Marketers have to be especially careful this season about not alienating customers, says Mark Fitzloff, executive creative director at Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Oregon. “The one thing mass consumer brands run away from as fast as they can is controversy. When you have an election that’s as divisive as this one is going to be, I can’t think of any client who would want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.”
‘Dream Come True’
For hosts, the debates are months in the making. Wright State, named after aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur, is building a TV studio, developing special curriculum and designing a line of themed swag that will include bowler hats, a Wright brothers trademark. A countdown clock on its website ticks away.
Robert Sweeney, the university’s executive vice president for planning and chair of its debate committee, has an $8 million budget and expects 5,000 members of the media. “As a political science student, it’s a dream come true,” says Rushing, the volunteer, who will begin pursuing a master’s degree at Wright State this fall.
Spectacle aside, performances on the stage matter. Voters for years have singled out debates “more than any other single factor” in deciding how to cast ballots, according to exit-poll data compiled by the commission. This year they’ll be must-watch because the race is so compelling. “There is certainly added interest,” says Averett, secretary of Democrats Abroad in Portugal. “We had a 50 percent increase in voter turnout for our global primary.”
In Mexico City, Joshua Castillo, an engineering student, says many Mexicans will be watching, fascinated as never before by U.S. presidential politics in no small part because of Trump’s proclamation that some Mexican immigrants are rapists and his promise to build a border wall paid for by their government.
In Moscow, Dmitriy Kosmodemiyanskiy, a money manager at Otkritie Asset Management, says that “Russians aren’t very interested,” considering it will mean getting up at 4 a.m.
But in the U.S., it’ll be embarrassing to miss a debate, Adamson says. “No one’s going to want to be at a dinner party and not have an opinion on who hit the knockout punch.”