Most were surprised by David Brat's win over House majority leader Eric Cantor in the Republican congressional primary in Virginia a few weeks ago. Where were the reporters and pollsters in this race?
Scores of articles were written in the aftermath to find answers (funny, but if just a fraction of the journalistic effort focused on Virginia beforehand, someone would have predicted the upset).
The episode got me to thinking: can the tech sector learn anything from Brat's triumph? After all, there's a constant tension between the old and new in tech – i.e., the market leaders and challengers. The startups behind that next innovation would like nothing better than to sneak up and clobber the competition, Brat style.
Granted, that win was in politics; and tech market battles generally don't turn on a single make-or-break contest. But tech consumers do vote for products – with their wallets. Product features and brand reputation can be likened to the profiles and images of the candidates.
So, I thought that I would study how Brat won the race – and find some takeaways for tech startups. Here is what I learned:
Build Support While Flying Under the Radar
It is great if you get wads of funding from the top Silicon Valley VCs, or have a serial entrepreneur with star power at the helm. Your launch will get covered by the major tech blogs and media. But one of the reasons Brat was successful is that he quietly built support without the help of the political media machine. He avoided the noise and distraction of the Beltway crowd – or they avoided him.
Either way, no one, especially team Cantor, knew what was coming until it was too late. The point is, most startups think that they need big buzz in the top tech blogs to win. But you may not need this if you follow another tactic from the Brat playbook.
Appeal to Your Base
Ultimately, Brat scored an upset because he had a better "product". His tough-on-immigration stance and humble, outsider persona won over those who were tired of politics as usual. He proved that all politics really are local.
In tech, you can win by appealing to another kind of base – your user base, or universe of potential customers. Develop products and marketing that really resonate with end users and you will be one step closer to unseating the tech incumbents (this may sound like obvious advice, but how many startups really do this?).
But if you are flying under the media radar, how do you get the word out to potential customers? That question leads us to the next tip.
Rally the Key Influencers for your Market
It seems like a contradiction. How can you fly under the media radar, yet build buzz and convert people to your cause? Brat found an answer to this question – he tapped the power of talk radio.
Strictly speaking, this is still media – but more about opinion and analysis than reporting mainstream political news. And it would be a mistake to think that information flows efficiently between the two. As David Carr wrote in his NY Times Media Equation column:
Hordes of blogs and news sites continue to chase the latest incremental scoop that will draw followers on Twitter, but a whole other channel of information is out there, including talk radio. Politico called it “Brat’s secret weapon,” to which, we might ask, secret to whom? About 50 million people in America listen to talk radio, much of it from conservative commentators like Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham.
They may represent a significant slice of Vox Populi, but they aren’t on heavy rotation in most newsrooms. Conservative talk radio blows a whistle that many journalists either can’t hear or don’t want to listen to.
The takeaway for tech? Find the influencers that hold sway over your targeted users and have reach into the marketplace. Get them excited. Court them and find common interests.
If this all sounds a little iffy, let me remind you of a company that famously won by using stealth PR techniques; that eschewed mainstream tech events like CES; that got big by firing up consumer tech tastemakers and launching products (and marketing) that really resonated. Anyone heard of the (once small) company called Apple?
