How Campaigns Plan, Prioritize and Persuade Voters with Paid Advertising
As one campaign operative quips, if you want to go down the rabbit hole of all the things campaigns can do with media, just watch The West Wing.
Those tactics are both entertaining and familiar among the political intelligentsia. But average voters are too busy living their lives to be concerned with campaign strategies. Utahns are likely working full-time jobs, ferrying kids to sports and activities, running errands, and keeping the family trains on the rails. Politicians barely merit a late-night smart phone scroll.
The irony: these regular residents are the very folks candidates are desperate to impress. The same malleable middle more concerned with packing school lunches than school board meetings is the coveted prize politicians must persuade to win.
The question is how?
‘Good Messaging Is About Repetition’
Just as our media is 24-7, politics in the digital age is 365 days a year. Media markets are often expensive, especially for statewide races. And spending from outside groups by both political parties is more pronounced and partisan than ever.
So how does a competitive campaign ever expect advertising will break through?
Lisa Roskelley, a former political journalist who ran the campaign of former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., says there are seasons for media. “The hope is you can map out a plan and get ads created and be able to hit play,” she says. “The reality is you’re dealing with those in-person conversations or zoom meetings to make sure the candidate is out in front of constituents as much as media.”
The other challenge when plotting the media buy is production time. Campaign staff must leap through hoops to get ads approved while the messaging itself may be shifting in real time. “Everything is fluid in a campaign,” Roskelley says. “Who you’re appealing to changes. Sometimes a message connects with a demographic you didn’t expect.”
Focus groups notwithstanding, there can be a lot of guesswork. After leaving journalism for politics, Roskelley says she gave politicians more credit than they deserved for their Machiavellian plans. “They didn’t have them,” she reveals. “Ad buying is similar. In reality, people are moved by compelling messages. When candidates are able to tap into what really resonates with (voters’) core values, that’s when it works.”
Andrew Roberts, campaign manager for independent U.S. Senate candidate Evan McMullin, says the marker of a good campaign is not how well you plan but how well you juggle.
“Take a Supreme Court ruling or Russia invading Ukraine,” Roberts says. “Any number of things can upend the best laid plans.”
“When you have a campaign with resources like a U.S. Senate race, the first step is polling and research to see what kind of movement you see,” he adds. “Underneath the hood, what are the demographics that can define the messages? You start first and foremost with needing to achieve name ID. Very seldom are people going to vote for people they’ve never heard of.”
Television is the most efficient way to maximize your reach, Roberts says, even if it is less targeted than direct mail and social media and more expensive.
“Good messaging is about repetition,” he says. “I’d say TV is still king but digital is making its mark, especially as people continue to cut the cord. If you can’t get in front of people often enough or frequently enough, the ability for them to retain the message is going to be muted.”
Does Political Messaging Move Voters?
Before jumping aboard McMullin’s unique bid to unseat Republican Sen. Mike Lee, Roberts ran the last two races for former Congressman Ben McAdams. Both times, polling showed enormous chunks of the electorate were still undecided in September and October.
“It’s harder to move those people post Labor Day…but there is still a tremendous amount of movement that can happen after Labor Day,” Roberts says. “’But it’s more expensive.”
Voters are becoming much more aware of the intention versus the gimmick, Roskelley says, even though she argues the general population has a long way to go regarding media literacy.
She notes media literacy students at Weber State University, where she was an adjunct, often cited nothing but social media apps as their top-5 media sources. “That’s a fascinating and somewhat frightening class to teach,” she recalls. “There’s so much work for us as a general public to do to understand what we are consuming.”
GOP-affiliated groups have recently dumped big money into Facebook ad buys that attempt to convince voters of false stances by McMullin on abortion and gun control. Of course, Utah has a lengthy lore of infamous media tactics when it comes to politics.
An 11th hour negative ad in a 1990 3rd District House race is one of the reasons insiders say Democrat Bill Orton was able to win a seat in Congress in ruby red Utah County. Just two days before the election, a large ad paid for by the Republican Party ran in the widely distributed Utah County Journal. GOP candidate Karl Snow was pictured with his sprawling family on one side above the caption “Karl Snow and his family.” On the other side was a picture of the unmarried Orton with the caption reading, “’Bill Orton and his family.” Snow apologized for the ad but Orton cruised to a 20-plus point victory and went on to win two more terms.
The Beehive State will never forget the teary 1994 five-hour press conference by family values Congresswoman Enid Greene Waldholtz, who blamed her husband Joseph Waldholtz for using illegal contributions to pay for her campaign, labeling him an unfit parent guilty of “erratic and bizarre” conduct. It was a stunning end to the political career of a rising GOP star dubbed “the Mormon Maggie Thatcher.”
In a 2007 Salt Lake City mayoral race, Love Communications won cheers and jeers for dubbing the race between Republican Dave Buhler and Democrat Ralph Becker “the Doer vs the Dreamer.”
And long before former President Donald Trump criticized newly defeated Republican Congresswoman Mia Love in November 2018 for not embracing him — “Mia Love gave me no love,” Trump complained, the phrase had been used by Democrats. During Love’s first bid for the 4th District seat, the Utah Democratic Party launched a tongue in cheek Twitter account. The handle: No Love For Mia.
With the influx of indirect money in modern campaigns, voters are forced to wade through a lot of noise. Both campaigns are countering the other with ads while outside groups are simultaneously saturating the platforms with partisan messages.
“Outside of the political intelligentsia, your average person doesn’t know the difference between an independent expenditure ad and something from an outside group,” Roberts explains. “I’ve had people say, ‘that ad your opponent is running is just heinous.’ Well, I know it’s not the candidate but an outside group. At the same time, I don’t want to disabuse them of the notion that it’s coming from the campaign.”
Independent expenditure ads by individual campaigns are frequently fact checked and, as such, held to higher standards. In the McAdams-Burgess Owens 4th District race two years ago, a negative ad from an outside group targeting McAdams was so misleading the McAdams camp was able to get it taken down.
When such wild accusations fly in a media buy, Roberts notes, “the opportunity it really presents is a fundraising one.”
Social Media: The Great Equalizer, Irritant, and Game Changer
For decades, both statewide and federal campaigns simply could not compete without first raising a war chest of campaign funds. That’s because the lifeline to name recognition — television and to a lesser extent radio — was unattainable without big bucks.
But, like a noisy first-term congresswoman ricocheting through the body politic, social media has changed the political landscape. Pennies on the dollar compared to legacy media, targeted ad buys on social platforms introduce candidates to a wide audience while tailoring messages to constituencies of choice.
“Social media has totally changed the landscape of the media buy from a decade ago,” Roskelley says. “It’s cheaper, faster, more direct, but it has its own pitfalls.”
Campaigns can run completely different ads week to week to see what resonates with voters. Content curators on campaigns can alter messaging in minutes or respond to attacks in seconds. When ads can be tailored and targeted, Roskelley says, it allows candidates to get more specific on issues and “be a little bit more two-faced,” taking different positions with different constituencies.
In his abbreviated run for president, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg dumped $1 billion of his own money before bowing out. That spend highlights how much cash it takes for candidates in America to run for public office.
Not anymore. Social media has leveled the playing field, allowing incumbents and newcomers to connect directly with voters. Gone are the days — even five years ago — when candidates would speak through surrogates on TV or traditional print media outlets.
In this era, Barack Obama shares his March Madness brackets on Twitter and a de-platformed Trump finds it so important to remain on social media that he starts his own Truth Social platform.
Political observers accurately point to social media as a game changer in modern campaigning. At the same time, oversaturation in messaging to a public weary of political pitches loses its effectiveness and risks becoming an irritant. Nobody is persuading anybody politically on Facebook these days. The most effective campaigns using such platforms, insiders suggest, are the ones sharing both personal and policy values.
Budget Helps, Authenticity Counts
As campaigns calculate paid media budgets, the long-standing mantra of “more is better” applies. But the cousin — “all media is good media” — does not.
“The reality is, you’re trying to connect your message with your constituency,” Roskelley says. “You need to make sure that the message that is part of a media campaign is in sync with the candidate.”
Pre-packaged ad campaigns, where the national party floods a market to buy up the airwaves, is rarely effective, Roskelley says. Frequent exposure and voice, lent via social media, give voters more insight into messaging that feels canned. On the flipside, people will also respond to something authentic.
“Generally, you’re not going to change someone’s mind with a TV ad, but you might help them make up their mind,” Roskelley adds. “You’re working on the movable middle. You’re not appealing to the person who has already staked out their position.”
Roberts says consistency and repetition are key for today’s campaigns, as well as a strategic spend. “’Two digital ads and two mailers is not going to cut it,” he says. “You have to do a lot of them.” And if the campaign uses up all its financial resources, “you try to make all the noise you can on earned media.”
“If you’re running in a highly competitive environment, the game you play is to max out your budget,” Roberts says. “You want to push yourself to the limit and even beyond it, recognizing that if you keep the campaign competitive, you’ll continue to raise (money).”
“Winning campaigns are aggressive campaigns.”
