Dean Phillips Presidential Campaign

Who is Dean Phillips?

In 2023, Alex and I, along with our wonderful group at Igloo Media (shoutout to the gang), were asked to direct paid marketing for Dean Phillips’ campaign during his run for President in the primaries. Now before I kick-off, it’s important to note, that prior to Dean, my general knowledge on US politics was very limited.

I’d had a short stint working with the wonderful No Labels Party, leading their animation project for a potential presidential candidate and had all but a few workshops to get myself up to speed. But, as a Brit, like a lot of the World, I was a sucker for mainstream media, crooked headlines and bias marketing. Nonetheless, I found myself asking the question, and it turns out many other Americans did too: “Who is Dean Phillips?”

Meet Dean

For context, Dean Phillips is a U.S. Congressman representing Minnesota's 3rd District since 2019. Dean is a member of the Democratic Party and an inspiring entrepreneur, notably having founded 2 monster businesses: Belvedere Vodka and Talenti Gelato. So the first thing I did, after gratefully accepting the role, was do a bit of research. I watched the All-In Podcast with Dean, read as many articles as I could and brushed up on American politics.

Dean seemed to have an energetic demeanour about him, and came across, at least from behind the lens as a motivated leader willing to risk a whole lot for what is likely to be a 2-person race. After Dean’s father died serving in Vietnam when he was 6 months old, Dean and his then single mother married Eddie Phillips, the heir to Phillips Distillery Company. Despite a privileged upbringing, Dean remains a humble guy, driving his “Government Repair Truck” to events around the state and hanging with folks from all walks of life. Moreover, his passion for building businesses was robust, and that certainly gave me a bit of buzz to take on the project.

5 things I learned when advertising for Dean

In this particular case, Dean’s success in the primaries was going to be defined by his performance in 1-2 states, starting in New Hampshire, the notorious battle ground for new candidates. Whether or not the campaign was a success would be determined by whether or not he could make a large enough impact over leading candidate and fellow Democrat, Joe Biden. For reference, we were contracted to operate the following three verticals: Google ads, Facebook ads and creative design (paid channels).

Here’s 5 things what we learned pretty fast:

1. Don’t believe what you see

After thoroughly analysing the creative libraries from Biden’s campaign, and other parties, we soon noticed that most of the imagery and footage live on Facebook ads were very data heavy and all entirely fake.

For example a picture of Biden on the podium with a bar chart and a caption that says “Only 1000 more votes to win!” or similar. So while Dean’s creative arsenal did involve some wonderful assets, advocating his actual political intentions, including a strong emphasis on healthcare reform, we had to, in order to compete with other candidates, “make up” statistics or write controversial copy that we know would generate clicks and donations instead of simply showcasing policy.

The reality is, there’s a large pool of people who are victims of propaganda, and even to this day, over 100 years since the concept was invented in American advertising, people will still believe almost anything they read. In retrospect, I wasn’t too surprised that other parties were lying on social media when we realised these assets performed better than creatives showcasing policy.

1. Money, money, money

As you’d expect donations are everything, and generating donations not only solidifies people’s commitment to your campaign and policy propositions, but your ability to actually stay in the race, let alone win. Political donations are funnelled through vehicles called PAC’s (Political Action Committee), that open up hundreds of millions of dollars in most cases for leading candidates.

For example Kamala Harris has raised $540 million in this year’s political race so far. Without any personal financial risk, the campaign can essentially spend every dollar they receive from the public on exposure through TV, social media and merchandise at a scale no other competing candidate can. Although, Michael Bloomberg’s attempt $1 billion, 180-day loss, will definitely go down as one of the largest financial flops in political history.

Dean, who was self-funding a large chunk of his race, profitability and longevity was at the forefront of his mind. While Dean’s digital advertising campaigns (Meta + Google), were actually profitable at the ad level, with a greater ROI than 1x, the variable costs outside of paid media, as well as fixed costs associated with his campaign, eventually made the journey unsustainable.

Despite notable donors including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman endorsing his campaign that same November, Dean’s budget was simply no match well-established political machinery and financial backing of his opponents.

1. Rapid Fire

Political advertising is fast pace. Why? Because every day, a new rumour, a new headline, a new allegation or a new mishap occurs with almost every candidate that’s in the race. Real or fake news, it doesn’t matter, news is ammo. Having a team that can turn around static assets, video edits, new copy, GIF’s or video mashups inside 24 hours isn’t fast enough. The designers, who feed off the strategists, need to design content, and deploy it to the media buying team within an hour or two of the first news headline.

You need to watch all news outlets diligently, 24 hours a day, to ensure you’re not late to the party. Especially if it’s breaking news about a rival candidate, assets that showcase their incompetence, will often drive effective traffic and more engagement through virality.

1. The Legal Engine: Policy Preservation

While Dean conveyed a pragmatic approach to policy and budget distribution, he was vulnerable to the legal engine of the Democratic Party and its well oiled policy preservation methods. Notably in October of ‘23, Florida Democratic Party’s executive committee voted to have only one presidential nominee run in the state primaries: Joe Biden. This was also neglecting the law set forth by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that the voting be distributed in a way that fairly represents the voters' chosen presidential candidate or their undecided status. Essentially, this means that if there’s another candidate people could and may want to vote for, they should be able to.

No Labels, a nonpartisan political party, previously set to run a Republican candidate, experienced the same issues, with complaints filed against them by democrats in AZ, claiming their beliefs and motives were’s truly nonpartisan. To Alex and I, it was clear that the Democratic engine was so centralised around preventing change within the party, that they allocate an entire legal vehicle to prevent even their own party representatives from behind considered, let alone run against the existing presidential nominee. Dean was to spend almost more time disputing legal allegations than conveying his intentions should he be elected.

1. Conflict and controversy wins

It soon dawned on me, that the whole political engine is driven by parties more likely to win through aggressive marketing tactics to generate handouts from folks they allegedly represent. No rule, no regulation, no policy will favor everyone, and that was the harsh reality that Dean faced. He took a middle ground approach in an environment that couldn’t support his hypothesis. Conflict thrives while logic dies, at the mercy of big media. If you’re not prepared to be aggressively left or aggressively right in your marketing strategy, you’ll be cast aside with the other normals.

An interesting study called The tribal instinct hypothesis, suggests that humans have evolved to be particularly sensitive to threats from out-groups. This sensitivity can manifest as increased aggression or hostility toward those perceived as outsiders, especially when influenced by propaganda that dehumanizes the out-group. It’s natural human instinct, going back thousands of years, to react to group conflict, and politics is modern carrier of this virus.

Study: Van Vugt, M., & Park, J. H. (2009). The tribal instinct hypothesis: Evolution and the social psychology of intergroup relations. In Intergroup Relations: The Role of Motivation and Emotion, 13-36.