What ever happened to the days when politics in marketing was the kiss of death? Now it seems you can’t have any conversation that doesn’t turn political.
Just a couple weeks ago I was at a networking event and I couldn’t even talk about the women-only networking groups I belong to without some old white guy complaining that there are no men-only networking groups. What started as an innocent conversation about networking turned political before I knew what was happening.
And that conversation is not an outlier. It’s increasingly the norm for conversations to turn political, even if there’s nothing inherently political about the topic.
Now we have politics leaking into our marketing and advertising.
I first noticed it after the election of 2016. I have always loved buying spices from Penzey’s. They used to have a brick-and-mortar shop in my neighborhood, but when the shop closed, I had to go online to get their herbs and spices. That led to me signing up for their newsletter, and after the 2016 election, their newsletters took a strong political stance.
After a few months, they reported that, yes, they had lost some customers as a result of taking that stance, but they had also gained some new customers, so in the end it all worked out. They are still in business, and as near as I can tell, still doing well for themselves.
And they’re not the only ones. It seems like every brand has taken some sort of political stance, and consumers are increasingly buying from brands whose politics align with their own.
That said, there is still a significant amount of risk involved to including politics in marketing. That begs the question, is including politics in marketing worth the risk?
The answer to that question will be different for everyone, so I can’t answer it for you. What I can do is take you through some of the pros and cons of including politics in marketing.
Table of Contents
- Pros to Including Politics in Marketing
- Cons to Including Politics in Marketing
- Know Your Audience
- What’s Political?
Pros to Including Politics in Marketing
Regardless of your political affiliations, there are benefits to including politics in marketing.
People Increasingly Want to Support Companies That Align with Their Values
Whether brands started getting political before consumers started demanding it or the other way around is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Which came first doesn’t matter, because the reality is that, at this point, it’s almost impossible to gain any traction without taking a stance on political issues.
People like supporting companies that are aligned with their values, including their political values. That means your marketing content has to get political so prospects can determine whether they want to support your brand.
Politics in Marketing Can Increase Customer Loyalty
Getting political in your marketing will undoubtedly turn off people whose values don’t align with yours. On the other hand, it can make those whose values do align with yours much more likely to stick around.
Marketers and business owners talk a lot about the fact that acquiring a new client is exponentially more expensive than keeping an existing client. The question is whether you keep enough clients to make up for the clients you lose.
Or maybe you’ll get lucky, as in the Penzey’s case study mentioned above, and you’ll gain enough new customers as a result of including politics in marketing to make up for the customers you lose.
Do You Work Closely with Your Clients?
I tend to work pretty closely with my clients. Moreover, I work in marketing, so if they wanted me to include politics in their marketing strategy, I might have a hard time with that if their values were directly opposed to mine, especially when it comes to issues I feel strongly about.
But maybe you work in a field where your clients’ beliefs never come up. Maybe you sell a product that’s mass produced and sold online so you never have to interact directly with your clients. Granted, there are plenty of companies like that that have included politics in their marketing (including Penzey’s.) But if you want to sit out the political game in your marketing, that’s cool, too.
Stand Out from the Crowd
I wouldn’t be surprised if companies started including politics in marketing as a way to stand out from the crowd. In marketing, it’s all about increasing brand recognition, and the more eyeballs you can get on your ads, the better your brand recognition will be.
And, yes, making people angry is a great way to get more eyeballs on your content. Consider the fact that Facebook has found that people are more likely to engage with content that enrages them, so the algorithm shows them more content that enrages them. They make nasty comments on those posts, and those comments then increase that post’s visibility because it tells the algorithm there’s “value” in that post. The post performs better, so the marketing strategist creates/orders more like it, and the cycle continues.
That said, I’ve already talked about the increase in politics in marketing. That might mean that if you want to stand out from the crowd now, you’d be better off staying away from politics and focusing on something else.
Cons to Including Politics in Marketing
Now that we’ve talked about some of the benefits to including politics in marketing, here are some of the drawbacks you should consider.
Politics in Marketing Limits Your Opportunities for Expansion
If you’re like me and you watch a lot of Shark Tank, you know the “sharks” are always asking about opportunities for expansion. A product is unlikely to get a deal if there’s only one product without the potential for variations. Not only is variety the spice of life, it’s also good business, because it gives you more opportunities to make money.
By including politics in your marketing, you might build brand loyalty with the people whose beliefs align with yours, but you’ll never win over the people whose beliefs are opposed to yours, which limits your opportunity for expansion.
Not only does it drive away customers with opposing beliefs, it can also drive away customers who consider themselves to be politically agnostic and don’t want politics mixed in with their shopping.
Of course, your mileage with this may vary. You might have dreams of becoming a global chain, or you might want to keep your business small and local. Again, I can’t make that call for you, I can only tell you what the potential consequences might be if you choose to include politics in marketing.
Politics in Marketing Might Be Contributing to the Deepening Divide in this Country
A lot of people have been saying we’re more divided now than we’ve been since the Civil War. That sounds like something a pundit would say to attract more eyeballs to their content, but there’s no denying there’s a real divide here. Any time a topic that’s even remotely political is broached, everyone immediately retreats to their corners, digs in their heels, and refuses to listen to the other side, much less admit they might have a point.
By including politics in marketing and aligning your brand with one political party over another, you’d be encouraging one group to listen to you and another group to tune you out.
I’m not saying you’re responsible for, or even capable of, fixing the deep divide in this country — that’s a lot of pressure to put on anyone. But it’s worth considering whether you want to contribute to it.
Know Your Audience
I talk about the importance of knowing your audience in just about every piece of content I create because everything else flows from that. If you know your target audience tends to lean in a particular political direction, it might be worthwhile to lean into that in your marketing. If they tend to avoid politics like the plague, then maybe your marketing should, too.
What’s Political?
I created a LinkedIn poll last week about politics in marketing, and one of the things that came up in the comments was the definition of what’s political. It’s a great question because there are so many things that are not inherently political that have been politicized by one side or the other. Some examples include:
- Whether protecting the planet for future generations is a worthwhile investment
- Whether children have a right to be safe in schools
- Whether murder is wrong
- Whether someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity is anyone else’s business
- Whether freedom of speech applies to everyone, or just a select few
Do you use politics in marketing? Why or why not? If so, what has been your experience?
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Lem Enrile