A Look at Each Candidates Campaign Slogans

Putting political opinions and view points aside, one campaign slogan from this recent election season seemed to perform better than the other. Ray Hennessey makes this claim in his recent article titled “Why 'Make America Great Again' Beat 'Stronger Together'”, which was published on Entrepreneur.com this past week. Here, Hennessey discusses the five reasons why Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ and its #MAGA hashtag out performed the marketing efforts of Hillary Clinton’s ‘Stronger Together’.

The first reason that Hennessey discusses is the call to action that #MAGA produced. Comparing it to Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ slogan, Hennessey links the two and describes how the slogan almost comes off as an order and is the voter’s responsibility. Contrasting it with ‘Stronger Together’, which Hennessey describes as an attempt at being all-inclusive, yet lacking the call to order that is important with marketing messages. While I do not support the campaign style and platform that Trump ran on, I do agree with Hennessey here who suggests that the ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan seemed to motivate people more so than ‘Stronger Together’.

The second factor that attributes to Trump’s marketing success is that the slogan is so simple with its execution. There was no real design team or image with hidden messages or symbols to take into consideration. Trump’s slogan was infamously seen as plain font on a red or white baseball hat or simply on a bumper sticker. There was nothing to be unsure about or confused about with this slogan. Simply, if you wanted to make America great again, you knew which slogan to look for. With ‘Stronger Together’, Hennessey explains how the slogan was inherently more ambiguous. The ambiguity comes from the idea that they need strength, as if to criticize the previous administration but not to go all the way since she was a part of it. This more passive approach apparently did not resonate with all voters and came off as another message trying to be politically correct, which contrasts the type of rhetoric that was common with Trump. In the end, it appears that the Clinton slogan was less blunt and more passive than the in your face strategy by Trump.

The third factor that Hennessey describes is that Clinton’s slogan campaign was not nearly as definitive as Trump’s. There was no question with Trump on what his slogan message was. Everyone knew it was all about ‘Make America Great Again’. Clinton used multiple different “sub-slogans” like, “I’m With Her”, “Fighting for Us”, and “Breaking Down Barriers.” By having all these messages at once, it can muddy the waters and make your overall campaign seem less grounded and more all over the place. We have all seen marketing campaigns where there was too much going on and thus lost part of its impact. This ties in with the next factor, which Hennessey states was social media.

With social media, Clinton was not able to make her main slogan ‘Stronger Together’ a massive hit. While she had a lot of success on social media, it was with her ‘I’m with Her’ slogan. By not capitalizing off her main slogan, it added ambiguity to the marketing campaign, which was not helped by the success of #MAGA with Trump supporters. Interestingly enough, ‘Make America Great Again’ is not as social media friendly on paper as something like ‘Stronger Together’, yet Trump supporters organically abbreviated it to #MAGA. Clinton’s supporters were using a hashtag of a slogan that their campaign essentially abandoned as its branding. Should Clinton have been able to better use her slogans on social media, who knows if the outcome would have changed.

The last and fifth factor that Hennessey discusses is the idea of leadership. He felt that the ‘Stronger Together’ slogan attempted to be too inclusive and did not give off the definitive leader feel that Clinton should have been going for. He also argues that ‘Stronger Together’ was a direct response to ‘Make America Great Again’ and seemed almost defensive, rather than direct and inspiring. Trump’s campaign seemed to be going off the premise that he, as an individual was going to ‘Make America Great Again’, compared to Clinton’s campaign, which was centered on a group effort. Personally, I like the idea of being “Stronger Together’ and working as a team, although apparently that was not the same sentiment with the way the Electoral College votes panned out. How do you feel about the slogans from this campaign? Do you agree with the claims made by Hennessey, or do you think the Clinton’s marketing was stronger. Let me know what you think in the comments section below.