"Ad Age is no stranger to adversity," Bradley Johnson, Ad Age's director of data analytics, writes in Downtime Opportunity: 2020 Edition, his comprehensive white paper on how the marketing and media industry met the challenges of the deepest previous economic downturns. (The white paper is available for purchase here; it is free for Ad Age Insider subscribers.) "We began publication less than 90 days after the stock market crash of 1929. One thing we’ve seen over the last 90 years: Remarkable innovation occurs in the worst of times."
With a contentious presidential campaign (mostly) behind us but a deadly third wave of the pandemic just upon us, it is fitting that the most turbulent year in memory ends amid chaos, confusion and something resembling hopefulness. The previous preview of Downtime Opportunity compared and contrasted the ups and downs various industries faced the last time a presidential election took place during a downturn—the Great Recession of 2007-09—with today's economic climate.
Among the brands that rose from the ashes of the Great Recession (or came to dominate their respective industries in its wake): Facebook, Tesla, Netflix, Hulu, Airbnb, Uber, Square, Venmo and Slack. A quick scan of the headlines, not to mention your daily routine, shows the impact these brands have had on all our lives 12 years after a presidential ticket with Joe Biden first won an election.
Other similarities between the post-election period in 2008 and 2020: a sense of hope and change mixed with a lingering feeling of dread and peril.
Both Democratic victories made history with Barack Obama as the first Black president in 2008 and Kamala Harris as the first Black, Indian American and woman vice president this year. And both victories were greeted with rapturous celebrations by the respective tickets' supporters (in Biden and Harris' case, literal dancing in the streets), not just in the U.S. but around the world as well.
'Brand relaunch of the year'
A Nov. 10, 2008, Ad Age headline credited Obama with "An Instant Overhaul for Tainted Brand America," commenting on the beating America's global reputation had taken after George W. Bush's unpopular Iraq War.
"The election and nomination process is the brand relaunch of the year," David Brain, CEO of Edelman Europe, Middle East and Africa, told Ad Age. "Brand USA. It's just fantastic."
"Most people outside the U.S. have viewed the last few years as a case of the U.S. against the rest of the world," said Ian Thubron, exec VP, Asia/Pacific at TBWA Worldwide, Hong Kong. "The feeling is that America has changed with this election and will become a safer place for all of us."
That sentiment could be quoted verbatim today regarding Biden's win from various world leaders and U.S. allies alienated by Donald Trump's stated America First philosophy, not to mention his affinity for authoritarians like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "Welcome back America!" Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, tweeted when Biden was declared the winner.