Kamala Harris’s $1B Campaign: Where Did It All Go?

0:00There are numbers out there from a marketing standpoint on the ad spend, the Democrats versus Republicans, who do you think got a better return on ad spend? Well, that was obvious. It's Republicans. But okay, let's just look at this ROI, right? So Kamala Harris's campaign spent a billion dollars. They went 20 million in debt. And then Trump, I think he did about 350 to 380 million or something like that. And he still had surplus leftover where he went to the Democrats and said, hey, I'll help cover your costs there just to make things right. Cause we don't want to, you know, we don't, we need to be united.

0:29Right. And so you don't remember this? No. How can you be 20 million or dollars in debt how are they allowed to what do you mean they're 20 million behind they didn't pay they didn't pay some of the vendors dude they were paying like i think they paid um beyonce like 10 million dollars or something the call her daddy set so they flew her in they didn't want to do it at her studio so that will fly in to washington dc they built a set for the set cost 100 grand it even looked like it was worth 100 grand right so there's just a lot of bad spending through the campaign that led to their, I mean, so it just goes to show you that no matter how much money you spend, it's not about how much money you spend sometimes, it's how efficient are you with your marketing.

1:05That's what we're trying to get at, whichever side you're on. And I think it's also a good time to say, I don't know about you. I made a video for my entire team. I'm like, guys, it doesn't matter which side you're on. Like some of you might be really happy right now. Some of you might be really sad, but what matters is we put one foot in front of the other and we just worry about what we can control. There's no use in just getting crazy. Sure. You can be maybe be sad a couple of days or so, but there's still people now to this day right now, we're two weeks removed and there's still people going nuts right now.

1:31Guys, it's, it's, I hate to say this, but whichever side, like when, when, when Biden won back then, or when Trump won back then, it's like the world still moves on and you got to move on. Yes. It's life and you got to deal with it. And in life, there's things that go your way and there's things that don't go your way, but that's reality. Yep. And the thing is this, right. I talked about this with my CTO. We're just like, you know no matter who's the president like it's not going to affect us that much in the long run right so goldman sachs went on tv because both the candidates at the time were making claims and goldman sachs had i think their chief investment officer one of those c-level titles but it was a fancy person who's really well educated smart with the economy and they said we do see their differentiation in the economy with each candidate, right?

2:23Depending on who wins, it will be a slight adjustment to economy. And when they're asked on CNBC, what's the difference? And they said, either one is negligible. It's less than a percent difference. Like you have to realize it doesn't matter what each of them say. You got to get all those things passed and you got to get people to agree upon them. It doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democrat, a lot of people in the same party won't agree with everything. Yep. All right. So I wanted to take a second to tell you about the agency owners association. So this is a agency peer group ran by my podcast cohost, Neil Patel and myself, Eric Su.

2:54And these were nine and eight figure agency owners respectively. And what I will say is at the end of the day, you want to learn from people that have been there, done that. If you want to grow your agency to seven figures, eight figures and beyond, this is the group for you. And we bring in other agency owners to speak as well. And it's a great peer group where you can help each other out. And you're going to learn how to acquire more clients. You're going to learn how to take yourself out of the day-to-day and to build the business of your dreams. And the cool thing till November 30th, we are holding a special price and you can apply at marketingschool.io slash agency.

3:23And the great thing about it as well, if you try to get into group, there's a seven day free trial, right? So once November 30th hits, we're going to increase the price by$200 per month. So right now you're getting it at the lowest price possible. So go to marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more and We'll see you inside. There's an interesting post here from Brian Halligan, one of the co-founders of HubSpot. So he said, election winners, number one, prediction market. So like polymarket, right? So polymarket had predicted weeks before 65 % Trump is going to win, right? And then the guy, the super rich French guy bet like 30 million bucks.

3:53No, I think he won. Was it? He won 30 million. He bet 30 million. I thought his profit was over 30 million. You could be right. I could be wrong. You could be right. Because I remember my cousin actually bet on one of the, he bet on Trump winning, right? I was going to say one of the candidates. and he bet seven grand and he won 20 grand in profit. Yeah. I remember reading an article saying some whale in France, they wouldn't say how much he bet, but they said he won 30 plus million dollars. So election winners, prediction markets like Polymarket, number two, podcast for sure, like a Rogan, for example.

4:25Three, social, like X, right? Three, sorry, election losers would be one, ABC, NBC, CBS. Two would be CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. Fox. And by the way, Fox is more right-leaning. The others are more left-leaning. And then three would be pollsters. Pollsters would be like the experts, right? And the experts are usually wrong, right? So I think it's, Balaji Srinivasan had predicted this maybe four to eight years ago or so. And it's just showing now that this, the next time they're going to do an election, I guarantee both sides are going to go on a podcast tour, hardcore. Podcast, respected podcast tours, hardcore.

4:59Yeah. And CNN is supposedly making some cuts because they had terrible viewership during the election. Who was selling their publication? Comcast was offloading. MSNBC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And wasn't someone trying to buy it? Was it like a joke that Elon wanted to buy it or something? They put that out there, but there's no substantiated facts or evidence or whatever you want to call it that Elon's actually trying to buy it. But people are just trying to throw rumors out there that he's going to be the buyer. But yeah, so Comcast is splitting up some of their divisions, I believe CNBC, MSNBC, is it called OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a few others, and they're trying to figure out.

5:38They're trying to offload, and then there's some that are, look, CNN is making cuts, right? It just goes to show you that things aren't, traditional media doesn't work as well. What happens? Why is it not working as well? Why are not many people watching? One, the average age is about 60 years old or so, so my parents still watch the news, right? But when you have a product that's not as good and people don't feel like they can trust you anymore, then they're going to go somewhere else, and they're going to go somewhere else where they're going to get their own information and they're going to learn to think for themselves.

6:03I actually think it's bigger than that. I think the real reason all these channels aren't getting the viewership is the cord cutters. If you look at the penetration of Netflix and Disney and Hulu and all these apps, it's caused people to not watch regular TV. I don't disagree with that, but also the product sucks. The product sucks, which is why you got the cord cutters and they're just watching the other stuff. So their viewership has been down for a long time. Yeah. And it continues going down and to the right. All right. That is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe.

6:32Go to marketingschool.io slash agency. And guess what? Neil and I, we're doing a session, a private session with the group tomorrow. Marketingschool.io slash agency. And we'll see you tomorrow.