Political Branding in the USA Election of 2020

Abstract

The 2020 American election shows how branding and other political marketing techniques shape American political behaviours at all levels. Particular attention is given to the case of the Trump and Biden campaigns, but attention is also paid to strategy employed at other levels in the same cycle. The 2020 election shows that, having individual politicians’ brand themselves instead of running a coordinated campaign on a single party brand can produce mixed results. This cycle shows that political brands are tightly targeted to segmented audiences thus gauging the size and distribution of the targeted audience matters a great deal. The emotive, personal, branding employed by Trump and Biden attracted some voters while repelling others and making those repelled susceptible to pitches by the opposition candidate and party.