Will Politicians Out Spend Santa Claus?

by John Cataldi | Sep 23, 2010 | Brand Strategy, Marketing Mishaps, Media / Sales Mishaps, Politics, The Real Mad Men, Traditional Advertising

There seems to be about 3 Billion Reasons to Leave Coal in the Stocking of Several Political Media Buyers for Wasteful Media Spending

Political advertising may potentially outperform holiday advertisers in hyper spending by November. Mediaweek reports that over, three-quarters of the $3 billion expected windfall will be spent in the final seven weeks leading up to November’s elections. Kantar Media released an expenditure showing that political ad spending is up over $160 million over the 2006 elections.

Kantar Media’s interpretation is that core advertising is pacing better than expected for television and radio. They believe that this is a result of special interests in the retail, telco and financial sectors driving media spending. With the foreknowledge that Kantar is a division of WPP, and sister to marketing agency Ogilvy & Mather, who handles the media campaigns for several elected officials, including candidates in New York, I would submit a different theory, which is based loosely on my last blog post.

For those that do not know, media is purchased on a political rate which is higher than most other media rates, averaging about 20%+ in my experience, but could go potentially higher. Plus, all political campaigns have to pay the media networks upfront. This is compounded by several media networks dedicate only a certain percentage of airplay to political media plays, though there have been times that a politician’s message can be bumped by a higher paying candidate depending upon the network. Currently many of the political campaigns that I have had exposure to and in some cases the pleasure to work with have hit a tipping point in their persistence to spend heavily on only one or two media channels, with the biggest offenders being TV and Radio. I use the term "tipping point" as the point of inflection that the ability to gain any more voter support from this particular media channel is diminished exponentially, given you have already overly saturated the media channel to capacity.

My advice to politicians….

1. Use social analytics to create more effective messaging, but only to registered voters!
2. Track your political media, by using traditional media analytics to see what media is creating voter action.
3. Use multichannel marketing strategies to spread dollars where it is cheaper and more effective, across all media types that are relevant to your voters.
4. Get rid of, or spend less on political media that is not working.
5. Use convergence media tactics to get the most out of every dollar spent (IE if a potential voter calls in to make a donation, their phone number can be exported to an SMS alert list, they can be socialized into Facebook and Twitter, etc) 
6. And if all else fails and your back is against the wall, with six weeks left in the campaign there is always Pay Per Voter Marketing!