Campaign Advertising: What wins votes?
Tuesday
May 5, 2009
Almost every campaign-watcher you come in contact with will have some strong ideas about how you should spend your campaign advertising dollars. Some folks will want you to plaster every stray telephone pole and tree house with campaign signs. Others will have wild ideas like having planes tow banners or even doing skywriting. They believe that anything that gets your name out before the public will get you votes.
However, the kind of advertising that is most effective is that which persuades people to vote for you. While name identification is helpful, advertising that gives people reasons to vote for you is much more effective.
Many campaigns start out with what we call a “Wanted Poster” flyer. There is a big photo of the candidate’s (usually) smiling face centered near the top with a biography below. Now, there may be people who will vote for a candidate because he is in Rotary or because he belongs to the Chamber of Commerce. However, most people need stronger reasons to vote for you. While it is fine to get your biography out there, it won’t sell very many voters on your candidacy.
One basic problem that many candidates have in putting together persuasive material is that they realize that taking positions on issues will convince some people to vote for them, but they fear losing votes from people who are on the other side of the issue. You need to get over the concept that you can somehow get one hundred percent of the votes. If you avoid taking positions that offend anyone, you will also find that you aren’t giving anyone a reason to vote for you.
Whether you use direct mail, television, radio or other forms of advertising, you need a focused message. Most voters aren’t paying a lot of attention to the election campaign. So, you need to concentrate on your strongest issues. You don’t want to spend time promoting your position on every possible issue. Concentrate on motivational issues. Those are defined as issues that will cause people to make a decision to vote for you solely because that one issue is so important to them and you are on their side.
Taxes are a perennial motivational issue. In an area that is growing rapidly, slowing the speed or improving the quality of development can be motivational issues. Policies that improve quality of life in immediately recognizable ways can also be motivational issues. “I’m a nice guy, vote for me” is not going to motivate people to vote for you.
In order to defeat an incumbent you should have at least one specific issue where you think the incumbent is just plain wrong. If the incumbent has a record of mismanagement or dishonesty, those are motivational issues as well. Incumbents can also be vulnerable if they have gotten out of touch with their constituents. The guy who gets the streets fixed and the water fountains in the park working is going to be difficult to beat, but the incumbent who doesn’t return phone calls is a much easier target.
If you are the incumbent, you may have a record you are proud to run on. If so, definitely use your record. However, don’t spend all your time talking about the past. You need to let the voters know what you will do if they give you another term. Many of the incumbents I have seen defeated spent all their time talking about the past when their challenger was talking about the future. Voters are most concerned about their own future and the future of their community.
I will get into more detail on the various types of advertising and how to identify the specific motivational issues in your district in other posts, but while you are planning your campaign, keep in mind that you need to develop a focused message that will motivate people to vote for you. Don’t expect them to mark their ballots for you just because you’re a good guy and they’ve seen your name on a few posters.
