Tag: politics

T minus 24 Hours

November 2, 2020

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.

How I Got Here

October 4, 2020

How does a politics major from Drake University end up in advertising? I believed in the invisible hand of a free market society. Most people with a politics degree use it as a pathway to law or into political campaigning. Both crossed my mind and I did take a practice LSAT, but neither screamed for me to follow them. Instead, I pursued advertising.

Politics is inevitable. Advertising, both corporate and political, is inevitable. Political advertising interfering with corporate advertising every two years is inevitable. But corporate America advertising never tries to understand political advertising and how to work through it. They just accept it as an inevitability and destruction to their campaigns for six months. And that’s where I sold my value. I understood the politics, and was quickly able to pick up the real-world corporate advertising. When these two concepts are combined, an amazing force is created.

In terms of advertising, there has been a see-sawing motion between who leads who. Some decades politics took the lead, and others had corporate America. As a guy working corporate America advertising, and heavily researching political advertising, I can say that corporate America is leading. Digital ads are great, an getting a million targeted impressions sounds nifty. Hell, for a few bucks a day, you can run a six times frequency targeted ad at a small audience for months on end. Digital is filled with infinite inventory and countless targeting. But is it working?

Advertising is a beautiful place where anyone can be right. With enough ingenuity and justification, any tactic, budget, target, and timeframe can make sense. But how effective was it? Did it actually move the needle? Was there research behind the plan? Or did some guy just say this is what we need to do because I said so and have won 70% of campaigns I managed?And will be the focus. It’s time research and science take a look at political advertising. No longer should ad campaigns be designed because it worked for candidate Z in the last election. Let’s throw it all on the table and figure out what gets the electorate to vote. And hopefully toss out a few ideas still in use from the 1950’s.