DON'T ALLOW POLITICAL DOLLARS TO SLIP AWAY

With 2008 presidential campaign spending already started, I’d like to share some insights from Alex Castellanos’ presentation at the BCFM conference.

Castellanos has served as a media consultant to six U.S. presidential campaigns, including Bush-Cheney 2004, and has helped to elect eight U.S. senators and six governors.

 His firm, National Media Inc., have been retained to run the 2008 ad campaign for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

As his resume demonstrates, Castellanos is in a position to provide a major media buyer’s perspective on the 2008 campaign.

In addition to offering a number of relevant insights on campaign spending, he spoke candidly about where we are falling short in attracting more of that ad money.

With the Internet a proven tool for influencing voters, Castellanos reported that his firm’s clients are currently spending 5%-10% of their total advertising budgets online and that the percentage is rising. 

Some of that money is going to TV station Web sites, but the campaigns are buying it from online brokers rather than through the stations’ sales staffs. That’s not by choice. 

Castellanos said that they would like to place their online orders at the same time they place their on-air orders and do it with the same people.

However, they have found that it’s currently easier, and cheaper, to buy that online space from a third party.

If you don’t believe it, try going to a provider like Google to buy an ad on your site. You’ll see what he means.

Handling online ad sales is a frequent topic at many of the nuts-and-bolts sessions organized by BCFM.

Castellanos’ comments remind us that it’s time we shift from thinking about our online and other emerging platforms as non-traditional revenues.

If we are going to provide competitive and customer-driven solutions to our advertisers, we need to simplify and integrate our ad sales programs.

We’re already seeing this happen at the national network level with the 2007 upfront presentations.

Castellanos’ experiences serve as the bellwether for following suit at the local market level.

Castellanos said that political media strategists spend a lot of time mining data to find the most efficient ways of reaching the people they want to persuade.

While it may not be surprising to learn that Republicans favor Porsche and Jaguar, and that Democrats go with Volvo and Subaru, there are a number of models that appeal to both, Castellos said. These include Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick, Pontiac, BMW, Toyota, Saturn and Lincoln. 

Campaign strategists are also aware of the individual TV shows and media that attract the greatest number of their target markets.

His firm’s analysis of all major broadcast and cable and network news reveals a 14% “GRP Gap.” Base Democrats watch 14% more television than base Republicans and swing voters.

Meanwhile, base Republicans and swing voters are 14% more likely than base Democrats to use the Internet.

Target Swing voters, which are the ones campaigns really want to reach, are most likely to be the heaviest Internet users.

Taking a page out of the campaign strategist’s playbook, we need to understand this kind of market intelligence and use it to ensure that we’re selling both the Republican and Democratic camps what they want to buy.

Castellanos still considers TV the blunderbuss for reaching mass audiences and all indicators point to record-level spending on the 2008 campaigns. 

However, if as much as 10% of all campaign spending goes to online venues, and, as his research suggests, local TV Web sites are among the most popular destination for voters, we need to be focusing on those revenues too.

Online spending is way up from 2004 and Castellanos’ findings indicate that number will be even greater four years from now.

We will be staying on the top of the political advertising thoughout the 2007-08 campaign season.

The next issue of BCFM’s bi-monthly magazine, The Financial Manager, will feature additional analysis of the 2008 campaign.

In addition to further examining Alex Castellanos’ remarks at our conference, TFM Editor Janet Stilson will include insights from Evan Tracey, COO of the research firm TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, and Chris Rohrs, president of the Television Bureau of Advertising.

And, if there’s member interest, we’ll look at hosting another Distance Learning Seminar to address the latest regulatory developments concerning the Fairness in Political Advertising Act.

Mary Collins is the president of the Broadcast Cable Financial Management Association, a professional society for financial, MIS and HR executives in the electronic media. Her column appears here every other Friday. She can be contacted at mcollins@bcfm.com or 847-716-7000.