Zeus Jones: How a Modern Branding Mindset Could Improve Campaign Spending

hellozeusjones:

As Stephen Colbert and John Stewart have very clearly pointed out, this election is all about money. Their parody of Super PAC-funded negative commercials as a primary campaign strategy makes it evident that the focus is definitely on quantity of contributions, rather than the quality of what…

Becky suggests that politicians could get more bang for their buck if they made like many big brands and spent more money on creative marketing campaigns that touch people’s lives in real ways rather than trying to blanket battleground states with attack ads on TV. I wish I could believe that this would work, but I’m skeptical, because…

1. Since politicians are campaigning to be elected to positions of power in which they can make the world better, it would be confusing if “making the world better” was where they spent their campaign dollars. For example, if Obama’s campaign funded startup ventures, people would say he should be focusing on supporting startups through public policy, not on asking for donations to fund startups via his campaign. Whereas if Pepsi sponsors a startup, people understand that it’s something they’re doing to try to look cool so you’ll drink Pepsi and feel good about it.
2. Though social media are definitely becoming more important in politics—Obama’s fundraising success in his first Presidential campaign demonstrated that—it’s still the case that many likely voters, especially those critical undecided soccer moms, watch a lot more TV than Tumblr.
3. Empirically, attack ads work. For decades, attack ads on TV have been remarkably successful at framing candidates in the minds of the public, and data from this campaign show that’s still the case. Even Obama, who wants to take the high road, finally went negative on Hillary Clinton with attack ads that were instrumental in helping him seal the nomination.

I’m all for taking chances and changing the conversation to the extent reasonably possible, but sad to say, if I were managing a Presidential campaign right now, I wouldn’t want to be on the side that overestimated the sophistication of the American public.

1. jaygabler reblogged this from hellozeusjones and added:

   politicians could get more bang for their buck if they made like many big brands and spent more money

2. hellozeusjones posted this