Monday, March 31, 2008
Now You Can Be A Contender
One of the chronic complaints from critics of the electoral process in the United States is that television advertising plays a disproportionate role in who wins an election, and since television advertising costs so much money, it means that election results are skewed towards the well-financed campaigns. If a couple of long time political strategists have anything to do about it, that might be about to change.
If you watch the talking head cable shows or Sunday talk shows very much, you will recognize the names of Michael Murphy and Bob Shrum. Murphy has long been connected to Republican campaigns while Shrum has been connected with the Democrats, and the two have teamed up with an online advertising agency called Spot Runner to sell generic pre-packaged political ads that are affordable to any campaign--local, state, or national. Depending on what you need and what your budget is, you can either buy a pre-packaged advertisement that touts your credentials of tough on crime for as little as $500. If you want to create your own ad from start to finish, you can spend a couple thousand dollars using Spot Runner, still cheaper than contracting with any other advertising agency.
As Shrum notes:
Ideally it would be great to see the government step in and mandate free airtime for candidates running for political office, or at the very least air time that costs a nominal fee--$500. In European systems, the government hands over huge blocks of time to the political parties and in some countries it is illegal for an individual candidate to run his own television advertisement. And here in the US--since the government supposedly controls the airwaves--it certainly has the power to make our elections more affordable for anyone to participate, and not just the wealthy few.
My guess is this new venture by the political marketing gurus will be most effective at the state and local level, where campaign budgets are much smaller, and not at the national level where the big money resides. But it is a welcome step nonetheless.
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If you watch the talking head cable shows or Sunday talk shows very much, you will recognize the names of Michael Murphy and Bob Shrum. Murphy has long been connected to Republican campaigns while Shrum has been connected with the Democrats, and the two have teamed up with an online advertising agency called Spot Runner to sell generic pre-packaged political ads that are affordable to any campaign--local, state, or national. Depending on what you need and what your budget is, you can either buy a pre-packaged advertisement that touts your credentials of tough on crime for as little as $500. If you want to create your own ad from start to finish, you can spend a couple thousand dollars using Spot Runner, still cheaper than contracting with any other advertising agency.
As Shrum notes:
There are 500,000 elections each year across the U.S., but the truth is, most of those candidates can't afford TV advertising. For better or worse, you're going to start seeing a lot more political TV spots, and I think that's better because this will democratize the system and level the playing field.
Ideally it would be great to see the government step in and mandate free airtime for candidates running for political office, or at the very least air time that costs a nominal fee--$500. In European systems, the government hands over huge blocks of time to the political parties and in some countries it is illegal for an individual candidate to run his own television advertisement. And here in the US--since the government supposedly controls the airwaves--it certainly has the power to make our elections more affordable for anyone to participate, and not just the wealthy few.
My guess is this new venture by the political marketing gurus will be most effective at the state and local level, where campaign budgets are much smaller, and not at the national level where the big money resides. But it is a welcome step nonetheless.
