Ray Malone's Commentary

Did you ever wonder why in Presidential, and Senate races, one never sees an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine for either major party candidate? Think about it. Can you remember seeing an advertisement for a presidential candidate in a newspaper?

They don't waste their money. No voter that the candidate is trying to reach will read an advertisement in a newspaper. Let me explain, Newspaper ads are good for reaching people who are interested in buying what the advertiser is selling. I f you are in the market for a used car, one of the first places most people look is in the auto ads section of the newspaper. It is a good way to get a feel for what is available and what it will likely cost. If a woman is about to buy clothing she may very well look at the paper to see which stores are holding a sale.

The purpose of political ads is to reach those who are not at the present time interested in a candidate. If you drink Pepsi and the Coca Cola company wants to convert you to Coke, a Coke ad in a newspaper will not reach you. You're a Pepsi person, why would you read the Coke ad?

On the other hand, there is little reason to use expensive advertising to reach the people who are going to vote for a candidate anyway. Candidates are trying to reach the people who are not in the market for there candidacy.

That is the big advantage of Radio and TV. One reads a newspaper to get the news. If you are not interested in the advertising, you just don't read it. If one tunes in a radio or TV station to get news or entertainment it is hard to avoid the advertising. Thus with Radio and TV a candidate can reach people who are not, at least at the time the ad airs, planning to go to the polls to vote for that candidate.

Therefore political ads are designed to appeal to people who are at best indifferent to the candidate. Many who hear the ad are likely opposed to the candidate. I was always amused by local Conservative Candidates who would buy spots in the Rush Limbaugh program. If the people who listen to Rush Limbaugh are not for you, then as a conservative you are not going to win. Sometimes candidates will buy a few ads in a newspaper that endorses them. But that is a way to say thanks to the newspaper, not get more votes.

There are those who cannot understand why Karl Rove agreed to write a column for Newsweek. That is simple. Karl wants to go where the prospects are. Let me put it this way. If you are trying to reform drunks, you don't go to the WCTU meeting to try to find them. And if you want to reach liberals with your case, you don't publish a column in a conservative magazine.

The same is true of political advertising.

The ad must catch the attention of the prospective voter. It must say things the prospective voter wants to hear, and it must motivate that person to register and vote.

People often wonder why candidates do and say things in radio and TV ads that seem unimportant or to be minor issues to the candidate's base. They are never designed to appeal to the base. They are designed to reach those opposed to them.

But the opposite is true of Negative ads. Thus I would expect Hillary to run negative ads against the Republican candidate on stations that carry Rush. Negative ads are designed to reduce the turn out for a candidates opponent. Thus negative ads are run in programs and on stations that reach an opponents supporters.

Is it important to get the base to vote? Of course it is, but that generally involves a ground game. It takes phone calls and personal visits to get all of the base to vote. To many people it is quite flattering and very effective to get a call from a party official asking that person and family to vote.

What do candidates do with polling? They use it to find out what issues and positions are important to groups of voters. If a candidate is running ads on a country music station whose audience is made up of mostly hourly workers who polls show are afraid of getting laid off, then the candidate knows to talk jobs and job security. On the other hand those ads if run on a classical music station whose audience is made up mostly of elite intelligentsia, that would likely not be effective at all.

Today in both Radio and TV candidates try to match advertisements to the wants and needs of the audience that watches that program.

The days when one could build a campaign around a slogan like "Madly for Adlai" or "I like Ike" are long gone. Today it takes a scientific approach to reach voters.

And what a campaign is all about is getting the votes of voters the candidate does not currently have. Keep that in mind as you watch what your favorite candidate does in the coming election season.