Selling Donald Trump

Early on in his time with us on the campaign, [digital director] Brad Parscale went to Mr. Trump and Jared [Kushner] and made this analogy: Imagine, he said, two television screens. The one on the left is a commercial for a new personal music device. The device is open so you can see its inner workings. It is a marvel of engineering. You can also see how sleek it looks on the outside, and the gold plating where you plug in the headphones.

The scene on the right has only a silhouette of a woman with long, curly hair dancing while listening to the device. The tagline is, "iPod, this is how it's going to make you feel."

Brad was new to politics. ... But he had been in the Web design business for many years, and he knew what sold and what didn't.

"The people want to know how it makes them feel," he said. "They want to buy the dance."

If Donald Trump was Twitter, then Hillary Clinton was LinkedIn. Her online presence was filled with long descriptions of stances and policies. ... She was the television screen on the left. But people ... didn't want a scripted intellectual connection. They wanted a visceral one. ... Trump ... made them dance.