Will Voters Choose Dems '20 Offerings, or Prefer GOP's Bill of Fare in '22, '24?

Joe and John Pizzeria, owners of a 50-year-old successful brand in Ridgewood, Queens, N.Y., never had any real competition until they sold the business in the mid-2000s. They knew two things about their company: make a great product and then get people to fall in love with it and become long-term customers of that product they love to eat.

This sampling idea can backfire, too. As the story goes, Piels Beer, a local NYC brewery in the 1950s, had a great advertising campaign with Bert and Harry as animated spokespersons for the brand.

The only issue was that buyers didn't like the beer. A great promotional campaign got their target market to sample the product, which was the problem. After sampling (testing) the product, they never repurchased it. Sampling got them to buy initially, but did not generate long-term brand loyalty.

Sampling has many meanings, especially in marketing. Here, it refers to trial usage with the intent of securing brand conversion. It's no secret that marketing tactics can only do so much. Despite what critics think, marketing can't get customers to rebuy what they don't like.

The current Biden administration can be analyzed utilizing this same sampling model. And when applying this construct, the results could be significantly more similar to Piels than Joe and Johns.

It is no secret that human behavior is often motivated by the practical rather than the ideological. So when Americans are polled on issues such as climate change, they are more likely to agree that they favor policies that restrict fossil fuel-based energy.

Green energy policy makes for great talking points on cable news shows and cocktail party talk but falls flat when prices rise because of noble but naive climate policy. Sampling gets Americans to experience first-hand the by-product of such green policies, and whether they like the taste of such regulations and their associated higher energy prices.

The southern border crisis is another example where sampling can ‌evaluate the fate of (political) buying behavior. Policy responses to the Russia-Ukraine war is a third example, while how the withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled is yet another sampling tactic where the American electorate can decide whether they like what they experienced using practical rather than ideological reference points.

These four policies offer voters apparent sampling alternatives to see what they like. Add to this how Trump critics who positioned his administration as chaotic seem not to be going any better.

And that's the power of sampling — tasting the policy first-hand and then deciding whether they like what they have experienced.

Voters will decide which policies they prefer by two distinctive administrations. Yes, sampling will determine which one they like — the practical one that works or the ideological one that works not so well.

The midterms will tell us what the outcome of this sampling will be: Piels Beer? Or John and Joe Pizzeria?

Marketers would bet on the policies that best satisfy the needs of most Americans. And it's why it is always easier to understand when one has marketing in mind.