Exploring the American political divide and the role of great brands

In December of 2016, shortly after the divisive presidential election in the United States, HP’s PC marketing team was gathering to review a new campaign. We were still internalizing what the election results meant for each of us personally — and for the brand we represent.  HP prides itself in being accessible to everyone. Looking over the campaign creative in front of us, we couldn't help but ask: “Do we think the situation we are portraying here is relevant to the Trump voter?”  

That led to even more reflection: Can one “general” approach to marketing work across opposing political tribes? Or do we need different, targeted communication customized to each audience? Should we approach America’s political tribes the same way we approach marketing to different demographics or ethnicities? And more importantly, are there core values shared across these groups that we could address through our brand’s voice? 

These questions are uniquely important to the HP brand. Our heritage is fundamentally democratic and the history of cofounders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard is a quintessential story of the American Dream. If any brand has a right, even a responsibility, to play broadly to everyone here in America, it is HP. 

Over the next several months, we embarked on a market research journey that transformed both our team’s thinking and practice — from the way we gather our insights to how we develop creative to deepening our brand’s core values.

Redefining social listening

We started this work using a focused social listening technique. This was a necessity because we had very little research on our customers that shed light on the issues we were trying to address. We approached this by framing a simple question:  “What does reinvention mean to you?”

The idea of reinvention is core to the HP brand heritage and equity and framing the work through this lens was crucial. Our approach started with deep content analysis on the big social media platforms to classify people into groups who tended toward the political left and the right, respectively. Given the outsized role social media plays in today’s political debate, the amount of data and content created over the last couple years, this was not difficult. 

After classifying the population into those two groups, we dove into psychometrics, using the Big 5 psychometric categories along with geographic, income and education dimensions. Then we analyzed the content deeply to understand the core motivations within each of these groups.  It was a big data analytics project with human analysis overlaid to extract true insights.

Futurists vs. Nostalgics

As it turned out, the idea of reinvention is in fact at the core of what differentiates these two groups.

For those who gravitated to the political left (we named this group “A Better Tomorrow”), reinvention means looking forward to a better future. Their core belief is that the world is changing for the better. They believe in progress, technologically and socially; in breaking down boundaries and in reaching outward in search of new, better ideas to old problems. They see information, education and experience as a critical resource for themselves and for their families. They’ve shared in the material and career opportunity afforded by the economic recovery and tend to live and work with others who are equally fortunate. They lean in to technology, social media and to brands they choose to consume. They are intellectually curious and revel in cultural diversity.

For those who gravitated to the political right (“The Way We Were”), reinvention means going back to a better time in America. They are nostalgic for a simpler, more innocent time when Americans shared the same values and the same optimism. They’re “people-friendly” and compassionate by nature. They revere heroes, prize community and value lifelong relationships with family and neighbors. They believe in a strong center — a place defined by family, friends and long-term loyalties.  Faith informs them and provides them with an anchor; authenticity and heritage inspires them. They feel as though American culture has turned away from these core values to what they see as fringe issues driven by a small but vocal minority in the media, entertainment and politics. Those voices make them feel misunderstood and sidelined in the broader discourse. They also have seen their economic wellbeing deteriorate year-over-year with no end in sight.

The differences between these groups is evidenced across everything from their psychographics to lifestyles to media consumption.  

The best way to bring this difference to life is to imagine two people standing back to back in a roadway, one looking forward and one looking backward. For “A Better Tomorrow,” reinvention is transformation: moving ahead to a brighter future. It is fundamentally optimistic with a belief that we are moving forward in the right direction and our task is to accelerate. “The Way We Were” is looking backward to a time before America lost its way and ruined its promise. They believe reinvention requires a fundamental “reset” in order to return to the glory of yesteryear.

Sitting at the same table to find common ground

Armed with this understanding we set out to understand what could unify these two groups. The challenge as we approached this task was how to uncover unifiers underneath inherent negative emotion and conflict. If families are struggling to maintain civility at the holiday table how could we enable a productive conversation across these two groups? This challenge required us to take a very different approach to how we did the research to understand this issue.

Traditionally, we would have approached this study by hosting focus groups with each of the two customer segments, exploring solutions and comparing results. But now we knew that to truly gather breakthrough insights we needed to create a new kind of forum, one where the true emotion surrounding these issues could come through. To enable that, we conducted work sessions in Dallas, Detroit, Cincinnati and Richmond. These sessions placed both groups in the same room to discuss issues with substantial disagreement. In other words, we let them fight it out on the issues they were most passionate about. 

After an hour and a half of passionate (and sometimes chaotic) discussion, we gave our participants a simple (but not easy) task: Work together to identify things they agree on.  

Six areas of shared beliefs

To our great delight they rose to the occasion! The discussion was equally passionate and chaotic but rooted in a positive view of what they could accomplish and what they could work together on. There were six major areas of agreement that emerged:

1. Protecting loved ones

Both sides of the fence said that the safety of their children and providing for their future success was a top concern. They worry that the real world and the digital world are fundamentally dangerous places for their children and we need to address the underlying issues for the sake of the next generation. This extends from physical security in schools and in public places to protection from online bullying. They believe that our government has let politics get in the way of real solutions and perhaps the answer lies in grass roots communities coming together to make real change. 

2. Community and family

The power of community and the importance of belonging to a group of people who share similar objectives in the community is another shared belief. Communities have shared values, perspective and diversity. They are also fundamentally personal and connected.  As one of our participants said “it is harder to hate someone you know.” Everyone recognizes the importance of the core ideals of family, involvement and civic responsibility in the context of their communities. Interestingly, many of our groups agreed that family includes but extends beyond the traditional definition of the nuclear family in most communities.

3. National security

Fear of external forces that might affect our nation and our way of life is shared across both groups. All recognized that these threats aren’t as obvious as in the past, but they are clearly something we must address. Those threats include the threat of terrorism within our country, rogue nations that might instigate an attack and the threat posed by cybersecurity intrusions. The recent attacks from foreign governments on U.S. companies and on the U.S. election is seen as a major threat that we must address.

4. Economic success and pride of work

The dignity of work and the basic right of all Americans to support themselves and their families is highly valued across both groups. Having the ability to work hard and contribute to society is a commonly held and fundamental belief that is the bedrock of what all describe as the American Dream. There is a sense that the fundamental value of hard work is getting lost in our current culture and is replaced by a sense of entitlement. There is also a recognition that our culture values white collar more highly than blue collar vocations. For everyone, this is recognized and seen as antithetical to historic American values.

5. Health and wellbeing

There is major agreement that everyone in our country should be able to access quality healthcare when they need to. Many of our participants shared stories of people close to them who were facing difficulties or even financial ruin due to the high costs of healthcare. There is also agreement that the core problem is due to a healthcare system that is bloated, bureaucratic and more focused on profit than patient care. They see government as being complicit in this problem and are pessimistic that we will have a solution to this anytime soon. 

6. Pollution and the environment

Both sides of the political spectrum agree that we need to do a better job of managing the environment for the future. The fundamental shared value is the desire and need to protect the environment. It then becomes local and community based versus anonymous and global.  It is easy to debate and find alternative views for climate change, which is polarizing, but the fundamental rights of having access to clean water, safe food and clear air are commonly shared beliefs. 

Guess what? Listening matters

Perhaps the biggest insight we uncovered from our market research work came from our participants’ reactions to the sessions themselves. Everyone expressed gratitude for the opportunity to talk about these issues. They acknowledged the power of dialogue and conversation. People who began with diametrically opposed views left the rooms with a deeper understanding and empathy for each other's points of view.

Conversations are hard. They can be contentious, create conflict, infuriate, but they have power to do amazing things. All valued the respect shown for their perspective and the dignity that comes with feeling that you have been heard.

What this means for our work at HP

At its core, the HP brand story is what the American Dream is all about. It is the idealized promise that every American has the opportunity through hard work and determination to achieve success and upward mobility, and to build a life of prosperity and peace for themselves and their family.

With the learnings we’ve captured over the last year, we believe our brand can represent these ideals by reinforcing the idea of reinvention in the areas that are unifiers for our consumers. 

Practically, this means changing how we define our target audiences to include political identity as an element. We are treating it the same way we treat demographic breaks like age, income and ethnicity. Minimally, we will be intentionally inclusive to ensure we represent our customers broadly, and in some cases, we will create work specifically against one group or the other. 

We are also changing our research methodology to ensure we are covering both groups and will continue doing work that digs even deeper into the insights that drive each. This means pushing ourselves on how we gather data. Understanding customers at a human level by putting them in real situations was a major breakthrough for us in this work. The more we can understand the reality of people in their everyday lives, not only in their joyous and uplifting moments, but in the chaos and conflict that sometimes comes, we will be better able to build the emotional connections for the brand that will stand the test of time.  

But in addition to developing new approaches for our brand marketing (some of which was already evident in our recent holiday campaign), our deep dive into our shared national concerns, values and hopes has left us with a renewed sense of purpose.

We remain optimistic about the future, and look forward to continuing these conversations with our customers and clients for many decades to come.

—with research led by Rob Leonhardt, Americas Customer and Market Insights Manager at HP Inc.