Editor’s note: Jon Christens is director of communications at Kelly Scott Madison (KSM), Chicago. Elizabeth Kalmbach is the firm’s vice president, group media director, and Darrell Drake is vice president, research. This article is an edited excerpt from KSM’s winter 2016 issue of State of Media.
Over the past two decades, political polarization in the U.S. has grown considerably. In fact, Pew Research claims that Americans are now more polarized than they’ve been since the Truman administration. Why the growth in division, especially in more recent years? Some attribute the divide to the apparent political parochialism that many consistently liberal or consistently conservative voters consign themselves to in today’s technologically-siloed society. With an ever-expanding amount of information sources to consume, many can stick to reading only the media that tends to align with their views.
So if political polarization has been exacerbated over the past 60 years, how do marketers tap into those amplified passions in the most effective way possible? To answer that question KSM and ORC International teamed up to conduct a consumer survey to see how the general public feels about political marketing. More than 1,000 U.S. adults, 18 years of age or older were asked questions ranging from their sentiments toward various types of political ads and media formats to their thoughts on exposure timing and new targeting tactics.
In this article we will look at when individuals begin researching candidates, breaking behaviors down by party affiliation and age groups, as well as the most influential sources of information for voters. In Part 2 we will provide a look at the power and purpose of political advertising as well as the public view of political ads on new, online formats.
When does the public start researching candidates?
To craft any marketing effort, one of the most logical places to begin the brainstorming process is with campaign timing. Understanding the flight dates helps shape key considerations regarding possible messaging and event alignment. In politics, the act of researching candidates and key issues is tied closely to the proximity of election days. However, when analyzing this behavior across party affiliations and age groups, some interesting differences arise.
Millennials will continue to be heavily prized by political candidates for their growing importance in upcoming elections but the group is often criticized by some strategists as being disengaged from traditional political and media formats. Looking at the timing of when certain groups begin researching political candidates, Millennials surprisingly differ from some larger trends seen across other age groups.
When asked how early respondents begin researching presidential candidates, KSM’s political marketing survey uncovered that Millennials are actually more likely than Baby Boomers to vet candidates very early in the campaigning process. The difference is a statistically significant 38 percent of Millennials who say they begin researching presidential candidates one year or more prior to an election, compared to 27 percent of Baby Boomers who do the same. In other words, Millennials are 1.4 times more likely than Baby Boomers to research candidates early on. Generation X nearly splits the difference at 31 percent. Thirty-five percent of Baby Boomers (this group’s most popular answer) and 31 percent of Gen X research just three to 11 months prior.
What are the forces driving Millennials to start analyzing the field early on and Baby Boomers to hold off until the primaries really start moving into high gear? The casual observer could chalk this difference up to the relative inexperience of younger voters who may not realize that names change often during the typically yearlong process leading up to primaries and prior to a party naming its nominees. But it also shows that when compared to other generations, Millennials are engaged early on in the rallying process and this could mean they have more of a sense of involvement in the campaigning process from start to finish. This might especially ring true when looking at the overall engagement Millennials have with politics on social media. It’s no secret that this age group is more open to interact with civic and political content on social networks. In fact, a Pew Research study stated that 48 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds make the choice to further investigate political or social topics as a direct result of what they read on social networks, and 57 percent claim they “engage in political activity on social media and nowhere else.” Pair the relative ease and extremely low cost of creating and supporting social pages with the perception from Millennials that social is a safe place to express oneself and it makes sense to infer that many users begin their first campaign interactions on social well before the primaries.
When it comes to research timing comparisons among party affiliations, the numbers also vary substantially. For instance, about one-fifth of Republicans claim they begin the research process for midterm candidates between six to 11 months prior to that region’s respective Election Day. That group, representing the largest subset of Republicans when looking at midterm researching activity, was followed closely by the third-largest subset of 19 percent who claim they start vetting competitors between three to five months before Election Day. Compare this with midterm numbers for Democrats and independents, and some stark differences arise. The latter two groups claim they either don’t start their research process until a couple of months prior to Election Day (17 percent for both Democrats and independents) or go as far as stating that they don’t research midterm candidates at all (25 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of independents). This data seems to indicate that Republicans place a greater importance on midterm elections than members of the Democratic Party or independents. A finding like this makes sense after thinking back to the past two midterms, when Republicans were focused on gaining control of both the House and Senate during Obama’s presidency.
A surprising finding appears when going back to respondents who claim they “usually know who [they’re] voting for without conducting extensive research” for both presidential and midterm periods. Overall, when looking at research timing for total adults 18 or older, the highest percentages are from those who claim they conduct no research prior to either presidential or midterm elections. A quarter of respondents marked this answer for midterm elections and 23 percent did so for presidential. When breaking these answers down by party affiliation, 25 and 24 percent of Democrats don’t research prior to midterm and presidential elections, respectively. For independents, the numbers were 26 and 22 percent for midterm and presidential elections, respectively. All four of these subsets represented the largest percentage of respondents for their respective parties’ answers. Republicans, on the other hand – while still having high percentages of non-researchers at 20 and 17 percent for midterm and presidential, respectively – had other higher percentages for research period habits.
Is this a sign that nearly a quarter of both Democrats and independents feel they rely more upon emotion than research when voting? Or do these individuals simply have a stricter definition of research than other groups and are possibly implying that they rely upon sources like political debates and word-of-mouth to form their voting decisions? While an exact answer to that question cannot be made based upon this survey’s data, political marketers should still make a note of key research period differences between the parties and age groups.
Most influential sources of information
Moving on to rank the most influential sources of information to voters, 73 percent of all respondents listed televised debates in their top three, 71 percent listed news reports and 62 percent listed friends or family. Theatrics and showmanship aside, findings to support the great importance of televised debates in the eyes of voters exist in numerous studies conducted in both the U.S. and U.K. and are often cited by political experts. A U.S. News & World Report article stated that televised debates are “one of the top sources of information for voters,” and a 2015 Panelbase survey claimed that the big media outlets and debates often “led online conversations.” Political ads, on the other hand, ranked near the bottom in terms of perceived influence for both total respondents and across all political party affiliations, which is to be expected. In general, when consumers are asked to choose the overall level of influence or trustworthiness between sponsored and non-sponsored content, non-sponsored content often ranks higher.
But when asking all respondents to focus on ranking just the most effective advertising formats that influence voting behavior, television had the most support, with 26 percent of all respondents ranking it as either extremely or very effective. This format was followed closely by print ads (newspaper or magazine) with 22 percent and social media ads with 19 percent of all respondents placing them in their top two most effective formats, respectively. This data not only reinforces the importance of a solid cross-platform presence if the specific campaign is a good fit but also emphasizes the need for creativity in these integrations. For instance, aligning a candidate’s social dialogue efforts with key debates and thinking of ways to generate spontaneous and shareable content (e.g., memes, GIFs, hashtags and reactionary posts) is absolutely essential.
Rankings in preferred ad formats across political affiliations mirrored practically all of the findings for total respondents. However, overall percentages showing influence rankings for Democrats across the top four “extremely or very effective” formats (TV, print, social media and online video ads) were higher when compared directly to those of independents and Republicans. Democrats averaged 5.25 percentage points higher overall in their rankings of the top four formats and actually diverged from the other two parties by awarding the number five spot to outdoor ads instead of radio. Because outdoor includes ads on public transit, taxis, buildings and billboards, and urbanized areas have a higher concentration of these formats, it makes sense that liberals would claim outdoor as more influential than other party-affiliated respondents. Everything from voting behavior to a 2014 study from the Pew Research Center showing liberals’ preference for living in cities and conservatives’ for the opposite can back up these findings. So what’s the biggest takeaway for marketers targeting liberal voters? Once again, get creative – but this time with out-of-home efforts. For those homing in on conservatives and independents, TV and print are still the most effective tools, followed in order by social, online video and radio ads.
When looking to age breakouts, a finding that seems to contradict much of the common rhetoric surrounding Millennials presents itself again. Surprisingly, this group feels that TV ads are the most effective format for politics, with 38 percent stating so, followed closely at 35 percent by social media ads. Online video, print and radio ads – at 30, 29 and 25 percent respectively – rounded out the top five for this group. Clearly, this throws some water in the face of those who say Millennials are not tapped into traditional media sources and are only engaged with online formats when it comes to politics. Data from one of Nielsen’s latest media consumption reports backs this up, indicating that 78 percent of young voters (18 to 34) watched broadcast TV in the past week. Even more Millennial myth-busting arose from data regarding overall interest levels in political advertising.