Transcript
Zain
0:01
This is a strategist episode 920. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan. Guys, another Sunday is upon us.
Corey
0:11
Another year without a Golden Globe win for the strategists. This
Zain
0:14
This is true. We have always tried to get in as part of the diversity mantra and mandate that the Golden Globes has exceedingly taken up on, but never. You guys drag me down. i
Carter
0:26
told you that if we put the fucking podcast on video we'd have a better chance but you two don't want to put it on video and so so you can wear your hoodies and not do your hair i look the same regardless doesn't matter if i'm on video i'm always gonna look this old i
Zain
0:41
i should have gone as a solo act this is making me why this is why timberlake left the other ones um which
Carter
0:49
which one was his backstreet
Carter
0:50
backstreet or in sync am i supposed to know that you
Zain
0:53
you you are supposed to know that yeah yeah Yeah, you are supposed to know that.
Carter
0:56
I know it's one of them. That's got to count for something.
Zain
0:58
Corey, what's going on in your world? Backstreet or one of the others, you know it's one of them. Yeah, that's good.
Zain
1:04
Anything you want to add to the mix, Corey?
Corey
1:06
I don't know. I think we just give Carter the runway. Let's just hear more about what he thinks about the things going on in the world.
Zain
1:13
Do you have any opinions
Carter
1:16
was really happy for Catherine O'Hara. I was really happy for Schitt's Creek.
Carter
1:21
It's been quite a year for them.
Carter
1:23
That's my Golden Globes knowledge. Okay,
Zain
1:25
Okay, Carter, anything on the sporting front?
Zain
1:28
I thought that all the sports were done.
Zain
1:31
Let's move it on to our first segment, our first segment, reviewing our reviews. Guys, we do this every now and then. We, you know, celebrate our listeners who send us such tremendous reviews. And often we pluck a few of them, in this case, one of them, to talk about, to dissect, to review, to praise. and this review comes to us by user LawyerOnVacation. Subject, recommended?
Zain
2:00
Let me read you the review. The review says, This podcast was recommended by a good friend. That is why I endured through a few episodes. Considering it consists of overly long and drawn-out shows of senseless blathering, I'm done with it. Corey, so many things to pick up on here. We've got LawyerOnVacation. We've got the one-star review. We've got the fact that it was recommended by a good friend. Should they have said formerly good friend? So many questions I have.
Zain
2:27
What do you want to pick up on? What are you thinking?
Corey
2:30
You know, it didn't make me feel that bad. And I guess this is the value of the scale that starts at one. I mean, we still got one star.
Zain
2:36
So I'm beginning to
Corey
2:37
to see it. Yes. It's the value there. Hey, listen, this is, to my knowledge, our first written one-star review. So there's a novelty factor to it here. year. It's very exciting to see the opinions like this. And so on that note, I mean, wins on style and wins on substance. How can you dispute a single word that was written there?
Zain
2:59
Listen, and not just words, the double spacing after a period, very lawyerly. I'm liking that. That took some extra effort. So I appreciate that. Corey, while I have you, they gave us a one star what are we giving this review what's
Zain
3:13
what's the scale out of zane uh
Zain
3:15
uh it's it's between one to five stars or over under on seven with a uh sliding scale of c minus i give it a b minus i give it a b minus give it a b minus steven carter your thoughts on this uh on this review i mean listen i'll just i'll just jump in before i let you speak uh overly long and drawn out senseless blathering was literally the premise of the show we began yeah uh and i think we've held consistently so your take well
Carter
3:42
well i mean he's he nailed it in fact didn't she yeah
Carter
3:47
but didn't cory take the lsat once that's
Carter
3:49
that's true i mean him rounding himself up to lawyer is exactly on brown brand i mean to be
Corey
3:54
be fair they absolutely nailed my sentiments about this show so exactly
Carter
3:58
exactly so i am not convinced that it's not actually cory who's done this however misunderstanding the five-star strategy, he just chose one star thinking he was actually giving it four. I think you know
Carter
4:10
me well enough to know.
Zain
4:10
know. One second. Corey's got some senses blathering. He wants to interject. Go ahead, Corey. I think
Corey
4:14
think you know me well enough to know I would never put two spaces after a period.
Carter
4:18
You know what? That's the only reason that I think it's not him.
Zain
4:21
That's interesting. That's very, very interesting. I love this level of, you know, we started off with the ambitions to do a political podcast. Last week we did a tight two minutes on butter. We're now doing some really interest forensic analysis on writing style and pattern here. I really like this, Carter. Carter, I need to ask you. They have given us one star. What are we giving the review?
Carter
4:44
F. This is a total fail.
Carter
4:47
Go fuck yourself is how this comes out in my mouth. Jesus Christ, Carter. Hey, I don't come to your workplace and rate your work. You might. We don't know who the person is. On vacation, my ass. She or he has probably been fired from the law firm that they work at, and this is all they can do. This is an old episode of The Strategist, back to back to back.
Corey
5:15
Didn't you tell us you listened to three yourself?
Corey
5:19
Pardon me? Didn't you say you listened to three episodes today? Oh,
Carter
5:22
Oh, no. I was actually talking to myself. I'd assumed that I'd written it.
Zain
5:27
Jesus Christ, Carter. I give it five stars. I think this is excellent. I always appreciate a good sentence with double spacing. I appreciate that they've nailed our brand. I just think that they get it. They get us. Too bad he or she is not listening anymore, because I feel like while
Zain
5:45
while the strategy of the podcast in their mind was low, the execution of what we wanted to do were killing. And so thank you to all our listeners, even the ones who have left us. Let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, of course, the check-in to piss off Corey Carter. We are talking about backseeds.
Zain
6:07
This is amazing. Corey sent us bold-faced text messages. He increased the size of his iMessage font just to make sure. I don't even know how you do that, but he did it. I
Carter
6:19
I don't know how he does it. He's
Zain
6:21
He's figured out a way. I mean, he's a lawyer.
Carter
6:22
No vaccine, no me, we, no we, no vaccine. Here we go.
Zain
6:28
Stephen Carter, AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved here in Canada. 500,000 doses on their way.
Carter
6:37
Well, you guys know that I've been railing on this quite a bit. And the proof will be in the pudding. But it looks like the pudding's getting made. And it looks like vaccinations are on their way. I think the Johnson & Johnson vaccination is going to come. And now we're getting to the place where people are saying, which
Carter
6:52
which is the best vaccine for me to take? And now they actually have to message the one that you can get. is the one that you should take. So I think this is, it's
Carter
7:02
it's all good news. Obviously, I'm very interested in, you know, people that are close to me getting vaccinated. Ultimately, I'm now in like phase one, by the way, guys, because I'm so fucking old. So we have that going for me. So, you know, that's good. I mean, I'm just really excited that more vaccination is coming. And I think that the rollout that we teased that Trudeau was trying to get it done faster disaster may,
Carter
7:28
may, in fact, actually occur.
Zain
7:30
Coy, the projections seem to be trending well for the Trudeau government. If the Johnson & Johnson one-shot comes online shortly, combined with the AstraZeneca availability, it seems like they may be better suited. This kind of seems like what you've been saying the whole time, if I'm giving you
Zain
7:47
some credit. However, and this is my question for you, is the narrative on vaccines and Trudeau already already crystallized and calcified or do you feel like there's a chapter still to be written that the liberals can leverage based on based on the next couple of months nothing's
Zain
8:05
written we're living this
Corey
8:06
this is okay these
Corey
8:07
segments can i just say yeah it's like a weather you love this is like a weather watch on a piece of shit local tv newscast in new jersey talking about possible storm surges next week oh
Corey
8:18
you've got the guy out front you know he's he's standing in the wind he's got his microphone and it's offering absolutely no value who fucking cares who gives a shit let's have a little bit of time let's step back from all of this the reality is nothing is baked right now the trudeau government is not subject to what happened last week or the week before we will have to stand back at a certain point and see how all of this rolled out and that's what's going to happen yeah a couple more vaccines online maybe one of them will have some more stops maybe we'll have something else come out of left field we
Corey
8:48
we can't keep riding this wave week to week either either as a podcast or as a country. Like, just fucking calm
Zain
8:55
Either as a podcast or a country. I think there's a big delta between the two, but that's fine. I like this. You know, you could have saved this for the editorial meetings we don't have. Carter, you're putting your hand up as if there's more than two of you, but please go ahead. Corey
Carter
9:10
Corey has convinced me. He, in fact, did write the review.
Carter
9:15
did the two spaces to throw us off. The bastard. What a crafty dick. Dick, oh, I love it. Sorry I was so mean to you when I did this. I didn't know it was you who wrote the review. Now I know, and I'm sorry I was such an ass about it.
Zain
9:29
No, that's good, Carter. I'm sticking with you. Corey clearly doesn't want to engage on the topic, but that's fine. Because we need someone to make sense of history while we're living it, and I think that's you, Carter. I mean, just by default.
Carter
9:41
Yeah, I've got the most history.
Zain
9:43
Well, Carter, tell me this. Political question. This moment in time that we're potentially living in, does this increase
Zain
9:51
increase the likelihood in your mind of a spring election what does this change in terms of the calculus right now like that's a no but seriously cory why are you losing your shit because i think there's something to
Corey
9:59
to be said here because he doesn't like to look into the crystal out of the moment no step out of the moment why why they have to live in them you have wasted two months talking about this because now we are back exactly to where we were talking about this two that's right that's
Corey
10:13
this is the wave we're riding this is the wave we're we're riding everybody needs to appreciate that these things are pretty tough to see while we're in the middle of it here but history is unfolding as predicted at this
Carter
10:24
this moment you guys listening right now you're watching the undoing right i mean zane chooses the topics and asks the questions okay cory that's what that's how we wrote it okay so just answer the fucking questions yes
Carter
10:39
think that a spring election is now more likely see how hard was that how
Carter
10:42
how hard was that I like this,
Corey
10:45
this, Carter. The spring election was pretty likely. You
Carter
10:48
You did. You've been consistent. I've been going like a weather vane, which is why Zane has to keep asking me.
Carter
10:55
I'm all over the place.
Zain
10:57
This is true. Corey, should Canada give back the COVAX vaccines that they've procured based
Zain
11:02
based on the trending numbers?
Corey
11:04
I think that just in terms of making it not look like it was a panicked move by the government, they shouldn't give back those vaccines. but they should find another way to help other nations with the vaccines that we have.
Zain
11:16
Carter, same question to you. Should Canada give back COVAX vaccines that they've procured as part of that international stockpile?
Carter
11:24
No, because then it admits a mistake that was made, and they just need to walk away from the idea that there was ever a mistake. Corey's right. Move past it. Don't give anything back. Don't admit a mistake, and everything will be fine.
Zain
11:37
So, you know, and I now ask every question risking pissing off Corey, but I mean, it's literally in the segment title, which is great.
Zain
11:48
Carter, what should you get? You're seeing these these numbers on board. You're seeing the vaccines come online. What should our friends in the Conservative Party consider doing right now? Step back, leave it aside, move on?
Carter
12:00
Well, no, I think that this they still have to prepare for their election. I would move to the economy. As soon as people start to feel like the vaccination issues is going to be solved and the pandemic is going to be solved, we're going to move to needing to address the high unemployment levels, the
Carter
12:18
the economic uncertainty of individual families, and the overall economy. And I think that those are all things that play really well for the Conservatives. In fact, far better than bitching and moaning about vaccine distribution. distribution.
Zain
12:31
Corey, not the same question to you, but I want to talk to you about the Trudeau government here, because we've always talked about their issues management risk that they constantly have. They take the victory lap before the race is even done. There seems to be an element of that, which is perhaps the reason why I keep bringing this topic up, is not necessarily to track the vaccine numbers, but to track the political promise versus the political reality. In this case, it seems like a good news story with one vaccine approved, a second one perhaps coming online. Any advice you'd have to the Trudeau government around their victory lap or how they message around the vaccination schedules and the vaccination timelines going forward, knowing that it's probably better news than it looked like, even based on their promise schedule that they had for March and September?
Corey
13:19
Don't take a victory lap. And if you're the conservatives, don't let them take a victory lap. In fact, that's where Trudeau is most vulnerable because we are still behind. We are still well back in the list of countries in terms of vaccination rates here.
Corey
13:33
So if you're O'Toole, you're now broadening the point and saying this is part of a pattern of behavior for Justin Trudeau. He promises these things, and then he has to back out of them gracelessly. This goes back to the very first months of him in the job. Do you remember how many Syrian refugees we were going to take in in the first couple of weeks of the Trudeau prime ministership? Well, that didn't fucking happen, did it? And this is just a pattern of behavior for this guy. And so if I'm O'Toole, I am trying to broaden the point there and remind them that, yeah, I mean, this is exactly what he has provided and try to move off of the idea being that the criticism was, will
Corey
14:10
will we get the vaccines and make it more? This guy has not managed the rollout particularly well. well.
Zain
14:17
Carter, I'm going to go to you for a topic I keep hammering you about every three or four episodes, which is vaccine communications. So you just made one of the points earlier that it's now incumbent upon the government to talk about get whichever vaccines available to you. We still don't know how they're going to use AstraZeneca, for example. Are they going to use it under 65, as has been speculated by some professionals, etc.? What do you think the vaccine communication priority right now is for the government? Is it to take whatever vaccine you you can get? And where does this kind of stand in the sort of arc of communications for vaccine adoption that we've been talking about iteratively on this podcast and this country, which is now like the two things I compare constantly, thanks to Corey, over the course of the last couple of months? Yeah,
Carter
15:00
Yeah, I don't think that we want to compare vaccines. We don't want to compare efficacies. I think the government is taking the exact right line on the best vaccine is the one that you can get. And I think that the vaccination struggle right now is just making sure that the The vaccines are in people's arms, as many as possible, but also kind of going back to our vaccine hesitancy group, forgetting about the anti-vaxxers. Anti-vaxxers are anti-vaxxers. Don't even worry about them. But the vaccine hesitant group needs to hear all the stories of how well this is working and how everybody who's got this has got a positive outcome. The thing that I would like to start seeing discussed is a conversation. I'm not saying this is the right thing, but a conversation about will we have vaccine passports? Will the passport be
Carter
15:47
be marked in some fashion? You've got vaccination. You can't travel without vaccinations outside of the country. Do your kids need to be vaccinated when we get to children being vaccinated? I'd like these types of conversations to start. I'm not saying that the government should say, yes, your kids need to be vaccinated. I think that having a conversation, though, will
Carter
16:07
will start to pull attention and start assuming that everybody's going to get vaccinated. I think that that will come maybe at the end of May when we're starting to see significant numbers going into people's arms.
Zain
16:22
Yeah, Trudeau's going to express some concerns on the vaccination passports. Corey, before I come to you on the question, Carter, just on a basis of governance, would vaccine passports be a federal or provincial jurisdiction? jurisdiction it
Carter
16:33
would have to be federal provincial cooperation right
Zain
16:36
right right uh cory same question on the comms um you know as we as we think about vaccine communications right now and the arc of vaccine adoption where do you where do you kind of see ourselves within that arc and what do the communication sort of principles now need to to be and what what should be the government kind of communicating um given the the online nature
Zain
16:56
nature of several more vaccines perhaps This
Corey
16:58
This is truly killing me. This is the exact same conversation we've had for weeks here. Yeah, it is. I hope the government isn't doing what we're doing, Zane. That's my sincere answer. Nothing is materially different, and they should continue with their plans as previous. And if they start chasing the issue of the week and talking about their vaccine communications, depending on how this unfolds week by week, we are well and truly fucked as a country. Stay
Corey
17:23
Stay the course. I
Zain
17:24
I don't I don't think my question is about what they do week to week to respond as like a public affairs issue. My question is about what do they do right now in their in their comm strategy? Which rung are they on? Which part of their comm strategy are they on now knowing that, you know, the political nature of vaccine delivery might be behind them in some way?
Corey
17:46
Why would that change their approach to communications one way? Don't
Zain
17:50
Don't they need to tell people, get back to the conversation of getting the people that are vaccine hesitant to start adopting this thing at scale? I mean, the current dearth in supply has helped them in that regard. But what do they now need to do to go back into that communications track and get people wanting this thing in a meaningful way?
Corey
18:08
way? I don't think there's a lot of evidence that the dearth in supply has resulted in more vaccine acceptance. When you look at countries
Corey
18:15
the world, you are seeing that vaccine acceptance is increasing as the rollout has gone on, including in countries with significantly more robust rollouts than ours. Look at UK, look at Israel. This is a statistic that's just kind of common, and it makes sense. This vaccine that was created in a year, there were people who were a bit hesitant about it. And as people got it and they didn't have bad side effects, and, you know, they had this pretty awesome side effect of not getting COVID-19, then things proceeded apace.
Corey
18:43
nothing has changed fundamentally the same thing we still have fewer vaccines than we have people who want to get vaccinated there's no reason to be the heavies on this we have seen the percent of people who are willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine increase across the western world by huge numbers in the past two months that will probably continue still nothing has changed
Zain
19:05
let's move it on to our next segment our next segment mean in the streets and tick-tocking from the sheets guys i want to take i want to take quite a bit of time uh or the time remaining from the last segment that i was really going to extend just to see the base to see how
Carter
19:20
how long cory would go before he lost his mind is that i
Zain
19:24
i have to say good job bringing the popcorn you were
Carter
19:26
were you were right i was ready for it man the popcorn was here this was exciting i
Zain
19:30
i want to talk about political brands and building political brands and i want to use this story this week of jagmeet singh um and his usage on tiktok to kind of talk about that uh going forward i want As we look into an election, whether that's the spring, the fall, next year, whenever, how do you shape a political brand of a leader? We always talk about authenticity. We always talk about being
Zain
19:51
being on mediums and platforms that people are on. But are there red lines in politics? And has the last couple of years changed what the red lines are in the political atmosphere? So, Carter, let's just start here. As we go into, I shouldn't say a full deep dive, but what are some branding principles that when you're talking to a candidate, you're discussing with them and saying, this is how you want to brand yourself. These are some of the larger sort of elements to consider when putting your, I was going to say personality, but maybe you can kind of even jump on this, your persona out online for the Canadian public. What are some broad principles? We'll start there, and then I want to have a more deeper conversation about each of the leaders as they brand themselves heading into election season.
Carter
20:34
Well, for me, it's all about authenticity. And that word is not new in politics. It's been used a million times in politics and it continues to be used because it matters. And if you kind of go back to the introduction of Twitter or even the introduction of Facebook into our campaigning structures, politicians
Carter
20:51
politicians really struggled with it because they weren't able to be authentic in the medium. And Facebook, I think, is still hard. I think that most Facebook is still managed by professionals who are trying
Carter
21:03
trying to, you know, I don't know, put the best spinner or whatever onto the
Carter
21:09
the actual medium itself because it's a more complicated medium. But TikTok's exactly like that as well. TikTok, to me, is a vehicle where people haven't quite figured it out yet. It reminds me a ton of Twitter back in the day when Twitter was still coming on, just just coming online. And
Carter
21:27
And it really wasn't. I mean, people were so amazed by Nahed Nenshi in 2010, because he knew how to use the medium, and he was authentic on that medium. And there was enough people on it to
Carter
21:40
to actually make a difference in an election. I'm not sure that there's enough people on TikTok to actually make an election difference at this stage. But being authentic on that medium could be a real boost to a politician that's trying to figure out how he or she can be
Carter
21:57
seen differently. But when I think of Jagmeet Singh, what I think about is a person who is trying to emulate AOC, not
Carter
22:06
not someone who's trying to be authentic himself. He is looking at what AOC has been able to do. She's a natural at all mediums. It doesn't matter if it's Instagram Live, It doesn't matter if it's TikTok. She's just got the ability. She's native to the technology and she knows how to use it and be authentic on it. And she's the exception. You know, how many elected representatives in the United States, how many can actually do what she does? One, right?
Carter
22:33
right? The same thing with, so trying to emulate someone else is by definition, not authentic.
Zain
22:40
Corey, you know, I asked Carter, what are some branding principles? I'm gonna ask you a similar question. But just add one one additional element to it. What are some 2021 branding principles in your mind? Have you and kind of have you seen the the the the ground and shift and change from from even a couple years ago, for what it means to be a political candidate trying to reach the masses these days?
Corey
23:04
well, that's interesting. I think you're actually confusing two topics here. One is the nature of brand. And the other is how you convey that brand. Let's talk about
Zain
23:10
about both. Yeah. Well,
Corey
23:11
let's talk about the first first, because that's what my advice would be to absolutely anybody. Before you decide through which channels you want to convey your message, you need to understand what your message is. And when you're setting your own brand, now, it would be nice to say everybody's brand should just be authentically who they are, right? But as a politician, you need to lean into certain elements of your personality more than others, depending on what the moment calls for. You've really got to start with three pieces, right you have to start with what you actually are and i mean that less about what you feel you are in your core but how you're perceived by the public you need to keep in mind what your opponents are to the public and you need to keep in mind what the public actually wants their politicians to be and it's the marriage of the three where you're going to determine where your best political brand is so i like to do focus groups and polling early on in a cycle to try Try to determine that. Polling looks a lot like for each of the major candidates out there. Here's a list of attributes, some good, some bad. Which ones do you think apply to candidate X? That's usually after unprompted, asking them to fill out a couple of lines or maybe a paragraph about what they think of the candidate, if they have any thoughts whatsoever.
Corey
24:20
And from there, you get a pretty good understanding of what, if anything, people think of you and what, if anything, people think of your political opponents. And so you've got a couple of the big pieces. Then the other piece is what are people actually looking for? And that becomes a matter of simply saying, what do you need in a leader right now? You
Corey
24:37
probably want to ask that somewhat
Corey
24:39
somewhat distance from the other two questions or else you'll find partisans just trying to align their answers all together. other and then ultimately do some focus groups especially useful to do focus groups if your candidate's not particularly well known because you can start to probe on things and ask about opinions that are there or not there but ultimately out of all of this zane what you are trying to do is you are going to try to find the thing that the public cares about that you do better than the other guy and ideally that your opponent is weak on as well because that's a way you can set up quite a good contrast but you have to be careful not to jump into something that you do do well, but your opponent does better. You have to be careful not to jump into something you do well, but the public doesn't give a shit about. And by having all of that information at hand, it allows you to have the informed conversation that you can then drive further into focus groups, testing these things out, further focus groups, further polling.
Zain
25:29
Excellent answer. I love where you were with those three buckets. Can we talk about platforms a bit more as we kind of extend beyond that? Because I think there's some interesting questions that that kind of emerge with that you know and and carter one question i have for you is relating to not just branding yourself but branding yourself when you're already kind of known like to cory's principles how do you if you're justin trudeau heading into your third election cycle consider your political brand can is there any way you can move it is there any way you can shift it or are you just doing small iterative tweaks to to what the canadian public already knows about you like if there's new platforms developed or new message opportunities how do you take advantage of them or do you have to rebrand do you i'm trying to understand as what this exercise may look like for a brand that we know trudeau versus two brands that we kind of don't know even though jagmeet had a cycle you know last round he's still having much more flexibility and i say otula has got the greatest amount of flexibility to his uh to his advantage. So I want to talk about what the differences in those two streams looks like between an established brand, what they can do and how they can pivot and leverage some of these platforms and opportunities versus, let's say, less established brands like Sing and O'Toole.
Carter
26:49
Yeah, I think that it's a point of emphasis, right? You can't change. I mean, if you're going to be authentic, you can't change who you are. You
Carter
26:57
You can change what is emphasized. So, for example, Trudeau, I think it's well within his brand spectrum
Carter
27:05
spectrum to suggest that he's caring, right,
Carter
27:07
right, that he cares about Canadians. And you can emphasize that part of the discussion. You can say, you know, this is a conversation about, you
Carter
27:18
know, how people will be cared for. And you can see him doubling down on things like long-term care or the health system or something else versus
Carter
27:29
versus something that may not exist within his brand structure, which may be more economic variables
Carter
27:36
variables or something along those lines. But you don't try and reinvent
Carter
27:41
reinvent the wheel. You don't say, you know what, people are really looking for a strong, empathetic leader or whatever. I mean, whatever words come out of Corey's polling, I tend not to rely on the polls like Corey does. I tend to look at what I think, you know, what I think, you know, kind of more of a gut feel we can get away with because some people just can't do certain things on the brand. You know, there's they are arrogant or they are challenged, you know, challenged in some fashion. And so you can't necessarily take them to
Carter
28:14
the public wants them to go. So you just take them where they're most comfortable going.
Carter
28:18
So for me, the brand of Trudeau— That's a compromise you
Zain
28:21
you have to make in certain cases, isn't it?
Carter
28:23
Yeah, because the brand of Trudeau is, you know, like to your point, exceptionally well-known. I mean, it's not like you're going to redefine him.
Carter
28:31
He was just, you know, his first election, he
Carter
28:34
he was so powerful just being the fresh, young face. Sure. You know, that brand didn't have to be well worked through. This brand, I think, will need a little bit more finesse because you're exactly right. He's gone through, I think he's just well-known. There's just no way around it.
Zain
28:52
Yeah, and to that point, he will be, if I'm not mistaken, the oldest leader running in the next race between the three major party leaders. How is that possible?
Zain
29:01
I think it is.
Carter
29:03
Yeah, I know. Yeah, I think
Zain
29:04
think you're right. I might be wrong on the O'Toole side, but I think he is a couple years older than O'Toole. Now, they're going to pick different lanes, so to speak. You know, Corey, one of the pieces of advice you guys constantly have that I constantly, you know, repeat without attribution, which is why I'm here, I've said this many times, is you can never use the playbook from last time for the next time, right? And that probably implies to the incumbent as well, right? Like, they bring a certain set of skills to the table, but to just run the race of 19 or 15 is not what you can bring again to the table, whether that be in 21 or 22. So what exactly are you kind of considering? Maybe I'll start with the Trudeau question first for how do you kind of rebrand or have a focal pivot for someone who's already well known in the public?
Corey
29:49
Yeah, and you can't run the same campaign as last time because you're never on the same battlefield. The tactics have changed so much over time. It's just it's a bit politically suicidal to do that. And if you end up winning, that is accidental. It's not because of any great strategy, if that's what your play is. so if you're justin trudeau and you've got an established brand and you are now running against two leaders who are not particularly established there's a couple of interesting nuances that brings into it here ultimately the advice does come down to what steven's advice is which is just emphasize different parts of your brand put something else in the window you uh you may have been a fresh face in 2015 that's not you anymore right
Corey
30:31
right you're not the young guy anymore your brand also evolves over time. And so you need to keep your eyes on your brand and you've got to figure out what you can actually put forward. Carter said something that's interesting that I think is worth underlining about the difference between what a perception of the candidate's brand is and the candidate's actual attributes. And I'll use Jason Kenney as an example. In the 2019 election, he was going around in a blue pickup truck saying, get her done. That
Corey
30:58
is not Jason i think we know him as
Zain
31:00
as a wine sipping sort of you know well he's
Corey
31:03
he's quite a cerebral guy he's much more likely to engage you in a conversation about 19th century english literature than the latest f-150 okay and uh and ultimately i think that's a certain brand tension he set up that is causing him challenges right now right when you just say this is what the public wants great i'm going to be that and i'm going to move forward some politicians are a little better at that than others. But I think there's always a certain hazard there. Now, when you are talking about an opponent, when you're setting your brand up, and you're trying to pick the brand elements that you want to emphasize, and it's against opponents who are pretty ill defined, and I think Aaron O'Toole offers a great example here.
Corey
31:41
What you need to do, what
Corey
31:44
what you absolutely must do, if you are the Liberal Party, is you need to run your hypothetical campaign against the best version Aaron O'Toole. You absolutely need to be thinking about what he is putting out there and what he is signaling he wants to be. But you have to assume that
Corey
32:00
that he's not just a clownish version of himself that you might put into your donor letters, right? You have to think about the best version of Aaron O'Toole and think about how those attributes may stack against your attributes and what that means in a, you know, let's say a 40-day campaign.
Corey
32:15
And that's tough because political campaigns tend to be full of political partisans. And if they're not careful, they can border towards sycophantic where they will say, oh, Justin Trudeau, you do everything wonderful. Yes, we should go on this ground because you are so good at this. And Aaron O'Toole, what a dummy that guy is, and what a knuckle-dragger he is. And you all of a sudden are playing like this phony version of you against this phony version of them, and you can run yourself into a lot of trouble. So rooting yourself in data, I think, is more important as an incumbent than it is as a new candidate, where you might have a bit more of a feel from the outside, but you can lose touch pretty quickly when your environment is 24 Sussex Drive or, you know, Rideau Cottage, I guess, right now. And it's important that you get yourself out of that bubble every possible way you can. And that doesn't mean talking to a bunch of people in your orbit. That means slapping yourself in the face with data from actual Canadians.
Zain
33:09
Carter, I want you to respond to that and see if you've got any additional thoughts on branding strategy before we move it on to platforms and tactics and some of those other elements that we want to talk about perhaps in the 2021 environment. So any thoughts before I move it on to that? Well,
Carter
33:24
Well, I think that Corey's made two excellent points. The first I want to talk about is the brand dissonance. So when you run against yourself, so Kenny is not the guy in the blue pickup truck, but that's who he perceived Albertans want. And obviously it worked because that's who Albertans elected. elected the problem is you have to run again in four years and so if you're not the person that you put in the window if you're not the person that is actually uh
Carter
33:49
you know that that person that's actually running for election you've got yourself a problem because
Carter
33:56
public buy the brand right so it's the equivalent of putting you know a brand up you know building a brand you know a high-end brand of some sort then putting in a low-end product um people won't buy the brand again. So the dissonance can't, can't
Carter
34:13
can't be so significant that people won't buy the product again. And that's what I think is part of the problem that's happening with Jason Kennedy. And the second part is this assuming the best versus the worst.
Carter
34:25
Corey couldn't be more right. You have to assume that the candidate, like one of the challenges we have is that we know these people, right?
Carter
34:34
right? We know them as human beings and as individuals, and we know their strengths and weaknesses and sometimes it's really hard to disassociate the brand attribute with the actual individual so
Carter
34:47
someone who's an idiot is being perceived in the general public as a as this as a genius and you're like there's no fucking way that's gonna last but it does last because this podcast
Zain
34:56
podcast is proof of that right exactly
Carter
34:57
exactly i mean it's just it's exactly right on i mean but this is the the
Carter
35:02
the but if you assume the best if you assume that the best version of of that person is going to be there, then you remove a lot of risk from yourself because the risk of, well, we're going to make bad decisions about this
Carter
35:15
this person is removed because you're actually assuming that they're going to be at their very best, the top of their game, and that helps you tremendously. So I think that those are both really
Carter
35:26
really good pieces of advice.
Zain
35:28
Before I move it on to platforms and kind of tie it into what got me thinking about this segment this week, which was that Jagmeet Singh TikTok, which I want to discuss. In a bit, not a bit of detail, but just want to do a drive by on it.
Zain
35:41
Have you guys had any candidates who have, you don't have to name names, but have either rejected a brand that you have tried to develop for them, or on the contrary, have taken on a brand and have kind of become the brand and has surprised you and being like, holy shit, like I made this as a as a reach goal. And they're now like, living up to it. I'm just curious, like your experiences on that before before we move on. But I see, Corey, you smiling. So I don't know if you want to add to either of those two.
Corey
36:07
My experiences are much more the former than the latter. You build the brand and the candidate may not even realize that it reflects them a little bit more than they think it does. Right? Because sometimes we have our own blind spots there. Or more likely, and maybe a better way to put it is, you've identified something that they're weak in and the public thinks they're weak in and they think they're strong in it. Like, they are on the wrong side of Mount Stupid on that particular matter, right, with the Dunning-Kruger effect. So that's been more my experience. I have worked
Corey
36:40
worked with people either in a political context or otherwise who are just
Corey
36:45
just phenomenal at being what they need to be in the moment. I don't want to pretend like I've only worked with duds. Quite the opposite. I've been very lucky. I've worked with some very smart leaders in my time. But that tends to be more like moments of brilliance that are rooted in an attribute they actually already have rather than them taking on something that's not them at all. That's
Corey
37:05
That's not really been my experience.
Zain
37:08
Carter, on either of the two sides, candidates rejecting a brand you've developed for them or a swim lane you've developed for them from a branding perspective, or candidates saying, sure, I'll take this brand on and surprisingly living up to it or making it the focal point of their not just persona but personality going forward? And either of those experiences?
Carter
37:29
Yeah, I think that we've had both of those experiences. I mean, Alison Redford is a pretty good example of someone who had a brand built for her that she rejected. She absolutely did not want to be the mother
Carter
37:44
mother of a young daughter, daughter of aging parents premier. She wanted to be the premier that said – that
Carter
37:50
that was the international premier, traveling around the world and bringing her brand of knowledge of the world to Alberta
Carter
37:59
Alberta and taking Alberta out to the rest of the world. That was a brand that – it's
Carter
38:04
it's too bad because I think that the brand was one of the strongest brands we made. None of those things was not true.
Carter
38:10
Alison was the mother of a young daughter, was the daughter of aging parents. And those things helped get her elected because those were authentic. But she preferred being the international premier and ultimately
Carter
38:24
ultimately was her undoing. And I think that to a degree, you know, Nenshi is the same, right? We created this brand of him being the smartest guy in the room, right? He was the smartest candidate. date um
Carter
38:37
you know to his detriment i would suggest to his detriment he has embodied embodied that that brand uh in the 11 years that he's been been the been the mayor um as
Carter
38:50
opposed to being for example the team maker in the room or you know like i think there are other things that he could have been uh that that if he'd embraced the fullness of his brand instead of just one element of his brand. He would have been a stronger leader.
Zain
39:04
I want to move it on to tactics. And this is where the initial question around the landscape of this particular election kind of opens up on the tactical side of things. Corey, I want to start with you. Jagmeet Singh on TikTok is doing a bunch of memes, seeming to be celebrated amongst a very small, but I'd say passionate group of young people who want more progressive policies in this country. um but do
Zain
39:27
do we have a red line in in in politics like he manages that account himself the meme i'm referring to if you've not seen it before i don't know how to describe it cory you are also on tiktok so maybe able to describe it better but it's a meme where like there is uh you ask a rhetorical question and then this really serious music kind of comes in and you kind of like then make that serious point it's really hard to explain i wish i did a better job but the way way this one starts is that he's in bed and then gets up in bed to make that serious point about why the liberals voted down on on the pharma care uh bill that was put in front of them so i want to talk about like political red lines on platform do you feel like trigmeet singh is reaching close to it or do you feel like no dude if this is you keep doing it
Corey
40:09
i remember seeing his tiktoks in the um the last election and they
Corey
40:15
they are very faithful to the the memes that are out there he's he's the platform i agree
Corey
40:19
well he's very good at jumping Jumping on what they're actually talking about at the time, the memes that are actually rolling through with relatively little leg. I mean, for a politician, almost no leg. Sometimes you'll see a politician toss up a meme and you're like, everybody stop talking about that. We've moved on.
Corey
40:33
We've moved on. You haven't. You've actually said something about yourself different than what you wanted to say. And in that sense, I think, hey, good for him. He sort of gets it. I mean, it's ultimately, in my opinion, actually not the most creative
Corey
40:47
creative version of TikTok, really, just to take whatever's out there in the zeitgeist and do your own political version, which is a little bit snarkier and targeted. I don't love TikTok for politics. Actually, it reminds me, Carter's right when he says it's a little bit like Twitter in the sense that Twitter
Corey
41:02
Twitter was a place where you didn't have these angry partisan dust-ups. And when it first started, when there were all of these politicians on it throwing out their talking points, the first reaction of the Twitter community was, don't ruin Twitter, right? Like, don't bring this political bullshit into Twitter. And now I think Twitter is synonymous with political bullshit. So this is the arc that these things take. But I am at least personally still sort of in the don't ruin TikTok with your bullshit sort of phase. So I guess ultimately as a consumer of the media, I'm not in love with it. And I think there's a risk that there are other people who feel the same way.
Corey
41:37
I don't know. But on the other hand, you've got to kind of push these boundaries. This is what's
Corey
41:41
what's expected. And this is how you build these new channels. I'm sure there were a lot of people who hated when Bill Clinton was on Arsenio Hall, right?
Corey
41:51
Don't ruin Arsenio, some people probably said. But now we think of it as a masterstroke. So it's just part of the push and pull of politics. And it's good that somebody in Canadian politics is trying to push that envelope because you don't see as much of that these days as you used to.
Corey
42:05
I don't love it personally, but I'm not the intended audience. Carter, why don't
Zain
42:09
don't we see as much of it? Corey brings up a really good point. We used to have this golden era of political communications experimentation, new platform out, people would do stuff. I don't see a Canadian politician hosting anything on Clubhouse just yet. I don't see, you know, this political experimentation, it seems to be playing much, much safer. I'm kind of curious to get your thoughts as to as to why you're not seeing an era of experimentation and content creation in domains that may be less popular, but may have promise.
Carter
42:41
It's about risk versus reward. I mean, why would you go on to a platform with virtually no listeners, nobody who's going to be voting on it, and make a significant test,
Carter
42:51
test, right? Why would you do that when you can screw up and really embarrass yourself when if you're on a good platform, like you're reaching people through TikTok, or you're reaching people through Twitter, you're reaching people through Facebook, book you're
Carter
43:06
you're reaching people through um you
Carter
43:09
you know other mediums you don't have to start up a podcast i mean just because joe biden started a podcast why didn't he just go on pod save america right why didn't he choose other mediums that were already in place right and i'm not suggesting that you know jagmeet singh needs to get on to other people's tiktoks for him to be successful but i just don't think that the risk versus reward is proportionate um the odds of him him fucking up are much higher than the odds of him nailing it.
Carter
43:35
So I think that TikTok especially is a tricky one. Video is hard. You still don't see a lot of people on YouTube. You even saw Aaron O'Toole screwing up with his video of Justin Trudeau in that port-a-potty. It's still easier to screw up than it is to absolutely nail it.
Zain
43:54
Corey, do you think it's the same, the risk-reward ratio? Is it just a simple calculation as that, which has kind of led to less experimentation by by political figures, or at least from the party side, political leaders, so to speak? Do you kind of credit it to that, perhaps?
Corey
44:11
A little bit. I would maybe put it a little bit differently. There is a pendulum that swings between experimentation and not. You tend to experiment more the further you are out of office, and you tend to not when you're in office. And then there's kind of a broader arc as well, where parties are more likely or less to get involved in these things based on parties getting burned in these things when they do take on some of these experimentations
Corey
44:35
experimentations and they become the cautionary tales for everybody else and i would say right
Corey
44:41
right now we are probably in an epoch
Corey
44:43
epoch where people are less likely to experiment there's a couple of reasons for that and as
Corey
44:48
as a result you're only going to see somebody who's in the third place party really swinging for the fences like that and the way jagmeet singh is so yeah
Corey
44:56
yeah i I think there's a lot of truth to that. And the problem with this era that we are in is that it's not just a question of looking foolish. It's also a question of, as a political organization, is this where you are going to put resources? There
Corey
45:10
There are so many flash
Corey
45:12
flash-in-the-pan things that come around and don't turn into anything. And if you're a political party, you do not want to be investing any time or money in those things, building those things. and i think there's just got to be a bit of a settling out before people start feeling more comfortable i don't have a clue if clubhouse is going to turn into anything tiktok
Corey
45:29
tiktok looked like a pretty wild bet a while ago the fact that it is a thing is hilarious it it started as an app not even named tiktok that was people lip
Corey
45:40
lip-syncing to music was it not musically but prior to that's right it was yeah yeah yeah
Corey
45:44
so you know we're in um you know we're in an environment where That's putting a chip on the board, but the board is a roulette wheel, and you're picking a number from 1 to 36, and that doesn't always seem very smart.
Zain
45:58
I'm going to ask you guys some advice for each of the three leaders in a moment, but I want to try to get a few political tactic questions out of the way. Stephen Carter, one of the big questions that I always get when I have people asking me for advice if they're running a campaign for a candidate is, can staff manage platforms, or do leaders have to be? And I'm curious, the rules have been written on this, but they're flexible, right? And like in a 2021 world, if the account is in the name of the person, should they be running it or is it OK for staff to run it? Do you feel like the rules have changed? That's my first question I want to pose to both of you.
Carter
46:33
Yeah, I think the rules have changed. I think the rules have changed because of advertising.
Carter
46:36
So, for example, Facebook, Facebook especially is an advertising vehicle for campaigns. pains the the stuff that goes up there you know it there's much less interaction that's not managed by staff i mean comment comment fields like it's just such a fucking cesspool no one's no one's really like you have to be part of your own little group to get positive stuff so facebook i think is managed by staff a lot um i think instagram is managed by um staff sometimes but the better accounts are managed by the individual. I think Twitter is managed by the individual because it is so reactionary and it is so dangerous. You definitely don't want to be the staffer who posts, you know, fuck my life. I just hit all the, what was that one? Fuck my life with David Swan. That
Corey
47:28
That was, there was a blizzard in Edmonton in
Corey
47:31
May or something like that. And David Swan was He was the leader of the liberals who were the official opposition at the time. And his EA woke
Corey
47:39
woke up, looked outside, had the very reasonable reaction of, oh, my God, look at this, took a picture with FML. David Swan didn't even know what FML was. And there was so much chatter, though, of people thinking David
Corey
47:52
David Swan was really cool. Yeah. And he apologized profusely.
Carter
47:57
But I do think that Twitter is risky. And so because of that, I think that most candidates run it by themselves with input from staff.
Carter
48:06
but you know, if you're going to do Twitter, TikTok, those immediate reactionary type of things, it is far better for them to be run by people who are at the very least very, very close, um, to the, uh, to the candidate.
Carter
48:19
I want to know, you want to know, this is a little bit of a, of a segue
Carter
48:23
segue off into the world. I want to know about the
Zain
48:25
the AstraZeneca and what it's going to mean for Canada. Yeah, no, go ahead.
Carter
48:28
ahead. You know what I want to know? I want to know how the approvals get made on the Washington Post's TikTok account.
Carter
48:33
Why? Because it's fantastic. And it's very much in the it to me, it is actually one of the most interesting accounts. And if you could hit that information level, as a politician with that level of entertainment, it'd be money in the bank. If you haven't looked up the Washington Post Twitter, TikTok account, please do because it is amazing to me. And I don't know how they do it. I don't know what the approvals look like. like. But that
Carter
49:01
that to me would be the only example of any major brand or any major entity that's using TikTok properly. The rest of the time, I'd stay the fuck away from it if I was a candidate right now.
Zain
49:13
Interesting. Corey, I'm going to ask you that same question. Have the rules changed in 2021 around candidates managing platforms with their names on them?
Corey
49:22
Yeah, I think as people become more savvy about social media networks they are much more forgiving for staff managing it because there's just an appreciation that people see behind the curtain you can't play the wizard of oz anymore and so if you're a candidate who's always got a bunch of on-point tweets and is going back when you're say for example in the house of commons or the legislature people are going to know that it's your staff anyway so most most of the ones that i i think do a good job say you know it's managed by x and staff allows that kind of plausible liability on both accounts and moves on.
Corey
49:57
Carter is right about the level of hazard being higher on the different media and different media are more personal. I mean, Marshall McLuhan made that point a long time ago. Carter just got to repackage it for the 21st century here. And we
Corey
50:10
we are in a position with TikTok, which is video, which is short, which is in many ways reactive to those memes. That is quite personal. I think it would be very difficult for staff to manage that one. And part of why the Washington Post works, by the way, on TikTok – and you should follow the Washington Post on TikTok. They are great. The guy, Dave, who runs it, I
Corey
50:29
think of it as Dave's account as much as anything. That's right. He does a great job of bringing it. And he will interview – and interview is not even the right word. But there will be cameo appearances from other people in the Washington Post in the TikTok. But he's the personality that carries it. It's
Carter
50:43
It's amazing. He's done an amazing job of it.
Zain
50:46
Corey, I'm going to stick with you. You know, one of your points that you made earlier was, and tell me if I am paraphrasing this incorrectly, but you said that you want to ultimately do things where you have a disproportionate advantage towards, right, as a candidate, especially amongst others. What does that mean around tactics on platforms? Like, if you feel like your team is not Jagmeet Singh and as good as him on TikTok, using that as an example, and you're a team O'Toole, do you just bypass it? And what does that kind of mean as it relates to that advice extending out to platforms and where your voice is? And, and maybe the heart of that question is, are there some table stakes in a 2021 campaign environment that you have to be on, uh, regardless of how good you might be versus the other guys in the race, quote unquote.
Corey
51:28
Yeah. Well, so let's zoom out a tiny bit for a minute. And there's another reason why Jagmeet Singh's on TikTok. And that is because the demographic he's after is on TikTok. I don't think Aaron O'Toole being on TikTok makes any fucking sense. Totally. And so there's a certain reality, and it all ties into the strategy, right? So when you're looking at the tactics you want to use, it's not just what you're good at, but it's also how is it going to connect with the audiences you are trying to get. And that's an important point, Zane. I think so many people think, yeah, they would be a sparkling personality on X, but X is not where the fish are. They're fishing in a pond that is totally barren for them. And it's something that political parties need to keep in mind.
Corey
52:05
It's not to say that it's only left-wing parties that tend to use these things, because that's not the case. I think we all know that Trump just cleaned the Democrats' clocks in a lot of online environments in 2016 and probably again in 2020. But you do need to know that there's a product market fit because otherwise, why are you wasting your time there? Does anybody want to see you on this particular channel? And that's important to keep in mind as you're building out these strategies. So would I recommend Aaron O'Toole be on TikTok? Probably not. I haven't seen his strategy. I don't know what he's up to. Would I recommend Justin Trudeau be on TikTok?
Corey
52:43
Maybe. Maybe. Depends on if those are demos that he's intending to play for this particular election. But Jagmeet Singh makes perfect sense. It makes absolute sense. You look at the demographics that the NDP are pulling right now. You look at NDP support amongst 18 to 24-year-olds, for example, which, as we've talked about, that can be a lot of young energy for a campaign. Makes a lot of sense.
Zain
53:06
Carter, same question to you around table stakes for platforms. Is there such a thing as table stakes for which platforms you have to be on in a 2021 environment? Or do you think it's all dictated by the strategy and it's all flexible, that if you have a candidate, I'm making this up, and they could be like, you know what, Facebook and Twitter aren't for us. I don't know who that candidate is, but the heart of my question is, are there table stakes for platforms that you have to be on in this in this 2021 world facebook
Carter
53:32
facebook twitter instagram that's like saying i'm not going to do tv radio or print right so uh those to me are are absolutely must do's now i think that the you know uh the clubhouse instagram instagram
Zain
53:47
instagram free so must do oh
Carter
53:49
oh absolutely especially if you're trying to appeal i mean it is a very strongly female audience and it's a very very different world than Facebook, even though it's owned by Facebook. And therefore, the advertising on it is also outstanding. So you can do a bunch of advertising tie-ins and promos around good posts and things like that. I think those are table stakes. Everything else is riskier. YouTube's fascinating because YouTube's a very watchable medium, but it
Carter
54:19
it now is a very high production level uh if you go back youtube in 20 i
Carter
54:25
i don't know 2007 2008 2010 when did it come online i don't remember but early youtube reminds me actually of early tiktok of tiktok now right the quality didn't need to be there the it could be short it had to be short um now it has to be long and and so it it it's it's a very hard medium to be on tiktok's a hard medium to be on video Video itself is a hard medium to be on, and
Carter
54:50
and I'd stay away from lives unless you're really good at lives. So Facebook Live and Instagram Live are
Carter
54:58
two of the bigger ones and two of the better ones, but you've got to be really careful.
Carter
55:02
Lives are when mistakes get made. Jason Kenney is probably the best at using lives because he knows he can speak to his audience directly, and that keeps him out of a lot of trouble with speaking to the general population directly.
Zain
55:17
Corey, I'm going to start with the candidates and just as we close off this segment, any strategic or tactical advice that you have for any of them? Let's start with Justin Trudeau. You've already kind of given a bit on maybe on TikTok, but any sort of broader advice you may have for him as his campaign looks to position him and his brand for his third election sometime this year or next year?
Corey
55:43
my advice to all three is is basically the same assuming you're going to take us through a tool i am tool and sing too which is you first need to define your accessible voter universe so not the people who always love you and not the people who always hate you but the people who you could persuade to vote for you or you may fail to persuade that group is all that matters and you've got to kind of cast the other two aside you've then got to look at all of that work i I recommended you do on brand ahead of time, and you've got to narrow in on that persuadable audience and say, what are they looking for in a brand? That's really what you've got to focus in on when I say, what
Corey
56:18
what does the public want in a leader? Because ultimately, that is the public you are playing for. It's a much smaller subset of the population than absolutely everybody. Can
Zain
56:26
Can I ask you a clarifying question on that particular inquiry?
Zain
56:30
when do you have to lock that in, what people want? Is that something you can have in real time that you're kind of, I'm not saying responding to in terms of what people want, but how do you kind of lock that in and make a decision that's saying, okay, I think we've got a good sense of what people want? Is it six months before? Is there a timeline that you kind of lock it in? Or how do you kind of grapple with that? I'm curious.
Corey
56:52
That work never ends. You should be doing that work on an ongoing basis, watching how your brand evolves, and you should be willing to adjust if that makes sense. Now, obviously, the closer you get to an election, the more collateral that's built, the more the platform is constructed. You've got to consider the change costs there. But you also need to know that even if it's incredibly difficult for you to do, but it's an absolute mandatory because of the way things have changed when you start tracking all of your brand,
Corey
57:19
brand, the reaction to the brand, the environment overall, the reaction to your opponents, sometimes you've got to make that hard pivot at the last minute. It's very uncomfortable, but c'est la vie.
Corey
57:31
so assuming that you have looked at what people think of you looked at what people think of your opponents looked at the environment overall come up with a group of people that you think you can be this person for and
Corey
57:43
and then you say where do they live are they on twitter are they on tiktok are they getting all of their news from the newspaper are they getting all of their news from leaflets that show up in their mailbox because they couldn't be fucked otherwise to care about politics. Whatever the answer is, that's where you are. And that's it. It's not hard. It's hard actually to stick to it, but it's not hard to conceptualize or do.
Zain
58:09
Carter, same question for you. I might just, to Corey's point, package all three leaders together. If you've got standard advice, top line advice that might apply to all three, or then maybe more specific nuanced advice to one or two of them, if you've got that as well.
Carter
58:22
Corey's question about where Where does the audience live? Where is the audience going to get their information from? That is fantastic. And that is the open question for me. I actually don't know the answer to that right now because there seems to be a very huge sub-segment of the population that isn't getting their information from sources that we can track at all, right? Like they may answer surveys that they're getting their information from Facebook or they're getting their information on television or they're getting their information on newspapers. papers but when you look at the survey information and then compare it back to the actual viewer numbers it doesn't make sense there's a there's a disconnect and i suspect that what's happening is that people are getting information i call it through osmosis is not really they get information through their social networks and how do you manage their social networks which social networks are you actually trying to influence uh so if you're trying to influence the group of people who are sharing like there's a there's a great left-wing uh tiktok community uh in alberta they are are putting up excellent content it is very watchable it is uh entertaining if you want them go get them or better yet just get them to to talk on your behalf i i just think um
Carter
59:33
it's about finding the social networks and getting them to communicate on your behalf now so and and that that's probably the hardest part of the social media environment is that is that shareability right and that's where the authentic nature must come through uh because otherwise it's not going to be uh shareable so i i this is why i lean very heavily on on instagram and facebook a very shareable mediums um instagram
Carter
1:00:00
instagram if you put the right content up uh very very shareable uh but right now it's it's still hard to figure out how to do political content um that people even want to be within 100 yards of i'm i'm really interested in where are people getting their information. I don't think, I
Carter
1:00:17
I think that people are, and this is maybe a bit dangerous to say, I don't think people have been less informed than they are now because they're actively avoiding information where they used to, at the very least, flip through the newspaper occasionally and see headlines. Now I think they're trying to actively avoid information.
Zain
1:00:35
We'll leave that segment there on that optimistic note, Stephen. Thank you for that. Let's move it on to our final segment our over under and our lightning round cory i'm gonna start with you trump has said at the cpac conference that he's ruling out a third party he wants to have a stranglehold on the gop overrated or underrated overrated
Corey
1:00:56
overrated since when have we given a shit about what donald trump claims he's going to do he's a fucking sociopath steven
Zain
1:01:05
steven carter same question Donald Trump saying that he does not want to start a third party. He wants to have stranglehold on the GOP, overrated, underrated.
Carter
1:01:13
Underrated. I think this is a huge problem for the GOP. It doesn't know what it wants. You know, the voters want Trump and Trump's a lunatic. And now how is the GOP ever going to get out from under his thumb? I don't know how they do it.
Zain
1:01:27
You know, this week, Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau met as the first meeting of foreign leaders. Carter, these meetings of foreign leaders, overrated or underrated in your mind?
Carter
1:01:37
Underrated. I think the world is a very, very small place right now. We talked last week about China and a coordinated response to China. This is how those coordinated responses get done. The G8, you know, the big meetings, the big, you know, everybody gets together in a room, that work was done six months before. And getting the work done, getting the relationships with the world leaders, There's very, very important underrated work by world leaders.
Zain
1:02:06
Corey, meeting with foreign leaders, overrated or underrated in your mind?
Corey
1:02:11
Underrated. I mean, ultimately, relationships
Corey
1:02:13
relationships matter, even in international affairs. And the fact that our leader gets along with the leader of the United States is an important thing, and it will pay dividends big and small over the next four years.
Zain
1:02:26
You know, Corey, the conservatives are heading into a policy convention. There already seems to be some chatter about it. This is the Federal Conservatives, of course, with some of their more moderate stalwarts within the party, including former Deputy Chief of Staff, Janine Byrne, losing their delegate spots for the policy convention coming up. So the question I have for you, policy conventions for political parties, overrated or underrated in your mind?
Corey
1:02:51
Overrated. Now, that's not to say this one couldn't be a giant embarrassment for Aaron O'Toole based on what he's trying to do and how he's trying to moderate the Conservative Party, because it does seem like there's going to be a significant social conservative contingent that may do
Corey
1:03:05
do their very best to rebrand the party away from where Aaron O'Toole is trying to take it. That said, policy conventions pass policy from the party, which ends up in a binder, which ends up on a bookshelf in the leader's office, if
Corey
1:03:19
if they're lucky. More likely, it's down the hall in somebody else's office that somebody can go and get when necessary. It doesn't materially change
Corey
1:03:27
change the game. Platforms do not come from... Any relationship between a platform and a policy book from a convention is purely accidental. Parties like to make a big show of saying, here is the policy that we took from there, but it's only there if the leader wanted to do it in the first place. So they're overrated. Carter,
Zain
1:03:46
Carter, same question to you. Political policy conventions, overrated or underrated in your mind?
Carter
1:03:52
Overrated but risky. So Corey's right. I mean binders
Carter
1:03:57
binders of information of policies that have been passed prior to forming government or whatever, they're
Carter
1:04:03
they're never going to be used if they're not popular because ultimately political parties want to win. And this is part of the friction that happens between party loyalists and the general population that elect governments. So
Carter
1:04:17
So this one I think is risky though. I mean, so while they are overrated, they can occasionally blow up on you and turn into a fairly important media cycle. So this one could blow up. So while they are underrated, it could still cause pain.
Corey
1:04:32
Yeah, parties have a lot of weight. I don't know how the CPC handles all of this stuff, but parties have a lot of way to manage that chaos. Generally speaking, the two major tools are, one, the fact that voting is done in such a way that prioritization comes out of it. And what ends up at the top of that list is almost always, on purpose, motherhood statements, the things that get 80-20 votes, 90-10 votes, because all of a sudden that delta, that's what determines your prioritization in the policy book. So you can say, yeah, we accepted the top 10 policies, right? The other thing they have is the order that things are actually addressed in the room, whether there's time for it or not, right? So if something going into it is lower on the priority list, you may never actually get to controversial policy 525. Right. And it got to 525 because the leader's office decided to pull some strings and make that the case. Or they held that vote at the same time that there's an equally crazy social conservative vote in three other places. This is what you would do, at least in physical location. And everybody's going to have to split their way to do that. So you're less likely to have one of those votes rushed and more likely to have the general flavor of a more moderate convention carry it.
Zain
1:05:39
Carter, I'm going to stick with you for the next one. You know, on the heels of the Trudeau-Biden meeting, Trudeau was on Meet the Press this morning, on Sunday morning, U.S. news talk show. So the strategy, I guess the question I have is on the strategy of, you know, putting your leaders, or in this case, our Canadian political leader on American television. What do you kind of make of that? Overrated or underrated in your mind?
Carter
1:06:00
Underrated. I think you always do better with someone else's press than you do with your own.
Carter
1:06:05
You know, you're far more likely to get fawning attention attention from someone else,
Carter
1:06:10
else, especially when the media is
Carter
1:06:11
is so, you know, kind of take, it has been taken with Justin Trudeau in the United States and Western Europe for quite some time. So you may as well take advantage of that. It gets you better coverage. And it also allows you to give cover towards the other leader for agreeing with you, right? You want Biden to be on your side, Make it easy for him. Get out there and do some media and make it so that you're building the parade that he can follow.
Zain
1:06:42
Good answer, Carter. Corey, same questions here, overrated, underrated. The strategy of sending your leader to foreign media, in this case, meet the press with sleepy eyes Chuck Todd on Sunday morning.
Corey
1:06:53
I agree with everything Carter said, but I'm still going to say overrated. Ultimately, I just don't know how much people are paying that much attention. And that's one of those things that will matter more to the senders than the recipients, right? Like that's – America is a big country with an awful lot going on.
Zain
1:07:10
Final question, Corey. Once the writ is dropped, will
Zain
1:07:14
will Justin Trudeau have an active TikTok account? The big question that we need to answer. But give your prediction. Will Justin Trudeau be on TikTok by when the writ is dropped for our next election, whether that be this year or next year or whenever?
Corey
1:07:30
yes and his first tiktok will be shaving his beard oh
Zain
1:07:34
oh interesting i don't think it's going to be the case but i like that a lot i feel like you're just setting some channeling some content ideas to the pmo directly stephen carter the master of predictions when the writ is dropped will one justin trudeau have an active tiktok account no
Carter
1:07:52
no absolutely not it would be devastating understanding
Zain
1:07:58
we're gonna leave it there that's a wrap on episode 920 of the strategist my name is zane belchie with me as always cory hogan stephen carter and we'll see you next time