Political campaigns show the importance of TV
- Posted by Ephraim Cohen on October 10th, 2006 filed in Advertising, Political Campaigns, Reputation Management
Jon Fine’s Business Week column on election TV ads shows off the new media bias that can mislead so many communicators. While many people have moved and are moving from TV/print to getting information online, many people still get their information from so-called old media. Once again, ignore old media at your peril.
As Jon points out, unlike marketers, campaign consultants are in a zero sum game. They either win and election or lose. That means they don’t have the luxury of experiementing with cutting edge marketing, they must go with what works. While many people do get information online, consultants know that many are still watching television and ads. They also know that only a small portion of the population has Tivo or similar capabilities which means people actually watch the ads, versus ignoring online ads while reading online information.
Personally, I’m not a big television advertisement fan. It seems a bit expensive for an ad outlet that so many people hate. And while I do think political ads will move to digital platforms like Websites, mobile and more, it will only happen as viewer habits move and to other non-TV mediums. It will happen, but it takes more than a few years of Internet penetration to change decade old viewer habits.
And I live in Connecticut where Lieberman lost to Lamont, due, many said, to online activism. Online activism may have helped boost Lamont, but I sure saw a lot of Lamont TV ads being used to push down Lieberman. Event Lamon’ts campaign seemed to know that old media isn’t old. It’s just older. And often, the older more experienced entity can be a lot more effective than the louder but still developing one.
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October 21st, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Does it only old media vs. new media?
Isn’t it audience of old media vs. new media audiences? Even more, isn’t it characteristics of old media audiences vs. characteristics of new media characteristics?
Situation of zero sum game forces to put political stuff on TV in order to make company as effective as possible. Here I mean to reach the audiences that are quite active as votes.
New media attract lots of young people, who are usually less political interested and the most important problem with them - they do not affiliate themselves with one political party. These are the people who tend to vote on issues, not on party. As they do not identify themselves with any political party it is difficult to make them to vote for party, instead of one political issue.
Although, sooner or later, even political communication will use new media as probably the main way of communication. It will happen when characteristics of new media users will reflect characteristics of electorate. (I mean when those who do cote and whose choice is not random will be also active users of new media).
October 30th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
To your (kateeJRMC) point, new media does in fact attract a lot of young people but they are not yet the political force in elections that the media makes them out to be. However, they will be one day, and when that day hits, new media will become the major force to deal with. Until then, the senior citizens, heartland citizens and other major voting demographics will be using so-called “old’ media for their voting information, and so that media remains the major force.