PRovoke Podcast: Andrew Bleeker on Lessons to be Learned From the Midterms

0:01Andrew Bleeker: The Provoke podcast brought to you by Provoke Media and produced by the international broadcast specialist Marketeers.

0:25Hi everybody and welcome to the post-election edition of the Provoke Media podcast where I am joined by Andrew Bleecker. Andrew, why don't you introduce yourself and tell people a little bit about your background for those outside the US who are not familiar with your many achievements? Appreciate that. Thanks for having me. And what a day to connect. I hope you've got a little bit of sleep last night, Paul. Not as much as I'd planned. Oh, I got more sleep because that was a beautiful early election night for me because we knew much earlier than I anticipated. But my name is Andrew Bleeker. I lead an organization called Bully Pulpit International.

1:09And if you're in Europe, you might be asking, what on earth is a bully pulpit? Which I spend a lot of time explaining. But really we're a firm that came out of the Obama campaigns originally about 17 years ago with really the idea of how do you take the lessons of politics and apply them to brands, which is what we support today. So it's obviously a great day to be talking right after the election. Yeah, and it's hard to know where to start with the lessons from last night because it feels like there are many and they're all indicative of a change in direction after the last couple of years. I'll tell you where I want to start, and this may just be that I'm feeling huge amounts of schadenfreude this morning about a number of the races.

2:07But I'd like to start with what happened in Texas, which was clearly seismic. seismic. And I'd sort of like to start with, because, you know, our audience is both business and political, but more business. I'd like to start with how somebody spends$470 million in an attempt to buy a senator and ends up with absolutely nothing in return. You know, the money that Elon Musk poured into that race and other races around the country feels like it was almost counterproductive, as if people took Elon Musk's what Elon Musk wants X. So we're going to vote Y. And what does that mean for big money in politics?

3:04Well, first of all, like I've been working on Texas for 25 years, so I'm thrilled about last night and excited for the new governor and senator-elect. A couple of things. I think at first it starts to look with, you know, campaigns and money help on the margins, right? But I think it helps us to step back and look at what was this election about. And you mentioned change. And look, we've been in an era of change for almost 20 years, right? Almost every election in the United States, except for one in 2012, has been a change election where Congress or the presidency has flipped parties. And the pace of change is only accelerating.

3:43And so as much as I want to be – I'm personally a Democrat, though our work is primarily corporate. But as much as I would like to say this was a victory for the Democrats, I think primarily this was a rejection of President Trump. and it was an expression of fear, right? And it wasn't that different than, you know, frankly, what's been happening all over the world in election after election where people are afraid. We're talking about mostly local issues that are heavily cost of living issues. People are afraid of the economic change, what's happening, how expensive things are getting across all fronts and don't see people working for them, right?

4:24And so that, I think that's the general shift and it's a very tough time to be an incumbent of any stripe Right. I think we saw that. And then on top of that, right, you know, we're seeing a huge, you know, a huge question around economic anxiety and throw the bastards out. But on top of that, we found also that great candidates matter, great products matter. And Texas, like I knew it was going to be a democratic wave and a change wave. It was bigger than I anticipated. And part of that and a lot of that was because the Democrats had some excellent candidates. And frankly, some of the candidates that President Trump handpicked on the Republican side were laughable.

5:05And I think in particular, we saw that not with the governor in Texas, who's a fixture, but certainly we saw that with with Ken Paxton on the Senate side. Yeah. And we saw, I mean, other candidates floundering at the last minute and making some desperation plays. I mean, I'd point to South Carolina as being a bad candidate issue. I'd point to Vivek Ramachwamy in that race being a bad candidate. I'd point to you know medical professionals who sue their patients Yes and we had some unique great candidates right like probably only Sherrod Brown could have won Ohio probably only Roy Cooper could have won in North Carolina but yes it's a mix but still it was to have more than one of the reasons I'm encouraged this morning and I think companies should be encouraged is persuasion is still possible right I think there was a lot of you know when president two years ago when president Trump won there was a lot of questions about our industry does any of this still matter you know should we just be lobbyists does reputation matter does communications matter are we too polarized to be to persuade people and we saw in many different in many demographic groups 25 percent movement I do think substance matters and I do think our industry can still have a huge impact I think the challenge is that most companies look like incumbent politicians right now.

6:37They don't look like they're on the side of change. They look like they're the incumbents defending the system that people don't like. And I think that's the challenge for brands over the next two years. I'll maybe circle back to that in a minute, because I do think there's a very interesting question about sort of the balance between the message and the messenger. And clearly, in some cases, it was the wrong messenger with the wrong message. But in other cases, it was maybe one or the other. And so we can come back and talk about that. But the other thing that was really notable to me was that the GOP's dependence on identity politics, on sort of trying to make a national election issue out of like half a dozen trans athletes around the country or going after Muslim candidates based on their religion just seemed to completely fail.

7:44We ended up with five black governors. We ended up with a black female governor in Georgia. We ended up with a Latino female governor in Texas. We saw trans candidates getting elected in places like Florida. That whole attempt of sort of demonizing certain groups of people just seems to have been completely out of touch with what the electorate wanted to hear. I'm really encouraged by that. You know, we work and have worked for trans candidates. We are very close with the family of the new governor in Texas. Her sister was a longtime colleague of ours. So we've known them for a long time. We're super encouraged by that.

8:37One, look, I think the biggest thing is the Republican Party was running as the incumbent party. They hold the presidency. They hold both parties of Congress. And you've got to deliver. And so identity politics, you know, some of those disruptions were more effective when under a Biden presidency where they were trying to point out maybe the maybe some of the excesses of things that people were responding to coming out of COVID or others. But when you're in charge, when you have full control, that's not enough. Yeah, I think the other argument that clearly failed was that two years into the Trump administration, every piece of bad news was sort of, well, that's Biden's fault.

9:26And I think people perhaps have gotten tired of hearing that the Republicans couldn't fix any of the problems supposedly created by their predecessor in two years. Well, worse than that, I think President Trump ran effectively in 24 on largely about the economy, right, and was said he was going to be America first and make America great again. And I think voters, we should give voters a lot of credit. I mean, I think they're very focused on, let's call it pocketbook issues, affordability issues. But it's not just about Biden. They can point to very specific things why they think President Trump has sort of lost sight of some of the promises.

10:06So instead of being America first, we've done tariffs and hurt farmers. Instead of being America first, we've started a war in the Middle East or a couple maybe that have raised gas prices. And so I think it's been very direct about what – and I think we've seen some of the movement. They believe so strongly in identity politics, the Republican Party, that in a lot of states they changed the districts or gerrymandered the districts hoping that the gains that they had made in certain groups, young voters, Latino voters, were permanent. And we saw some of the biggest shifts back in those groups.

10:41And in fact, many of the districts that they – the Republican Party redrew backfired. Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, I think I don't know if this held true after I saw this data point, but at one point this morning, I was hearing that not a single one of the gerrymandered districts had fallen into the hands of Republicans, which, given the level of panic that there was six months ago, nine months ago, is quite remarkable. Well, you know, the thing with Jeremy Andrews has long term impacts, right? This obviously was a Democratic wave, you know, a teen's shift, right, which is bigger than even the shift that happened during 2008.

11:27And when Obama was elected, which is the last time we won this many seats. So, you know, those will pose challenges for the new elected officials, whether they can get reelected down the road in a year that's a little less like a wave. But yes, this was a massive blowout. Right. And tinkering on the margins didn't do it. I mean, some of the margins were insane. Right. I mean, you know, I was those races in in Texas that I was thinking would be like half a percentage point if they were Democrat wins ended up being 7, 10, 12 percent. The races in Georgia were routinely 15 percent. And let's talk a little bit about what's happened in Georgia, because what we see there is, you know, that there's been progress all along the way.

12:21And, you know, as much as Keisha Lance Bottoms getting the governorship brought me joy, you know, the whole history of Stacey Abrams and the amount of work she put in in that state over the years and Warnock and Ossoff and just how overwhelmingly Ossoff was supposed to be the one vulnerable Democratic incumbent. how overwhelmingly they won those races is indicative that if you put in the work over a period of years and so obviously now the hope is that texas will be the next georgia well it's certainly going to change the map for 28 and obviously 28 starts today if it hasn't already right and everyone's looking at that i mean georgia obviously you know where in these governor's races, particularly for folks outside of the United States, I think sometimes the governor's races don't get enough attention.

13:19But the governor's races have huge impacts as relates to 20 because it's often the state governments that control the elections. And so one of the things I think we can dispense of is any third term Trump presidency, right? Which is, I don't say that as a joke, but Democrats now control the governor's houses in really key swing states from Texas and Georgia to Michigan, Pennsylvania, right? And I think that, and many others, you know, Arizona, you know, and those, I think that will end the Trump third term piece. It also makes it possible for people like an Ossoff to be much more likely to consider running for president because there'll be a governor of their same party in that state who would appoint the next senator should somebody win, like Obama had in Illinois.

14:12And if Texas is not a one-off, it completely changes the electoral map, right? I mean, I don't see a path to the presidency for Republicans that doesn't include Texas. No, you're in the near term, you're 100 percent right. But I've also I've seen the map move so fast, like politics and public opinion are moving faster than ever. Right. It used to be so goes Ohio, so goes the nation. Right. Then for the last almost 10 years, Ohio has been a plus five, plus 10 Republican state. Right. Democrats won it last night. We Democrats won in Texas once, right? I don't think we're at this place yet where the whole country is as purple as, it's certainly not blue.

15:01But I think the map at how campaigns invest resources, how companies invest resources, you know, think about all the data centers that moved to Texas, think about all the companies that moved to Texas. and you know like we are we are in a much more uh much more divided country than people well again coming back to to elon musk i mean he relocated his entire business to get away from a blue state and founds it finds himself now in another blue state which is kind of interesting well and they're still different i think one of the things that's important to know is that the a lot of the folks that won it's not that the democratic party itself has a clear brand right now in terms of what does it mean to be a blue state.

15:45The folks that won, won because they were the right candidates locally and really focused on what mattered in their states, be, you know, be that Texas or Iowa, Kansas, you know, and, you know, and many of these others. And so it doesn't mean that a California, you know, policies that work in California are coming to Texas anytime soon. No, no, that's fair enough. One of the reasons that I wanted to have this conversation with you specifically was that I very much remember what happened after the Obama campaign that you worked on and the fact that corporations across America were looking for the lessons from that campaign and obviously the use of social media, the use of data in social media and precise targeting was a thing that crossed over very quickly from the political arena into the corporate arena.

16:49Your firm is essentially sort of built on that foundation that you could take the principles from an election campaign and translate them into the corporate world. What are the lessons? It doesn't seem as clear to me what the lessons are from this election for corporate America, not in terms of policy or policy positions, but in terms of what worked, right? Sorry, I'm rambling now. But the last election, you know, the big lesson seemed to be that we all needed to go on Joe Rogan and do two and a half hour interviews with Joe Rogan to reach that sort of disenfranchised, non-mainstream audience.

17:39What are the lessons from this one? I appreciate you asking. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten the Joe Rogan question over the last couple of years. And for most CEOs, I would tell you, believe me, that is not, unless you have something to actually say to Joe Rogan, who's a very good interviewer, I don't suggest that. But I think there are a lot of lessons that brands should draw from this. And we've been scheduling a lot of sort of confidential briefings to share more with clients over the next few days and weeks. But a couple of things, I think it starts with, to your point on how much Elon Musk spent on advertising.

18:19How do people actually get information today? How do we persuade people today, you know, in a world of ultra low trust, you know, in a world of sort of post-fact belief and tribalism and everything else, where we know, you know, particularly the biggest, I was really impressed by how much voters under 30 and voters under 40 moved across demographic groups. They were the biggest movers this cycle, right, in terms of the swing votes. And one thing, one of the biggest differences about that group that I think is really indicative here is that they were, particularly below 40, People in America were not really trained to consume news.

19:01They actively do not seek out news. They expect news to come to them, which I think for most people that came up in the corporate communications world, it's like, well, but we talk to reporters all day. Well, that's obviously not going to be sufficient. And so one of the stats, and I'll be able to share more on numbers on this soon, but the majority of information, the majority of time spent on social video with election content, and the vast majority, no less, was not from candidates or campaigns. It was from other intermediaries, be that influencers and be that what I would call clipping. right and so other sort of this whole distribution universe right that takes little clips from speeches little clips from news interviews and mass produces it in scale and that i think this space is the future of advertising it's not brilliant 30 second ads we make those there's a place for that right in in sports in live entertainment in other places where people still have real in-demand viewing but the majority of the content that people are seeing is from parasocial relationships with people they trust and is coming in these forms of clips and influencers.

20:17And that's where the world's going. Okay. How willing are the consulting class going to be to acknowledge that? Because the economic model still very much rewards the creation of those 30 and 60 second commercials and the buying of media. And, you know, there are a lot of people who are very invested in doing it that way. You know, there's something much more rough and ready and and improvisational, I guess, about what you're talking about that maybe disintermediates some of those people who've been charging candidates a fortune to to create all that advertising. Look, I have been fighting this fight in politics for 20 years.

21:09And, you know, it I wouldn't say I've perfectly won by any stretch. In fact, I've lost much more than I've won in the fight being to actually campaign the way voters get information. Right. And the reason I'm not worried about the people standing in the middle is that in the United States, we effectively have unlimited resources. It's amazing how much money is in campaigns today versus when I started. And so the reality is this will change if the map continues to expand to include the whole country, like if Texas and these big states are really in play. But when we have a small number of battleground states or a small number of districts, in practice, both sides at this point now have unlimited resources.

21:51So it's going to be an all of the above. So are we still going to do TV? Yes. There'll be plenty of money for those people. But I think the reason they will adapt is that the donors are going to force it, right? The Elon Musk of the world, and I can't speak to the right necessarily, but are not going to put up with$400 million being spent and wasted. These are smart people. They're going to demand results. And they hold the purse strings. So in terms of those sort of influences and creators and the people who are generating the kind of content you're talking about, is there a feeling that those people need to be controlled by the campaign and coordinated with by the campaign?

22:40Or is there actually a feeling that it's better if they're just completely free to go out and do their own thing and be as radical as they like? Well, look, political consultants, you know, live and die by polling. Right. That's that's what we know. We like scripts. We like very specific language. So, of course, there's a huge bias in both parties towards control. but in practice control doesn't scale and we're playing a scale game we're playing an algorithm game and we can now see reach and and we're and we're playing an arbitrage game of how expensive is our reach and the reality today is the math's not close so the way to get cheap reach credible cheap reach is to take your hands off right is to be and the math on this is striking You look at the CPMs or what is the cost per 1 ,000 video views, right?

23:40And I've seen in some of these states, I was seeing CPMs at$0.03 and I was seeing CPMs at$2, right? And then obviously traditional like premium video, you could be paying$30, right? And so I don't think most campaigns and certainly most brands have any sense of the order of magnitude differences in terms of all that they're putting into, like, how much money they spend getting a Wall Street Journal story, right? How much money do they spend producing a blog post? And how many people, what is the actual reach and persuasive impact of that content? And that is something now campaigns can measure very precisely across earned, across paid, across owned.

24:21And like, how is our content ecosystem performing? And who is it reaching? Are they reaching the folks that matter? And are we persuading them or not? Not just are we getting likes or views? I mean, that's a discussion that I've been having for the last couple of years, because I think that the resources, talking about corporations now, the resource allocation in terms of media is completely out of whack. with where the impact is. And there's still this feeling that, well, my peer set always tells me when they saw an article in the Wall Street Journal, but nobody ever says anything to me when they see a TikTok video about the brand or the company.

25:08And so there's a bias at the C level towards those old establishment media that they and their close circle of friends are focused on day in day out yes and then the board will email around and look we're a yes and on this right like we're not a either or like i believe in traditional media as the source i don't believe in traditional media as distribution and i think we have to distinguish the two right for llms and everything else big believer in traditional media that drives the market it drives policymakers there's a there's a huge need to do both But I think there are not enough brands that are thinking about traditional media as content sources, but not counting on traditional media to do the distribution.

25:54And we have to think that the distribution comes in all these other forms, in clipping, in influencers, in making it interesting. And look, most companies look a lot like incumbent candidates. They're relatively boring. They're explaining and therefore losing instead of being for something. They're defending. But what they do have is resources, right? They do have capital relative to others. And so it's going to have to be a much more mix of earned and paid distribution. And I think overall, the communications function lacks some of the sophistication and data that the marketing world has. It's just we need to put our own metrics and our own targeting on it.

26:35And that's what we've been trying to build over the last decade. Right. The other aspect of this that is interesting to me is, you know, I think going into this election, there was a general feeling in the public affairs, public relations community that the main outcome was going to be a different kind of oversight and a lot of scrutiny. And clearly that's going to happen. And we'll talk a little bit about that. But before we get to that, it does actually seem to me that even though it's just the House and the Senate and the executive remains what it was, there are things that are going to change in the policy environment in a very real way.

27:24I look at all of the various initiatives around the country about data centers. And again, when I looked at the results of those this morning, it was a clean sweep. There was nobody out there voting to have more data centers in their community. And that's going to have implications for the tech sector and for AI players and others, right? Well, look, there's no question that a lot of policy is driven locally. And so that is going to change. I work a lot on the data center question and the technology transformation question. There's no question that a lot more needs to be done locally in communities to assure, to get people really to believe that there's a benefit to them locally, even if they know there's some national benefit potentially to the U.S.

28:07or to some companies. But I think that's certainly been a wake-up call on certain sectors. And a lot of that will happen locally as the power grid needs to transform. So many things need to transform. Most of that's done locally. At a federal level, yes, we're very focused on oversight. We do a lot of hearing. I'm here in Washington, D.C. We do a lot of hearing prep. And I think communications as a function has too often taken a backseat to the litigators and to some of the lobbyists on prep for things like hearings. And hearings, to me, are no different than we were just talking about traditional media, where hearings now are not the distribution.

28:46They are the content, right? And the members of Congress who are doing the interviewing get that. They're doing it for social distribution, too. And so preparing for a hearing is now very different because your goal is not just to win the legal in the room. It's to win how does this play increasingly in a social media world. So we're excited about the oversight space. The other thing I would say on policy is this was a big sweep. President Trump has actually, despite the candidates that he picked, very good political instincts. And they're not tied to traditional Republican policies. He's not much of a traditional Republican.

29:22And so I wouldn't be surprised if there are real things where the Democratic Congress cannot work with the president, you know, because he knows he's going to be focused on legacy and he's focused on himself. And so whether that is around particularly around lowering costs. Right. And a lot of traditional industries are going to be in the crosshairs. I think about pharma and drug prices. I think about energy and gas prices. I think about just food prices. I think, you know, you could really see this president working with Democrats on a whole bunch of things that would feel totally antithetical to a traditional Republican Party.

29:59Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the Venn diagram of where the Maha movement overlaps with the Democratic Party is pretty interesting, right? There are some quite traditional liberal ideas in that movement, as well as a lot of weird anti-science stuff. Yeah, politics is a bit of a horseshoe, right, in that we come pretty close to each other on the fringes of populism. Yeah. Oversight is clearly going to be a thing, though, right? Robert Garcia was pretty clear. Lawyer up. Lawyer up, right? You could see the sort of consternation on the faces of the Fox News hosts as they read that. And there was a really, really interesting quote today about, you know, is it going to be oversight or is it going to be focusing on affordability issues?

30:54And the answer was we can walk and chew gum at the same time. um i you know one suspects that both of those things are going to go hand in hand because the the electorate drew a pretty clear line from i'm not getting any more money and i'm finding it more difficult to afford gas and i'm finding it more difficult to afford food and and by the way there's a whole group of people who are just raking in billions of dollars close to the trump family that are so corruption and affordability and not separate issues. No, no, they have to be tied. Otherwise, it's vindictive and off. But if people can tie it to gas prices are higher because you profited off of a deal from the Saudis, the Qataris, or they bought you a jet, I mean, they have to be connected, right, in many of these circumstances.

31:51And I think they can be. But CEOs are going to be in a very tough spot. I mean, they're going to be compelled by law to comply with these subpoenas. And most of them, as we've seen, are also federal contractors. And so you can imagine the White House putting a great deal of pressure on these CEOs to not testify. And so I think a lot of this is going to end up in the courts. Final question, because I want to be respectful of your time. What do you see happening in terms of corporations and the way they view their role in society more broadly? There was such a swift pullback from anything that looked like corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, woke after the last election.

32:46Do you think that the pendulum will swing back a little bit more towards the center on those issues? Yes. And I think it I actually think it didn't swing as far as people think. Like, I think people I think I'm a more of an optimist on this. My experience is that most companies, particularly the big companies, realize that we are in an increase. We're in a world where we've needed to go where we need government more than we have in decades. Right. We're in an increasingly mercantilist world. where we're going to have to deal with government. We're in a world of huge technology change and major regulatory needs.

33:20We're in a CapEx-heavy world where we're going to need a lot of government support. And so I don't think, and frankly, we're just in a world of huge societal change with AI and robots and everything else that's going to happen over the next few years. And so I don't think any company is sort of naive that we're going to need to bring all these stakeholders along. You know, regulators, the public, their employee base, their communities, investors. Like, I don't think anyone has stopped doing that. I think we have stopped using certain terms. I think there are a few things on the margins, on DEI or on, you know, on sustainability targets that got, we were more quiet about or more.

33:56But I actually, I don't think there's any ability to slow down. In fact, I think the pressure on companies is going to be higher. What I've been trying to give our clients confidence in is that we can actually, for the first time, I think, in quite a while since President Trump took office, I think we can actually plan. So much of the last two years was reactive, was day by day, was living by truth social post. And I think now we have more clear sailing than we've had in a long time. We know what divided government's going to look like. We know basically the framework of how both presidential primaries are going to shape up here in the United States.

34:32And they're both going to be very similar, right, truthfully. They're not going to be that different. They're both going to be very domestically oriented, focus on cost of living, focus on these big questions around technological change and what does that mean for our kids and what we all do for a living. And I think that gives, I think there's a huge need, not for companies to try to pick every issue, but there's a huge need for companies to actually stand for something and not be the incumbent candidate. In terms of 2028, I said that was going to be the last question, but I can't help myself.

35:06In terms of 2028, are there any obvious winners and or losers from what happened last night in terms of improving their chances of being the nominee for one party or another? Yeah, look, I think by and large, America is not eager for politicians right now. I think a lot of the folks that did really well last night have really compelling narratives, are are, you know, really working for people in intense ways. But yes, I think the loser is obviously the president, right? And so I think everyone associated with him, right? The vice president. But the vice president, the secretary of state, feel like they were pretty big losers last night, huge losers last night.

35:46And, you know, I think the Tucker Carlson's of the world and many other folks on the right are big winners. And likewise, there are obviously, you know, there are many, probably half the Democrats. After President Trump won, It was hard to tell almost anyone in the Senate or governor that you can't be president. Obviously, you're quite qualified. So I think there are quite a few people, you know, an Ossoff, a Governor Shapiro. You know, we've got governors in Maryland. I think there are many, many folks on the Democratic Party that are feeling better after last night. But certainly the loser is the president.

36:15And the campaign starts today? It's already started. Yeah. OK, thanks. No, thanks so much for having me, Paul. Really appreciate it. Very insightful. I just think, I mean, there's a lot to dig down into there. I feel like some of it just sort of skimmed the surface. But these are issues, obviously, that you're going to be talking with a whole bunch of clients about over the next six months or so. And it's going to be a very interesting time. Yeah, look, we're still counting votes. But if anyone's interested in going deeper on some of the specifics in a closed door, I'm very happy to do that. What do you think is going to happen in Mississippi?

36:56I'm, you know, I can't believe we're talking about Mississippi, but I think the Democrats can pull it out. I do, too. Just looking at where the votes are counted yet. I do, too. I think it's mostly provisional ballots. Yeah. OK. And more shodden, sorry, I'm going on again, but more shodden further there because there was a really concerted effort to disenfranchise African-American voters. That seems to have totally motivated them to renew their registration. to get I think we gotta feel good about democracy tonight yeah no I think that's probably right the big winner on the night definitely definitely thank you Andrew yeah and maybe you're up too as an aside could be a winner but we'll see alright thank you so much Paul really appreciate it

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37:50Andrew Bleeker: listening to the Provoke podcast brought to you by Provoke Media and produced by the international broadcast specialist, Marketers.