While most presidential candidates look at their media strategy in terms of cost-per-voter, Michael Bloomberg is challenging that assumption with his broad-reaching buys.
With more resources than any candidate in history, political media buying norms are falling to the wayside for the Bloomberg camp. Typically, strategy is built around a budget, but given the former New York mayor’s remarkable resources, there's no need to limit their advertising options. In fact, New York Magazine estimated that if Bloomberg spent one-tenth of his wealth on this election, he’d outspend the entire Republican Party five to one.
Political media firms specialize in electing candidates through a dynamic and layered media strategy and work to give clients the best value within their budget. While retail firms focus on the long game, running extended, lower-point-level campaigns to persuade consumers on a product or service over time, political media takes a different approach given a much shorter window to persuade voters to turn out for what amounts to a one-day sale.
While most presidential candidates are building their strategy around winning Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, or Nevada, Bloomberg has his sights set on Super Tuesday. Since Bloomberg won’t even appear on ballots in the four early states, he’s investing heavily in those Super Tuesday states—most of which haven’t seen political spending in many presidential primary cycles. One of the most expensive Super Tuesday states is California, with 494 delegates to be awarded on March 3rd. The only other presidential candidate to spend outside of the four early states is Tom Steyer, who added California markets to his TV buys soon after Bloomberg went up on TV.
Bloomberg isn’t the only presidential candidate using a retail firm—this is also Andrew Yang’s buyers’ first foray into political buying. Yang’s buyers made a mistake in November when they initially only bought stations in the Boston market instead of the King Kong station for New Hampshire. While the vast majority of the state is covered by the Boston media market, there’s only one TV station that is physically located in New Hampshire, and that’s WMUR, which is where most of the eyeballs in the state are going for their news and local programming.
While Yang's team added WMUR to the buy later that same November day, it was widely understood in the political buying community that they made a mistake and left WMUR off their original order.
For example, when looking at Nielsen ratings for the state of New Hampshire, during the 6 p.m. newscast, WMUR receives a 12.5 rating while WCVB and WFXT received a 0.0 and 0.1, respectively, for the same time period. Clearly, WMUR is the best choice for a presidential candidates’ ad dollars.
In Michigan, Bloomberg is buying statewide, and it might be paying off. A recent EPIC-MRA poll in the state had Bloomberg beating Donald Trump by the biggest margin in a head-to-head matchup. Though the head-to-head had 9 percent of likely voters undecided, it showed Bloomberg beating the president by seven points. The same poll had Elizabeth Warren beating Trump by three points, Pete Buttigieg by four, Bernie Sanders by five, and Joe Biden by six.
In states where Bloomberg is spending, like Michigan, the ads running on local television stations aren’t the only ads potential voters see. Bloomberg is layering his ads—buying national networks, like CNN, NBC, and CBS, and premium sporting events, such as Big 10 basketball and NFL playoff games. And this is only on a linear media front—he’s also hitting voters with an intense digital ad blitz.
In our office, we often ask our clients, “Do you want to be famous or do you want to get elected?” We ask this because, more often than not, the qualitative data we use to determine how to reach our target voters doesn’t lead us to buy glamorous programming. Sometimes the voters you want to reach are watching “Days of our Lives” and “People’s Court,” not the AFC Championship game. But thanks to his vast financial advantage, Bloomberg has the luxury of not having to choose. He can ignore the typical rules of efficient political buying and buy a $10 million Super Bowl ad.
Other PAC and candidate spending pales in comparison to that of Bloomberg. Consider that earlier this month, (1/14-1/20), Bloomberg’s spending accounted for 65 percent of total spending. The second-highest spender, Tom Steyer, only accounted for about 13 percent.
Image Source: InsideTrack™, product of Sage Media Planning: Presidential spending overview for the week of Jan 14-20, 2020
When it comes to evaluating how effective Bloomberg’s media plan is, it comes down to perspective. Through the lens of traditional political media buying, this type of plan is unprecedented. But when the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money is taken into account, the strategy is in-line with accomplishing what Bloomberg is attempting to do—introduce himself and deliver persuasive messages to gain support in Super Tuesday states.
Cathy Buckley and Eileen Proudlock direct the Competitive Tracking department and Jade Brown is political tracking analyst for Sage Media Planning & Placement, a Democratic media buying firm, located in Washington, D.C.