2016 Electorate Most Diverse in History

The electorate in 2016 will be the most racially and ethnically diverse in U.S. history, according to the most recent report from the Pew Research Center. Nearly one in three eligible voters (31%) will be Hispanic, African-American, Asian or another racial or ethnic minority, up from 29% when President Obama last won the White House in 2012. And the demographic shifts are expected to continue. While the 156 million eligible non-Hispanic white voters still outnumber the 70 million eligible minority voters, the non-Hispanic white voter growth is slower and will continue to lose electorate share. Already the group dropped from 71% of the electorate in 2012 to 69% in 2016. In fact two-thirds of the net growth in the U.S. electorate has come from racial and ethnic minorities, up 7.5 million eligible voters since 2012, compared to the addition of just 3.2 million non-Hispanic white voters. Non-Hispanic whites are losing ground because of the higher mean age of the group, leading to a higher death rate and a smaller percentage of new young voters who turned 18 since 2012. Immigrants, though a contentious issue in the current presidential race, are not a key growth driver for any group but Asians. Some 60% of new Asian voters came via naturalization, compared with just 26% of new Hispanic voters since 2012. However, turnout rates may reduce the initial impact of these demographic shifts, adds Pew Research. In 2012, 64% of non-Hispanic white and 67% of black eligible voters actually cast ballots, compared with just 48% of Hispanic and 47% of Asians. For more data, see http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history/

Why the Carson Campaign Is a Facebook Fan

GOP hopeful Ben Carson's campaign is a fan of Facebook's political ad platform--to the point that Ken Dawson, Carson's head of digital strategy, calls it "the heart of our campaign" in an October interview with Scott Detrow of NPR's political news. Indeed, Carson's Facebook page has over 4 million followers for its posts, videos and candidate chats, Detrow reports. But Facebook's biggest appeal for Carson and other candidates is its ability to specifically target ads. Campaigns have three basic ad-targeting tools. Campaigns can import a list of existing supporters for ad promotion, for example; Dawson says the Carson team loads e-mail lists garnered from website sign-ups, donations, event attendance and other sources, and then tailors ad frequency, content and call-to-action by segment. To expand targeted ad reach, campaigns can also ask Facebook to build custom "look-alike" audiences, matching the characteristics of existing active donors, for example. Finally, campaigns can use the information provided in Facebook profiles and appended by Facebook's data partner Acxiom to select ad audiences by demographics such as location, age and gender, as well as by behaviors such as pages liked and purchase history. For more: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/10/26/451271794/like-it-or-not-political-campaigns-are-using-facebook-to-target-you

Movie Theater Pre-Show Ad Firm Nixes Political Ads

To avoid expected political ad "negativity" in the 2016 election cycle, National CineMedia, whose FirstLook pre-show ad program plays in 1,600 movie theaters and reaches 700 million moviegoers annually, has decided to refuse all political advertising, reported a recent AdWeek magazine story. NCM did show some political ads during the 2012 election cycle, choosing only ads it judged to be positive or neutral. This time it expects a "sea of negative ads" and will make its theaters "politics-free zones," reports AdWeek. For national and local campaigns, NCM's decision removes access to a national reach that translates into a Nielsen rating above 7.0 among the desirable 18- to 49-year-old demographic, with no way for viewers to skip ads, notes the story. And for NCM, it means forgoing a slice of an estimated $4 billion in TV political ad spending. Cliff Marks, NCM president of sales and marketing, explained the decision to AdWeek: "We think brands are going to get really sick of having their image and their brand projected next to these negative ads. How is anybody going to remember your brand and message?" Marks said the company hopes appreciative brand advertising will compensate for any potential loss from missing political ads, but the decision is based on "doing the right thing." Read the full story at http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/why-national-cinemedia-saying-no-all-political-advertising-167570

New Made-for-Digital Content Courts Young Voters

In their efforts to corral younger, millennial voters, 2016 election campaigns are investing in made-for-digital content, with a focus on social media and mobile, at record rates, according to a recent CNBC.com article. Reuters estimates that candidates will spend $1 billion on digital media advertising, close to four times the amount spent in 2012, CNBC reports. Almost six months before the primary elections, 80% of declared presidential hopefuls have created made-for-digital YouTube videos, and eight candidates have used live streaming for their candidacy announcements. Democratic contender Sen. Bernie Sanders even worked with a virtual reality production company to film a fundraising speech so viewers could have a 3-D, 360-degree experience. Candidates clearly want to tap into the 18- to 36-year-old crowd that, per the Crowdtap marketing platform, spends 17.8 hours a day consuming media content, especially through social sites. It is also a voter group that is so mobile-phone-addicted that YouTube on mobile now reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds than any single cable network. When it comes to content delivery, Facebook is aggressively courting politicians with updated ad products that allow matching of voter files with Facebook profile data, and Snapchat is curating live candidate events and offering candidates their own Snapchat channels. However, in embracing made-for-digital video, candidates are taking a new approach from the slick TV-style productions of the past. Campaigns are trying to connect to a new generation of voters with raw, live and hopefully viral content (Sen. Ted Cruz frying bacon on the barrel of a gun). A quote from Sen. Rand Paul's chief digital strategist, Vincent Harris, sums up: "2016 is potentially the first cycle that, by Election Day, voters will be consuming more content from the Internet than on television. This is especially true for first-time voters, younger voters and college voters..." For more, read http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/05/how-pols-are-targeting-the-youth-vote-go-360-and-snapchat-like-mad.html

Reaching Ethnic Voters Demands Custom Data

Custom data is emerging as a vital tool for 2016 candidates and causes facing a dramatic shift in voter demographics, with proportions of Hispanic, Asian and African-American voters growing relative to white voters in many key states. For example, in Nevada, non-Hispanic whites will fall to 60% of the voting population in 2016 (from 65% in 2012), while Hispanics will grow to 19% (up from 16%), African-Americans will rise to 10% (from 9%), and potential Asian voters will go to 8% (from 7%), per a Washington Post evaluation of U.S. Census data. Besides Nevada, states most affected by demographic shifts include Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, North Carolia, Ohio and Virginia. A recent Ad Age article interviewed Republican and Democratic strategists to highlight 2016 plans for winning ethnic political allegiance--and custom data was one of the key strategies. "I think the status quo has been somewhat subpar in terms of our ability to find minority voters, especially in areas that are more diverse," Tom Bonier, CEO of Democratic data consultancy TargetSmart, admitted to Ad Age. Since raw commercial data on race and ethnicity doesn't always provide enough accuracy for the data crunchers, TargetSmart and other political agencies are building data models internally--especially Democrats and progressives, who see winning African-American and Hispanic voters as key to 2016 victory. One of the important custom tweaks that data analysts are making is coding the appropriate language for campaign messaging. A Hispanic surname alone does not indicate whether the preferred communication language is English or Spanish, for example. For other strategic implications of ethnic voter shifts, such as increased mobile communications, see the complete article: http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/politicians-custom-data-key-reaching-ethnic-vote/297912/

Can Campaigns Tap Instagram's Growing Clout?

Social media's political strategy has been so dominated by Facebook and Twitter that campaign marketers may have missed the swift rise of another social platform: Instagram. Thanks to a post by Aaron Blake on The Fix blog of The Washington Post for pointing out the growing political potential of Instagram. While Facebook still corrals the most Internet users, Instagram's photo-sharing service has now surpassed Twitter in terms of total users, per the Pew Research Center's 2014 data. More significantly, Pew found that Instagram's demographics skew strongly toward younger voters (53% of 18- to 29-year old Internet users), minorities (38% of African-Americans and 34% of Latinos, compared with 21% of white Internet users) and women (more women use Instagram than men). Those are the groups that made up the supposed "Obama coalition," and both Democrats and Republicans are courting them for a 2016 win. So no one should be surprised that, in his recent State of the Union address, President Obama concluded his praise for astronaut Scott Kelly's yearlong stay in space to prep for a Mars mission by telling Kelly, "Make sure to Instagram it." Campaign marketers may want to take the hint and start planning how to reach Instagram's key voting blocs by sharing some persuasive images. For details of Pew's social media data, read http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/04/why-the-two-parties-need-to-figure-out-instagram-now/

Midterm Wooing of Millennials Has Key Takeaways

Midterm campaigns have been working hard to woo millennials. The importance of the demographic target is clear: Those born between 1981 and the early 2000s now make up a quarter of the U.S. population, and roughly 45 million are eligible to vote. But millennials are also a hard-to-reach, easy-to-alienate cohort. A recent AdWeek article asked political marketing experts for takeaways from recent efforts to win millennial support. To appeal to this tech-centric, channel-agnostic and social media-obsessed generation, campaigns need to marry the right platforms with the right content, the experts advised. As far as marketing platforms, the stress is on a digital, "multiscreen" approach; a recent survey found that 30% of millennials use four or more digital communications devices daily, and the overall group checks mobile phones an average of 40 times per day. And when it comes to content, relevant, entertaining and informative messaging is critical. Experts interviewed by AdWeek warned that pitches not only need to be laser-focused to match millennials’ ideals and interests but must come across as sincere; millennials will spurn anything that smacks of hype, histrionics, hard sell, preaching or scare tactics. But perhaps one of the biggest challenges for campaigners is this demographic's distrust of politics and politicians. For example, a recent Reason-Rupe survey found that 66% of millennials believe government is inefficient and wasteful, and 60% think it abuses its powers. As a result, campaigns have gained by focusing on issues and values over party affiliation. Rob Shepardson, co-founder and partner in the creative agency SS+K, summed up: "Millennials will align with somebody regardless of political labels based on values. Communicate through issues, not through the candidate. Negative ads and politics-as-usual can turn millennials off. They are quite shrewd when it comes to marketing. You need to get to a point or a benefit that matters to them." For examples of recent campaign efforts that worked, or failed, to win over millennials, see the article: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/tapping-millennial-political-and-social-passions-ahead-midterm-elections-160563

New Media Market Maps Offer Unique Look at Voters

Successful political ad strategy needs to go deeper than red and blue states to match voter demographics and views with media markets and costs. How does that redraw the American political map? Now, as reported in a recent Washington Post article, leading Democratic media firm GMMB and Civis Analytics have crunched 2012 election data to create that kind of mapping for the first time. Their mapping shows every U.S. media market in terms of political leanings, voter demographics, upcoming 2014 races and likely ad costs, and even the percentage of uninsured, which may influence how markets line up on the health-care debate. Their maps deliver some surprise results. Looking back on the Obama-Romney presidential race reveals that President Obama’s best media market wasn’t in a liberal enclave like San Francisco but rather in tiny Laredo, TX. Obama beat Romney by 54 points along that stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. Why? More than 90% of voters in Laredo are Hispanic, a particularly pro-Obama group. In contrast, Romney did best in north Texas, in the Abilene-Sweetwater market, where he beat Obama by 60 points. Looking to 2014, when the Affordable Care Act may be a hot issue, both parties and independent PACs will be paying attention to media markets with large portions of uninsured. Since the political map shows that more than 20% of the population remains uninsured in large swaths of the West and Southwest, along with chunks of the South, watch for ACA-related ad spends there. For a chance to look at the GMMB-Civis maps in detail for different variables, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/03/the-2012-election-results-by-media-market/

Some Ways to Reach the Elusive Millenial Donor

Campaigns and causes are sometimes frustrated in their fundraising efforts to target the elusive Millenials, people born between 1980 and 2000. One reason is that they may be using the wrong marketing tactics and channels based on what worked well with previous generations. A recent article on npEngage.com by Emily Goodstein, herself a Millenial, provided some statistics that hint at how to find Millenial donors. First, note that 65% of Millennials prefer to learn about a nonprofit through its website and 55% prefer to learn about it through forms of social media. So you better have both an active website and an active presence on Facebook. Goodstein makes a second key point: Some 47% of Millennials prefer to support nonprofits with their time, while only 16% prefer to give exclusively through financial support. So develop an engagement strategy that goes beyond asking for financial contributions! Finally, Millennials prefer learning from peers, so it's time to investigate peer-to-peer fundraising tools. For more, go to http://www.npengage.com/fundraising/millennial-donors-please-stand/

What to Do When Direct Mail Misses Young Donors

What can a nonprofit do when its usual direct mail efforts aren't attracting enough younger donors? Chet Dalzell recently commented in Target Marketing Magazine on an interesting marketing strategy by Covenant House, a nonprofit helping homeless children. In 2012, Covenant House was disappointed in its direct mail results with younger prospects so it went hunting online, setting up a series of petitions through Care2, the online social action community, on four topics: child trafficking, emergency health care, aging out of foster care, and domestic violence. They received names and online contact information from tens of thousands and this year used those names in a three-part e-mail series relevant to each petition subject, seeking to turn digital fans into donors. Those who didn't respond to the e-mails got a telemarketing call. Early results are positive, per Dalzell, but direct mail hasn't been dropped as a result. Since multi-channel donors are more generous and sustained givers, the young digital donors should look to see a direct mail piece in the near future, and direct mail continues to be Covenant House's "workhorse" of acquisition, says Dalzell. Bottom line: The lesson isn't "to mail or not to mail"; it's about a smart multi-channel mix, segmentation and testing. For more, see the article at http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/blog/is-there-generation-gap-among-direct-mail-responders

Foundations Seek to Reflect 'Changing Face of America'

Appeal to America's changing demographics was considered a key factor in President Obama's recent re-election. Everyone talks about the "changing face of America" -- with a growing Latino population and more same-sex couples, for example -- but have the leaders and constituencies of philanthropic associations and foundations changed to match? A progress report on the successes and challenges of increasing diversity, equity and inclusion in the philanthropy arena was recently released by the D5 coalition. Launched in April 2011, D5 is a coalition of leading philanthropic associations and foundations with a five-year diversity project. By the end of 2015, D5 hopes to achieve goals such as recruiting of more diverse foundation leadership, increasing funding for diverse communities, and improving data collection to measure diversity progress in philanthropy. Among positive moves highlighted was the April meeting of 26 leaders of major foundations -- including the California Endowment, Annie E. Casey Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Open Society Foundations -- to form an alliance for action on issues affecting youth of color. For more on D5 and its progress report, go to http://www.d5coalition.org/2013/05/new-report-offers-lessons-for-philanthropic-field-to-keep-up-with-changing-face-of-america/