Gary Briggs, Digital Director for the Bloomberg Presidential Campaign, on the 2020 Elections, Marketing, and the Importance of Family
Gary Briggs at the International Conference in New York City.
“I have never been good at the ‘what do you want to be in five years?’ question,” said Gary Briggs, whose prolific career includes time in senior positions at eBay, Google, Facebook, and most recently as the digital director of Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign. For Briggs, it is genuine person-to-person connections that matters at the end of the day.
On November 25, 2019, it was announced that Briggs, Facebook’s former CMO, would be at the helm of Bloomberg’s $100 million presidential campaign. Speaking of the pressure in taking up the task, Briggs stressed the need to translate the resources at hand into the right type of impact that resonates with the public. More importantly, the urgency of the election and the potential lasting effect of such a campaign sets Briggs’ latest job apart from any of his previous positions.
What Briggs saw in the current election cycle was the exhaustion of keeping up with “harsh and intense” political conversations. For him, there is a need to find “common ground” and return to “the fundamental principles of the country.”
Especially with the rise of digital marketing, Briggs has started to view marketing as increasingly more of a science than an art. However, he does not undermine the importance of communications and emotions in marketing. In his words, the market comprises of “rational people making emotional decisions.”
In other words, there is a need to create a personal connection between the brand and viewers. To credit the idea of David Aaker, Briggs says a brand “is a set of promises made,” and it is the responsibility of the brand to uphold these expectations. During his tenure on Facebook, Mr. Briggs was part of the company’s change in mission to “bring the world closer together.” Mr. Briggs saw the mission as both an assertion of what Facebook is doing and what the company needs to strive for.
But, behind his prolific career, Briggs made it clear that family has been his most important legacy. Briggs mentioned his wife, Catherine, as someone who has influenced him to build a corporate culture around love and compassion. As a reference to a speech that Briggs gave a few years back, he suggested that a lie some people seem to accept is that “success is financial.” For him, the most crucial decision in one’s life is “who one chooses to love.” It is the attention to “the work on love, rather than the work on work” that is most important to Briggs.
In a political climate that is increasingly unforgiving, what Briggs brings with his faith in forging genuine connections might be what we truly need.