Sept 2012 - Advertising/Communications Times

Page 2 Advertising/Communications Times September 2012
By Mike Mallowe
Spending $6 billion on people
who can’t make a decision
may be wretched excess.
This fall the two political parties
will spend about $6 billion on
messages aimed, primarily, at a
small group of people – undecided
voters.
I can’t conceive of being
an “undecided” voter – or pretty
much of an “undecided” anything.
I am one of those people
who may be wrong, monumentally
wrong, but who is never in
doubt.
I can definitely respect your
personal or political preference,
as long as you have one.
My biggest problems have
always been with people – particularly
leaders – who waited
until the last possible minute to
see which way to jump. A word
like “trust” never enters into their
decision-making.
But, that’s just me.
There are still people out
there who can’t decide whom
they will vote for, or if they will
vote, at all. I’m sure you might
even know some of them. They
might even make you as crazy
as they make me.
In a weird way this really
resonates with me because I
know so many people who have
spent their professional lives
also trying to convert or convince
undecideds – buy my product or
service; use me; believe in me;
try my store, or restaurant, or
magazine, or come to my school.
(Editor’s Note: They’re called
“advertisers”)
No matter how hard you
work, or how many customers
you thoroughly satisfy – which
is exactly what most successful
people in business do every
day – you will still be spinning
your wheels chasing after the
undecideds. And, you will never
be able to truly win over those
undecideds, at least not for long.
Marketing To
Determine Future
If you look at it from this
point-of-view, all marketing, including
advertising and public relations,
is about trying to capture
those undecideds.
The future of your business,
or at least your profits, might depend
on the undecideds and in
this election the future of the whole
country might depend on them.
Who Are
The Undecideds?
Elizabeth Kolbert, a blogger
with The New Yorker magazine,
tried to come up with a good estimate
of how many people this
“undecided” label really includes.
The best person she went
to was former Bill Clinton adviser
Paul Begala, who pops up quite
Bying “Undecideds”
Mike Mallowe
a bit as a talking head on cable
news. This is what Begala had to
say recently in Newsweek:
“When you factor out the
undecideds in securely red or
blue states (since their votes
won’t change the Electoral College
results), the election comes
down to ‘around 4 percent of the
voters in six states.’”
“I did the math so you won’t
have to,” Begala told her.
“Four percent of the presidential
vote in Virginia, Florida,
Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, and
Colorado is 916,643 people.
That’s it. The American president
will be selected by fewer than
half the number of people who
paid to get into a Houston Astros
home game last year.’”
As you might expect, something
else the undecideds have
in common is a stupefying lack
of basic knowledge regarding
current events, politics or even
fundamental civics.
Does that translate to the
undecideds among us also being
the stupidest among us?
You don’t have to answer
that, and neither do I.
But the question does keep
coming up in these analysis
pieces and based on the kind of
group profiles they project, I do
not think you would want any undecideds
doing surgery on you
or your loved ones.
People who take umbrage
at this frequently confuse independent
voters with undecided
voters.
Independents have often
given up on both political parties
after belonging to one or both of
them. Many independents vote
regularly and know all about
the issues. My apologies to any
touchy independents.
But we aren’t talking about
independent voters here – we
are talking about people who
are so zombie-like that they truly
cannot figure out which of two
clearly defined candidates they
like best.
Spending Marketing
Dollars on the Undecideds
The amount of money being
spent trying to get through to
the undediceds is astonishing.
Before bothering to do much research,
I calculated that about a
billion dollars each sounded right
for the two candidates.
Boy, was I wrong.
The OpenSecrets.org, a blog
that pushes for good government
in Washington, recently quoted
one of their experts on the amount
of money that will be spent, including
advertising, media buys of all
sorts, public relations, social media,
direct mail, volunteers, and
even flower arrangements at fundraising
dinners:
“Although a lot of money still
remains to be raised and spent,
the data already show that we’re
on track to break the extraordinary,
record-setting sums spent
in 2008,” said Sheila Krumholz,
Continued on next page
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Communications Times
Volume 36, #3 September, 2012
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