With more than 1,000 Inman posts, Bernice Ross is a long-time contributor whose weekly column on real estate trends, luxury, marketing and other best practices publishes every Monday.
With last weekâs kickoff rally for Donald Trumpâs re-election campaign and two nights of televised Democratic debates this week, the 2020 Presidential campaign has shifted into high gear.
What if you could predict the outcome of the 2020 election today using a simple model that has worked in the three presidential campaigns? More importantly, what implications does that model have for your real estate business?
When the Democratic presidential contenders take the stage this week, much will be made of how they came across on the debate stage, their positions on various issues and how successful they were in attacking President Donald Trump.
Moreover, early polling numbers are showing Trump is behind in key states to many of the Democratic front-runners.
But what if none of these things actually has any bearing on the outcome of the election?
The American culture code for buying: Hope, dream, and fix It
Clotaire Rapaille is the marketing genius behind some of the most successful ad campaigns in history. He is known for advising politicians and advertisers on how to influence peopleâs unconscious decision-making.
Fifty of the Fortune 100 companies are his clients, and theyâre willing to shell out top dollar to uncover what motivates their clients to buy their products, or what motivates people to vote for a specific candidate in an election.
Two of his books Secrets of Marketing in a Multi-Cultural World and The Culture Code, outline what really motivates Americans (and people from other cultures) to buy specific products and services.
The three primary culture codes that cause Americans to like or purchase a product are âhope,â âdreamâ and âfix it,â according to Rapaille.
Whatâs fascinating is that several successful presidential candidates have picked up on the importance of this code. President Bill Clinton was the âMan from Hope.â
President Barack Obama authored a book called Dreams of My Father and his campaign slogan was âHope and Change.â Both were completely âon codeâ for persuading American voters to vote for them.
As I looked at the 17 Republican contenders for 2016, the only candidate who was on code was Trump. Unlike Hillary Clinton, who used âStronger Together,â âIâm With Her,â and âFighting For Us,â Trumpâs âMake America Great Againâ slogan was on code for âfix it.â
Based on this one fact alone, in September 2015, I made the following prediction that I never thought would happen:
Trump is playing the fix-it card with relish and could very well ride âfix itâ all the way to the White House.
One thing that is for certain is that Trump is deeply entrenched in sticking with the âfix itâ code for 2020: Immigration needs to be fixed, infrastructure needs to be fixed, the opioid crisis needs to be fixed, as do the cost of prescription drugs.
At his rally Orlando rally last Tuesday, he asked his supporters if his slogan for 2020 should continue to be, âMake America Great Againâ or âKeep America Great.â The crowd chose âKeep America Great.â
At first, I thought that Trump had wandered off code. However, Rapailleâs research shows that Americans rate companies that have problems and fix them higher than companies who get it right the first time.
Part of the appeal of Amazon, Costco and Nordstrom is that when something isnât right, theyâll âfix itâ by letting you return it and/or refunding your money.
Handicapping the 2020 Democratic presidential race
Assuming Rapaille is indeed right and Americans will decide 2020 based upon who is âon code,â the candidates who will gain the most traction will be those who use âhope,â âdreamâ and/or âfix it.â The winner will be the one who best articulates one or more of these codes.
So far, the only leading Democratic presidential contender who even comes close to this idea in terms of a campaign slogan and messaging is Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachussetts, whose slogan is: âWe Will Rebuild The Middle Class.â
That message was part of her launch video and is part of her campaign rallies. The New York Times Magazine ran a cover profile of her just this past weekend with the headline: âElizabeth Warren has an answer for everything.â
The messaging is so consistent, and the plans are so wide-ranging that it all caused the comedian Ashley Nicole Black to joke on Twitter: âDo you think Elizabeth Warren has a plan to fix my love life?â
Warren has laid out her own plans to help Americans with their student loan debt, with their housing costs, to cope with the opioid crisis and to address the cost of prescription drugs â unlike many of the other Democratic candidates.
The important thing to note is that while sheâs talking a lot about fixing things, her message isnât quite on code. âRebuilding the middle classâ implies it needs improvement, but it doesnât quite imply that it was broken and needs to be âfixed,â a subtle but important difference. As weâve seen in the past, unless the message is exactly on code, it likely wonât work.
If Warren does indeed âget on code,â an even more interesting question is what happens if two or more candidates use different codes to compete against each other? Will they be the final front-runners going into the Democratic convention? Will their âcodesâ outweigh Trumpâs use of âfix it?â
Takeaways for your real estate business
While all of this is interesting, how does it translate into your real estate business? Here are several examples of how to integrate these codes in your own communications and marketing campaigns.
1. Youâre not selling real estate â youâre selling the âdreamâ of homeownership.
Here are three examples:
- For first-time buyers: âThe dream of owning your own home.â
- For buyers purchasing a vacation home: âThe vacation home you always dreamed of owning.â
- For buyers purchasing a residential lot: âThe home youâve always dreamed of building.â
When you use the word âdream,â youâre creating a âbrightness of the futureâ scenario. According to Rapaille, as compared to Europe, the U.S. is a young, optimistic, forward-looking country. When you work with most buyers, theyâre excited about buying that next home and dreaming of what their life will be like when they finally own it.
2. When things go wrong, use âfix itâ
Long before I ever heard of Clotaire Rapaille, I discovered that if I was dealing with an angry client or there was a problem in one of my transactions, one of the best approaches was to do the following:
- First, never say, âIâm sorry.â When most people apologize, they try to explain away what they did or justify why their position is right. Either way, you only make the other person angrier.
- Instead of apologizing or explaining, ask, âWhat can I do to fix this?â The benefit of using this approach is that it shifts the other personâs focus from what is making them angry to helping you look for solutions to their issue.
Keep in mind, according to Rapailleâs research, Americans rate companies that fix their problems more highly than those whose products donât have any problems.
Iâm curious to see who among the Democratic contenders will be on code.
Remember, that ultimately what your clients will remember is what you do, how you connect with their hopes and dreams, and what you do to fix it when there is a problem.
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Bernice Ross, president and CEO of BrokerageUP and RealEstateCoach.com, is a national speaker, author and trainer with over 1,000 published articles. Learn about her broker/manager training programs designed for women, by women, at BrokerageUp.com and her new agent sales training at RealEstateCoach.com/newagent.