▸ Key Takeaways
- The informal 2028 presidential campaign has already begun as potential candidates test messages, build donor networks, visit key states, and position themselves.
- Kamala Harris’s official Presidential campaign operation in 2024 dramatically outspent Donald Trump’s but still lost the popular vote, Electoral College, and all seven principal battleground states.
- Harris spent $1.176 billion through December 2024, while Trump spent approximately $462 million through the post-election reporting period.
- Money can magnify an effective campaign, but it cannot overcome confused positioning, an unclear Big Idea, or a weak Unique Selling Proposition.
- Harris struggled to present herself as the candidate of change while refusing to separate herself clearly from the Biden administration.
- Her fundamental marketing problem was believability: the campaign’s message frequently conflicted with what voters believed they were experiencing.
- Harris had sophisticated voter data, but possessing data is not the same as building a responsive database that generates action.
- Every response—from a petition signature to rally attendance—should move a supporter toward another measurable commitment.
- Conservatives, Republicans and Christians can oppose Zohran Mamdani’s socialism while learning from his integration of digital media, database acquisition, volunteers, community events, texting, phoning, rallies, and door-to-door activity.
- Micro-targeting fails when a campaign locates the correct voters but communicates an irrelevant or unconvincing message.
- Impressions, celebrity appearances, donations, calls, texts, and door knocks are intermediate measurements. Votes are the final measurement.
- The 2028 candidate with the most money will not necessarily win. The candidate with the clearest, most believable, best-integrated campaign may defeat a far better-financed opponent.
(Editor’s Note: For more than 25 years, I have been writing this newsletter, speaking at conferences, producing podcasts, and appearing in radio and television interviews.
But my perspective on this campaign comes from an even longer history.
For more than 50 years, I have led Creative Direct Marketing Group, a national advertising agency serving political candidates, entrepreneurs, businesses, and major corporations.
During that time, we have helped entrepreneurs become multimillionaires, small companies grow into large companies, and large companies become industry giants. Our work has earned 128 marketing awards, and we have served clients nationwide.
This article is based on those decades of experience in marketing, advertising, direct response, positioning, data, testing, and campaign strategy. My purpose is to identify the costly mistakes candidates must avoid—and the proven principles they need to compete successfully.)
The 2028 presidential campaign has already begun.
Potential presidential candidates are visiting early-primary states.
They’re testing campaign themes.
Developing platforms.
Building donor networks.
Expanding their social-media audiences.
And positioning themselves against possible opponents.
Most have not formally declared. But behind the scenes, the battle for 2028 is already underway.
Before any candidate spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to become president, they should carefully study one of the most expensive political marketing failures in American history:
Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Harris had almost every advantage the political establishment could give her:
- More money.
- More advertising.
- More campaign staff.
- More field offices in many battleground areas.
- Favorable coverage from most of the national media.
- Celebrity endorsements.
- Sophisticated voter data.
- An extensive Democratic Party organization.
Yet she lost to Donald Trump—despite dramatically outspending him.
Harris spent approximately $1.176 billion.
Trump’s principal campaign about $462 million.
These numbers are not perfectly equivalent. Both candidates benefited from political parties, super PACs, and other outside organizations.
Yet Trump won:
- The popular vote.
- The Electoral College, 312–226.
- All seven principal battleground states.
- The presidency.
The lesson for every potential 2028 candidate is unmistakable:
Raising more money and buying more advertising will not compensate for confused positioning, an unclear Big Idea, a weak Unique Selling Proposition, unbelievable messaging, or a failure to turn supporters into voters.
Here are nine marketing lessons every prospective candidate—and every Republican and conservative leader—should understand.
1. Modern campaign technology cannot rescue a flawed strategy.
The Harris campaign did not lack modern tools.
It used:
- Sophisticated voter analytics.
- Digital and television advertising.
- Streaming media.
- Social-media influencers.
- Text messaging.
- Phone banks.
- Field offices.
- Celebrity appearances.
- Large rallies.
The problem was not the absence of technology.
The problem was relying on modern technology without mastering timeless marketing principles.
Artificial intelligence, data modeling, micro-targeting, and social media cannot create:
- A clear position.
- A powerful Big Idea.
- A compelling Unique Selling Proposition.
- A believable promise.
- Effective direct-response copy.
- An emotional connection with voters.
- A persuasive reason to act.
Technology can amplify a persuasive message.
It can also distribute a weak message faster and more expensively.
2. Harris lacked one clear and motivating campaign theme.
A campaign theme is not merely a slogan.
It is the central message that defines the election, explains the stakes, and gives voters an emotional reason to act.
Ronald Reagan had “Morning in America.”
Barack Obama had “Hope and Change.”
Donald Trump had “Make America Great Again.”
What did Kamala Harris represent?
Joy?
Freedom?
Turning the page?
Protecting democracy?
Abortion?
Stopping Trump?
Continuing the Biden administration?
Her campaign used all these themes, but never developed one dominant, believable proposition that unified the campaign.
A presidential candidate cannot expect voters to assemble the message themselves.
If the campaign cannot explain its central theme in one compelling sentence, the average voter will not be able to explain it either.
3. Her positioning was confused and contradictory.
Positioning establishes the distinctive place a candidate occupies in the voter’s mind.
Harris faced an unavoidable strategic problem.
She needed to run as the candidate of change while serving as vice president in the administration voters wanted changed.
Was she:
- A continuation of Joe Biden?
- A repudiation of Biden?
- A progressive reformer?
- A centrist prosecutor?
- A candidate of stability?
- A candidate of change?
Her campaign never resolved these contradictions.
The most damaging example came during an appearance on The View.
Harris was asked what she would have done differently from President Biden.
She answered:
“There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
That was a devastating positioning failure.
Voters concerned about inflation, immigration, crime, foreign wars, government spending, or Biden’s leadership were given little reason to believe Harris represented a new direction.
Trump’s campaign immediately positioned her as four more years of Biden.
The marketing rule is simple:
If you do not position yourself, your opponent will position you.
4. Harris never developed a compelling Unique Selling Proposition.
The campaign theme defines the overall message.
Positioning defines the candidate’s place in the voter’s mind.
The Unique Selling Proposition answers the decisive question:
Why should I choose this candidate instead of the alternative?
Harris never gave enough undecided and irregular voters a specific, compelling, and believable reason to vote for her instead of Trump.
Opposition to Trump energized committed Democrats.
But “I am not Donald Trump” was not a sufficient USP for voters who believed the country was moving in the wrong direction.
Harris needed a concrete promise explaining:
- What she would change.
- How she would differ from Biden.
- Why her policies would improve voters’ lives.
- Why voters should believe her.
- Why choosing her would produce a better result than choosing Trump.
That proposition never became clear.
5. Believability became the campaign’s core marketing problem.
Successful marketing requires believability.
A campaign cannot persuade voters to reject what they see, feel, and experience.
Voters saw:
- Higher grocery bills.
- Higher housing costs.
- An uncontrolled southern border.
- Rising government debt.
- Crime and disorder.
- Wars and international instability.
- Joe Biden’s visible physical and mental decline.
Harris could not acknowledge these failures without criticizing the administration in which she served.
Instead, her campaign frequently minimized voters’ concerns, changed the subject, or presented statistics that conflicted with their daily experiences.
That created a fatal message-to-market mismatch.
It is not enough for a political claim to be technically defensible.
It must also be credible to the person hearing it.
When the campaign’s message conflicts with lived experience, the voter usually believes the experience.
6. Harris had voter data—but data is not the same as a responsive database.
The Democratic Party possessed sophisticated voter files and extensive analytics.
The real problem was not simply acquiring names.
It was converting information, advertising, enthusiasm, and contacts into enough votes in the places that mattered.
It’s making sure the target audience actually votes.
An effective campaign database should reveal:
- What motivated each response.
- Which issues matter to each person.
- Whether the person has been called.
- Whether the person has been texted.
- Whether contact was made.
- Whether the person supports the candidate.
- Whether the person has committed to vote.
- Whether the person will donate.
- Whether the person will volunteer.
- Whether the person will knock on doors.
- Whether the person will call or text others.
- Whether the person will host an event.
- What follow-up action should occur next.
A voter list is a collection of names.
A responsive database is the command center for identification, persuasion, activation, and turnout.
7. Conservatives, Republicans and Christians should learn from Zohran Mamdani’s database-first strategy.
Conservatives do not have to agree with a socialist’s policies to learn from a successful campaign.
Zohran Mamdani’s New York campaign understood how to turn attention into organization.
His campaign used:
- Social-media videos.
- Issue-based petitions to identify issues for microtargeting volunteers and donors.
- Website registrations.
- Donations.
- Canvassing.
- Geofencing
- Community gatherings.
- House parties.
- Rallies.
- Volunteer recruitment.
- Extensive volunteer training.
But the campaign did not treat a video view, petition signature, or rally attendance as an isolated event.
It used those responses to acquire supporter information and bring people into a campaign-controlled database.
A social-media follower could become a petition signer.
The petition signer could become an event attendee.
The attendee could become a donor.
The donor could become a volunteer.
The volunteer could make calls, send texts, knock on doors, recruit friends, or organize a neighborhood.
Mamdani’s organization developed more than 100,000 volunteers and knocked on approximately three million doors.
His campaign connected its digital operation directly to:
- Texting.
- Phoning.
- Door-to-door activity.
- House parties.
- Community events.
- Rallies.
- Volunteer development and financing.
- Voter turnout.
This is how a campaign turns an audience into an army and out of nowhere he created one… 100,000 volunteers.
Conservative candidates frequently hold enthusiastic rallies but fail to capture and activate everyone attending.
A rally should not end when the candidate leaves the stage.
Every attendee’s data should me collected. They should be invited to take a specific next action. The campaign should record that action, assign the person to the proper category, and continue developing the relationship.
8. Harris’s micro-targeting failed to produce an effective message-to-market match.
Micro-targeting involves much more than identifying voters by age, race, sex, income, geography, education, or voting history.
The campaign must understand:
- What is the voter’s key issue?
- What motivates each segment.
- What problem concerns it most.
- Which benefit will be persuasive.
- Which language will be believable.
- Which channel will reach it.
- Which call to action will produce a response.
Post-election research showed that Harris lost support among repeat Democratic voters. The anticipated surge of new and irregular Democratic voters did not materialize sufficiently.
She also struggled among working-class voters, rural Americans, men, younger voters, minority voters, and people without college degrees.
The campaign could identify many of these people in its database.
But identifying someone is not the same as persuading that person.
A 25-year-old man concerned about wages and housing does not respond to the same message as a progressive college graduate.
A Hispanic small-business owner does not respond to the same message as a Democratic Party activist.
A rural family struggling with food and energy prices did not respond to rhetoric developed by campaign consultants.
Micro-targeting fails when the campaign understands the database but misunderstands the people inside it.
9. Harris generated massive activity—but activity is not ROI.
The Harris campaign produced enormous activity:
- Hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising.
- Social-media views.
- Celebrity endorsements.
- Rallies.
- Field offices.
- Phone calls.
- Text messages.
- Donations.
- Favorable media coverage.
But an election is the ultimate direct-response campaign.
The voter responds or does not respond.
The ballot is cast or is not cast.
The candidate wins or loses.
Advertising impressions were not the final objective.
Celebrity applause was not the final objective.
Fundraising was not the final objective.
Votes were the objective.
Harris lost 312–226 in the electoral college.
She lost the popular vote.
She lost all seven principal battleground states.
It means the overall strategy failed to produce the required result despite its extraordinary resources.
Trump’s campaign was not perfect… far from it.
But Trump had one enormous strategic advantage:
Voters understood his positioning.
His fundamental proposition was clear:
Americans were better off during Trump’s first term. Biden and Harris produced inflation, weakness, disorder, war, and an open border. Elect Trump to restore prosperity, security, and American strength.
Voters could accept or reject that promise.
But they understood it.
Trump’s operation also concentrated on low-propensity supporters—people who favored Trump but could not be counted upon to vote.
His campaign and allied organizations attempted to identify, contact, and turn out those voters.
Harris spent more money communicating a less differentiated and less believable proposition.
The Warning Every Potential 2028 Candidate Should Hear
The 2028 campaign should not begin with massive spending.
It should begin with ten strategic decisions:
- Establish clear positioning.
2. Create one powerful Big Idea.
3. Develop a compelling Unique Selling Proposition.
4. Make a specific and believable promise.
5. Acquire first-party supporter data.
6. Record each supporter’s interests, behavior, and commitments.
7. Move supporters toward progressively deeper involvement.
8. Integrate digital media, texting, phoning, door-to-door activity, gatherings, and rallies.
9. Measure commitments, ballots, and votes—not attention and applause.
Kamala Harris proved that a candidate can:
- Raise more.
- Spend more.
- Advertise more.
- Hire more.
- Receive more favorable coverage.
- Attract more celebrities and influencers.
- Operate more field offices.
And still lose.
Train your volunteers – develop an army.
Money remains essential. But money magnifies strategy. It does not replace it.
Spend $1 billion promoting confused positioning, an unclear Big Idea, a weak USP, and an unbelievable message, and you do not have a billion-dollar presidential campaign.
You have a billion-dollar marketing failure.
What do you think? Email me at [email protected].
Here are 2 actions you can take now:
1. Are you a candidate—or helping a political campaign?
Winning requires more than money, rallies, signs, and social-media posts.
A successful campaign needs the right positioning, message, voter data, targeting, database development, advertising, and Get Out the Vote strategy.
For nearly 50 years, we’ve helped candidates and political organizations apply proven direct-response marketing strategies to reach, persuade, identify, and turn out voters.
We can help develop an integrated campaign—or provide specialized services such as:
- Geofencing and digital advertising.
- Voter-data analysis and micro-targeting.
- Campaign positioning and messaging.
- Database development.
- Direct mail, email, and text strategies.
- Fundraising and supporter acquisition.
- Volunteer development.
- Get Out the Vote campaigns.
If you are running for office or helping a candidate, contact Michael to discuss how we can help.
Contact Michael at 615-933-4647 or email him at [email protected] about a political campaign.
2. Learn what you can do to help rescue the American dream.
You do not have to be a candidate or professional political consultant to make a difference.
In my book, The Great Deception: 10 Shocking Dangers and the Blueprint for Rescuing the American Dream, I expose the threats facing America—and provide an action plan for responding.
The Blueprint explains practical strategies and techniques you can use:
● As an individual.
● In your church or community.
● As a volunteer.
● As part of an organized political campaign.
● To help identify, persuade, and turn out voters.
● To help principled candidates win elections.
If you want to do more than watch America decline—if you want to become part of the solution—get your copy today.
Get my book The Great Deception: 10 Shocking Dangers and the Blueprint for Rescuing the American Dream. Click HERE to order the book online.
You can order the book on Amazon HERE.
Or get the audiobook version HERE and on Kindle HERE.
You can also get an autographed edition online HERE or by phone at 615-814-6633 (M-F 10 am to 3 pm).
You can also send a check for $26.13 (including shipping) payable to Media Specialists and send it to this address:
Media Specialists
1313 4th Ave N
Nashville, TN 37208
FAQs:
Q: Has the 2028 presidential campaign already begun?
A: Yes, informally. Although most potential candidates have not officially declared, prospective contenders are visiting important states, raising money, testing messages, developing signature issues, expanding national audiences, and positioning themselves within their political parties.
Q: How much did Kamala Harris spend compared with Donald Trump?
A: Federal Election Commission filings show that the campaign committee Harris inherited from Joe Biden reported approximately $1.176 billion in total disbursements through December 2024. Trump’s principal campaign reported approximately $462 million through the post-election reporting period. The figures are not perfectly equivalent because Harris inherited Biden’s committee, and both candidates benefited from political parties, super PACs, and outside organizations. Nevertheless, Harris’s official campaign operation spent substantially more.
Q: Why did Harris lose despite dramatically outspending Trump?
A: No single factor explains an election involving more than 150 million voters. From a marketing perspective, however, Harris struggled with confused positioning, an unclear campaign theme, insufficient differentiation, a weak Unique Selling Proposition, believability problems, and an ineffective message-to-market match among essential voter groups.
More spending amplified the campaign, but it could not correct these underlying strategic weaknesses.
Q: What was Harris’s positioning problem?
A: Harris attempted to present herself as a candidate who would “turn the page,” but she was the sitting vice president and declined to explain clearly how her presidency would differ from Joe Biden’s.
This allowed Trump to position her as a continuation of the Biden administration rather than as a credible candidate of change.
Q: What was missing from Harris’s Unique Selling Proposition?
A: Harris did not provide enough undecided and irregular voters with a specific, compelling, differentiated, and believable reason to choose her instead of Trump. Opposition to Trump motivated committed Democrats but being “not Trump” was not a sufficiently powerful USP for every voter she needed.
Q: What was the Harris campaign’s believability problem?
A: Many voters were concerned about inflation, housing costs, immigration, crime, foreign instability, government spending, and President Biden’s condition. Harris could not acknowledge these failures fully without criticizing the administration in which she served. Her campaign’s message consequently conflicted with what many voters believed they were seeing and experiencing.
Q: Did the Harris campaign lack voter data?
A: No. The Harris campaign and Democratic Party possessed extensive voter information, sophisticated analytics, micro-targeting capabilities, and a substantial field operation. The more important question is whether the campaign converted that information into sufficient persuasion, supporter development, voting commitments, and turnout in the states it needed to win.
Q: What is a database-first political campaign?
A: A database-first campaign treats every supporter response as the beginning of a continuing relationship. Petition signers, donors, rally attendees, social-media responders, volunteers, and prospective voters are recorded, categorized, contacted, and moved toward deeper commitments such as donating, texting, phoning, canvassing, hosting events, recruiting others, and voting.
Q: What can conservatives, Republicans and Christians learn from Zohran Mamdani’s campaign?
A: Conservatives, Republicans and Christians can reject Mamdani’s socialist policies while learning from his campaign mechanics. His organization integrated a clear economic message with social media, first-party data acquisition, automated follow-up, volunteer development, community events, rallies, texting, phoning, and door-to-door canvassing. The strategic lesson is how to turn an audience into an organized, measurable, and deployable movement.
Q: Why is political micro-targeting sometimes ineffective?
A: Micro-targeting fails when a campaign identifies the correct voter but delivers the wrong message. Successful micro-targeting requires more than demographic or behavioral selection. The issue, benefit, language, proof, media channel, and call to action must match the concerns and motivations of the targeted voter.
Q: What should potential 2028 presidential candidates do now?
A: Potential candidates should establish clear positioning, develop one powerful Big Idea, create a compelling Unique Selling Proposition, make a believable promise, acquire first-party supporter data, organize supporters by interests and behavior, develop volunteers, integrate digital and field activity, test messages, and measure voting commitments and actual turnout—not merely money, attention, and applause.
About Craig Huey:
Craig Huey is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and publisher of The Huey Alert and Direct Marketing Update. He is also the author of The Great Deception: 10 Shocking Dangers and the Blueprint for Rescuing the American Dream, exposing the lies of socialism and defending America’s founding principles. Craig appears on national media such as FOX, FOX Business, Newsmax and more. He also co-hosts The Huey Alert Podcast with his wife Shelly and helps business leaders, Christians, conservatives, libertarians, young people and more understand the intersection of faith, politics, and freedom.