Yes. I know that isn’t a real word. It’s my mashup of one word I try to never use with Marshall McLuhan.
Marshall who? Here’s a short intro.
McLuhan was a Canadian academic who, in his 1960’s studies of the media, coined the phrase the medium is the message. McLuhan’s basic premise was that the way a message is delivered- the channel- is more important that the content or meaning of the message.
People quibble with this phrase, what media meant and means, and more. But it- and its inversion- ‘the message is the medium’- is more relevant today than ever before, especially when it comes to the guy in the White House.
It’s sad that McLuhan, who also came up with ‘global village’ and wrote extensively on many topics, has faded into the background even as his thinking resonates more in our daily lives. But that’s a topic for another time.
Early Media and Personal Branding
McLuhan coined his phrase when the traditional media of the day- print and radio- were slowly starting to lose their hold in the zeitgeist to a new medium- video/television. It soon made stars and celebrities of politicians, news anchors, comics, actors, and others and to define these people.
After all, it was a televised debate that helped a young, smooth and suave John F. Kennedy triumph over a sweaty Richard Nixon and his five o’clock shadow in 1960. Walter Cronkite was Trust. John Wayne was American Hero. MLK was Inspiration. Marilyn Monroe was Censored. And so on.
But it didn’t stop with branding. Public perception about the Vietnam war, Hippies, Watergate and so much more was also defined by the new medium. The message seemed pretty clear: you could now command attention, win a place in people’s hearts and minds, and become rich and famous just by dominating a medium and controlling what you let the public saw of you.
Is the message the medium now?
Fast forward to today, where we actually have an inversion of McLuhan’s phrase- it seems that ‘the message is the medium’ now. The content we consume now is short form, to match our interrupt dominated attention spans.
And, the number of channels available to distribute that type of content has grown exponentially- see FaceBook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, Quibi, and so many others. Perhaps that began with the rise of publications like USA Today (once derided as ‘McPaper’) and sound bite television news.
The rules of engagement have changed accordingly: to capture attention in these media, content must be voluminous but also short, sharp, focused, and, preferably, provocative. Only people of a certain age make the time anymore to consume reasoned, long form stuff. You can say one thing today and its polar opposite later- no one is going to remember.
McLuhan and Trump
Now, I have no idea whether 45 has even heard of McLuhan; but I do know that he has practiced his phrase to devastatingly good effect. He is many things, none of them good, but it must be admitted that he has always had complete mastery- and control- of the media.
This goes back to his man about town days in New York, when tabloids portrayed him exactly as he wanted them to (‘I am rich, successful, build palaces, bonk babes, and make good deals!’). Later, it morphed into television via reality shows (‘I crown winners!’). Now, of course it is Twitter (‘I’m the King of Truth and everyone else is fake!’).
Whether by design or accident, 45 has unquestionably learned how to be the message by dominating and controlling his media platforms of choice. Along the way he has relentlessly played all of us to march to his tune.
Personality Means Popularity?
Consider the data. Search for Trump in Google and you’ll get a staggering 1.4 BILLION hits- about the same as Obama (339 Million), Cristiano Ronaldo (262M), Kardashian (255M), Beyoncé (248M), Lady Gaga (210M), Oprah (71M), and Mick Jagger (37M) combined.
Famous groups like The Beatles and Rolling Stones get ‘only’ 181M and 215M hits respectively. You have to get to big corporate entities like Microsoft to match Trump’s hits and to Apple, Amazon, FaceBook et al to surpass them.
There’s some consolation elsewhere for folks like Obama, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Ronaldo, Lady Gaga, and Ellen DeGeneres- all of whom are followed more than Trump on Twitter, but with a much smaller gap than with the Google hits. Obama leads with 115 Million followers, Trump is ninth with 77 Million.
But none of this counts the millions of times media outlets around the world are forced to use his name- and that, folks, is called free advertising.
The TrumpLuhan Playbook
The question, then, is this: how on earth does a guy whose known primary talents are to bonk blonde and buxom porn stars and babes, run beauty pageants and reality shows, sell fake products, stiff people for services he procures, and take companies bankrupt, get to be the most powerful man on the planet?
You might say, well, precisely because of those talents. Fair enough but there’s something bigger here- and it’s what I call The TrumpLuhan Playbook.
This playbook provides politicians- actually anyone who is or wants to be in the public eye- with extremely effective ways to capture and sustain attention, distribute messages and control their constituencies; and, to become the message.
The TrumpLuhan Playbook has the following foundational components:
Play to your audience. Yeah, some people might read articles and sit through long newscasts and interviews but that’s so twentieth century and old folk. In the short attention span world, it’s so much easier to send hundreds of tweets, one or two sentences at a time. That’s actually about what people have time for. It’s also very useful when you know you’ve reached your capability limit for actually stringing coherent thought together.
Stay top of mind. Say something—anything. Make it provocative. Say one thing on television, backtrack on Twitter. It doesn’t matter what the topic is. Just poke the people and the media beast, and get them all riled up. They will respond by going ballistic, covering what’s said 24×7, and lighting up all their social media, making sure you’re mentioned in the news cycle all the time. The technical term is ‘received advertising’ and it’s impossible to quantify it, but it’s a lot.
Tack and deflect frequently. Who cares what you said or did even two hours ago? No one will remember if you drown it out or tweet that you didn’t say it. So, if you’re having a problem with one issue, throw something else out there, to make people forget the first thing. It works like this:
Bad news on the economy? Attack China. Bad polls? Attack the stinking fake news. Can’t get your agenda legislated? Attack the Dems and say they’re socialists. People losing their jobs? Attack immigrants and, you know, build the wall. Etc. Generally looking to blame someone? Go after BLM, LGBTQ, et al
Even better, you can can keep doing this- it’s pretty easy to rinse and repeat. Your people will people love it!
Repetition is the new reality. This is Advertising 101. If you want to make an impression and get people to buy stuff, you don’t run one ad in one publication. No one will notice.
No, you run campaigns and repeat the buy messages over and over; you double down and go large.
Ergo: Fake CNN! Failing New York Times! I had a perfect call with Ukraine! I built the best economy ever! I am a stable genius! Who knew Covid-19 would be like this! I inherited a military without ammunition and empty stockpiles! China is now my poodle! Everything was crap before me, and now it’s all beautiful! Really Beautiful. Etc.
If you say stuff like this enough times and keep saying it, all your people and a few others will believe you, and that means votes the next time you’re up for election.
Stage the show. Who needs pressers, where you are mercilessly interrogated by liberals, snowflakes, and commies? Not you.
Instead, do rallies, where you can control every word said. Do ‘made for TV’ snippets from government monuments (the White House helps) with all your surrogates in tow. Do interviews with Fox Trump News, who know how just much they owe us for their ratings. Why take on pain?
There’s probably more but you get the gist.
The TrumpLuhan playbook has profound and confounding implications for the media.
How do you do your job and not cover the leader of the free world? How do you cover all the deranged things he’s saying and not give them airtime? How do you do not expose his U turns, conflicting statements, and lies and not play into his hands? How do you deal with a guy who is canny enough to know that ‘the medium is the message’ and ‘the message is the medium’? Who knows all too well how to convert his playbook to precious, unpaid, coverage?
Yeah. I don’t know either.
So here’s my message to the media:
- Yes, you’ve been played, like the rest of us.
- This is the new normal.
- Good luck.
Also, please don’t stick pins in a Marshall McLuhan doll. After all, he was only the messenger—.
Go with Goebbels instead.
