Steve Dempsey

THE MODERN DIRECT-to-consumer boom began in the late 2000s, when a few things fell into place that allowed brands bypass the traditional mechanisms of retail and marketing. Online payments, outsourced fulfilment, access to customers through Google, Facebook and YouTube all played a part.

Things went very online very quickly. And direct-to-consumer challenger brands saw an opportunity.

Early adopters like Bonobos, Glossier and Warby Parker realised they didn’t need big department stores and massive ad spends to sell trousers, cosmetics or glasses; they could own the customer relationship themselves.

Dollar Shave Club got the most cultural cut through.

Its breakthrough 2012 YouTube promo cost just $4,500 and featured founder Michael Dubin wandering through his warehouse cracking jokes about the absurdity of expensive razors. The website crashed and 12,000 orders arrived within 48 hours.  

And now politicians are honing their direct to consumer game.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, has The Real Food Show on YouTube, where he cooks with guests while talking about food and health.

His colleague, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, has gone further.

The Great American Road Trip follows Duffy and his family around America in something resembling reality television.

Donald Trump’s Cabinet is turning into a collection of YouTubers.

It is tempting to roll your eyes and dismiss this as another example of America’s decline. But doing so misses the fact that these politicians are bringing a disruptor’s business model to politics that fits with their two fingers to the establishment ethos.

Dollar Shave Club was a massive success. But this success came at a cost – to Gillette.

Gillette had spent decades building an industrial machine involving manufacturing, advertising agencies, retailers and supermarkets. Dollar Shave Club called out the absurdity of this business model, and how it offered little value to the consumer.

“Do you like spending $20 a month on razors?” it quipped. “$19 go to Roger Federer.”

So who is Gillette in the modern-day political equivalent?

Sadly, it’s the media.

Ministers used to hold press conferences and issue press releases to reach their audience. They needed RTÉ, the BBC, or CNN to distribute their message. This was the political equivalent of selling your product through Tesco – which cedes a lot of power to Tesco.

Editors and producers chose which politicians appeared, how long they got, what questions they were asked and which parts of their answers appeared in the finished programme or article.

The politician might have supplied the raw material, but the media company owned the packaging and the distribution. Worse, from the politician’s perspective, troublesome journalists had a nasty habit of asking difficult questions.

The internet turns this dynamic on its head.

Kennedy can make a programme about cooking, call it health policy, publish it himself and potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people without facing any questions. One recording can become a YouTube programme, podcast, Instagram Reel, TikTok, YouTube Short and dozens of social posts. Your in-house production team becomes more important than your media relations team.

This isn’t happening because traditional media suddenly stopped being useful. It is happening because its monopoly over political distribution is eroding.

The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report contains a remarkable milestone. Across 48 markets, social media and video networks are now the most widely used way of accessing online news, used by 54% of respondents, compared with 51% using news organisations’ websites and apps.

The rise of social channels for news is happening across all age groups. YouTube alone is used for news by 34%. Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands are the only three countries where TV news trumps – or is on a par with watching online news.

What’s driving this growth? Personalities it seems. 27% of respondents to the Reuters report get some form of news from news focused creators or influencers. Respondents said creators are more entertaining, easier to understand and more relatable than traditional news outlets. 

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American politicians aren’t the only ones who are following the audiences into social media. In Poland, former president Andrzej Duda has his own programme on Kanał Zero, a YouTube-based news operation with more than two million subscribers.

India’s Narendra Modi, Argentina’s Javier Milei and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele have all built enormous direct social-media operations around their own brands. Modi, for example, has over 106 million Instagram followers.

These aren’t simply politicians who are “good at social media”.

They’re new media entrepreneurs, who are building political and cultural capital, rather than financial capital. But there’s a new and slightly different edge to the latest political social attempts like Kennedy’s kitchen, Duffy’s family road trip or Gavin Newsome’s political podcast.

Their primary focus is to show a softer side of a politician or show their deep thinking, their family man credentials, and where necessary, suck up to the US President. They’re naked attempts to build the comms infrastructure for a candidate seeking higher office.

And there’s undoubtedly more on the way.

Positioning yourself for a presidential run? You used to write a book, now you need a podcast or YouTube show. Less Dreams of My Father, more like Reels of My Father. 

The great trick of direct-to-consumer wasn’t simply cutting out retailers and wasteful marketing. Challenger brands like Dollar Shave Club replaced expensive middlemen with genuinely appealing founders, jokes, social stunts, memes and videos people actually wanted to share.

They felt fresh, and they offered real value to consumers.

Some of the needier candidates looking to build their political profile using direct-to-consumer tactics have forgotten this. They’re using tired TV formats, there’s no humour in evidence and no value offered to potential voters.

These guys may understand culture wars, but they sure don’t get culture.