Kamala Harris’s $1B Campaign: Where Did It All Go?

There are numbers out there from a marketing standpoint on the ad spend, the Democrats versus Republicans. Who do you think got a better return on ad spend?

Well, that was obvious. It's Republicans.

But okay, let's just look at this ROI, right? So Kamala Harris's campaign spent $1 billion. They went $20 million in debt. And then Trump, I think he did about $350 to $380 million or something like that. And he still had surplus left over where he went to the Democrats and said, hey, I'll help cover your costs there just to make things right because we don't want to— we need to be united, right? And so you remember this? No.

How can you be $20 million in debt?

How are they allowed to? What do you mean? They're $20 million behind. They didn't pay some of the vendors, dude. They were paying like, I think they paid Beyoncé like $10 million or something. The Call Her Daddy set. So they flew her in. They didn't want to do it at her studio. So they fly in to Washington, DC. They built a set for her. The set costs $100 grand. It didn't even look like it was worth $100 grand, right? So there's just a lot of bad spending through the campaign. That led to their— I mean, so it just goes to show you that no matter how much money you spend, it's not about how much money you spend sometimes, it's how efficient are you with your marketing. That's what we're trying to get at, whichever side you're on.

Yes.

And I think it's also a good time to say, I don't know about you, I made a video for my entire team. I'm like, guys, it doesn't matter which side you're on. Like, some of you might be really happy right now, some of you might be really sad. But what matters is we put one foot in front of the other. And we will just worry about what we can control. There's no use in just Getting crazy. Sure, you can be maybe sad a couple of days or so, but there's still people now to this day, right now we're 2 weeks removed and there's still people going nuts right now. Guys, it's, it's, I hate to say this, but whichever side, like when, when, when Biden won back then or when Trump won back then, it's like the world still moves on and you got to move on.

Yes, it's life and you got to deal with it. And in life there's things that go your way and there's things that don't go your way, but that's reality.

Yep. And the thing is this, right? I talked about this with, with, um, my CTO. We're just like, You know, no matter who's the president, like, it's not going to affect us that much in the long run, right?

So Goldman Sachs went on TV because both the candidates at the time were making claims. And Goldman Sachs had, I think, their chief investment officer, one of those C-level titles, but it was a fancy person who's really well-educated, smart with the economy. And they said, we do see there a differentiation in the economy with each candidate. Right, depending on who wins, it will be a slight adjustment to economy. And when they're asked on CNBC, what's the difference? And they said, either one is negligible. It's less than a percent difference.

Yeah.

Like, you have to realize it doesn't matter what each of them say. You got to get all those things passed and you got to get people to agree upon them. And it doesn't matter if it's a Republican or Democrat, a lot of people in the same party won't agree with everything.

Yep. All right, so I wanted to take a second to tell you about the Agency Owners Association. So this is an agency peer group ran by my podcast co-host, Neil Patel, and myself, Eric Siu. These were 9 and 8-figure agency owners respectively. And what I will say is at the end of the day, you wanna learn from people that have been there, done that. If you wanna grow your agency to 7 figures, 8 figures, and beyond, this is the group for you. And we bring in other agency owners to speak as well. And it's a great peer group where you can help each other out. And you're gonna learn how to acquire more clients. You're gonna learn how to take yourself out of the day-to-day and to build the business of your dreams. And the cool thing, till November 30th, we are holding a special price and you can apply at marketingschool.io/agency. And the great thing about it as well, if you try to get into Groove, there's a 7-day free trial, right? So once November 30th hits, we're going to increase the price by $200 per month. So right now you're getting it at the lowest price possible. So go to marketingschool.io/agency to learn more and we'll see you inside. There's an interesting post here from Brian Halligan, one of the co-founders of HubSpot. So he said election winners, number one, Prediction Market. So like Polly Market, right? So Polly Market had predicted weeks before 65% Trump is going to win, right? And then the guy, the super rich French guy bet like $30 million.

Yeah.

No, I think he won.

Was it he won?

He won $30 million. He bet $30 million.

I thought his profit was over $30 million.

You could be right. I could be wrong. You could be right. Because I remember my cousin actually bet on one of the— he bet on Trump winning, right? I was going to say one of the candidates. And he bet $7,000 and he won $20,000 in profit. Yeah.

I remember reading an article saying some whale in France, they wouldn't say how much he bet, but they said he won $30+ million.

So election winners, prediction markets like Polymarket. Number 2, podcasts for sure, like Rogan, for example. 3, social, like X, right? 3. Sorry, election losers would be 1, ABC, NBC, CBS. 2 would be CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. By the way, Fox is more right-leaning. The others are more left-leaning. Then 3 would be pollsters. Pollsters would be like the experts, right? The experts are usually wrong, right? I think Balaji Srinivasan had predicted this maybe 4 to 8 years ago or so. It's just showing now that the next time they're going to do an election, I guarantee you both sides are gonna go on a podcast tour hardcore. Podcast, respective podcast tours hardcore.

Yeah, and CNN is supposedly making some cuts because they had terrible viewership during the election.

Who was, who was selling their publication? Comcast was offloaded.

MSNBC is selling.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And wasn't, uh, someone trying to buy it? Was it like a joke that Elon wanted to buy it or something?

They put that out there, but there's no substantiated facts or evidence or whatever you want to call it that Elon's actually trying to buy it, but people are just trying to throw out Rumors out there that he's going to be the, uh, the buyer. But yeah, so Comcast is, uh, splitting up some of their divisions. I believe CNBC, MSNBC, uh, is it called OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a few others. And they're trying to figure out, uh—

They're trying to offload. And then there's some that are like CNN's making cuts, right? It just goes to show you that things aren't— traditional media, it doesn't work as well. What happens? Why is it not working as well? Why is not— why are not many people watching? One, the average age is about 60 years old or so. So my parents still watch the news, right? But when you have a product that's not as good and people don't feel like they can trust you anymore, then they're going to go somewhere else. And they're going to go somewhere else where they're going to get their own information and they're going to learn to think for themselves.

I actually think it's bigger than that. I think the real reason all these channels aren't gaining the viewership is the cord cutters. If you look at the penetration of Netflix and Disney and Hulu and all these apps, it's caused people to not watch regular TV as much.

I don't disagree with that, but also the product sucks.

The product sucks, which is why you got the cord cutters. Exactly. And you're just watching the other stuff. So their viewership has been down for a long time.

Yeah. And it continues going down and to the right.

All right.

That is it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io/agency. And guess what? Neil and I, we're doing a session, a private session with the group tomorrow. marketingschool.io/agency. And we'll see you tomorrow.