Political Advertising and Driving the Message Home

By Lance Winslow

One thing that political strategists believe is that their candidate must stay on message, so they pick a specific message and then drive that point home, unfortunately, things are changing a bit and this tactic seems to be backfiring a bit. You see, the newest generation is a click happy, nano-second group of folks and they are planning on voting this time around.

Thus, if political campaigns keep playing the same old boring TV advertisements over and over again they are going to get bored and irritated. They want substance, variety and interesting fun commercials. This creates a huge problem because the political campaigns know that older voters vote 2:1 over younger voters and so the campaigns need to do what works for targeting baby-boomers without turning off the millennials.

Remember, even though the millennials spend more time online than watching TV, they still watch TV some and so, if all they see is re-runs they are going to assign those candidates to "more of the same" or just more of the "status quo" and they typically do not trust government or the status quo much. See the dilemma?

Obviously, the TV ads for political campaigns borrow from corporate advertising branding techniques and anything that has worked well in the past. But while doing this they also are seen running a familiar strategy, one that is often reviled by this next generation. Simple messages for the masses is the name of the game in political advertising or so it has been.

But, at the same time that the mass media strategy tries to drive home that message, hopefully one that everyone can agree upon for the sake of the candidate, the targeted marketing using email lists, instant messaging, direct mail and actual door to door meet and greeters; and this poses a slight conflict. A dilemma that the millennials are starting to question, as the massive repetition of the exact same TV ad over and over again are starting to make them angry. Think on this.

Lance Winslow - Lance Winslow's Bio. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/.