A New Era for Political Ads

With 2008 presidential candidates already sparring, it became quickly apparent that television would play a larger role in the outcome of this election than in any prior campaign. This hastened me back to that indelible marker in TV’s history when it was first credited with changing the course of a presidential election.

We’ve all seen the footage from the 1960 debate where an ashen and gaunt-looking Richard Nixon in a taupe suit contrasts so negatively to a confident, youthful JFK in a dark ensemble. Many who saw the debates on TV felt JFK won convincingly. We’re told their televised debate turned an election, and few disagree.

Since that heady day where politics and television first intersected, we’ve learned that every candidate has had to lay a progressively larger bet on romancing voters through the most powerful selling machine – television.

In the 47years that have followed the Nixon/JFK debate that was “won by television,” candidates have often looked for the TV edge in two ways:

• Stumping on the campaign trail before a collection of news cameras with the aim of packaging themselves and their policies on most if not all the TV news outlets.
• Advertising, advertising and more advertising.

Thus the modern day election battles now pit a candidate’s “collective TV content” (news coverage + linear ads) versus that of his/her rival’s “collective TV content”.

In 2007 and 2008, any election candidate’s news coverage and linear ads will only be a partial formula for swaying voters via TV. Those candidates whose staffers put equal emphasis on TV conduit, TV connectivity and advanced TV capabilities will realize the full power of TV as a “sway” mechanism capable of turning an election in their favor.

Candidates can count on cable to be their chief conduit to voters by exploiting cable’s seven customizable ways to get to voters: nationally, nationally on-demand, DMA-based, DMA-based copy-splits, DMA-based on-demand, and zone/ZIPs by neighborhood and zone/ZIPs on-demand by neighborhood.

Additionally, by understanding the passions and pursuits of the groups they need to sway; beyond age and gender (Read: the coveted “soccer moms” voting block, etc), is a critical part of every candidate’s success blueprint.

If  “all politics are local” is an election truism, than cable TV is the medium and the conduit that a candidate would have built from scratch to service and exploit that truism: Tailored TV message by cable zone/ZIPs will definitely impact the 2008 elections

The ability to tailor an ad message and target based on mindset, values and interest genres multiplies that message’s “sway” power significantly. For still deeper connections, these same cable brands can be activated across a full range of platforms to keep the message resident throughout the voter’s daily content consumption.

In the coming elections, it will be the practices of advanced advertising that will produce the best marriages of conduit and connectivity in delivering a candidate’s message and ultimately a vote.

Combining voter geographic insights with voter psychographic profiles and turning to cable to exploit the union will produce 2008 political advertising programs that include:

• Neighboring counties that not only have differing 30-second linear ads for the same candidate, emphasizing strength on whatever issues are most important to each specific county, but each customized 30-second ad can lead the voter into different four-minute video immersions on differing issues hosted by that candidate.
• Polling groups of viewers on questions/issues is also a cable TV reality for 2007 and 2008 and can be done in cable markets locally and regionally. There will be no better way to help customize candidate messages back to the voters than polling them as viewers.

  In the coming elections, it will be these types of practices that will produce the best marriages of conduit and connectivity while delivering a candidate’s message and, ultimately, a vote. In 2008, it will be this new era of JFK-like candidates who seize the leverage of television to reach voters that will ultimately take their seats in an Assembly, Congress or the House at 2500 Pennsylvania Avenue.