Who Do Voters Trust? Media, Politicians or None

President Donald Trump and his political and media supporters have been preaching against the "fake news." What impact has that had on voters? How much do voters trust the media vs. politicians? One year after Trump's victory, the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison commissioned a national survey to find out whom Trump supporters trust and how that confidence is related to whom the American people want to make political decisions. While support from Republicans clearly remains key to Trump’s chances for success, the survey reveals that party is less important than Trump's cult of personality. A representative sample of 2,000 Americans was asked, “When the news media and politicians disagree about the facts of a situation, which one are you more likely to trust?” and 70% of the public still chose the media. However, among those Americans who approved of President Trump’s job performance (about 38% of the sample), 80% said they trusted politicians over the news media. These were largely, but not exclusively, white men. Yet these same Trump supporters do not trust politicians in general with making important decisions about how our democracy works. Survey respondents were asked who they thought should be making our political decisions—ordinary people, politicians, or an equal mix of the two—and 69% preferred an equal mix. More surprisingly, only 6% of those who said they trusted politicians over the media (overwhelmingly Trump supporters) also said they wanted those same politicians making decisions about running the country. This suggests that Trump’s support is less about partisan loyalty or adherence to a philosophy of democratic governance than it is about confidence in Trump himself—and even that support has been dwindling to historic lows. It also suggests that Republican politicians hoping to ride Trump's coattails in the 2018 midterm elections may be in for a bumpy ride as they court his "base." For more, see https://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2017/11/21/16684474/trump-voters-media-trust

Political Ads Wither in Trump Presidency's Chaos

If your political or advocacy ad campaign is confused about what, when and where to promote, you're not alone. Even though politics is leading the news cycle, driving traffic online and in broadcast media, the chaos of the Trump presidency is leaving many political advertisers in limbo, according to a recent AdExchanger article by James Hercher. Jordan Lieberman, politics and public affairs lead at the ad targeting firm Audience Partners, explained to Hercher that “the legislative calendar is so messed up, it’s not leaving time for organizations or activists to really plan a campaign.” Typically, the year following a presidential campaign sees many high-profile bills and public opinion ad campaigns. This year, without any bills or coherent legislative direction, special interests and advocacy groups are hesitant. “There’s this element of the unexpected now,” noted Grace Briscoe, vice president of candidates and causes at ad tech company Centro. “Clients that previously planned out three to six months ahead around Congressional recesses and the legislative calendar are doing maybe week-long tactical campaigns.” Four political digital ad buyers told Hercher that soft demand has decreased rates for media packages offered by publishers as diverse as the Daily Caller, Roll Call, McClatchy, RealClearPolitics and Daily Kos, and that even national news publishers with broader audiences are feeling the ad demand pinch. In fact, brand and advocacy advertisers apparently find high-profile political coverage today so anathema, regardless of partisan viewpoint, that they are dodging it altogether, with Briscoe reporting a marked drop in brand and advocacy clients interested in appearing next to political stories. See https://adexchanger.com/politics/political-media-struggles-capitalize-trump-bump/

The Trump Marketing Effect: Temporary or Lasting?

Entering 2017, political marketing has some new ground rules thanks to Donald Trump's unorthodox campaign and presidential style, per political pundits. For example, while political campaigns used to focus on motivating voters to get involved, voter passion (from protest marches to besieged political offices) seems to be the rule rather than the exception now. Where political campaigners once tried to fight voter apathy, today they need to understand and address voter demands. A recent Direct Marketing News article cites Will Bunnett, Clarify Agency principal and former senior e-mail writer and producer in 2008 at Obama for America: "The voters that are the subjects of political marketing are behaving much differently in this political climate than they have in the past. Right now, political marketing is less about cajoling people to get them motivated, and more about keeping up with the demands from voters." How did Trump succeed? With a branding strategy, opines Bunnett. "The [Trump] brand handled the persuasion and the turnout, so branding strategy will get more attention in the future of political marketing thanks to Trump's success with it," he tells DM News and adds, "I predict that in the wake of Trump, political marketers will refocus on strategy over tactics" such as moving voters up an engagement ladder from interest to petition to donation. But a big question is whether this is a permanent or temporary shift in the political winds. Bunnett, for one, warns political strategists to "avoid overcompensating for a shift in voter behavior that's ultimately probably temporary." He urges campaigns and causes to "adapt to the passion right now," but "not forget how to cajole." For the full article, see http://www.dmnews.com/marketing-strategy/how-trump-changed-political-marketing/article/637000/

How Presidential Hopefuls Score on Social Media

Social media has been making political news in 2016, from Donald Trump's controversial tweets to Bernie Sanders' millennial "like"-ability. So how do all the presidential hopefuls compare in terms of their social media ground game? In a recent Fortune magazine article, the analytics team of Hootsuite social media management rated the candidates on five key categories of social performance: impact, engagement, reach. sentiment, and authenticity. It should be no surprise that GOP front-runner Donald Trump comes out on top, using social media as part of a three-pronged strategy of interdependent, mutually reinforcing use of rallies, media coverage and social buzz. On the theory that any type of attention is better than no attention, Trump wins with impact, reach and authenticity, even though he is weaker than other candidates on engagement and sentiment (more negative social mentions). Close on Trump's heels is Democrat challenger Bernie Sanders, who succeeds with strong engagement, impact and authenticity, despite lack of a planned strategy. Bernie's young followers have created a collective social energy for him that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton can envy. Nevertheless, Democratic leader Clinton comes in third overall thanks to her huge reach (second only to Trump); she has 3.1 million Twitter followers, 3.1 million Facebook likes, successful use of Instagram and early embrace of Snapchat. She also scores higher on positive sentiment. Meanwhile, Republican Ted Cruz trails in fourth place with weak reach and tepid sentiment inspiration; Cruz counts just 3.2 million followers on Twitter and Facebook compared with Trump’s 14.5 million, for example. And John Kasich is dead last, in delegates and social power, with just 292,000 followers on Twitter and 286,000 likes on Facebook. For the detailed analysis, read http://fortune.com/2016/04/18/bernie-sanders-donald-trump-social-media/

How Clinton Leads Trump in the Data Game

Targeted voter data and analytics are key to winning for political campaigns and causes today. So, who has the better data armory among the warring presidential hopefuls? Advertising Age magazine recently addressed the issue by comparing Democrat front-runner Hillary Clinton and Republican primary leader Donald Trump in terms of operations, spending and expert support. Political analysts give the Democrats an edge operationally, coming out of the two data-centric Obama campaigns with a sophisticated data-gathering operation that can target voters in swing states. In terms of dollars spent, the Federal Election Commission shows the Clinton campaign pays about $10,000 a month to a top data staffer, co-founder of data firm BlueLabs, and about the same amount combined per month for two additional staffers, plus Clinton has spent around $82,000 with NGP VAN, a Democratic voter data firm, since last October. In contrast, Trump waited until January to hire two "low-profile" former Republican National Committee data strategists, per Politico reporting. But he has brought data consultants on board, too, spending $240,000 with the political data firm L2 and about $18,000 with NationBuilder, a voter file management platform. The candidates will also joust with media buys based on data analytics, and Clinton has outspent Trump for data-enhanced media agency buys so far, shelling out $9.6 million to TV firm GMMB and $745,000 to digital agency Bully Pulpit in February. Of course, spending is not the only measure of strength in the data arena. Staff expertise and experience counts, and Clinton may have the advantage there, opined political analysts. While Clinton is sure to gather former Obama data veterans and agencies if she wins nomination, Trump may struggle to attract similar data expertise from the Republican side given the #NeverTrump movement. For more: http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/clinton-trump-match-data-arena/302989/

Political Ads Scramble for TV Time, Winning Formula

The TV ad battles in the 2016 political race are heating up, reports The New York Times, and we haven't even reached the primaries. At the same time, candidates and their super PACs are still struggling to find a formula that will translate ad dollars into votes. In 2015, candidates and their allies already spent nearly $100 million on political advertising, including $72 million in Iowa and New Hampshire alone, Kantar Media/CMAG estimated for the NYT story. Now campaigns are feverishly grabbing for TV ad space ahead of the primaries, and negative attack ads are on the rise. “We’re getting down to the firing-squad part of the campaign,” Larry McCarthy, the strategist making ads for Right to Rise, the super PAC supporting Jeb Bush, told the NYT. Yet the biggest spenders, such as the Bush PACs, have reaped only scant improvement in the polls for their efforts. Factors include a changed TV ad landscape thanks to media-master Donald Trump, who has generated hundreds of millions of dollars of free TV time from news coverage and debates, and a failure to break through with distinct content to the target audiences, say analysts. When Right to Rise (Bush PAC), New Day for America (Kasich PAC) and America Leads (Christie PAC), which spent an estimated $26.4 million combined in New Hampshire in 2015, all air an ad focused on Islamic terrorism, no one candidate stands out for voters. As candidates start to recast tactics and budgets (and Trump launches his first paid TV ads), 2015 TV spending is likely to be dwarfed, opined Ken Goldstein, a University of San Francisco professor of politics tracking advertising: “It seems like that was a bunch of money this fall, but that was just the sorbet before the main course. That wasn’t even the appetizer.” To see a current sampling of political TV ad messages, go to the NYT story: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/us/politics/ad-wars-of-2016-campaign-erupt-in-a-changing-tv-arena.html

Where's the Bang for Political Consulting Bucks?

Candidates pouring money into the coffers of political consultants, especially for TV ads, aren't getting much bang for their bucks so far in this election cycle. In fact, a December 2015 New York Times piece by Adam Sheingate, chairman of the Johns Hopkins University political science department, looked at 2016 presidential hopefuls' spending on political consulting firms and noted an often inverse relationship between dollar outlays and poll rankings. For example, Jeb Bush has spent over $50 million to date with a handful of political consulting firms (mainly for TV ads) to earn 3% support in recent CNN/ORC polls, while Donald Trump spent just $1.2 million in the same period to earn a 39% support position in the polls. A ranking of 10 Republican candidates by consultant spending through the end of 2015 has Bush in the lead, with Carson coming in second (for 10% poll support) and Christie in third place for 5% poll results. (Poll leader Trump ranks ninth in spending out of 10.) On the Democratic side, front-runner Hillary Clinton spent the most on consultants at about $18.5 million in 2015--spread evenly over TV, digital media, direct mail/fundraising and polling--but it has earned her higher poll numbers than Bernie Sanders with his $4.9 million consultant outlay. Thanks mainly to media ad costs, 2016 is on track to outdo 2012 in terms of political consulting spending. In 2012, consultants billed federal candidates, parties and super PACs more than $3.6 billion for products and services, Sheingate notes, with 70% of that amount going to firms specializing in the production and placement of media (mainly TV). As of December 10, 2015, candidates and their affiliated super PACs have already spent more than $163 million on consulting services, compared with just $43 million spent on consulting at the same point in 2012 campaigns. By the way, $45 million of 2015's $163 million is accounted for by Jeb Bush's media (TV) dollars, point out Sheingate. For more detail on spending by candidate and promotional channel, see http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/30/opinion/campaign-stops/the-political-consultant-racket.html?_r=0

Marketing Pro Ranks GOP Hopefuls' Social Efforts

Social media branding is a must-have for today's presidential hopefuls, so how are the leading GOP contenders doing from a purely marketing standpoint? A recent MarketingProfs article by Jeremy Page, a network marketing blogger, provides one political outsider's ranking of the top six Republican presidential candidates based just on social media marketing performance. You may not agree with the rankings, but there are lessons worth gleaning. For example, Page puts Jeb Bush at the tail end of GOP contenders based on a lackluster social media presence (just 363,000 Twitter followers) and policy-oriented posts that create a persona without emotional resonance. Social media, especially Twitter, "isn't the place to be overly sensible and pragmatic," warns Page. Marco Rubio comes in fifth place with his strategy of keeping an uncontentious, low profile while building a social following (over 1 million Twitter followers). Page urges Rubio to do more to reinforce his brand as a "candidate of the people" with retweets and posts that leverage "your community for your social media content." Fourth place is awarded to long-shot Carly Fiorina for using social media to push a persona of openness, showcasing her willingness to answer questions via Q&As on niche, real-time streaming platforms like Periscope, for example. Ted Cruz gets a No. 3 position for an innovative digital strategy that stresses crowdfunding and gamification. Via Cruz Crowd, followers can recruit friends to join a personal Cruz Crowd donation page and then monitor money raised via Facebook and Twitter, plus earn game badges. With the competitive Cruz Crew app, players earn points based on actions to spread the word. Ben Carson is No. 2 thanks to his use of Facebook to leverage 4.6 million fans (compared with Hillary Clinton's 1.5 million and Trump's 3.8 million Facebook followers) via heartfelt long-form letters, plus polls and petitions to collect e-mail addresses. At the top of the heap is (no surprise) Donald Trump, who presents his tax plan on Periscope, hosts #AskTrump Q&As, and rallies fans on Facebook and Twitter with unfiltered "real" posts that keep him constantly in the media spotlight (for free). Page's takeaway: "Use social media to be controversial and troll the media." For more, see http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2015/29033/ranking-gop-presidential-candidates-according-to-digital-strategy

In 2016 Race, Public Snubs Media Fact-Checkers

This election cycle has seen more than its share of candidate flubs, exaggerations and falsehoods, but it's the mainstream media fact-checkers who are getting bad ratings from the voting public, not political prevaricators. GOP front-runner Donald Trump also may lead in untruths, for example. A recent NBC News report notes that fact-checking project Politifact rates 41% of Trump's statements as "false" to date, and 21% as "pants on fire" false. Ben Carson has 43% of his assertions labeled false by Politifact, with 13% at the worst pants-on-fire level. The Democrats' lead candidate Hillary Clinton is not seen as 100% truthful either; Politifact rates 11% of her statements as false and 1% as pants-on-fire wrong, per NBC. Why aren't media call-outs of such political dishonesty affecting poll numbers? The NBC story supplies one explanation: According to a new Pew Research Center study, the American public has more distrust for the news media than ever before, with a whopping 65% saying the news media has a negative impact on the country, up from 57% in 2010. That's a worse rating than respondents give for popular villains like banks and large corporations, and close to the disfavor allotted Congress. The more conservative the respondent, the more likely they are to be down on the media. Pew found that 82% of surveyed conservatives thought of the media as a negative force, which may explain why media challenges bounce off Trump among his Republican fans. For more, read the NBC report at http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/booing-fact-checkers-how-low-trust-media-shaping-2016-n468986

Music Themes for Campaigns Risk Legal Tangles

Today's political campaigns are set to music. Media-savvy candidates choreograph appearances with theme tunes for their signature messages and styles. And sometimes those music choices land them in legal trouble. Ask Donald Trump. The New York Times recently reported on the thorny issue of political music use, noting as examples R.E.M.'s early complaint about Donald Trump using “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” and the more recent demand from Steven Tyler of Aerosmith that Trump stop using his band’s 1973 hit “Dream On” at campaign events. The disputes highlight a legal gray area over licensing rules for music in political campaigns, experts explained in the NYT article. For example, when Neil Young complained in June that Trump had used his song “Rockin’ in the Free World” without permission, Trump’s campaign responded that it had obtained a so-called public performance license from Ascap, the music rights agency. In addition, venues where most major campaign events are held (convention halls, hotels, and sports arenas) often carry their own licenses from Ascap and BMI, another rights agency, that allow play of millions of songs in those agencies’ catalogs. Of course, the issue is complicated when the song use at an event is broadcast on TV and shared on social media. The protest letter from Steven Tyler’s lawyer to the Trump campaign even cited the Lanham Act, a federal law covering trademark and false advertising, claiming the song could be seen as a false endorsement. However, lawyers and copyright experts interviewed cited the difficulties of proving people actually thought of the music as an endorsement. In any case, campaigns will want to brush up on the legal nuances of music use. A starting point can be the Recording Industry Association of America's guidelines on copyright issues in music for political campaigns. With expanding media channels, legal confusion and polarized politics, campaigns don't want to risk having a lawsuit call the final tune. See http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/us/politics/in-choreographed-campaigns-candidates-stumble-over-choice-of-music.html?_r=0

Candidates' Back-to-School Swag Woos Youth Vote

Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul, Donald Trump and other presidential hopefuls are hoping to lure young voters with branded back-to-school gear, reports Advertising Age. Hillary Clinton's back-to-school collection includes a "She's Got Your Back(pack)" knapsack, a cell phone case and a "college pack" with t-shirt, plastic cups, buttons, stickers and other items. Hi8llalry also offers a college "party pack" that includes a bottle opener keychain and fake gold tattoos. Meanwhile, Rand Paul's campaign store is pushing anti-Hillary items (like an erased e-mail server called "Hillary's Hard Drive") as well as a bag toss game, NSA spy blocker, and t-shirts designed by contest winners, including one with Paul's face labeled "Liberty Bro." Not to be left behind, Donald Trump offers a branded pack of 16-oz. red cups for campus beer bashes, pom poms, drink coozies and megaphones. Will it work to plaster their names and faces all over college campuses and win the hearts of young voters? Time will tell. For more, see http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/hillary-clinton-pushes-back-school-collection-college-students/300010/