Marketing Briefing: As corporate America fosters a closer relationship with Trump, marketing will remain neutral

Marketers, meanwhile, are working in corporations that have been more public and generous with their inauguration fund donations this time around. Coca-Cola CEO and chairman James Quigley, for instance, reportedly gifted President Trump the first “Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke.” As the second term for President Trump gets going, it seems there’s a shift in how companies are working with him and how public they’re being about that work.

Corporate America making efforts to foster good will with the new administration isn’t surprising. There are myriad policies that President Trump and his incoming administration have proposed that could impact those companies and affect how they do business — tariffs, privacy legislation, a ban on pharmaceutical advertising, etc. With that being the case, it makes sense that these companies would signal they want to work more closely with the Trump administration.

“There are some issues that regard the incoming administration in which they’ll need to collaborate and work on,” Jay Pattisall, vp and senior agency analyst at Forrester, said, noting privacy on a state or federal level, AI regulation and potential amendments to the tax code regarding whether advertising can be written off as a few of the issues that the marketing industry would want to work closely with the Trump administration on. “There’s no shortage of issues for them to work on.”

Looking at those potential issues, it’s easy to see why some in corporate America are taking a different tone this time around. For example, “the last thing that any of the tech companies want is huge tariffs on their partners in places like China where they’re going to put tariffs on imports and that’s gonna have a pass through cost all the way down,” said Nancy Hill, CEO of Media Sherpas. With such tariffs possibly on the horizon, it’s no surprise that tech companies would want to get closer to this administration now. Another example, noted Hill, is banning pharmaceutical ads, which could have a massive impact on the industry.

One agency CEO noted that “anecdotally, brands seemed to be ok working with Trump the first time but they were just in the closet about it.” While he hasn’t personally heard from any specific brands about fostering a deeper connection to Trump during his second term, “a consistent topic of conversation is making more money and if there is a way that Trump makes them more money, I’m sure they will,” he said.

While corporate America seems to be more public about their push to get close to President Trump this time around, the tone of advertising and the ad world will likely be much more administration-agnostic for the next four years. As previously reported by Digiday, last time, CMOs seemed to get more political, making public statements, running ad boycotts and the like to signal to people that their corporations were forces for good in some way. That is unlikely this time.

“The neutral approach, whether it be agencies or brands, is a reflection of the shifts and changes in public sentiment as well as the political climate,” said Pattisall.

3 Questions with Loren Castle, CEO and founder of snack brand Sweet Loren’s

Sweet Loren’s first partnership was with Mattel’s Barbie, a massive brand that so many brands were collaborating with around the movie. How did that come together?

What’s ironic about all of this is I got in touch with the Mattel team and the people running this had never heard of Sweet Loren’s. To me, that was a perfect example of why we needed to do the partnership. We feel like we have the Barbie of cookie dough and no one’s heard about us. We’re not as old as Mattel. We don’t have as much money behind marketing as Mattel. “Can we just send you samples and see your reaction? Give it to your family.” We sent them samples and had a call the next week.

Barbie is a massive brand. How do you build on that for future partnerships?

The truth is this is our first partnership. Since everything’s small, we just decided to go with the largest brand we could possibly find. As long as it continues at the pace it is, which I have no doubt it will, this will be part of our strategy. Our products are sold in supermarkets. There’s a buy-in period that takes a long time. It’s not like I can just launch a partnership with another brand, like a Lululemon cookie dough tomorrow. You have to sell it into the supermarket. There’s a calendar of when it launches. So these partnerships with our products sold in 35,000 supermarkets … we have to really be thinking a year out and making sure that supermarkets are going to get excited about it.

A brand partnership is harder to measure in terms of ROI. How are you measuring success and balancing performance with brand storytelling?

We’re very ROI-driven. We have a DTC business, but our product is really sold in supermarkets. We feel very confident putting budget behind things that are trackable.

If we’re going to choose to spend money on marketing, and we don’t have millions on millions of endless dollars, then it just has to really work hard for the brand. There’s an art and science to it. We have a certain budget that we’re going to allocate for this year. We’re going to have to do a ton of testing and learning, seeing where we’re getting ROI and creating some portion that’s maybe not as measurable.

Maybe the Barbie thing, we can’t fully understand. Of course, we can count units sold, but there’s probably a whole other halo effect of bringing new users in, people that are going to buy us more times a year, even if they knew the brand already. — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

For all the ways brands are looking to stand out in a crowded digital landscape and reach consumers, text messaging and digital wallets may be a viable vehicle, according to new research from Vibes, a mobile engagement platform. See further details below:

• 86% of survey respondents reported that they’re more likely to engage with or redeem mobile offers sent to them via text message than those sent via email or offers in a brand’s mobile app.
• 4 out of 5 consumers preferring brands send them text messages at least once a week.
• Over 55% of consumers also said they’re more likely to engage with brands that offer a digital wallet option for coupons/offers and loyalty cards. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“You still have areas where you can go viral … it’s just going to feel a little bit different.”

— Gary J. Nix, founder and chief strategy advisor at Brandarchy Reimagined, a marketing collective, when asked about life after TikTok for brands that have relied on going viral on the platform.

What we’ve covered

• As TikTok teeters, YouTube, Meta, Snapchat and more race to claim its ad dollars with incentives, discounts
• Here’s who stands to benefit from — or lose to — Amazon’s new retail media offering
• Telcos in ad tech, haven’t we seen this movie before?