Prof G on Marketing: Rebranding the Democratic Party

0:27Adobe Acrobat Studio, so brand new. welcome to office hours with prof g today we're finishing off our special three-part series prof g on marketing where we answer questions from business leaders about the biggest marketing challenges and opportunities companies face today what a thrill question number one our first question comes from dan while on instagram they ask what lessons from marketing can the average person use in their day-to-day life so the basis of marketing is most people most people think, okay, how do I find consumers for my product? The basis of marketing is, all right, how do I create a product after identifying a market and a need?

1:11And so I think essentially my most popular session in my course is the brand you, and that is trying to think of yourself as a brand. It just shocks me how many people spend their entire lives in brand management thinking about every component and touch point of a product or service to create intangible associations or a brand. Brand is emotion. Brands are intangible such that you get kind of unfair advantage, right? And then they don't think about what their brand is. So think about what is your market, right? Are you in the market to find a job in accounting? And then think, okay, how do I create a product, me, that attracts or is very attractive to the market of potential employers in accounting?

1:53Is it certification? Is it a CFA? Is it the way I dress, looking very orderly? Is it having knowledge, specific knowledge about a very deep niche in accounting? Is it beginning to create content around accounting such that people notice me? it's figuring out what is your market like in the mating market in the professional market uh across the world like what what what do you what do you want to achieve what's the market for getting that level of achievement and then reverse engineering to what certification character attributes physical appearance activities and behaviors will in fact make you most attractive to your potential market and being really strategic about it right being really kind of thoughtful about it.

2:40I want to appeal to thought leaders. I want to have a lot of influence and I want to appeal to young men. But I did a little bit more analysis. What I really want to appeal to is I want to appeal to young men and I want to appeal to their moms. And the way I appeal to young men is I start thinking about, okay, young men are very focused on finance and economic security. They also, I think they're the white space for young men and straight men, quite frankly, is to be more emotive and more vulnerable. So I talk about stuff that's a little bit uncomfortable. I'm also irreverent and profane. Now, some of that is authentic because I am a profane and vulgar person, but quite frankly, some of it is marketing because I want, you know, I'm an older dude.

3:18So to resonate with younger people, I do think they like a guy or are attracted to a product that is a little bit irreverent, a little bit fearless, and quite frankly, funny. So marketing isn't finding consumers for your product. It's figuring out what market you want to go after and then reverse engineering to yourself and saying, how do I become the best product that that market can't resist is more attractive to that market? Who are you? What's your core value proposition? What do you want to be known for reputationally? And then how do you – the way you behave, the way you dress, the certifications you get, the characteristics you attribute, how do you reinforce that association and that brand?

4:00You create such a strong brand that when people are faced with a myriad of decisions around who they hire, who they hang out with, who they mate with, they decide to look at the shelf and they pick you. Question number two. Our next question comes from Threads. Lee asks. As a professional artist, we are told that we can never look like we are marketing, yet we must market to make sales. How do we do that? Oh, my God. You want to talk about an industry that is so like full of shit, that is so like all marketing. I mean, literally. OK, I'm sure there's like, you know, 0.001 percent of artists are so fucking brilliant that their work itself just breaks through.

4:39Folks, get over yourself. If you're not willing to be a total whore and go to openings and meet people and be on Instagram and totally pimp your – if you don't feel like you need to shower every day because you've done so much whoring of yourself and your work, then just expect to be a struggling artist that eventually digresses into some sort of substance abuse and is poor the rest of your life. I don't think I can think of an industry that is more marketing than art. I mean, it's creating this illusion and this character and why you're so in. My piece of art, basically what do I have? I have two pieces of art, literally only two.

5:17One is a picture of Otto Frank returning to the basement where he and his family hung out. And that has real meaning for me. And then literally whenever I feel sorry for myself, which is one of the many things I hate about myself, given my blessings, I go look at that photo and boom, I stop feeling sorry for myself. The second piece of art I own is this thing. It's called Map for a Politician. And it's by a guy named Grayson Perry. And it's an etching and it's beautiful and it's very political and it kind of speaks to me. It means a lot to me because I went with someone, someone I care a great deal about when I was in Istanbul with her, said, I think you'd really like this artist.

5:57And he's having an exhibition in Istanbul. And we went. I loved it. And then she bought me a piece. I think it's probably the most valuable physical thing I own. or at least most valuable to me. And one of the things I love about it, and I just was so intrigued, is this guy, Grayson Perry, lives half the year as a man and half as a woman. Anyways, I found that just super cool, and I found him fascinating. I'll learn more about him. And yeah, I bought the piece, but what I was really buying was a small piece of Grayson Perry because I was just fascinated with the artist. So your ability to market yourself, go to stuff, get awareness, get pictures of your shit out on social media.

6:37I think it's everything or nearly everything. So if you're banking on the fact that you're 0.0001 % of artists, yeah, have at it. And if you believe that, guess what? You know what's really going to bum you out is people who are less talented than you are going to make a lot more money and get a lot more relevance because they did the hard part. And that is they got out a big spoon and they ate shit. They marketed themselves. So of course, this is an industry that's huge around marketing. I immediately go to social, but I think it's being social media, but I also think it's being very social, going to a bunch of stuff.

7:08I can't tell you how to do this, but quite frankly, I think being quirky in the art field or being really standing out in terms of the way you dress, you are your own brand, is really important. And just meeting with as many people as possible. I think this is the ultimate sales and marketing industry. And that is, what is art? It's 49 % the art and it's 51 % on marketing. Get over yourself. Start marketing. All right, we'll be right back after a quick break.

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9:16If a new alternative party were to emerge in the USA, that was centrist in nature. How would Scott package the brand? Name, messaging, media tactics, et cetera. It's an interesting question. And it's a question that's relevant to me. I'm friends with Andrew Yang, who wanted to start something called the Ford Party and asked me to get involved. And I'm basically very cynical on third parties. I don't think they work. I think everyone has an idea. Remember Howard Schultz? He decided he was going to run as an independent. God, that was stupid. I'm a billionaire and I've built an amazing coffee company, so I should lead the nation.

9:47Okay, that makes sense. But anyways, the question for me is if the Democratic Party is going to reinvent itself and become the new third party or a more robust party, what would it look like? I think in general, Democrats or this new third party you're talking about need to be less focused on trying to acquire social status and studying to a purity test around an orthodoxy of what your political party is supposed to represent for society and lecturing at people and trying to be social engineers or evangelists of an orthodoxy and focus on the following. How can government and the platform that is the United States provide more emotional and material success for people?

10:30That's it. How can we give people, young people, a sense of purpose through national service, through good schooling, through opportunities to meet and mate? And then how can we implement a series of policies that fill in the gaps such that young people can have a reasonable shot, more than a reasonable shot, a probable shot at achieving what is the most rewarding thing in the world? And that is finding someone to fall in love with and having a certain level of prosperity where you can raise your kids, take a vacation, not worry about health care. 40 % of American households have medical debt.

11:00What does that mean? We need a party that gets very serious about stopping lobbying and ensuring that Ozempic and Humira don't cost eight times more than what people in other nations pay for. Think about how outrageous it is that we pay more for pharmaceuticals than any other nation, despite the fact that we invent them. So I think that this new party would have to be focused on what I call the unifying theory of everything. And that is anyone under the age of 40 should have the path, the trajectory, and the infrastructure to find someone to fall in love with, more third places, more sports leagues, more churches, more nonprofits, mandatory national service, so we can meet people from different ethnicities, different economic backgrounds, different sexual orientations, and find out, you know what?

11:41I may not agree with your politics. I may not like you, whatever. But you know what? I have a bond with you. Why? Because this is what we have in common. We're Americans. We need to lower taxes on young people such that they have more of a shot at getting housing. Let's talk about housing. Seven million manufactured homes in the next 10 years. Little cool communities with young people. They pop up their cool coffee shops and their cool cultural institutions, and we massively bring down the cost of housing. Federal legislation that does away with this nimbyism such that we have more housing and people can actually afford a fucking house.

12:18$25 an hour minimum wage. If it had just kept pace with productivity or inflation, it'd be a 23 bucks. But, oh, small businesses would go out of the business. No, they wouldn't. Minimum wage programs in Washington State and California have resulted in economic growth. Why? Because the wonderful thing about poor and middle-income households is they spend all their money creating a multiplier effect. The economy actually gets a stimulus. All of these things could be done. We need leadership. We need data-driven government that is willing to stand up to special interest groups that stops this ridiculous transfer of money from young to old.

12:53For the first time, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents were in 250 years. That means America isn't working. So here is the unifying theory of everything for your new party. Anyone under the age of 40 should have an obvious aluminum path where they can meet someone, fall in love, have a reasonable lifestyle, have a house and afford to have children and feel good about America. That's it. Not that hard. We've fucked it all up. We can unfuck it. That's your third party. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursofpropturedmedia.com.

13:30That's officehoursofpropturedmedia.com. Or if you prefer to ask on Reddit, just post your question on the Scott Galloway subreddit, and we just might feature it in an upcoming episode. Oh, good God, that's exciting.

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