Full disclosure: running a PR agency focused on the tech sector, political campaigns aren’t our main thing. As our tech PR services go, we usually stick to pitching reporters about large startup funding rounds, unique product launches, AI-powered this or that (and boy, do we get great results from all of our PR campaigns). The rough-and-tumble of politics is something I personally would rather deal with in no-stakes chatter over a couple of pints with fellow news junkies down at the Morrissey pub.
That said, there’s a USA 2024 election sucking all of the oxygen out of the room when it comes to trending news. So, we’ve been paying attention to what the big players have been up to.
We all know who the players are: from the Republican side, New York City real estate tycoon, alleged world champion of bullshit and unrepentant playboy turned reality TV star-turned MAGA candidate (and recent assassin survivor) Donald Trump.
On the Democrat ticket, we have the former progressive prosecutor, then liberal senator, now joyful Veep DEI hire and probable communist, United States Vice President Kamala Harris.
Now, what are the different media relations strategies we’re seeing from the Trump and Harris campaigns (and what can lessons can companies looking to build their brand with PR take away from this)?
To be honest, when I first looked at this, I held the same opinion as most people: there’s nothing in common between these two campaigns.
The more I look at it, Trump and Harris’ media relations strategies have a lot in common.
At heart, they’re both weirdly inspired by the same thing: contempt for (or at the very least, aloofness from) the legacy mainstream media.
I can already hear the groans of disbelief. I get it. You’re skeptical. But I can prove it.
Let me show you how the Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns are running a very similar media relations playbook.
Donald Trump says “fake news” a lot but he still craves (and gets) the spotlight
It’s no big secret that Trump hates the way he is treated in the media today (as opposed to the positive, or at least not openly hostile relationship he had with media before he was a Republican candidate).
Still, Trump seems to wish he could be friends with them like in the old days. (This clip of Donald Trump on the View in 2011, having a normal, friendly conversation with Barbara Walters and Whoopie Goldberg, seems like it’s from an alternate universe.) Late into his embattled presidency, it seemed like 99 percent of American media (outside of Fox News, The New York Post and, well… that’s about it) had openly and proudly formed a united front against his administration, with the New York Times leading the snarling pack.
For some that watch him go into (adversarial) interview after interview with hostile reporters, the old Charlie Brown with the football routine must run through their mind. The part of Lucy (who always grabs the football away at the last second) is played by every reporter who gives off any hint of friendliness at the start. It wouldn’t look good to bare one’s fangs and snarl from the moment the man walks behind a microphone. But it doesn’t take long before they’re ripping into the ex-President over supposed failings.
Is Trump really embattled or just his own worst enemy? A breaking Newsbusters report claims it might not just be a bias in the minds of MAGA supporters. According to this STUDY: Networks Deliver Massive Media Honeymoon to Kamala Harris: “Since Joe Biden exited the 2024 presidential race four weeks ago, the liberal networks have delivered an unprecedented boost of positive publicity to his successor in the race, Vice President Kamala Harris. Not only has Harris received 66% more airtime than former President Donald Trump, but the spin of Harris’s coverage has been more positive (84%) than any other major party nominee, even as Trump’s coverage has been nearly entirely hostile (89% negative).”
This finding is of a piece with media coverage we’ve seen for many years. Taking only demonstrable media hoaxes into account, there’s the Russian-Collusion hoax, that media pounded relentlessly for years (with zero apologies when the Mueller report ). The Fine People hoax (which US President Joe Biden perpetuated again, with no pushback, at the Democrat convention this week). The bleach hoax. There were plenty of others, big and small, but you get the idea.
Clearly, the overwhelming majority of people who work in the media are happy to provide the most uncharitable (and unethical) coverage of candidate Donald Trump.
So, what is Donald Trump’s media relations strategy?
It has two parts. The first one is perhaps the most counterintuitive media relations strategy: go into the lion’s den and take on adversarial media interviews. But he also goes around the legacy media when he can.
Let’s get into the first part of the strategy.
Trump takes on the media and it kind of works for him (in a way that few CEOs could pull off. But they might try)
Why would Trump (or in a similar situation, let’s say a startup CEO, bitten by a bad experience) willingly talk to a hostile reporter?
Keep in mind that the ultimate objective of any media interview is not really to speak to the reporter.
The goal is to get your message out to the audience.
Trump, as a candidate for President, simply must get out his supporters to help with the campaign, and rally his voters on election day.
A biased and hostile interviewer still provides an opportunity to get the word out.
(You might ask, with so many voters’ minds made up, why wouldn’t he just pull a 2020 Joe Biden and campaign from his living room? Seems like a lot less effort. But the Trump brand is basically that of a bigmouth, larger-than-life fighter who can’t be kept down. Hiding away in his house would actually confuse and diminish his brand, turning a close election into an epic defeat for him.)
But still, isn’t it risky? Even if you manage somehow to get a word in edgewise, if the reporter is going to interrupt, mischaracterize and even defame you in real time, how does that help you?
Look at how this interview kicked off recently: “TRUMP: Well, first of all, I don't think I've ever been asked a question so - in such a horrible manner, a first question. You don't even say hello, how are you? Are you with ABC? - because I think they're a fake news network, a terrible network.”
By coming out swinging, Trump defined the rules of the game.
He made it very clear that this would not be a “normal” media interview. This put him in some measure of control, which is a boss move, putting a reporter (who is normally in charge, by virtue of being the one asking the questions) on the back foot. He comes across as a decisive leader.
Most people, including his supporters, already think of Trump as a guy who does not hold back, to the point of rudeness. But by laying this framework down, he also defines the reporter as a rude, perhaps unprofessional person who, at the very least, should be scrutinized for any sign that he’s actually correct.
This candid approach can also be effective outside of media scrums, but it is incredibly easy to do with reporters in particular. That’s because reporters today simply do not have the reputations they had decades ago.
How does Trump get away with “attacking” journalists like this?
There was a time when this kind of interview strategy would have been almost unthinkable. That was back when “journalist” was seen as an overwhelmingly respectable, even honorable profession. There was a myth built up (and not just among journalists themselves) that they were a kind of combined intellectual private eye and righteous crusader, digging for the truth.
Today, trust in the media has tanked. Regular readers of news see reporters on every side as partisan hacks, on every major issue, big and small, from the economy to the environment, foreign policy, etc. (There’s not enough space here to get into why we’re at this juncture, but feel free to check out one of our most popular podcasts and opinion pieces ever, about why people don’t trust media. Suffice to say, the situation is as I have described it.)
So, Trump isn’t trying to convert viewers over to his way of thinking about the “fake news” media. At the start of a lot of interviews, he’s just reminding them what they already believe.
So, once he’s done the tiny bit of reframing at the start of an interview, he’s now ready to say whatever he’s ready to say.
If a reporter tries to “fact-check” Trump or just openly call him a liar, it doesn’t hurt him. The audience can put those contradictions aside and try to make up their own minds about whether anything he is saying is valid.
What does it mean for Trump to go around the legacy media?
As I mentioned, going into hostile interviews is absolutely part of Trump’s method for connecting with the people. But he also has a strategy to go around the legacy media when he can, but using the media when he can’t get around them.
A perfect example was Donald Trump’s recent 2-hour conversation with Elon Musk on X, which reportedly got 95 million views when it came out. Elon is many things, but he’s definitely not a journalist (and to be fair, this was billed as a conversation, not an interview.) More recently, Trump did an hour on comedian Theo Von’s podcast, which got 5.5 million views on YouTube alone.
Of course, Trump also has resources and channels that few CEOs in corporate America could match. Not many people have access to their own social media network (in Trump’s case, Truth Social) whose main selling point is that it’s the only place you’re going to see this person do social media.
By contrast, a legacy news network like CNN might get a few hundred thousand viewers all day long. (A stand-out exception to this was a certain exclusive debate on CNN in June featuring Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which garnered an audience of 48 million.) That’s not to say that all corporate media outlets are in the same boat, but… well, it’s tough out there. Independent media is definitely giving the old CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc. crowd a run for their money.
And Trump is famous for another way of reaching his audience: live events. His whistlestop tours across the USA bring in crowds that match numbers for rock concerts or football games. Say what you want about the man’s politics or personality: he knows how to bring and work a crowd (And yes, he’s apparently still doing this, though now behind bulletproof glass.)
It’s not just Trump. The Kamala Harris campaign is also going around the legacy media (and reporters can’t do anything about it)
Up until now, most of this deep dive has focused on Donald Trump’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work media relations strategy. But let’s look at where we are with the Kamala Harris campaign.
As noted earlier, with the Newsbusters study, it sure looks like Kamala Harris does not have the same problem with negative news coverage that Trump has to deal with.
It’s genuinely hard to imagine a credentialed journalist coming up to Trump and saying “I am struck, just in your presence!”
But that’s the treatment Kamala Harris gets in… well, in the opposite of a hard-hitting interview.
Given that advantage, you’d expect Kamala Harris to be doing multiple long-form, free-running interviews a day, where she can talk about her favorite things: electric school buses, the root causes of immigration, her economic plan, etc. Instead of talking from a teleprompter, she could be connecting in a more down-to-earth, 1-on-1 way.
Conventional wisdom certainly had it that if you want to connect with voters, they should see you as a real person who can confidently articulate your vision.
But instead of 1-on-1 interviews with friendly media personalities, Kamala’s most hard-hitting interview has been a seemingly scripted chat with… her own VP, about tacos, music and the future of America.
The venerable institution of Time magazine put Kamala on the cover with a slogan (Her Moment) and image that would have made Soviet propaganda poster designers proud. Even with that kind of fawning coverage, the writer of the article could not get Harris to do an interview.
Why is Kamala avoiding interviews when it’s clear she’d get a warm welcome and as positive a spin as she could hope for? Even the Washington Post, no friend of Trump, has called out Harris over this (gently) in recent days.
So, why does she continue to do this? It comes back to the thing I mentioned near the beginning: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have the same feeling for almost the entire media class: total contempt.
The media surely want to talk to her. They want to get the inside scoop on her policies. I’m certain that plenty of them want to, well, do journalism. Ask questions and get answers and then tell the world.
She’s ignoring them, because she can. Because she seems to know she can take them for granted and they will feel the pressure to do her bidding or get out of the way. (Curiously, this seems to be a habit of hers throughout her working life, not just with the media.)
Trump’s contempt for the media comes from righteous anger. It is motivated by pattern recognition. He looks back at an almost unbroken record (since he announced himself as a political candidate) of getting interviewed by reporters who hate his guts.
Harris’ contempt (or if you think that’s not quite fair, aloofness) towards the media doesn’t come from anger at past treatment. It comes from recognition that she (or at least her Democrat minders) has already achieved total control.
Harris is already assured of the media’s endless love and loyalty. She spurns them at no cost.
The Time magazine piece wasn’t the first and won’t be the last. New York magazine may ask How Long Can ‘Brat Summer’ Last? The vibes are good, but at some point, Kamala Harris has to leave her bubble. But it doesn’t seem like New York Magazine, or any other magazine, will force her to do so.
A shrug and a despairing note is as close as mainstream reporters will come to ever mentioning that she doesn’t show up for interviews involving tough questions.
And with the polls seemingly going Harris’ way, why would she change tack?
I expect the Kamala Harris campaign to continue to go around the legacy media, producing puffball “interviews” with friends and colleagues shared on social media. They can keep doing that until the election.
In the meantime, the fawning legacy media gets the job done with persuading Americans that Kamala Harris is a leader worth following. It certainly does seem to be working.
Startups: How to use the Trump-Harris media relations playbook
What does any of this have to do with media relations for your company?
Well, do you have brand recognition of Trump, perhaps the most famous man on the planet?
Does your company already have unwavering cheerleaders in the vast majority of newsrooms from coast to coast, like Harris?
Let’s be honest. Probably not. If your startup is really just starting out, your main challenge isn’t navigating hostile interviewers with an agenda or fending off love-smitten stalkers from the press corps, either. Your main problem is getting any attention at all that will help you connect with your audience - who should include customers.
But you probably have an advantage that neither of the leading candidates has in the 2024 US election.
That advantage is the flip side of your problem. We agree that not too many people already know about you.
I’m not saying it’s a great thing if you have no PR presence.
But if you have no PR presence, then this is the time to begin creating that brand identity on your own terms.
Why let others define you when you can take a page from Kamala’s Democrat minders and define yourself whichever way you want?
Before your first interview with a reporter, think how you might answer these questions:
What is your vision for your company? For your customers?
What’s different about your leadership style?
What’s truly unique about your products?
How is your technology innovative, in a way that’s likely to leave your competitors in the dust?
What’s the inflexion point where you made a choice that turned your company from an also-ran into a champion? How did you transform from a background NPC to Player 1?
What gigantic problems are you solving in a novel way?
What’s already in the news that people are dying to read about, where you have the expertise to insert your data-driven insights or spicy hot takes?
No reporter has heard of you? Fine, then. This is the time to define your story, your way. Think about how you’d answer these questions (or get a PR pro to help you talk through these tough questions in a proactive way).
Advanced strategies for using the Trump-Harris media relations playbook for crisis PR and more
What if your startup, or perhaps growing company (dare I say enterprise?) is already at the stage where your brand story is already on a firm foundation. You’ve got a solid product or service line, with repeat customers and real and growing revenue.
You’ve even managed to get a few earned media coverage pieces already. At least, enough media coverage to put an “As seen in” line on your home page with some fancy logos below from Business Insider, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, etc. Good on you! And now that you’ve got these wins in the door, maybe you’ve got a process (or a PR agency, with their own process) for adding to this earned media coverage over time with more positive stories.
That said, as any business grows, the problems it faces can get bigger. I’m not talking about anything illegal or villainous. I don’t expect your company to hit $5 million in annual revenue and suddenly you’re getting accused of stuff as bad as turning the nation’s border into a free-for-all for criminal gangs (like Harris) or ending democracy (like Trump).
But I am talking about crisis PR situations, big and small, that can have a measurable impact on your business.
Maybe your AI startup is getting accused of training your LLM off of stuff you don’t actually own. Or your slick two-sided marketplace platform is getting abused by scammers preying on customers - and now your name is getting dragged through the mud. Or you’ve gotten caught in a wave of inflation and had to raise app fees to stay in business - but now some people are calling your company greedy. And now, the reporter is on Line 1…
You might use the Trump media relations playbook to go into the lion’s den. If you believe getting in front of an audience is going to help more than it hurts, here are some of the steps involved:
Figure out your key messages. However long the interview goes, make sure you say what you need to say, so those quotes are most likely to get used. Practice internally, with a colleague, so that the exact wording you want to use rolls off your tongue.
If the reporter seems to be steering the conversation in a direction that could put you on unsafe ground, use bridging techniques like “Before we get off topic, I just want to say…” or “I get what you’re saying, but I think the more important thing to focus on is…” or “Look, I understand the story is complicated, but let me provide some facts.” There’s dozens of bridging phrases you can use - and which business leaders do use. Get acquainted with at least some of them.
Make sure you record the interview from your side. If a reporter invites you to a “friendly chat” and proceeds to edit the interview and remove context from clips in such a way that you get framed as a villain or weirdo, you’ll have the recording to share with the world on your blog or social media. If this seems like a weak defense because the reporter naturally has more reach, it’s actually the opposite. Any reporter caught out being unfair or unethical can become a much bigger story. Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy took a flamethrower to The Washington Post after a hit piece using this exact method, gaining a bonus to his reputation while leaving other reporters on notice to not try any shenanigans.
There’s a lot more to crisis PR than that, but those tips should help you get started with managing those bumps in the road.
Don’t like hard questions or unpredictable interviews? This Kamala Harris trick could work for you
What about the old “no comment” trick? Can’t you just pull a Kamala Harris and sort of pretend the media doesn’t exist?
You could.
There’s a risk with the “no comment” strategy in that now the (possibly hostile) reporter will frame the story in a way that makes you look bad. And some reporters can get annoyed at companies that pull a “no comment” move. You might turn a reporter who was genuinely looking for information with an open mind into someone who is going to feel compelled to dig deeper in order to say negative things.
Remember, going into an interview is your chance to define your own story. Pretending you’re not in when a reporter calls, or just saying “we have no comment at this time” loses that opportunity for you.
On the other hand, “no comment” could work like magic.
The reporter is on a deadline and can’t get commentary from anyone else and their editor just kills the story. So, are there any other sources you think the reporter might seek out? What’s their relation to you?
“No comment” can also be a viable strategy for those who haven’t had time to put together their key messages. If that’s the case, get cracking on those key messages.
Or maybe, even with amazing messaging, you just don’t have a leader who is good in front of a microphone or camera. They have the Kamala Harris teleprompter addiction.
If that’s the case, start media training for the leadership team, yesterday. These kinds of skills need to be in play for leaders.
Now I don’t want to convey that most reporters are looking to nail you to the wall the instant your company gets review bombed or hits a bump in the road.
The truth is really the opposite. A lot of reporters are looking for positive stories and will give you the Kamala Harris treatment if you’re ready with expert tips and timely insights when they need them.
Probably 99 percent of our PR agency’s media hits for clients involve us newsjacking a trending story and throwing a CEO’s hot take at a reporter who covers that beat. Reporters are incentivized to be nice (or at least not hostile) to organizations that want to provide sources and expertise, because they want to go back to those sources if they need quick answers on a deadline.
Can startups and scale-ups use the Trump-Kamala play of going around the legacy media?
Absolutely. And you should.
Keep in mind that the mainstream legacy media still has a lot of sway. Earned media coverage in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post or the L.A. times has a certain “ooh la la” that most blogs or podcasts can’t match. The reason companies hire PR agencies is to get the news that brings the credibility that helps them sell more. And it works like a charm.
As a PR agency, our main thing is reaching out to legacy media outlets like Forbes, USA Today, Newsweek, TechCrunch, etc. across the tech and business world. We pitch them all the time and it gives us a warm feeling in our hearts when we actually get clients into the news (We love you! Keep doing what you’re doing!)
That said, our world is changing. The most popular news app on the planet isn’t the mobile version of the New York Times or the Economist. It’s X (formerly Twitter). Back in February, Elon’s X app became the most popular news app in the USA. By the summer, it had become the most popular news app in over 140 countries.
In the podcast world, Joe Rogan routinely gets 10 to 15 million viewers for each episode he puts out. You’ll recall that CNN’s viewership is measured in the hundreds of thousands (all day).
I’m not saying you can forget about PR and just start throwing posts up on X and that will solve all your brand challenges. And I’m definitely not telling you that all you need to do is call up Joe Rogan and he’ll hook you up. But I am saying that if you want to get your message out, the easiest way is to start creating content and putting it out on channels that you own. It’s a low barrier to entry to put up content on a blog, or join a podcast, or start sharing links to your thought leadership over X or other social platforms.
This is not a new message, exactly. Social media has been a buzzword for many years. But a lot of companies are frustrated from putting in effort and not seeing meaningful results.
I can tell you that going around the legacy media does bring results if you have data-driven, insightful things to say. Instead of just pitching big media outlets and reporters, we’ll also reach out to niche publications (usually digital-only) or podcasts. If putting together your own vlog or podcast seems too intimidating, that’s fine (for now). Get started by joining someone else’s show.
But hold on… why invest that kind of effort? There’s only one Joe Rogan (or Tucker Carlson if you want to discuss the new top dog of podcasting). Very few podcasts do big numbers. Why record something for an hour or two (or five) if it looks like only 100 people might see it?
My recommendation is to look at it the way Trump and Harris look at it. Going into a long-form conversation (instead of a 2-minute or 5-minute interview with a reporter) gives you the chance to tell your story in a revolutionary way. You’re not limited by the abbreviated format or technology anymore. You can say exactly what you want to say, how you want to say it.
In an interview with a reporter, there’s usually no time for deep context. It’s about getting your talking points out as fast as you can, before you get cut off. In a podcast or on a video show, your story is literally what you make it.
That’s why our PR clients absolutely love getting into podcasts. They also love getting earned media hits in big outlets. But we often hear from clients after a podcast that “the experience was so fun. I want to do more of that.”
It’s just a deeper and more meaningful way to communicate.
So just like a candidate running for the job of leader of the free world, get out there and tell your story in new ways. As Kamala Harris might say, look at what can be, unburdened by what has been.
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