It’s election day’s eve. The candidates are doing their last minute rounds, political ads are primarily positive, and the world waits to see what the outcome is. A lot of focus, as it should be, is centered on the candidates. What did they say? What didn’t they say? How does their past look? Are they strong enough to handle the future? Is America ready for them? But we don’t focus a lot around the election advertising.
I know what you’re thinking. What about all all the reports on how many BILLIONS of dollars are spent on political advertising. Or all of the crazy reports on Facebook political advertising. Now before you think I’ve jumped off the deep end and am crazy, let me explain.
The media covers the surface level political advertising regularly. We hear about candidate So And So spend millions of dollars in their district. But how did they spend that money. What audiences was it directed at? Did those audiences turn out? Or were they bored to death with two ads at a frequency high enough to be considered cruel and unusual punishment? It’s an unspoken norm that candidates should not have money in the bank by the end of election day. If there is an extra dollar at the end, then it could have been one more dollar they spent to reach one more persuadable voter that could have tipped the election in their favor.
I respect that. But what if a slight portion was allocated to run a post mortem on the ad campaign of that cycle? Think of the valuable lessons that could be learned from looking at what was spent, on which audience, when, how, and compare it to how they voted? And I’m not just talking about digital ads. It should be across the entire advertising campaign. From day one to election night. From Outdoor Boards and TV to that small annoying banner ad the bottom of most screens. Corporate America does this well. They care just as much about the end result as how they got that result.
There’s a saying from George Santayana that’s worth ending on, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Let’s do more than remember the past. Let’s analyze it like our life depended on it.