This year’s political campaigns hold an ugly mirror to marketing. In an era where many marketers are obsessed with questions of purpose and social responsibility, politics have run away in the opposite direction, embracing the bad habits marketing is trying to leave behind

The results of the US election draw a line under a shift in political discourse. The rise of post-truth politics is here regardless of who won. The story of this shift is very much intertwined in the role marketing plays in popular culture.

Despite being coined in 2010, the term post-truth politics has only entered mainstream public debate in the past year. The twin shocks of the British EU referendum campaigns and the US presidential election have intersected with a series of compounding factors that are amplifying this specific type of discourse. Continue reading →