Rebranding the US Presidential Race

Unless you’ve been living under a rock these past few months, you know that the current US presidential race has escalated from ‘unprecedented’ to ‘bewildering’ and beyond. Party norms have been shattered, a demagogue is within striking distance of winning, and conventional means of swaying the electorate have proven ineffective.

Surprisingly, there is a method to this madness, in the form of worldview science. By framing the psychologies of both the presidential front runners and the populace they appeal to, we can see there are indeed patterns of persuasion that trigger irrational support and vehement opposition with startling predictability.

To help decipher these patterns, I invited behavioral scientist John Marshall Roberts for a chat. In our conversation, he carefully mapped out each of the four prominent worldviews as they applied to the current presidential personalities, and predicted which  would prevail in the long term (all bets were off for the current race!)

I discovered as I spoke with Roberts that the current presidential race mirrored another phenomenon close to my wheelhouse: the worldview of established brands, and how they were threatened by upstarts in an increasingly turbulent marketplace. The parallels were uncanny.

But I don’t want to give away the punchline. Instead, I’ll invite you to put on your headphones, and settle in for a lively conversation. Enjoy!