Lessons From This Video
- Donald Trump won the 2016 election partially because he generated insane amounts of “polarity”.
- Polarity is a marketing concept to describe how effectively your marketing is at getting people to like or dislike you. You want existing customers, potential customers and stakeholders to like you more. You don’t care about making anyone else like you except for your existing and potential customers (and these will be the people that will dislike you the most).
- The first step to generating polarity is to be authentic, don’t try to get people to like you or fit in, it’s not sustainable.
- An easy way to generate polarity is to state your position on a certain issue, whether it is related to business, a news article, a recently published study, politics, your society, or your local community.
- Polarity is useful for both B2B and B2C brands.
- Generating polarity doesn’t mean being a jerk or saying outlandish things like the Trumpster (funny nickname, isn’t it?) It means positioning your brand as a hero ONLY for your customers. As an example, my name is Alexander because I’m named after the original “Alexander The Great”. He’s a hero in Western society. Everyone knows him and knows his name. But in places like Iran he’s known for committing genocide. Should I change my name just because of that? No, I don’t care what they think because they are not my existing nor potential customers. As the saying goes, “if you try to please everyone, you will please no one”.
- One example of how I generate polarity is mentioning that I was raised by my 90+ year old Jewish grandmother. This generates a small form of polarity because (believe it or not) some people could like me more or dislike me more based on this fact alone.
- Another example of how I generate polarity is mentioning in my bio (on the about page) that I dropped out of highschool. This one is a bit more obvious, but, there are many people who would never consider working with a person like that. Then there are those who, in their eyes, would respect me even more based on that fact (as we say in America, “I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps”). We love our underdogs!
- And an even more obvious example of how I generate polarity is by calling Donald Trump “dumb”. Well, like any other human he certainly has done “dumb” things. A die-hard Trump supporter will likely take offense to this comment, but most people will either agree or not care.
- Generating polarity and being authentic is a risky move and requires a lot of confidence. Many people are not comfortable making friends nor enemies.
- The key to generating polarity is to make sure at least one third of people like you. As an example, one third of people who vote Republican LOVE Donald Trump. The other 2 thirds basically do not like him and may or may not vote for him if they had to. Some might even vote Democrat or not vote at all if Trump was the only other option besides a Democrat.
- Brands that do not generate polarity do not matter to the consumer.