Exploring Marketing Strategies During the 2016 Election: An Analysis of Trump and Clinton’s TV Advertisements and Facebook Posts

Abstract

The 2016 Presidential Election needs close analysis, as it differed from previous elections in significant ways. For instance, not only was the outcome a surprise to much of the American electorate, as well as political experts, the winner, Donald Trump, also broke several political norms. For instance, in past years, the candidate who solicited the most funding has typically won the election but Trump, however, spent less than his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and still won the electoral college. In addition, Trump also aired less TV advertisements than his opponent and still won 3 another presidential election anomaly. The tone of these advertisements, also, was more negative than past elections. Although the 2012 election had more negative advertisements than the 2016 election, the 2016 election is still the second most negative election in political history. Voting trends amongst the results of the 2016 election also reveal anomalies from recent elections in voter characteristics. Finally, social media played a prominent role in the campaigning of the 2016 election 3 whereas it had not been utilized in presidential elections in the past. Although presidential candidates as early as 2008 started utilizing social media in their campaigning, it was not as widely used as it was in 2016. The anomalies of 2016, therefore, make this election necessary to study, as the differences in campaign behavior and tactics may indicate the start of new trends in political marketing that are important to address for future Presidential elections. In 2016, there was one candidate who went against campaign norms (Trump) and one candidate who followed past campaign patterns (Clinton). By comparing how either candidate followed or broke traditional norms, it may be possible to determine new, effective strategies of campaigning in presidential 2 elections. Specifically, I will attempt to shed light on one of the differences between the two candidates 3 their advertisement strategies on TV versus on social media. Notably, TV and social media have different audiences. TV advertisements must appeal to a broader set of people who are watching the broadcast, while social media posts are aimed towards a specific audience who already supports the candidate's content. By analyzing the <effectiveness= 3 defined as the ability of a social media campaign to gain high engagement counts 3 I will observe if there were differences and similarities in TV advertisement and social media content that could have led one candidate to be more successful, or less successful in marketing themselves to voters. I evaluated the topic, tone, and format of the advertisement or post. In particular, I will analyze content differences in TV advertisements and Facebook posts. Facebook is a key social media engine to analyze as there is not much research in the current literature on either candidate's Facebook strategy. Much of the current findings surrounding social media campaign strategy is about Trump and Clinton's Twitter posts. However, both candidates were active on Facebook, and studies by sources such as the Wesleyan Media Project have shown that Facebook was the primary social media platform used for soliciting campaign donations in 2016. Because not much is known about the Facebook content that Trump or Clinton used to appeal to campaign supporters, it is important to analyze what was effective in appealing to each candidate's voter base. Since Facebook advertisements in 2016 are not available, as the Facebook Ad Library did not exist yet, it is still important to analyze Facebook 3 posts, as they also serve as a way to market candidate messaging to voters. In this paper, I utilized TV advertisement data from the Wesleyan Media Project, an organization that studies the TV political advertising of all elections. For my Facebook data, I compiled a list of all posts from Labor Day of 2016 to Election Day and conducted analysis of topics from my dataset with various analytical programs. I hypothesized that on Facebook and TV advertisements, Trump and Clinton would have different tones across platforms. Specifically, I hypothesized that TV advertisement tone would be more negative than Facebook tone. TV advertisements strive to appeal to a general public, and therefore candidates may feel a pressure to talk negatively about their opponent to persuade people not to vote for them. On Facebook, however, those who follow either candidate have an interest in them, and therefore politicians may feel less pressure to discuss their opponent, and may instead focus on themselves in a positive light. I also hypothesized that both candidates will discuss different policy content on TV and on Facebook. Specifically, I am interested in seeing if the policy issues they discuss on TV versus Facebook are in line with the key voter issues outlined by the Pew Research Center. I hypothesized that the top voter issues will be discussed more in TV advertisements, while more partisan and specific issues will be targeted on Facebook. I then compared the topics discussed by either candidate to the actual voter turnout of Election Day in 2016 to observe whether or not certain topics correlated with specific demographics voting more for a candidate. My results showed me that there were indeed differences in the content of Clinton on TV and on Facebook, but that Trump was largely consistent in what he discussed on TV and4 Facebook. On TV, Clinton discussed women's rights, the Iraq War, job Security, and safety most on TV. Her Facebook posts, however, largely focused on women's rights, taxes, healthcare, and immigration. Trump's TV advertisements were focused on taxes, terrorism, job security, and Benghazi, and his Facebook content was largely based on the same topics. In terms of tone, the candidate's also differed from each other and from their TV advertisements. An analysis of Clinton's TV advertisements found that her tone was overall negative. However, this trend was reversed in her Facebook posts, where she had 78 negative posts, 13 contrast posts, and 134 positive posts. Trump, also, who aired no positive TV advertisements, had a majority positive Facebook posts. He had 112 negative posts, 90 contrast posts, and 376 positive posts. On both TV and Facebook, Trump aired a higher percentage of contrast posts than Clinton. Drawing from these results, it seems that the <successful= marketing strategy, in Trump's case, is talking about the same issues, but with a different tone to varying voter audiences. For instance, on TV, which is shown to a broader audience, he took a contrasting tone on the same issues he discussed on Facebook. To a more supportive audience on his Facebook, he instead spoke about his ability to solve the issues broadcast on TV, as well as his campaign successes, rather than just attack Clinton's ability to handle key political issues. Clinton, on the other hand, took the opposite approach. Although she aired less negative advertisements than Trump on TV her approach to tone was majority negative on both TV and Facebook.