Absolutely.

Delivery of the Trump message absolutely resonated with and flipped voters who normally vote democratic or who wouldn't vote. Union members, Catholics, etc. In my county, which hasn't elected a GOP candidate in 30 years, it drove 5% more republican votes than 2004/2008/2016. That matters in competitive places.

Bernie Sanders was very similar on the democratic side. Many people not so happy with the mainstream party candidate were attracted to his message, which was delivered mostly via social media, especially early on.

Don't discount the power of social platforms. The impact of a good targeted message is real on its own, but is magnified when your dad/cousin/friend/boss implicitly endorses the message by commenting or sharing. If you look at Trump's campaign, that made it possible to say and do socially unacceptable things. "Make America Great Again" means something to people who support him... they find it inspirational.

> What makes you think that people are malleable? This article doesn't say anything about the effectiveness of what CA did. It's impossible to say if people voted the way they did because of a FB ad. My >20 years of experience in the consumer technology (ad) industry tells me that ads had little to no impact.

The difference here and ordinary ad is, that unlike ads which target people based on where they live, interests, gender, income and many other things, here they categorize people by a psychological profile and then use whichever triggers work best. They also use other information to trigger emotional responses. For example my family member is a veteran who is a Republican. He forwards plenty of messages that has intentions to scare him and make be even more to the right. For example some article of a parent of a soldier who got a note on his car from supposed liberal wishing him that his son would be killed, or liberals burning flags, or democrats not standing up and clapping when a widow of a soldier that died (it was in 2017 I believe) was honored by Trump etc. It is trivial to manipulate pictures or recreate scenarios that would trigger, but those things work really well on him, and he wasn't even a nut before.

> Clinton vs Trump wasn't an option people were waying. No one switched from Clinton to Trump (or vice versa) because of an ad or anything else. Those that hate Clinton voted for Trump, those that hate Trump voted for Clinton. It's really is as simple as that.

> Have you ever met or even heard of someone who supported one of those candidates but switched to the other? I haven't.

Yes if you're hardcore Democrat or Republican and only vote in party lines, it's unlikely that you will be changed, but then you would be classified as a different profile.

The effort was to discourage Democrats from voting or even make them vote 3rd party (for example there was a campaign that made Clinton look quite evil, and frankly it fooled me too), everyone else was encouraged to vote for Trump (in different ways depending on their profile).

Back in 2016 I saw on /r/AskReddit a question, someone was asking why Trump supporters were planning to vote for Trump. What stick with me was one response where person acknowledged that Trump was bad, but he still was going to vote for him, because he hated establishment and "it needs to get real bad before it gets better". People have different personalities and reasons but if you can categorize them correctly you can provide them reason they want to make them cast a vote for candidate you want.

What you're basically saying is that if a candidate tailors a message to an individual, then that individual will support them. Yes! That's how it should work. The candidates have to earn the support of the voters. They should be trying to craft messages that resonate with them. If people can flip voters with ads alone, then where does it end? Who has the better ads?

What we say was a constituency that was upset with the status quo. When given a chance to vote for an outsider, they jumped on it. I think advertising played little to no role in the 2016 election and I've yet to see data to suggest otherwise.

That was traditional way, Trump during his campaign sad many things that contradicted itself. Nobody really knew what his actual policy would be in the end.

The messages were more in the tune: "Trump maybe is not the greatest, but Hilary will be a catastrophe."

Completely agree with these anecdotes, and this is where the potential power of the campaign extended far beyond ads to Facebook groups, and Twitter / Instagram follower networks. Within those spheres you have free reign to curate audiences based on profiles, feed this type of blatantly false information to trigger people, and optimize from there. I went into greater detail in another comment in this thread, but I would suggest reading the Senate intelligence report from October to learn more – if you care about this topic it's riveting and frightening.

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...

But people were coerced by the media they saw into hating whichever candidate and, many, into loving one of them.

Only if you discount people's ability to think for themselves. Both these candidates had been in the public eye for decades. People decided based on what they've witnessed with their own eyes.

You work in advertising in >20 years, you really think you would have job if it didn't work?

Everyone who you will ask will absolutely say they aren't influenced by advertising, yet the branded products are still successful despite being more expensive.

For example medication, people still are buying Tylenol, Mortin, Aleve despite there being cheaper alternatives that are essentially the same thing: Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, Naproxen. They will start buying these generics only after they are educated that these things are the same thing.

If you're looking for an insurance company (for a car, life etc) you will tend to chose companies that you heard the name of. You might pick up one that's not familiar (to you) only after you do research or someone else will recommend it to you.

It's same with politics, if you would do research I don't think those campaigns would influence you much, but most people won't have time to do a research.

Personally, I buy the big brand name drugs over generics for the somewhat-rational reason that I trust the quality control and deep pockets of a Johnson and Johnson or GlaxoSmithKline more than I trust whatever random company makes those generics. It’s probably a minuscule extra risk but my medication budget is a few bucks a year and I am happy to have the extra peace of mind of knowing that a $300 billion company’s reputation is resting on these pills not being contaminated.

I guess it's your choice, but it's not like those companies didn't have scandals in that area.

Yeah I agree completely. The media can manipulate this by controlling what people witness with their own eyes.

People tend to stick to a small number of news sources, so these sources only tell one side of a story.

You need as much of the info as possible to think for yourself, and you can be manipulated by what you have witnessed.