The height of the 2024 U.S. election season is still months away, but campaigning and rhetoric are already heating up, with some newfangled tech sowing fresh division. As a split nation is primed to become even more polarized in the home stretch, brands will have some choppy — and potentially expensive — waters to navigate.
In a report published earlier in March, Forrester Research identified four challenge areas for marketers that will be heightened this election year: rising media costs; political allegiances challenging brand loyalty; evolving regulations for artificial intelligence in both political and non-political advertising; and the use of emerging technology like deepfakes.
It’s enough to make a brand marketer want to tap out. Indeed, the researcher previously found that 82% of marketing executives at consumer-facing brands in the U.S. expressed concern about marketing during an election year. But sitting out the game is neither practical nor advisable, analysts cautioned, so here are some tips to consider when tackling modern election season trials.
Strained media budgets
Advertising costs are expected to be the most expensive of all time for an election cycle, increasing 13% from the 2020 race, according to AdImpact. In addition to political campaigns taking up space in the latter half of the year, the late summer will see the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, which will command top dollar for media placements. While some marketers may have planned for the more expensive third and fourth quarters, costs are already rising significantly.
“For marketers who may not be thinking about marketing during the Olympics, they may try to front-load the year, leaving them with a little vulnerability at the end of the year,” said Audrey Chee-Read, principal analyst at Forrester. “We’ve already seen those rising costs strain marketing budgets in 2024.”
Volatility and strain will be felt in the programmatic arena, where transactions are made quickly and publishers may be hard to verify.
“We’re finding there are only these few thousand safe places that people can be buying on, and they’re all being saturated,” said Mo Allibhai, senior analyst at Forrester. “Everybody is heading to the same event, and we’re crowding the roads on the way to it.”
As presidential campaigns ramp up, wise marketers will look for ways to lock in good deals on premium spaces early and find alternatives — such as nonprofit publishers — that are brand-safe without carrying as steep a price tag.
“There are so many spaces that are not welcoming [political] advertising that are great places to run the field with your own advertising,” said Allibhai. “And it’s a great opportunity to build those publisher relationships durable for after the election season.”
Political allegiances and brand impact
For the past few years, the general consensus has been that consumers want brands to be more participatory in social issues, particularly those that are close to their hearts. But the tide has turned on some purpose-led marketing in a divided climate. Look no further than Bud Light, which enlisted transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a promotion last year and saw all hell break loose.
This election year, the environment will almost surely be even more polarized, leaving brands unsure about how to proceed. According to Forrester’s research, 72% of Republicans said they preferred that brands not be actively involved in politics, compared with 38% of Democrats. Similarly, 51% of Democrats felt brands should speak out on issues that align with their brand values, compared with 23% of Republicans.
These findings indicate brands will need to know themselves and their consumers better than ever this election season. They will have to know what type of messaging their consumer base will tolerate, in what arenas and on which topics they will have permission to speak.
“Understanding your consumer base beyond demographics is going to be really important for this year,” Chee-Read said. “Ultimately, it’s going to come down to the core consumer and the level of sensitivity. It’s going to be very important for companies to know what the sensitivity is if they do release something that may be controversial.”
As much as a marketer may want to sit out the entire year to avoid getting drawn in to the back-and-forth, that would be both impractical and inadvisable, according to Chee-Read. Instead, hesitant marketers should consider focusing messaging on product benefits rather than broader corporate programs and initiatives.
“This is an opportunity for brands to focus on the functional aspects of their product offerings,” said Chee-Read. “Things that don’t really fall into the political fray and more about talking about the functionality of what their product does.”
Evolving regulations
One issue with emerging technology is that it can take hold so quickly that regulators can’t keep pace. And when governments and watchdogs are so divided they can’t agree on many key issues, devising cohesive rules for tools like generative AI and social media misinformation is a tall order. As a result, the guidelines and policing for these technologies have been left up to the platforms, creating a patchwork of practices and policies that marketers are trying to wrap their heads around.
“It’s a quickly changing environment and we’re seeing a reactive situation with our regulatory agencies where they see something and decide where they take unilateral action against them,” said Allibhai. “It’s a little like a Whac-A-Mole, where a lot of publishers are creating their own policies and things can get shifted around here and there depending on what is happening.”
As with any game of Whac-A-Mole, the only surefire solution is to stay vigilant and pay attention to how regulations are changing and how they might affect a brand’s marketing initiatives.
Sifting through the fakes
The final headwind is not necessarily one limited to the political cycle, but could nevertheless see pitfalls multiply amid the Trump versus Biden showdown. Past emerging technologies, like robocalling and ad targeting, came of age during previous election cycles, and there is no reason to think those that are on the rise now — such as deepfakes and generative AI — won’t play a big role this election season.
“The danger of spoofing and deepfakes, in general, is heightened already, and platforms like Google and Facebook are creating tools for advertisers to easily spread AI-generated ads through their campaigns. This is creating a chaotic environment for consumer trust,” said Chee-Read. “There are a lot of situations where advertisers are getting mixed in with these bad actors.”
This is a time for brands, especially big brands that are susceptible to being dragged into a deepfake controversy, to amp up social listening and other resources to be ready to act should the need arise to defend their reputation in the marketplace, according to Forrester.
“This is a moment for the PR team to use tools to monitor where the brand is, where it’s being talked about and where it’s being engaged with,” said Chee-Read. “It’s also an opportunity to have that responsive task force in place, to not just rely on the PR team but to have that team of stakeholders within the company who can be aligned and make decisions quickly.”
