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Sometimes, not all of the time, money is a key factor in winning a campaign. We have seen it right here in Lake Worth where the guy with the most money went down in flames. The message must be convincing and when the message hits on "jobs" and the "economy," voters take notice especially when you have a group such as the Chamber of Commerce behind your iniatiative.
As a lot of you know, Ryan Houck was a paid shill of the Florida Chamber of Commerce in its campaign against Amendment 4. In this November 2010 ballot initiative, money and strategy
was everything. Now we are experiencing the total gutting of the DCA, our State's overseer on Comprehensive Plan changes, as well as the desire of the new governor to build over Florida as jobs was his campaign promise.
Also, Yes on Amendment 4 was polling ahead one month before the election but with no professional strategist on Board from the get-go, had literally run out of money. There was no way to go but down in flames. Television and other media were the keys and that took obscene amounts of cash. We lost too because of our naive faith that everyone would rally around smart growth, saving our environment, our resources, and developers whoring our State for the almighty buck. We should have known better.
The following remarks were noted by Joyce Tarnow at a recent presentation by Ryan Houck to a public relations professional networking group. The name of the presentation is “Winning Strategy for Advocacy.”
- He stated that the marketplace is evolving from “consumer" to "stakeholder." (I think this has a lot of implications because stakeholder may mean "special interest" in our terminology.)
- The campaign was structured, systematic, and disciplined
- He mentioned that he did not like the logo for the yard signs but since that was the decision to use that logo and liberal use of yard signs, they went with it
(I personally thought their Vote No Sign was extremely effective from the ominous colors of red and black to the finger pointing "no.")- They formed their committee in 2007, and in 2007 & 2008, started forming their network of groups
(nearly 4 years before the election)- He mentioned the name change but explained the rationale
- Their campaign funding was 11.2 million. I believe this was considerably less than they were expecting to have, mentioning $50 to $60,000,000 as the number they thought might be needed. But that money was leveraged by the fact that they follow a disciplined campaign strategy. This number was a lot less than was spent on the sugar tax which at that time was $25,000,000. Another person by the name of Roy mentioned that in today's dollars $25,000,000 would have equated to $50,000,000. So the point is that the campaign was very efficiently run.
- The first poll in April of 2007 showed a 3 to 1 ratio of yes votes to no
- The campaign was comprised of the following components: paid media, coalition efforts, grassroots, legal, research and fund raising
- 24 of 25 editorial boards "no" on A4 with only the Keynoter in the Keys opposing
- Web videos were important because they got a lot of hits
- They established "regional partnerships" to reach 90% of the electorate focusing on Jacksonville, the I-4 corridor in central Florida, and Miami
- They had a staff of six people in order to focus money on media
- Their Facebook page 6,000 fans
- The 45 to 54 year age range was the strongest support demographic. (How queer is that?-- they should know)
- Online advertising was strong, and they provided 250,000 exposures
- Strong use of voice mail, e-mails and Facebook photos of the logo
- Paid media
- The media airtime purchases were made early so they could get the most advantageous time slots that they needed. (So if we had gotten some last-minute money it would have been fairly ineffectual.)
- They utilized research on when Democrats versus Republicans watch TV and bought TV time coordinated to evening time-slots when Republicans most frequently watch TV
- They were on three stations in Jacksonville in central Florida and one station in Miami
- Regarding Hispanics, he felt that they were more likely to vote yes on 4 so they were targeted for additional exposures
- Key messages
- Jobs, taxes, workability of A4
- According to their research A-4’s messages had higher impact and were simpler. The anti-A4 statements were more complex but picked up in intensity as the media campaign progressed
- All ads were research tested
- A powerful statement was "expenditures cannot be estimated precisely." This is powerful because it was taken from the cost assessment of A4
- They strongly steered away from mention FloridaHometownDemocracy in favor of A4
- St. Pete Beach was only viewed as a prism for making points about jobs and the economy. It sounds like it was only a secondary message as an aid to making their jobs and economy points.
- Endorsements: they felt this was important with voters, so they pushed the various endorsements including even the Chamber of Commerce endorsement and this is the controversial organization
- A4 was beaten by the most decisive margin since 1986
It takes 1200 points in an ad to get opinion to move. But they saw an eight point shift after only 700 points. Apparently this is a measure of the effectiveness of paid media.
