The American choice has been and gone.

As of this writing, Joe Biden is the president-elect with a five million vote lead over incumbent President Trump, and with a substantial margin of Electoral College seats and legal challenges aside, Trump can’t catch him.

Currently, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris get all the credit for the win. Just like in 2016, when Donald Trump initially got all the credit for the win. Later, however, as the window of victory dwindled, we began to hear some of the clever marketing strategies of some of the marketing geniuses.

The likes of Brad Parscale, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Jared Kushner, etc. began to receive recognition for the unexpected and surprise victory.

I imagine that over time, praise for the people behind Biden’s victory will also be promoted and at that point we will begin to learn about what happened in the planning and implementation stages that led to the victory.

But until that happens, an event like the US election is such an important event that any marketing, sales, and entrepreneurial professional needs to give some serious thought to what happened and how it can be used or avoided in our own situations. In fact, I think the US election is the biggest game in the world and if you really want to build a business then this is the game to review and critique.

Now, if you had to beat Donald Trump, how would you do it?

Furthermore, if you had to beat Donald Trump during a pandemic, in which Donald Trump obviously mishandled, how would you go about getting a win?

In my analysis, I think the most obvious strategy, the thing to do, was pretty simple. It doesn’t need to involve a lot of marketing magic or trickery. It is nothing revolutionary or a master strategy. In fact, I think it was pretty obvious, and the Biden camp nailed it with “pikes.”

They chose to compete against Trump on one thing and one thing only, and that was character.

Sometimes in marketing, the simplest things are often the most effective.

It reminds me of the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford comes face to face with this knife-wielding bad guy. The bad guy is putting on a show, waving the knife, wiggling it, spinning it, and Harrison Ford reaches down and grabs his gun and hits him, shoots him dead. The obvious thing to do. It doesn’t matter how good you are with your knife; you’re not hitting a gun if the guy knows how to use it and is very close.

I think it was similar with Biden’s campaign strategy. Biden was obvious, Biden was simple, and Biden stayed focused on character. Whereas Trump, he seemed like a bit of everywhere. To be sure, Trump expended enormous energy and that probably earned him the 70 million votes. In general, the Trump campaign seemed to be focusing much more on magic tricks. Brad Parscale was back doing his Facebook thing. Bannon was targeting right-wingers in the media. Trump himself was looking for his playbook move, which he has used so effectively for almost his entire adult life, which is to start abusing people and picking fights. Before Hillary, it was Rosie O’Donnell and that gave her lots of free publicity and a platform. This time it was anyone he could sully, even the legendary Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Along with this convention, Trump paraded strategically by using the podium at the White House to straighten out the election campaign. Trump labeled China the enemy, Antifa the enemy, the Democrats the enemy. Trump had innocent people pulled aside to take a picture with a Bible. And, of course, there was the alleged attempt to obtain a dirty file from the Ukrainian president on his opponent. Then there were the nicknames. Shifty Schiff, Nasty Nancy, and Sleepy Joe, and so on. But all of this just played into Biden’s character campaign over all.

Trump’s most effective tool was his rally. Rallies are a show of power. Demonstrating a large following and giving him a platform to bash the media and other haters, particularly “Sleepy Joe”.

Kudos to Trump, he is excellent at running rallies and one could feel the momentum building as he scored rally after rally after rally, often 3 a day crisscrossing the country.

Meanwhile, Biden simply focused on character.

To prove this, he listened to the people. He was guided and protected that “there is a virus out there”, I cannot be seen running around the United States, organizing large virus spreading events. Perhaps truth be told, he didn’t do this because he knew his events would be nothing like the Trump events.

Biden stuck to all things character. Meanwhile, he uses the threat of the virus and mobilizes people to vote by mail, since he would be “much safer”. Joe Biden identified that because he was dangerous out there, he would do the character thing and stay as long as possible in his bunker and exhibit ultra-social distancing. He wore masks, provided safe messages and didn’t miss an opportunity to describe how poorly he was being handled by his opponent. Biden embodied a person of integrity, a person of character, and as a result, I am the person to vote for, safely and by mail.

He also showed his character in his interactions. He offered help and a platform to the child who stuttered, comforted the children who had lost a parent, comforted the mother whose child was fighting in Iraq, and so on. I’m not saying any of this was untrue, but he was choosing to amplify these messages, as marketing does, all aimed at amplifying the character trait: his opponent’s perceived weakness.

Biden’s nomination of Kamala Harris was another demonstration of his character. The fact that she could turn the other cheek to someone who really mauled him during the primaries, the fact that she had the vision to bring a woman to the White House for the first time. The fact that she had the vision for her to be a woman of color, to be the first woman of color to hold a position in the White House as vice president. more signs of character.

Throughout all of this, Trump simply continued to meet. Even though he does this incredibly well, overall rallies were more of a thing for 2016 and not a COVID-plagued 2020.

At his rallies, Trump implored people to forgo their midweek election day to stand in a voting booth for four or five hours and risk contracting coronavirus. Those people are a hard sell. On the other hand, Biden said, “no, don’t do that to yourselves,” and what’s more, “you can even be bullied by Trump’s people.” So don’t do it, send your vote by mail.

And the people did, and they voted early as we now know.

Having garnered 70 million votes, Trump still built a solid following and, in fact, that’s why he feels so defeated in disbelief, because he knew his rallies were magnificent. And he would have left every one of those rallies thinking, man, I have this in the bag.

So an election in the US can be like a business, often in business the solution can be obvious. There is never a need to make things too difficult.

I have been guilty of this myself, many times in fact.

I’ve tried to prove to clients that I know what I’m doing, and in doing so, I’ve created overly elaborate and difficult sales funnels and the like. Sometimes there’s a place for this, but more often than not, when I’m introduced to a company, a business, or a situation where they have a marketing problem, usually the answer involves slowing down, taking stock of what’s happening and find one, two or maybe three things that are a bit off. This approach often fixes the problem entirely.

There is no need to make it too difficult. It may be much easier than you think.