Lanna Hill: Trump victory shows need to understand the ‘other side’

Being touted as the most remarkable political comeback in modern US history, Donald Trump’s election victory will continue to send shockwaves and stimulate conversations worldwide for weeks to come, and here in Australia, we are no different.

As a Trump victory started to look more and more likely, my social media feed started filling with posts and stories of outrage, sadness, despair and disbelief.

And I get it — I am far from a Trump fan. In my opinion, he stands for so much of what is wrong with the world, politics, and society right now and I know I’m not alone in that sentiment.

However, when I look at his campaign and victory through a more objective lens, it’s sadly quite clear how Trump was re-elected despite the significant case against doing so. There is much to be learned from this, not only in the context of our upcoming Australian Federal election but also as it applies to any brand or campaign.

Two things that Trump did exceptionally well, and his opponent Kamala Harris, did not, was having a clear and consistent message and knowing his audience. His appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast and bromance with Elon Musk, to pick two iconic moments from the campaign, were bullseyes in terms of brand and audience alignment.

The consistency created trust, and if not trust, certainly a sense of predictability that ultimately played a pivotal role in his victory. Americans could see what another Trump presidency would look like, and voted accordingly.

If we zoom out on the US for a moment and zoom in on the macro issues facing Australia over the next 12 months and beyond, we need to take as much as we can from this result, regardless of political leanings.

Whether it be last year’s No vote for the Voice referendum, the rates of violence against women, or the sobering statistic that Australia has the biggest gambling problem in the world, the evidence is clear that as a country, we are failing at influencing collective societal change.

Our campaigns aren’t working. And while saying that certainly oversimplifies these unarguably complex issues and how difficult it is to create long-term, systemic change, the truth is that we won’t change outcomes by spending more time within our own echo chambers.

We must seek to understand the “other side” in order to speak to them and ultimately influence them.

In a rare interview earlier this year, former prime minister Julia Gillard put it simply in discussing the challenges Australia still faces around gender equity.

“We have got to be self-critical and analytical about our obvious inability to take young men in particular on the journey with us”, she said.

Doing what we’ve done before won’t produce a different outcome. When we look again at Harris’s campaign, it’s quite apparent that aside from an ongoing lack of clarity around what she would do if she were to be elected, her campaign team failed to arm her with the messaging she needed to connect with the voters they needed to.

It’s time to get uncomfortable, put aside the outrage, and familiarise ourselves with the other side.

Lanna Hill is a strategist, speaker and founder of Leverage Media.