Meg Whitman Advertises...and Makes Progress

Does the headline shock you? It seems to make sense, to be an obvious relationship between cause and effect, right? If you get your name out there, defined as spending campaign money advertising your story or your message, people will become more familiar with you and many will be receptive to your candidacy (hopefully). This receptivity will show up in polls in the form of growing support for your campaign.


Results of the Capitol Weekly/Probolsky Research California Poll

Meg Whitman 34%
Tom Campbell 12.5%
Steve Poizner 5.5%

Previous October 8 Field Poll:

Meg Whitman 22%
Tom Campbell 20%
Steve Poizner 9%

Yet candidates in every election cycle all over the country hoard their money until days or merely a few weeks before the election under the orthodox budgeting process that you budget your campaign backwards – that is, from election-day back.

If you are a juggernaut, this may work since your opposition may never get off the ground financially, which means there will be little competition, ensuring a victory; this is especially the case if the opponent in this situation also uses the orthodox budgeting process of planning from election-day backwards.

But even juggernauts can be taken down by starting early. If advertising works near the end of a campaign, why shouldn’t it work early on?

Let that sink in. Seriously.

Many in the political consulting industry don’t believe in early advertising. They would respond by saying, “well, Biggs, it’s too early for voters to pay attention to the campaign, you should save your money until later.” This is an orthodox response to defend an old, orthodox strategy.

It just simply isn’t true that voters aren’t paying attention. It’s almost like saying people aren’t paying attention to XYZ company or to Coca-Cola. I don’t wake up every day wondering about Coca-Cola, therefore, why should Coca-Cola advertise towards me?

But when the TV ads and radio ads start appearing, suddenly the product, or candidate, gains awareness among those exposed to the advertising. Some people won’t commit early on, but many others will, and this group is big enough to gain a strong lead with. And those who are uncommitted are still being exposed to the positive (or negative) advertising and will take some “reprogramming”, or ad dollars from the opposition, to sway in the other direction.

Seeing your poll numbers rise in relationship to your advertising is momentum. This momentum is a snowball that has collateral effect, or “pin action” as Mad Money’s Jim Cramer likes to say: it creates excitement about the campaign and often leads to greater fund-raising, which helps grow the organization of the campaign at the same time (endorsements, volunteers, etc.).

And once again, we see a brave candidate in Meg Whitman getting out there early, running some good advertising spots and seeing the results in the polls. The point of this post is to show advertising early can in fact make a difference, not so much to question why Campbell and Poizner are not doing what Whitman is doing. They are not as well-heeled as Whitman is. Her campaign has spent over $19 million getting these poll numbers. However, an impact could be made doing some radio advertising on conservative talk radio in California’s different media markets for a lot less than many realize.
For candidates in smaller contests, anywhere from council to congress to state-wide elections in smaller states, small amounts of advertising money relative to what their contests are used to later on in a campaign can make a huge difference.