Let’s talk about a bizarre few days, okay?
On Friday, Donald Trump became president. Going from “ratings machine” to Commander In Chief.
What a world we live in?
Then on his first full day in office, he sends his press secretary, Sean Spicer, out to argue and yell at the White House press corp about how they were telling lies about the size of the crowds in DC for the inauguration.
(Which, as a DC resident, let me tell you, were the smallest of the 3 inaugurations I have been here for.)
On Sunday, we had Trump’s other press secretary, maybe the one he really wants, Kellyanne Conway come out on “Meet The Press” to discuss “alternative facts.”
Which is just another word for lies.
While all of this was going down, someone was pinging me about some marketing and sales ideas…and the person was asking me about the reason that his logical marketing and sales pieces weren’t converting and weren’t effective.
To which I only had one reply, “when people are making a decision, there is no such thing as a logical choice. All decisions are emotional.”
Don’t be fooled.
Everything we do is driven by emotion.
Sure, Dr. Spock might have been emotionless, but no one else is.
That’s what makes all of the stuff that is going on around us so very fascinating.
Why?
Because in theory, people should act in certain ways. They should make decisions based on certain criteria. And, everything should follow a certain logic!
That’s just always been wrong.
So when you see your co-workers or Chuck Todd baffled by the strange nature of what has happened in the first few days of the Donald Trump presidency, you shouldn’t be fooled.
The argument that is being made is one of thought and logic, but logic is dead. Donald Trump is a master marketer and he knows that the best way to get his way is to create turmoil and distractions.
That’s what is logical for him…complete illogic.
The great thing about this is that you can actually learn a lot from these past few days…because when you approach your own sales and marketing efforts, no matter what your industry, you can go after people’s emotions. You can go after people’s points of pain, push their buttons, make them emotional.
That’s what good sales and marketing is all about, but it just seems that the press and the people that cover politics in DC, have never been confronted with it in such a way.
The lesson they need to learn pretty quickly is that logic is dead, even if I’m not sure it was ever alive…and the only way to cover a master marketer and PR agent is by expecting that certain things are going to carry the day:
- distractions
- announcements
- controversy
These are just a few.
Pretty much anything that will detract from things that the White House doesn’t deem to be the things that they want you to pay attention to.
In your own business, you can use that too. Maybe not in a nefarious way, but in a pretty intelligent way…by drawing attention to what is important. By drawing attention to the impact. By creating emotion around the change you are going to create.