Chipotle's Founder Wants to Shake Up Restaurants Again. This Time With Robot Kitchens
What Does Microsoft Have in Common With a Weird, Willy Wonka-Themed Event?
Why Bitcoin Is Booming All of a Sudden
Elon Musk Wants Billions to Fund His Secretive AI Startup, xAI
Amid a Startup Funding Crunch, Alexa von Tobel Has $330 Million to Spend
How Lume Taught Harry's to Rethink What It Means to Be a Cool Brand
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I'm Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
Mark Penn has long straddled the worlds of business and politics. He was President Bill Clinton's pollster for six years and has been a strategic adviser to Hillary Clinton and Tony Blair. He also is chairman and CEO of Stagwell, a global marketing services network. (Politics are also part of his personal life: Penn's wife, Nancy Jacobson, is founder and CEO of No Labels, a centrist group that has indicated it might back a third-party presidential candidate.) And while Penn is both an executive and a pollster, he happens to think business and politics don't mix. I spoke with Penn about the upcoming presidential election, and what it means--and won't mean--for companies. Edited excerpts follow:
Modern CEO: What does your polling tell you about the upcoming presidential election? And in particular, what are you finding that might be surprising to a business audience?
Mark Penn: I think the biggest surprise in politics today is that immigration is the No. 1 issue. Outside of 9/11, the economy has been the No. 1 issue [among voters] for the last 40 years.
MC: What are your high-level observations about the intersection of business and politics today?
MP: The most important thing for most CEOs and businesspeople is to stick to their business and stay as far away from politics as they possibly can, especially if they have the kind of brand that is an "every person" brand. At best, politics splits this country 50-50. If you get involved in politics in any way, whatever your popularity is, it [gets] cut in half. For brands like Bud Light or Disney, you cannot win. You can only win if you're a smaller niche brand that has a group of customers that would be very compatible with your values or political values, or you've expressed those values during a prolonged period of time, so they're already baked into your brand.
MC: No Labels has said it would like to support a Unity ticket if a majority of Americans don't approve of the Democratic candidate and Republican candidate for president. Your wife is founder and CEO of No Labels. Do you have any involvement?
MP: I'm not involved directly in No Labels. I can't say I haven't gone to an occasional meeting or given a small amount of input, but this is her project, her thing. This is what she does, and she calls the shots.
MC: What does the polling tell us about the potential success of a third party?
MP: I personally polled for John Anderson [who ran in 1980], and I did [1992 candidate] Ross Perot's benchmark poll. The truth is, the conditions of this presidential election are probably more ripe for a third-party candidacy than almost any time in modern history. People are unhappy with the parties; they're unhappy with the candidates; they're unhappy with the direction of the country; they're unhappy with the economy; they're unhappy with a lot of common-sense issues. And we know that, for a long time, the bases on the left and the right have had an outsized influence when most of the voters are in the middle.
MC: Would the introduction of a third-party candidate into the presidential election cycle have implications for business?
MP: I'll go back to my first point. Businesses and politics do not mix. I think businesses are not voters.
MC: But does business fare better when you have a moderate in the White House?
MP: What does "business" want? Business typically wants lower taxes, less expensive labor, and simplified approval processes. What's going to be at stake here? Tariffs are going to be at stake, as well as taxes because the 2025 tax cuts will expire on December 31, 2025. Immigration is going to be at stake. And climate change versus cheaper energy prices will be at stake. All these things typically affect business interests.
MC: A few months ago JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon was publicly trying to drum up support for Nikki Haley as an alternative to Trump. Is that a signal that business wants someone who isn't a populist?
MP: If you were taking votes among CEOs, maybe 25 percent of them would vote for Trump, and maybe 75 percent would not. But are they representing themselves and their interests? Or are they representing what's a better outcome for their business? They want less regulation. They want fewer logjams in Congress. They probably want less government spending and lower interest rates. If a moderate candidate stood for those things, then the moderate candidate would be good for "business." I think a moderate candidate would be good because the other thing that businesses always want is some clarity on the issues, since they need to make longer-term investments.
MC: Stagwell has a new risk and reputation practice. Why did you start it?
MP: More businesses were, overnight, getting into multibillion-dollar problems and risks that were tied to their reputation or to politics. The same company that would dither over a $2 million expenditure would suddenly lose $5 billion [in market valuation], overnight. That said to me that they were under-investing in the area of risk and reputation, didn't understand the politics of their various constituencies, and were not anticipating how they could avoid getting put into a political vise.
I observed that these companies typically had chief communication officers from one party or the other, and when you get into this kind of situation, you want to have an experienced Democrat operative and Republican operative to analyze the situation, so you don't get hit with problems from either side.
I said, "Look, we need to put together some Democrats, Republicans, public relations and polling folks, and say, 'This is the team you need, and they should audit all your various stakeholders.'" We're just starting this practice, but the clients who've bought into the system appreciate that it's comprehensive in approach.
MC: There are a lot of people who say the country is more divided than ever and bemoan the coarsening of political discourse.
MP: These are separate two issues. People always say, "This is the most divided we've ever been." We had a Civil War in 1860 and 500,000 people were dead. That is the most divided we've ever been. In the 1960s, [we had] the Vietnam War and protests, the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] that blew up buildings, and the 1968 Democratic Convention. Those were more turbulent and divided times by far. Today's divisions are not unusual in American politics at all.
The second point, which again is separate, is that the level of debate seems to have spiraled down. I always like to tell people to go watch the Nixon-Kennedy debates, and you see an actual debate about world issues and approaches to those world issues. We just don't see that anymore. I think that's really dispiriting. Although our TV shows have gotten more complex, sophisticated, and interesting, our political rhetoric and political advertising have gone in the other direction.
What's driving entrepreneurs this presidential election
Here's who will win the 2024 election, according to prediction markets
Mark Penn is an ad industry outsider
Big business faces a no-win election in 2024
Now accepting applications for Inc.’s Best Workplace awards. Apply by February 16 for your chance to be featured!
A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta
Privacy Policy
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
visit website
