Personal Democracy Forum has an interesting article on new media and the Virginia governor's race. A few key conclusions:*"Television is still king," with "printed mailers...second" and new media "waiting out in the castle courtyard."
*McDonnell and Deeds "were on fairly even footing" when it came to TV and radio - about $10 million each, but McDonnell spent far less in relative terms - 49% of his total spending vs. 65% of Deeds'.
*McDonnell spent three times as much on direct mail than Deeds did, $1.5 million-$0.5 million
*On the new media front, McDonnell reported spending about $659,000 on new media vs. $117,000 for Deeds; a nearly 6:1 edge for McDonnell online.
*Deeds' spending on new media amounted to about 1% of his entire media budget, and even less of his total budget. For McDonnell, new media amounted to about 6.5% of his media budget, although there's some question as to what the McDonnell campaign is counting in his new media expenditure numbers.
The article quotes my good friend and co-author (on Netroots Rising) Nate Wilcox, who works for the WebStrong Group and consulted to the Brian Moran campaign last spring. Among other things, Nate calls the new media expenditures by Deeds and McDonnell "woefully small," and notes that firms placing those ads "took a 5 to 10% commission."
I followed up with Nate yesterday and he had a couple more comments about the Deeds' campaign specifically. First, Nate felt that "there was probably no tactic that could have made up for the strategic weakness of Deeds as the nominee." Having said that, Nate believes that the Deeds campaign folks "were scared and chose to duck into the turtle shell of the conventional instead of gambling on new tactics."
In other words, the Deeds campaign consultants - Monica and David Dixon, David Petts, etc. - spent far less on "new media" than on the traditional stuff they've been doing forever. Thus, while corporate America spends about 25%-33% on new media, the Deeds campaign spent perhaps 0.5%-1% or so. From what I've gathered, a more reasonable share would have been along the lines of 10% of the campaign's ad budget, but instead we got about 1/10th or 1/20th of that. Part of this disparity results from political campaigns being run by the same people who've been running them for years, and these people tend do what they've always done - TV, direct mail, and not much else. In fact, from what I hear, these people don't even understand cable TV, let alone "new media." Thus, I've been told by experts on this area that campaigns should spend 40%-50% of their TV budgets on cable, but instead it's often closer to nothing (or miniscule).
Of course, cable takes more work, as you have to do "targeting," and a lot of these consultants are often too lazy and risk-averse/fearful (of doing something that's not in the time-honored playbook) to do that work. In general, of course, it's risky to try new things, but in political campaigns, it often appears that you're far safer losing by doing the "acceptable"/"safe" thing than trying to win - and possibly failing - by doing things that aren't considered "acceptable"/"safe." So, even though there's very little (if any) empirical - let alone scientific, as in "controlled, double-blind experiments" - evidence that direct mail or "interruption marketing" on TV is particularly effective, consultants keep doing it over and over again. Meanwhile, "new" things - although they're actually not that "new" anymore - like cable and online advertising, are largely neglected.
The end result of all this fearfulness, laziness, clulesness, and risk-averseness (is that a word?): a huge edge in spending for traditional media as opposed to new media and cable, even though it's quite possible campaigns would get a far, FAR greater "bang for their buck" from the latter methods. But hey, as long as those consultants are fat and happy, who cares if we actually win elections, right?
