Spikes Asia 2016: 'Trump became news': Mindshare's Lyndon Morant

Speaking on 23 September, the third and final day of Spikes Asia 2016, Lyndon Morant, head of strategy, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, Mindshare, analysed campaigns of US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

 

Referring to Politifact billing Trump's statements as the '2015 Lie of the Year', he said, "Yet, he got 13.3 million people to consider him to be authentic when he talks."

 

What cannot be denied is that Trump has stayed in the public eye. The speaker reasoned why. 

 

He first referred to Trump's recent appearance on the Dr. Oz show, where he revealed his health reports.

He explained, "Oz questions Trump's extraordinary health report. The host thought he wouldn't have the report. But he did. The show was filmed live and the TV doctor had to analyse the report live. Dr. Oz then appeared on 'The Today Show' to discuss his meeting with Trump and the report he read. Let's summarise what happened. Trump appeared on a daytime show to analyse his health. Then he handed his report to Dr Oz. Oz became the most talked about doctor in the world. Hilarry Clinton then proved her reports by releasing them to the public. But, she didn't appear on television. Trump was on TV, and so he seems transparent. No camera caught the report Dr Oz studied. People are trusting Dr Oz and Trump more than they are trusting Clinton's reports even though they were available publicly."

 

Morant stated that Dr. Oz had reportedly invited both Clinton and Trump to his show a month ago. Trump agreed, and may have brought forward his appearance because of reports of Clinton suffering with pneumonia, according to the Mindshare executive. 

 

This was not an isolated event and is part of a well-oiled PR system, he added. "At one point there were 16 Republican President candidates excluding Trump. All these people favoured the same thought of taxes etc. The differences among each were personalities. Trump had a different process. He had an opinion on everything (happening around the world). He was available for interviews  24 hours a day. Trump became news," said Morant.

 

He added, "When he commands so much free media then why does he need paid media? Clinton has spent $157 million on advertising, which is 46 per cent of the total campaign spends. Trump's total spends are $111 million, of which 30 per cent ($33 million) are on advertising. He has got over $3 billion of free media coverage."

 

Morant went on to explain why Trump hasn't  had to spend as much as Clinton on advertising. 

 

The key reason for this was Trump personally taking to the medium, which caused more interactions then Clinton's posts.

 

"From January 2015 to September 2016, ninety per cent of Trump's tweets are direct from his account. One in four of Clinton's posts are retweets and replies, so she does try engaging. But the interactions (number of posts which quote tweets etc.) are much higher from Trump's account. Clinton does what the advertising industry is told, as she posts with stats, images and sometimes videos. A lot of Trump's updates are text-based statistic updates. He rarely uses hashtags too. Trump's tweets look the same and are consistent in voice. His tweets are fewer in words but have more emotion. Hillary's (posts) are polished with images and hashtags. Fifty six per cent of Trump's tweets are from an Android device (personally from him). Sixteen per cent come from an iPhone. Twenty five per cent are from the Twitter web client. For Hillary, only 5 per cent come from a mobile device (personal). Sixty four per cent tweets come from tweet deck. Within politics, Trump is a brand on social media."

 

He did point to a tweet from Clinton though, which has the maximum retweets and shares and engagement for a singular post among the two, and said that the only reason it did so was because it had a human element.

 

Morant explained what according to him was Trump's major objective: getting people to hate him 'slightly lesser' than Clinton. He contended that Trump wants people to get disinterested from voting in the elections.

 

He ended with three points Clinton and brands could learn from Trump's methods in the media: