Longshot
Hello, I hope all is great on your end.
Some big news this week – Zach’s book on the campaign comes out on Tuesday!
Chances are if you’re reading this, you were interested in or excited by my presidential campaign. The campaign would not have happened without Zach Graumann, my co-host whom I interview on the podcast this week on his new book “Longshot: How Political Nobodies Took Andrew Yang National – and the New Playbook that Let Us Built a Movement.” It’s his first book and it’s a joy to read.
Zach’s book is obviously personal to me, as it’s about my presidential campaign but also written by a close friend whom I went through a war with. It’s a wonderful book guaranteed to make you laugh and grimace and appreciate what it takes to build something that catches hold of the popular imagination using 21st century tools and media.
The book starts with Zach’s decision to join the campaign and goes on to catalogue our early struggles, how we found our footing, podcasts and social media, the birth of the Yang Gang, #MATH, planning rallies, making and prepping for the debates, wrangling with the media, campaigning in New Hampshire and Iowa and much more. Zach also distills the key decisions of the campaign with marketing principles around Identity Branding, the new Attention Economy, Authenticity and more.
Here’s a sample passage from Longshot:
“We’re calling it . . . Yang Gang.”
Our five-person team was gathered in a standing circle in our high-ceilinged Midtown HQ in late September 2018, and I had just proudly announced the name of our new political army.
The responses were less than supportive.
“’Yang Gang’ sounds like ‘gang bang.’”
“Pretty sure people don’t wanna join a gang.”
“This is the worst idea you’ve ever had.”
I was undeterred. I raised my voice to be heard over their grumbling and continued. “When people voted for a Republican candidate in 2016, what did they say?”
Crickets.
“They said, ‘I’m voting for Ted Cruz,’ ‘I’m voting for John Kasich,’’ I answered.
More crickets. I kept going.
“But what did they say when they were voting for the Donald? They didn’t just say, ‘I’m voting for Trump.’ What’d they say?”
Blank, slightly skeptical looks all around.
Finally, Frawley came to my rescue.
“I’m MAGA,” muttered Frawley.
“Yes!” I jumped, excited that someone was at least pretending to follow along. “It was visceral. It was Part of you. It is something you identified with.”
“Yeah, but Yang Gang sounds stupid and childish and no one will like it,” Carly piped.
“Can’t we find something better?” asked Shinners as he rolled his eyes.
“I’m pretty sure Yang Gang is already a thing in Korea.” Said Frawley, looking at his phone.
No one on the staff was sold.
After some back and forth, I declared, “Well, this is only a semi-democracy.” “Yang Gang it is until you pick something better. You have one week. Otherwise . . . Yang Gang, baby!”
They didn’t come up with anything better, because Yang Gang was brilliant. We needed to differentiate to create our identity brand, and Yang Gang was a creative way to give a unique identity to our supporters and welcome them into something that felt like a community.
I can call Yang Gang brilliant because it wasn’t my idea. (I’m not always the best at generating ideas, but I am very good at seeing an idea’s potential and putting it into practice.) The name actually came from Instagram – someone posted #YangGang in the comments on one of our posts, and I immediately loved it. So catchy. It rhymed, implied community, and invoked a sense of identity. It was perfect. Maybe it wasn’t the best name for supporters of a serious presidential contender, per se, but it was perfect for us.
