lee Carter:

And it’s too late. 

Michael Maslansky:

There, you know, we like the idea of having a vulnerability that, like he was so perfect, that there was nothing that she was going to do differently, that they could point to, that they could find. That was either innocuous in hindsight, it just, it feels like it’s so easy have to to have been such a dramatic miss in not having done it, you know there’s one other thing that I think is. You know, kind of unrelated to this last point, but I think really important which is that the, as we talked about the, you kind of, what Trump did so well with the forgotten man, kind of the forgotten person in America is that the I think the left to their peril, fundamentally underestimates how difficult it is for many… what? And I’m gonna say white men who live in fly over country and white women and white families. And this is not to kind of figure out where everybody fits in line, but that there is this battle that you know that I think is like fundamental which is the what I would say is they used to haves versus the never hads, right and the never hads is the marginalized communities that you know in the traditional Democratic coalition who have never had a seat at the table and they’re fighting for it and they should, and they deserve to be treated, you know, equally and get their fair share at the same time, got a lot of people who are not in those communities who feel like maybe they used to have more power. Maybe they used to have more privilege. Maybe they used to have more respect. We asked question in our responsible business work of whether people thought that other people were trying to shove their opinions down their throat. Or whether they were respected, you know, less than they were in the past, 90% of Republicans think that they are respected less today than they were in the past. And that other people in this case, meaning the left, are trying to force opinions down their throat and it’s a pretty dangerous kind of situation to be in if you need some of that population to be part of your coalition. 

Lee Carter:

Totally. So. It’s such an important, important lesson for everybody to take away —

Keith Yazmir:

And that’s why I mean. Just to build, Lee both on what you and Michael were saying. There, people talked a lot about, “Oh, where is Harris’s sister soldier moment?” Right. “Where’s her symbolic stake in the ground of change of difference?”. I actually hear those 90% of Republicans who feel that they are not respected and so I actually would go further than your excellent speech just now to say that they needed, she needed something that was more extreme because we are living in an extreme moment where the context was extreme, right and and and Trump’s success is about his ability to credibly say I am not bringing more of the same. And I know, love him or hate him, nobody believes he’s being more to say he was able to credibly come forth and say this is change. And I went back and looked at presidential slogans since Carter… Anybody remember Carter?… “A leader, for a change,” great line because he was coming after Nixon. And for a leader comma for change Reagan. You better remember again. “Let’s make America great again.” That was Reagan’s line. That didn’t start with Trump. That was Reagan’s campaign line. The again piece right for people, for a change, was Clinton’s change. We can believe in, and we probably all remember who talked about that. This was change election, and she didn’t bring the change, but she, I think she needed to put that stake in the ground and we talked to our clients a lot about how it can feel like in your own communications signaling that difference, that differentiation, that value. And we end up having these interesting conversations with folks about no, but we changed this word. We use this word and see it’s very different from these other folks. No, we have this new, for folks to actually hear you. Who are expecting more of the same old as Michael was talking about with his kind of narrative. You need to really push into it frequently 10 times harder than you think you do for folks to be like, oh, and then you need to repeat it 100 times so they actually start to get it. And I mean, yes, we’re not here to beat up on the Harris campaign. They didn’t have any time. They were in a very tight spot and obviously there’s a lot of complexities that are going on there that we’re not touching on nor probably aware of but you need to to to do that from the communications perspective, to have any chance of getting traction. 

Lee Carter:

So I think you bring up a really good point about you’re talking about everybody’s slogans. I want to talk about some of the language that was used during the course of the election, whether it was by Joe Biden when he was a candidate, or Kamala Harris, or whether it was by Donald Trump or Vance. But I want you to think about all of the significant moments that came down to messaging. And is there anything that you would have either said differently, or you think defined and change the game? So either something that was a big miss or a big win. 

Ben Feller:

Yeah, I mean I do think that as I said, Harris didn’t take the opportunity for either loyalty reasons or otherwise to take on the pain. People felt economically. It was price gouging and tax credits and opportunity economy. It just didn’t matter to them. Personally, but I also think that there was a fundamental belief that both campaigns had Lee. Harris was fervent in her belief that she would be a president for all that a lip speech, she referenced one of the big moments for her if she wanted it to be. A big moment was. “Guys, it doesn’t have to be this way. Like we’re the United States of America. It doesn’t have to feel this way. It doesn’t have to be this way. Remember what happened behind me on January 6. Like, we can do this together…” and believes that strongly. And a lot of people who voted for her do President Trump, to to keep point, was never that President and he said it a little bit when he won and kind of had some nice words, but he was he ran that transgender ad that Michael referenced and ended with. She’s for they them for you. It was specifically saying there are some people in this country that I am not for. I’m trying to get the votes of 50.1% of everybody. And if I do that, I win and then we all win and I think that there are specific language moments, but also that underwriting language philosophy are you for everybody, or are you picking the people that are going to get you the coalition and, you know again Keith, it wasn’t that I thought there was a dramatic shift in the country, but he did have these gains. And so I think part of the difference is the way that people are processing this election now besides the fact that we’ve had a Trump presidency before. Is those numbers make this feel a little bit differently? It can’t just be categorized as a white rural surprise vote there are elements of diversity in this when, even though it was still still close and I think that’s part of what America has to grapple with is that, you know, we have twice voted for someone who has made it a language differentiator to say I’m for you if you’re in this group not. Not for all. Now other presidents have one on the all and Kareem Obama was more the, you know, the United. 

Lee Carter:

But I actually I want to challenge you on that Ben because there were some of those ads where you were absolutely right. He was very, very targeted. There’s some of this policies, I think that you could argue are very, very different. But he said I am fighting for all Americans. She tried to say he’s fighting for himself. I will fight for you, but I can point to at least 15 different key speeches where his message was about fighting for all Americans. 

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, yeah. 

Lee Carter:

I don’t know. 

Ben Feller:

I think that history will show and Trump would say that his appeal to people that feel forgotten, disenfranchised, left out angry was one of fear. This country is not what it needs to be. People are crossing the border. They’re eating cats and dogs. They’re taking your jobs. We got to get America back. It’s just a different way of going about it. I don’t think you could be a candidate around the sort of the change of fear. And then say at the same time I’m a candidate for all. I mean that that’s just how I see it. 

Lee Carter:

I mean, the thing that’s really interesting is whenever you’re talking about and I don’t necessarily want to get into debate about this in particular, but from a language perspective, I do think that Trump really tried to talk about how he was fighting for all Americans, and maybe all was code, as you heard it for some Americans. But I think that was his words were often that and I think that one of the things that we forget and I forgot when we’re talking about this is that every one of those messages that Keith talked about was about change, which means that every time that happened, people were feeling badly. It wasn’t that Trump uniquely ran on fear. Everybody in some way has run on. There is a problem that needs to be solved. I or this administration can uniquely solve it and make the change that you need to see. Unique to Donald Trump, and I don’t think it’s unique to any, you know marketing case or you know if you think about market shaping and pharma we’re talking about problems that need to be solved. We’re addressing issues that need an answer and that’s not always fear based that is actually addressing an underlying need that people have. And I think Donald Trump tapped into that. 

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, but I’m not sure that it was I think the… you and I’ve talked about this a little bit about the warm fuzzy. I actually thought the 2016 campaign from Trump was a some ways more optimistic than this one. He may have said that a lot. Kamala said a lot of things a lot of times too about what she was going to do for the economy and stuff like that that were equally dismissed, I think ultimately he was seen as the more competent candidate to address the problems and identified a clearer set of problems. You know, arguably hurt himself by overdoing it in in some places, but that you know that people who were on the fence at the end of the cycle were more likely to say, you know what, like, he’s the one who’s going to bring prices down because Kamala is not going to do it. Or he’s the one who’s going to stop immigration. And Kamala is not going to do it. I don’t know that. And then there was his base that I think felt like he represented them. But if you’re in that swing late deciding voter, I don’t know that either one of them were giving you the warm fuzzies that you know you were choosing, between which one really cared more about you as opposed to which one was more focused on the issues. And now addressing the issues that really matter. 

Ben Feller:

The people that matter, we should remind our our folks that they can ask questions. We want to hear from you. It’s not what we say. So drop your questions in the chat, please. 

Michael Maslansky:

You can tell Ben that he’s wrong. Or Keith. 

Keith Yazmir:

I hear it a lot, but it won’t work apparently because that never works. So it kind of builds. On what Ben was saying, although I was smiling, Ben, when you were talking about the ellipse speech, because, yes, I and Lee, you and I did a bunch of testing a little while ago about the resonance of messages that are honestly, hey, it doesn’t have to be like this. Everybody shares some blame for the divisiveness today. Let’s bring everybody together. But it’s a little ironic that the location of her speech at the ellipse, with the capital behind and her using that as a prop was belying the message of, Hey, let’s all get together simply because January 6th is, of course turned into a symbol of Donald Trump of all these terrible things that could happen, et cetera. And so there was an interesting tension to that. Whereas for the swing voters, the people, again, the actual swing voters, that’s CNN and Fox are talking about. They want somebody who’s just gonna leave all that stuff behind. Just talk to me about what actually matters to me. But my language shift Lee to your question is away from that right, democracy is on the ballot. The fascism focus. This has been the democratic messaging writ large from 2015, when Trump became the candidate, until now has been one or another version of, Get a load of this guy. That therein does not a campaign make. She didn’t have a lot of time, but she didn’t take the opportunity. She had to say this is who I am. This is what I’m for and proposed to do, and I’ll just come back to it because I think it is the critical word of this entire cycle. This is what I am going to change because I know you all believe change is important to happen and things are broken, and here’s what I’m going to change. Not. Here’s what I’m going to do. Not opportunity, economy, whatever that actually means. Here’s what I’m going to change, because that in this case conveys more authenticity and and and and seriousness of intent. 

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah. So actually I’m going to pivot a little bit just because I know we have about 15 minutes, and I want to talk about change in a way that what we can really expect for what’s going to happen now so. Trump said he was going to change a lot of things in terms of who he’s going to nominate for his cabinet. So far, he seems to have held true to his promises pretty strictly in terms of the kind of people that he was going to put in and the kind of change that he was going to expect. It has the potential to really upend the way much of our economy is regulated. And I think you know, I know Lee, you’ve been talking to a lot of people on the transition, I think we’re seeing in the what happened over the weekend with the two candidates for Treasury Secretary that there’s a right way and a wrong way to handle the Trump administration. I think it would be great Lee to get your perspective on, you know, at a high level, at least on the transition, what you’re hearing and what you think companies ought to be thinking about in terms of how to deal with this new administration. 

Lee Carter:

Yeah. So I think most of you guys that are on probably know for better or worse, I I know a number of people that are either on the transition team or have been named as potential cabinet members and in my role at you know that I that I play as a commentator on TV, I’ve gotten to know a lot of these folks and I’ve been having some conversations. And it’s very clear that this team is looking at this election as a mandate for change. And that means RFK Junior is going into Health and Human services with the idea that he is going to upend the Pharmaceutical industry as we know it. He’s going to fight vaccines. There’s conversations about what he’s going to do around DTC advertising. Food ingredients, despite the fact that when he was on his way to the UFC this weekend with Donald Trump, where he had a whole bunch of McDonald’s, I think there’s a lot of people who are wondering, what it means for food ingredients there’s people afraid of. There’s all kinds of memes going out there about Diet Coke, and other kinds of products and what it means. And I think we’ve got to look at this very, very seriously. And so for a lot of our clients, we’re already having conversations about how can we prepare for this. We’ve got two months between now and Inauguration Day. And they are getting ready to make some big changes. And one thing that I learned for sure is we aren’t going to win. Any of the debates by not engaging them and we’re not going to win by putting all the facts out there that says why they are wrong. Because they have their own set of facts and they just had a vote where they feel like. They won on these issues and so for all of us, whether you’re in the pharma business, whether you are in the food business. Whether you’re in the communications business, whether in financial services, there’s going to be some regulation and you know, impact, some say it’s more favorable, but others you know. All bets are off here. You know the message that’s coming overwhelmingly is we don’t want business as usual. We want disruption and that’s what they’re planning to do. And so for the topics that are most important to our business, I really think that we need to create playbooks and be ready and we need to be ready to go sit at the table. I think in 2016, you know, some of our CEO’s and some of our folks went into manufacturing roundtables and then left, and there was a lot of protest votes, people that said that they weren’t gonna engage with this administration. I don’t think that’s gonna be the answer now. I think we’re gonna have to engage in dialogue and figure out how we’re gonna engage from both a messaging perspective because what we’re seeing now is Americans have very, very real concerns about how companies are run, how business gets done and how they make, how we make decisions about what goes into all of our bodies. And so I very much expect there to be a whole host of topics that we need to be prepared for, and we’ve got two months to do it and I don’t think we should be flat-footed. So it’s something that we’re willing ready and able to come in and talk to you guys about whether you’re at a sister agency or a company that’s navigating these kinds of things. We have work. We’re happy to have these conversations because I think it’s really important that we use these two months wisely. 

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah. And I think you know it’s going to require a lot of different strategies depending on what it is that you are. Advocating for who your relationships are with kind of where you sit politically. You know what? But I think that the kind of the full frontal assault on you’re wrong. And let me tell you all the ways is certainly one that is not going to to resonate. I mean, I think that there are there are going to be issues where aligning with the administration kind of making making your solution big and beautiful, and Trump’s are going to be effective, there are others where it may be that the strategy is to be the least visible among the targets so that they the administration moves on to something that that feels like it is a more palatable target. It may be that you have to lean in on certain things that are likely to rally the Trump base in ways that they don’t appreciate. I mean, I think tariffs will be a particularly interesting one where all of a sudden, you know, when the reality of tariffs, at least that as I understand. Tariffs becomes a little bit more clear. You know who it is that really stands up or stands against them. But there are a whole kind of portfolio of different strategies that are going to be necessary depending on the issue and really thinking deeply about who the audience is that needs to be reached, and how they feel about these issues and what might be persuasive for them. And is obviously central to what we do and I’m going to be critical here. 

Ben Feller:

Yeah. I think too some of the questions we’re already hearing from clients whose agenda might not match up with the Trump administration or… we saw a question here about the Republican turn in Capitol Hill as well is do we need to now how do we change, who we are to meet this new reality. And I think what we’re finding and advising a lot of our clients is that who you are, right. There’s a real value in honoring your own values and your your identity. Compellingly, crisply with the differentiation from the others, you don’t have to change who you are but you do need, to Michael at least, point change how you explain who you are. So one of the core findings of the ESG work that Michael led was people do believe across parties and the underpinnings. Of, you know, environmental, social governance work. But not the way it’s said it has become a toxic term, but they care about companies that are materially doing the right thing as long as they are responsible businesses to their communities and to their people. And so changing the way that you talk about the issue that you believe in is really the key. And if you’re wondering how to do that, if you don’t have those relationships or it feels like a huge leap, we can absolutely help with the how and love to engage in that. 

Michael Maslansky:

I was typing an answer to the question, but we could take a couple of quick questions to see. So why don’t I… the one I was responding to is: “Is what you do more powerful than what you say? Or can the right language be so powerful that it overcomes lack of action or the inability to act due to strategic constraints or other operational handcuffs leaders find themselves having to deal with? I mean, I’ll give you my take. I think… 

Keith Yazmir:

What were you typing? 

Michael Maslansky:

I think we always believe that the kind of the gap between what you say and what you do should be as small as possible. But there are times where you are absolutely constrained in what you can do or in what you can say. I think in the situations where you’re constrained in what you can do there would be a good rationale to explain it that helps you, you know, communicate a commitment or a desire or our perspective that gives you more latitude than your actions will allow, and that there is, you know, we often talk like there’s the, you know, what’s more important to have a great story to tell or to tell a great story? And the answer is you need, you need both in most cases, and that action without the right messaging is as dangerous as messaging without action. It is, you know, it’s trying to strike the right balance. 

Keith Yazmir:

And Richard has a great question in the… “I asked this group in virtual form about six weeks ago whether Harris needed to do more to earn her moderate stripes like a sister soldier moment…” And apparently we all hemmed and hawed and said well. Hmm. Fast forward today and hearing that she didn’t do enough to to counteract the negative narrative, you know, perspective is that her biggest mistake was her comment on the view that we mentioned before about I can’t think of anything I would have done differently. And her second biggest mistake was failing to counteract her far left image. Is there something I’m missing and what should the Democratic Party do to ensure midterm election yields a different outcome? I would say just to start off, I agree wholeheartedly and if I was one of the hammers and Harriers I take the excuse of hey man, we’re just making this up as we get up. It’s great and I don’t actually remember when in the the… How long she’d been a candidate when we did the last session, whether it was before or after she made the switch away from the forward-looking kind of joy elements to back to bashing fascist fascism and the like. But I would say in terms of your second piece of that advice for the opposition party to around midterms is okay let’s drop the shock. Can’t believe this guy. Can you believe what he said? Now Can you believe what his appointee said? Can you believe he did that? That’s all fine to feel. But that’s not messaging and that’s not convincing anybody. I think that over the next two years as it was during it’s here’s what he’s doing. What are the results? Is he delivering for you? Who voted for him? And lastly, and I know other people are going to want to jump in on this, let’s also keep in mind very much so that midterms are not presidentials. And so actually back to the comments about swing voters and knowing who your voters are, the people who are going to decide the midterms are not the people that decided this election. It’s a different electorate. It’s motivated voters who come out there and that’s a bit of a different ball game. Other folks. 

Lee Carter:

You know, I think to just, I just want to go back to this question. I think the biggest mistake that Kamala made was the October 8th – she can’t think of anything she would have done differently than Biden, it’s not about the far left image, right? I think even though that was used to attack her because I think we often say anything that’s left ambiguous, misinterpreted negatively. And because she didn’t give an answer for us to hold on to, we’re able to fill it with the answers that we knew to exist to be true when they were held against her. So failing to answer the question actually allowed us to fill in the void with whatever it is that we wanted to. So I think that is that and that is something that we really all need to learn, not just politicians. This is just like, you know, so I… Knowing your weaknesses is also really, really important. You know, and her weakness being, you know, that she was too far left or that you know, she knew her weakness about her laugh. So she turned that into joy. But I think one thing that we can also learn from Donald Trump is he knows his weaknesses and turns them into strengths. I’m not a bully. I’m gonna fight for you. I’m not, you know, I have no political experience. I’m an outsider who’s going to go in and blow things up. I’m a businessman who’s gonna make deals like you’ve never seen before. You call us garbage. I’m showing up with a garbage truck. Like there is just no one who is more aware of what the attack is and how to flip it and reframe. And that’s something else we can all learn from. 

Michael Maslansky:

Richard, Good for calling us out. I think we were naive to think that at that point, she was setting the terms of the narrative, and it seemed like it could hold. There was no rush to actively change it herself. I think she didn’t react to the moments that came her way the way that she should have, whether it was on the view or on dealing with the actively rebutting the accusations that she was a moderate liberal as opposed to just kind of talking about the fact that her values haven’t changed and therefore she wasn’t a flip-flopper so. You know, but it’s a good, good call. 

Ben Feller:

Out my final word to those in the opposition party who are not happy right now. Two things. First of all, you know, recent political history is showing that we are not a country of incrementalism and that in my adult lifetime we swung from Bush senior to Clinton at that time. It seems like a very long time ago that felt like a mini-revolution. Generationally, geographically, everything, you know, we went after Clinton fatigue. We went back to Bush 43, then to Obama, you know, after people were tired of that time. To Trump, Biden, Trump. So I think that midterms in the middle of a first term have always shown support for the opposition party. But having said all that, I think the most important takeaway is to underscore something Lee said don’t wait two years, don’t just build up. You know, your party for the midterms and the presidential. And listen to these voters. But engage. This is the new reality. If the Trump administration on the hill really wants to find a way forward with both parties, there’s an opportunity here. But you got to engage them on their terms as much as your own. 

Lee Carter:

I would also just build on that Ben to dismiss this belief that exists out there. I think we’ve been dismissive of Americans, we’ve been dismissive of Donald Trump. We’ve been dismissive of Trump supporters. We’ve been dismissive of a whole host of people for far too long and that’s something that we need to figure out. How do we engage with one? And this is a long term movement. It’s a long time in the making that we got to here and it’s going to be a long time getting through it, but I think that the good news for all of us is the answer really does lie and communicating through it, not in walking away from it. And I’m encouraged in this moment to see that there seems to be more of an appetite for conversation than there did before, and I think that we all need to engage no matter where you sit. 

Michael Maslansky:

Yeah, I’ll just at the risk of beating up on on this, you know. There’s a choice that everybody has to make right now, which is like to kind of come to terms with what happened and why and one way to do it is to look externally and say, well, it wasn’t us, it was them. It’s people who were, who are racist or who are misogynist or who are all of these negatives and I think leaving aside the question of whether or not that’s true or it’s true for some people, it’s not terribly helpful. In winning the next one, if that’s your goal, because really it is finding out what you can control and what you can do better and where you may not fully understand the people that you’re trying to persuade. And that is, I think what we’ve all kind of been leaning into is that there is a misunderstanding of the populace on the left in ways that you know that allowed a very flawed candidate in Donald Trump to win. 

All right. We are over. I don’t mean to have grabbed the last word, but you all said the smart stuff. So I said the last stuff, and thanks for everybody for joining, and really appreciate the comments. Please send questions or reach out if we can be helpful. We would love to. And more to come. But thank you all and have a good night.