Did Psychographics Make Trump President?

Arguably, one of the most spectacular marketing successes this year was the election of Donald Trump. Many are still puzzled how such awkward candidate could win. End of last year, a Swiss magazine offered an interesting, but daunting explanation: London-based marketing and data service provider Cambridge Analytica's huge analysis of American voters' social data, the Psychographic profiling of millions, and the corresponding micro-targeting advice to Trump's campaign team was decisive for the tight victory.

Cambridge Analytica's alleged involvement in the Brexit campaign and Steve Bannon as board member certainly make the story a thriller. While it is not possible to prove or disprove the claim without access to the corresponding data (and there are quite some doubts in place), the interesting message is: Social Data powered Psychographics could have made Trump President; and it will without a doubt be key to target and convert individuals in the future. This is why I put Psychographics as first P in the 10P of Digital Marketing.


Psychographics, according to Wikipedia, is "the study of personality, value, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles". One well-proven method of studying personalities is the five-factor-model which profiles individuals by assigning them percentage numbers to the five attributes openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (sometimes the model is referred to as OCEAN for obvious reasons). Knowing about an individual's psychographic profile would put marketeers into a great position to really get serious about tailoring their message to the individual's taste.

As for now, marketeers usually did not have such deep insights on individual level. To get this data would have required individuals to fill out lengthy questionnaires, which hardly any consumer would do to fill a marketeers' hunger for data. However, these times are gone: with access to customers' digital footprints like social data, an individual's psychographic profile can be extremely well approximated even without his or her active contribution. Scientist and Psychographics expert Michal Kosinski has laid out in a number of research publications how powerful social data is in determining personalities: to assess an individuals' personality (according to the five-factor model), knowing 70 Facebook Likes is more accurate than the opinion of a good friend. With 300 Facebook Likes, Psychographics can determine an individual's personality more accurately than his or her partner (read article).

You can test-drive the accuracy of Facebook Likes for yourself by comparing your personal results on discovermyprofile (this is the conventional method which will take time) and on applymagicsauce (this will go quick by accessing your FB profile). It worked very well in my case. While apparently there are serious privacy issues and data protection barriers, players like Cambridge Analytica show that gaining access to such data is no fiction. Marketeers will find a way. Psychographics based on digital footprints will ultimately mean the end of marketing as you know it: as mass media play, with one message delivered to maximum reach. By contrast, with Psychographics the old idea "Segment of One" comes true: Marketing becomes fully capable to capture targets in their individuality and to deliver exactly the right message at the right time and in the right tonality to maximize conversion. That vision is not far away, and companies need to prepare now. In a later post I hope to get into more detail, which capabilities marketing organizations need to develop to get ready for the future.