Mica Hansen on TV Versus Digital Political Advertising

As vice president and director of political sales at CoxReps Mica Hansen pictured at top has extensive knowledge of what makes a political campaign work In this interview Hansen discusses the current state of political advertising and what makes for a strong and weak ad She also examines the relative differences between digital and television political advertising particularly insofar as each has been dominated by the Trump and Bloomberg campaigns respectivelyErich Prince When it comes to classic political ads a couple come to mind the 1964 quotDaisyquot ad by the Johnson campaign and the 1984 ad during Mitch McConnell39s first Senate race with bloodhounds searching for McConnell39s opponent Dee Huddleston What ads stand out for youMica Hansen I39d certainly agree with you on those first two One of the ads that recently caught my eye was Senator Joni Ernst and her initial spot where she described her experience quotcastrating hogsquot I thought that one was certainly eyecatching It catapulted her name out there in a way that it would39ve been difficult to do otherwise No one knew who she was amp8212 and then everyone knew who she wasPrince What are the features that make for a good political adHansen I think that39s changing A few years ago I would have said a compelling storyline amp8212 much like Barack Obama39s initial biographical spots They were spots that were introducing the candidate to the electorate Now to the point of the Joni Ernst spots it tends to be something that39s either a little more controversial or comes with humor or has something that makes it stand out from the generic We39re seeing an uptick in military service features as quite a few veterans are now running for office and that will often be a key component of their pitchPrince Conversely what makes for a bad political adHansen Goodness there are so many There39s the generic flags apple pie the shot of the family with the puppy amp8212 so often a golden retriever Or quotI39m a successful businessperson this is why I can run the governmentquotNow granted that worked very very well at the presidential level Obviously I39m speaking of Trump amp8212 and Bloomberg to a certain extent But at the local level I think people are looking for something more enticing than just quotI39ve made a lot of money in business so I39m going now to bring that to the statequotWe39ve seen differences though depending on if a candidate is selffunding So I should put that caveat in there If you39ve got enough money to put behind your message generally that tends to make up for any number of copy errors you may commit along the wayPrince As Mitch McConnell says in his memoir The Long Game quotThe three most important words in politics are 39cash on hand39quotHansen Absolutely 100 percentPrince You mentioned Mike Bloomberg What ad strategy being practiced among the 2020 Democratic candidates amp8212 by Bloomberg or others amp8212 stands out most as noteworthy or interestingHansen I would have actually said Bloomberg Now granted it is a strategy that could only be pursued by someone who had this amount of quotcash on handquot amp8212 to steal from the previous line It39s not something that can be done otherwise but he has frequent copy changes and engaging copy I39ve noticed a narrative coming through beyond just trolling President TrumpFor example I was watching a spot and he39s been using the tagline quotMike Will Get It Donequot In this most recent spot he said quotWell what is 39It39quot And he talked about what his quotItquot was which was changing the tax structure increasing funding for social programs giving everyone health coverage etc But he actually took the time to define quotItquot Then there39s the sheer amount of spending At this point Bloomberg and Steyer have combined for 4459 million in spending more than all other candidates combinedPrince An important conversation that has been ongoing is television versus digital ad spending How are you seeing the breakdown between the two this cycleHansen Bloomberg is challenging where the trend line had been by running so many television ads As of the week of February 10th Michael Bloomberg has spent approximately 300 million on advertising with approximately 79 percent of that on local broadcast or network television He39s doing digital too of courseBut one of the things that was true about the Trump campaign which kind of upended the way campaigns were being planned at the time is that it was digitalforward It was substantially spending on digital amp8212 Facebook specifically As you know Brad Parscale his current campaign manager worked as his digital manager previously and they invested heavily in digital And it worked well So far the Trump campaign has spent approximately 521 million this cycle with about 39 million on digitalPrince Can you describe the current intersection of political ad spending and the broader financial wellbeing of the various local news marketsHansen There has been a contraction that is obvious and documented I39m not letting the cat out of the bag to say that there39s been a contraction in broadcast spending overall over the last few years Yet political ad spending has somewhat papered over amp8212 if not made up for amp8212 some of the declines that we39ve seen in core spending going into broadcast And I can see that continuing especially since Bloomberg39s campaign is investing so much in broadcastOf course this all depends on who wins If Trump continues with the digitalfirst strategy and is able to win reelection I39m sure we39ll see more candidates continue that pivot to digital But if a more general market and broadcast strategy wins the day then I would say the advantage is to broadcastTo invoke an extremely old trope Broadcast is the shotgun digital is the rifle and you39re going to hit an individual person whereas television hits everybody And then it just depends on who39s listening to your message at that moment I know there is still targeting involved and I don39t want to act like broadcast isn39t targeted amp8212 because it is amp8212 just not to the degree of digital But since you are trying to get a preponderance of voters out there to vote for you you need to reach that level of audience for which broadcast has not been surpassedDon39t stop now Stay in the know with critical commentary on media news coverage from Erich Prince and News on the RecordClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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Mica Hansen on TV Versus Digital Political Advertising

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Erich J. Prince

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