Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Episode 37: Modern Campaign Ads, with Nick Everhart of Content Creative Media & Medium Buying

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Episode 37: Modern Campaign Ads, with Nick Everhart of Content Creative Media & Medium Buying · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

0:01
SPEAKER_03: [music]
0:13
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst here at DDHQ.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: You know,
0:20
SPEAKER_00: we talk a lot about money in politics,
0:22
SPEAKER_00: like how much a candidate or group is raised and spent.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: If you've read one of my primary election previews over the past few months,
0:29
SPEAKER_00: You'll often see a reference to how much a candidate has raised or how much
0:32
SPEAKER_00: an outside group has spent supporting or opposing a candidate.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: And one big reason is that a large chunk of that money goes
0:39
SPEAKER_00: to creating campaign advertising and purchasing airtime either on TV
0:45
SPEAKER_00: or digital platforms to run said advertising.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: You know,
0:48
SPEAKER_00: as a result,
0:48
SPEAKER_00: many Americans and I'm sure many of you listeners
0:51
SPEAKER_00: and viewers find themselves bombarded by campaign ads promoting or attacking
0:54
SPEAKER_00: a candidate or cause.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: But just how does ad creation and placement work?
0:59
SPEAKER_00: How has it changed in our increasingly digital world?
1:02
SPEAKER_00: What works and doesn't work nowadays?
1:05
SPEAKER_00: These are topics familiar to political practitioners and analysts,
1:08
SPEAKER_00: but not necessarily the lay public.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: And so to dig into the universe of campaign advertising,
1:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to welcome Nick Everhart to the podcast.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Nick is the founder and president of Content Creative Media, and Medium Buying.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: He's been working in the campaign public affairs,
1:23
SPEAKER_00: advertising,
1:24
SPEAKER_00: creative and buying space on the Republican side of the aisle for 25 plus years.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: And has worked with numerous candidates and groups and other political clients.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Nick can give us an inside look at how some of this works and how it's changed some
1:37
SPEAKER_00: over the years.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: So with that, Nick, welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks for having me on.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: Big, big fan of your podcast and just the awesome work you guys are
1:48
SPEAKER_02: doing at Decision Desk.
1:49
SPEAKER_02: Makes knowing what's happening on election night a lot easier than it used to be.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's our goal.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: And we're always happy to hear it.
1:59
SPEAKER_02: In fact,
1:59
SPEAKER_02: I always enjoy now when I'm working on something and they don't know about you on
2:03
SPEAKER_02: a race and I get to be like, oh, well, for returns, we'll just go to DDHQ.
2:06
SPEAKER_02: And they're like, what's that?
2:07
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, your life will be changed.
2:11
SPEAKER_02: You won't worry about it unless you nostalgically want to look at that,
2:15
SPEAKER_02: you know, that old New York Times return page.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: You're not going to go back.
2:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:19
SPEAKER_00: Well, appreciate the, the positive word there.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, and, uh,
2:24
SPEAKER_00: you know, we're,
2:25
SPEAKER_00: we're, we're enjoying it and trying to make it more easily accessible to people.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: So, and,
2:30
SPEAKER_00: and some ways in the same ways,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: this podcast is trying to make sort of analysis and understanding of what's going on
2:36
SPEAKER_00: a little more accessible,
2:36
SPEAKER_00: but so with that in mind,
2:39
SPEAKER_00: uh, you know, obviously you've been, you've been doing this for, for a bit.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: And so I,
2:43
SPEAKER_00: I thought it would be,
2:44
SPEAKER_00: it'd be fun to sort of hear What you do specifically from your own,
2:49
SPEAKER_00: from the horse's mouth,
2:50
SPEAKER_00: if you will, and then how you got into it in the first place.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I guess today, right?
3:00
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned it.
3:01
SPEAKER_02: I'm a full service agency, Content Creative Media, so we produce ads.
3:07
SPEAKER_02: TV, radio, digital.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: And then Medium Buying is our sister company that does the buying for the projects
3:13
SPEAKER_01: where we do creative,
3:14
SPEAKER_01: but then also does a
3:16
SPEAKER_02: lot of buying for other agencies or institutions or groups.
3:19
SPEAKER_02: And out of that,
3:20
SPEAKER_02: we do the planning,
3:22
SPEAKER_02: the buying,
3:23
SPEAKER_02: the competitive tracking,
3:24
SPEAKER_02: the ad captures,
3:26
SPEAKER_02: just all the information that you kind of have to do
3:30
SPEAKER_02: to plan your own media campaigns and also You know,
3:32
SPEAKER_02: know what your opponent's doing because that's a huge part of what you're supposed
3:37
SPEAKER_02: to do.
3:38
SPEAKER_02: You know,
3:39
SPEAKER_02: whether it's adjusting buys or,
3:41
SPEAKER_02: you know, mutually sure destruction’s a running joke in American politics, right?
3:44
SPEAKER_02: They spend a hundred thousand and something.
3:46
SPEAKER_02: You need to match it.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: So that kind of,
3:49
SPEAKER_02: that's kind of,
3:49
SPEAKER_02: you know,
3:49
SPEAKER_02: the gamesmanship or strategic-like backside on the,
3:52
SPEAKER_02: on the buying, planning side is, is what we do at Medium.
3:55
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I, um, geez, um, When you sent me my first draft of my buyer,
4:02
SPEAKER_01: you said 20, and I was like, oh, we got to go to 25 years I've been doing this.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Which is insane.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: I grew up in Southern Indiana, and I kind of wanted
4:11
SPEAKER_02: to not go to IU.
4:11
SPEAKER_02: It was real close to where I grew up.
4:14
SPEAKER_02: And they also waitlisted me, which made me mad.
4:17
SPEAKER_02: So I went to Ohio State in Columbus, and that's kind of where home is now.
4:20
SPEAKER_02: That's where my business is based and where I've been raised in my family.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: But when I went
4:27
SPEAKER_02: to OSU, I was,
4:28
SPEAKER_02: you know, Liked that it was a big school in a city, and I love college football.
4:35
SPEAKER_02: And so there aren't many... Good place to be.
4:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's something Ohio State's always been good at,
4:41
SPEAKER_02: even before they were good at the school part of things.
4:43
SPEAKER_02: And so I thought I wanted to get into broadcast journalism.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: That's really what I wanted.
4:49
SPEAKER_02: And I got kind of rudely awakened my freshman year when they dropped
4:51
SPEAKER_02: the broadcast journalism program.
4:55
SPEAKER_02: But I also was kind of intrigued by the whole state capitol,
4:58
SPEAKER_02: state house,
5:00
SPEAKER_02: There's always an energy too about colleges and state capitals in the same town,
5:05
SPEAKER_02: places like Columbus and Austin.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: They're big schools that give you lots of opportunities to explore and figure out
5:12
SPEAKER_02: that whole world while you're an undergrad.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: I had a class, probably my sophomore or junior year, it was kind of an applied politics class.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: It used to be taught by a guy named Herb Asher.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if he's still even teaching at the school anymore.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: It's been a long time since I've talked to him.
5:28
SPEAKER_02: But one of the things he made you do
5:32
SPEAKER_01: in his class was you had to work on a campaign.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: And so this was 2000, right?
5:38
SPEAKER_02: So Ohio at the time, shocking to youngsters in our business or people watching,
5:43
SPEAKER_02: used to be a purple state.
5:45
SPEAKER_02: Key swing state, you know, key swing state.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: Ohio and Florida used to be battlegrounds.
5:50
SPEAKER_02: That's how old I am.
5:52
SPEAKER_02: And I guess things are getting a little more competitive in Ohio this year.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, so you had to work on a race.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: And so there was the presidential race, which lots of
6:01
SPEAKER_02: people wanted to gravitate and work on.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: And then there was the, there was a competitive congressional race.
6:05
SPEAKER_02: It was, I think it was Dorothy Teater and Pat Tiberi.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people wanted to work on that.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: Class kind of cleared out.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: I went to the front.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: I was like, you know, I'm kind of intrigued by, campaigns and politics.
6:16
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, I want,
6:17
SPEAKER_02: I'd like to be in like a slam dunk state rep race where I can go work really hard,
6:22
SPEAKER_02: make an impression,
6:22
SPEAKER_02: and they'll help me get, you know, a page job in the speaker's floor.
6:25
SPEAKER_02: He looked at me like I was a psycho.
6:27
SPEAKER_02: And, but he helped me do it.
6:29
SPEAKER_02: And it was a state rep by the name of the time.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: His name was Larry Wolpert.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: I think he still lives in Central Ohio.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: He's not in elected office.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: And from that, subsequently, I got a page job on the speaker's floor.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: And that gave me kind of like a front row seat to like, wow,
6:41
SPEAKER_02: that's the governing side, but just, you know, the intersection of politics in this.
6:45
SPEAKER_02: And so that's kind of how I got, kind of got the bug.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: And then I graduated from school and I wasn't really sure
6:52
SPEAKER_01: that last year what I was exactly going to do.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: I'd kept working and shifted to like interning at a public affairs shop or whatever.
6:59
SPEAKER_02: And the guy I worked for,
7:02
SPEAKER_02: who wound up being the state party chairman later, Doug Preisse, and was a Kasich guy.
7:07
SPEAKER_02: He introduced me to Rex Elsass at Strategy Group, and I was like their fifth employee.
7:13
SPEAKER_02: I graduated, had a job that next Monday and kind of was off and running.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: So I never did the, I never worked on a campaign, right?
7:21
SPEAKER_02: I never was a comms guy or a manager on the ground.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: I kind of just fell into this, at the time, kind of fledgling ad shop.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, a job that I didn't even know existed three months before I had it.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Because until you're in this world, right,
7:36
SPEAKER_01: you don't,
7:36
SPEAKER_01: You don't really think about who's making ads or who's placing buys or who's,
7:40
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:40
SPEAKER_01: that like the whole consultant
7:43
SPEAKER_02: ecosystem is not something that crosses your mind,
7:46
SPEAKER_02: especially when you're,
7:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
7:47
SPEAKER_02: just finishing up college and having a good time and not worrying about
7:50
SPEAKER_02: the next job,
7:50
SPEAKER_02: let alone just people out there who are even interested in politics, right?
7:54
SPEAKER_02: The backside of this, the business side of it.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I was the fifth employee and stayed there until, I don't know, 2013.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: And then I had a pretty,
8:05
SPEAKER_02: um, pretty well-documented fallout with him and that shop and world and had
8:10
SPEAKER_02: a little non-compete before I started my own companies.
8:13
SPEAKER_02: But along the way,
8:14
SPEAKER_02: when I was there,
8:16
SPEAKER_02: we used a local ad agency or ad buyer that only did kind of Ohio work
8:21
SPEAKER_02: or what we brought to it.
8:22
SPEAKER_02: And after like a cycle of that,
8:23
SPEAKER_02: I remember going to exercise like,
8:25
SPEAKER_02: I don't think they do a very good job and I think we can do it better and make
8:28
SPEAKER_02: a lot more money doing it.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: And he loved that last part of that equation.
8:33
SPEAKER_02: And so I started strategic media placement probably four years in.
8:38
SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
8:39
SPEAKER_02: just and I
8:41
SPEAKER_01: kind of to learn media buying outside of a political space,
8:45
SPEAKER_01: I found some of those old media buying academies that used to be kind
8:48
SPEAKER_01: of Coca-Cola propped up and they had people that used to work at major shops
8:51
SPEAKER_02: or companies like that and kind of learned real media buying aside from politics.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: And so that's kind of how I started S&P and kind of learned The art and science,
9:02
SPEAKER_02: if you would, of being a good media planner, buyer, and competitive tracker.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's something I want to dive into a little bit because I think it's,
9:13
SPEAKER_00: as you said,
9:14
SPEAKER_00: and I think rightfully so,
9:15
SPEAKER_00: it's something a lot of people are just not really following.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of like a- Which is
9:21
SPEAKER_02: absurd, right?
9:22
SPEAKER_02: Like there's all these ads that flood yourself every fall.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: And the idea that there's a world behind that is not often thought about for sure.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that there's, you know, active, like people aren't just willy-nilly doing this.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: There's like a lot.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe, maybe.
9:40
SPEAKER_02: We call those local yokel run races.
9:42
SPEAKER_02: They don't typically end as well.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, I think just for folks to get some idea,
9:51
SPEAKER_00: I was curious about some of the campaigns and groups you've worked with over
9:55
SPEAKER_00: the years, maybe some recent examples and then some more distant ones.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
9:59
SPEAKER_00: you mentioned sort of a,
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Something you did at the very start,
10:03
SPEAKER_00: but as in your professional life here,
10:06
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
10:07
SPEAKER_00: we're going to,
10:08
SPEAKER_00: I think,
10:09
SPEAKER_00: show a couple ads that you've been involved in, but I guess, oh, no, it's okay.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: It'll be fun.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to,
10:16
SPEAKER_00: but I guess I was just curious,
10:17
SPEAKER_00: like, what are some recent examples of candidates or groups you've worked with?
10:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we do media buying for everything from local races up to US Senate campaigns
10:31
SPEAKER_02: and major institutions.
10:33
SPEAKER_02: We do a lot of work for Cleffer Growth, which means we're very busy in primary cycle.
10:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I bet.
10:42
SPEAKER_02: In the general as well, but certainly in the primary phase.
10:46
SPEAKER_02: You know,
10:47
SPEAKER_02: on the U.S.
10:47
SPEAKER_02: Senate buying side this year,
10:49
SPEAKER_02: worked for Barry Moore,
10:52
SPEAKER_02: did their buying,
10:53
SPEAKER_02: worked for Curt Almayot in Montana,
10:56
SPEAKER_02: you know, Governors Races right now buying for Larry Road in South Dakota.
11:00
SPEAKER_02: So, I mean,
11:01
SPEAKER_02: I've always,
11:02
SPEAKER_02: you know,
11:03
SPEAKER_02: and do a lot of other institutional work for groups like Raga and have done work for
11:06
SPEAKER_02: the RSLCs of the work in both the institutions and committees.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: I've always,
11:12
SPEAKER_02: and it's probably kind of from where I started the shop I worked at,
11:16
SPEAKER_02: we were a non-DC
11:17
SPEAKER_01: based company.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: We were not institutional favorites, if you would.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: And that was also a world where pre-Citizens United,
11:25
SPEAKER_01: the amount of work and spending in advertising and politics at large,
11:28
SPEAKER_01: but particularly in advertising, was a
11:31
SPEAKER_02: fraction of what it is now.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: And that's mainly because you had campaign direct work and you had
11:36
SPEAKER_01: the major institutions, and that was really it.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
11:39
SPEAKER_01: to get work,
11:40
SPEAKER_01: you had to either be kind of wired out of the buildings,
11:42
SPEAKER_01: whether it be the NRCC
11:43
SPEAKER_02: or NRSC or RGA,
11:45
SPEAKER_02: et cetera,
11:45
SPEAKER_02: or you just had to go kind of develop a mindset of chasing business,
11:50
SPEAKER_01: like cold calling it and getting after it and, you know, doing real sales.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: It was almost like being a college football recruiter, right?
11:56
SPEAKER_01: You know,
11:56
SPEAKER_01: there'd be an open congressional seat and,
11:59
SPEAKER_01: you know,
12:01
SPEAKER_01: you'd try to get a hold of them however you could,
12:02
SPEAKER_01: even pre kind of, you know, like I said, 01.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: Internet exists,
12:06
SPEAKER_01: but the degree to which it was like,
12:08
SPEAKER_01: You know,
12:09
SPEAKER_01: you were still doing a lot of cold calls and phone calls and things like that to get
12:12
SPEAKER_01: in somebody's home to try to show them a reel or talk about it.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: Or sometimes you're calling people that you thought they look good on paper
12:18
SPEAKER_01: from afar and they hadn't even thought about it.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: So you're almost recruiting like legitimately into a new sport.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
12:25
SPEAKER_01: I think that
12:25
SPEAKER_02: mindset,
12:26
SPEAKER_02: I say all that because I've always kind of liked to have a book of business and work
12:31
SPEAKER_02: that wasn't relying on a singular project or race or place.
12:35
SPEAKER_02: So, you know,
12:36
SPEAKER_02: you look at our client list,
12:37
SPEAKER_02: whether it's be Content or Medium, or the stuff I used to do,
12:40
SPEAKER_02: like Strategy Group, and it's very, it's not regional.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: I never wanted to be a Midwest guy or a South guy or Northeast guy or West guy.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I always felt like if you're a good practitioner and you get good at this
12:51
SPEAKER_02: and you understand how to do media buying and you understand how to Tell
12:54
SPEAKER_01: a story
12:54
SPEAKER_01: and cut an ad and do a narrative message arc.
12:57
SPEAKER_01: You should be able to do that anywhere.
12:58
SPEAKER_02: And, um,
13:00
SPEAKER_02: I think our,
13:00
SPEAKER_02: I think our client list kind of reflects that, um,
13:03
SPEAKER_02: you know, and, and, um,
13:05
SPEAKER_02: and yeah, so, um,
13:07
SPEAKER_02: you know,
13:08
SPEAKER_02: if there's been a Gov primary this year,
13:09
SPEAKER_02: there's probably a 90% chance I’ve done an inside or out on it.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, You know,
13:14
SPEAKER_02: some of the congressional primaries,
13:15
SPEAKER_02: too, via outside groups more
13:17
SPEAKER_01: than anything else.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: Particularly,
13:19
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:19
SPEAKER_01: the primary,
13:20
SPEAKER_01: we're in this strange phase where primaries are so much more determined by
13:23
SPEAKER_02: that Trump endorsement.
13:25
SPEAKER_02: Some of these things don't go to the full-bore mat that they used to.
13:29
SPEAKER_02: And they're,
13:30
SPEAKER_02: frankly,
13:31
SPEAKER_02: not quite as hard-fought and competitive because of that,
13:34
SPEAKER_02: because he's able to kind of really dictate the outcome of the winner.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: And it changes the campaign.
13:38
SPEAKER_02: People run before the campaign of trying to get the endorsement, too.
13:41
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, that's changed.
13:43
SPEAKER_02: A lot, frankly,
13:46
SPEAKER_02: you know,
13:46
SPEAKER_02: we'll see the runway on that post this cycle and futures,
13:49
SPEAKER_02: but, but,
13:51
SPEAKER_01: but yeah, like, and also levels of race, right?
13:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you're,
13:55
SPEAKER_01: if you're good at a congressional,
13:56
SPEAKER_01: no reason you shouldn't be able to do down ballot statewides.
13:58
SPEAKER_02: And I do a lot of caucus programs to places like Ohio,
14:01
SPEAKER_02: Wisconsin,
14:03
SPEAKER_02: Pennsylvania,
14:04
SPEAKER_02: you know, battleground kind of purple still swing states in some instances.
14:07
SPEAKER_02: Love doing that because That's a space where it's not just trench warfare, right?
14:12
SPEAKER_02: Senate races and gov races,
14:13
SPEAKER_02: especially in general elections,
14:14
SPEAKER_02: there's so much money being spent that,
14:17
SPEAKER_02: you know, you're talking about inches that you're moving.
14:19
SPEAKER_02: Whereas some of these caucus programs,
14:21
SPEAKER_02: you might with a campaign get three to four to five bites at an apple.
14:24
SPEAKER_02: And so you got to make them all count.
14:25
SPEAKER_02: You got to really make it stick.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: You can be a little bit more innovative and out of the box because you're not sort
14:31
SPEAKER_02: of, you're not dealing with the national environment rules, if you would.
14:35
SPEAKER_02: So we do a lot of that too.
14:38
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, that's...
14:39
SPEAKER_02: That's just a little smattering of the places we've been or who we've worked for.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe that's a good transition point because I wanted to talk a little bit
14:47
SPEAKER_00: about – I wanted to just show a few clips of some stuff you've done in
14:50
SPEAKER_00: the last cycle or two and then talk a little bit about what goes into that or
14:58
SPEAKER_00: as much as you can talk about it.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Just sort of thinking about like if it's an attack ad.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: There's your Coca-Cola recipe, right?
15:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean it's all – Right, right.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously each race, there are distinctive things, right?
15:10
SPEAKER_00: It's each candidate and their opponents.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: But also thinking about,
15:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious about, well,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: let's start with one from this cycle,
15:20
SPEAKER_00: which I know you sent over to me,
15:23
SPEAKER_00: which is an ad from the Oklahoma Republican primary for governor.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: So yes, Republican primary for governor,
15:30
SPEAKER_00: which we just had in June, Mike Mazze, Mazzy, Mazzy, Mazzy.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: I always like, it's like I've- It's also spelled for it's E-I, M-A-Z-Z-E-I.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's probably like Italian, you know, in background.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: I always, Mazzei,
15:47
SPEAKER_00: I always,
15:48
SPEAKER_00: I like have listened to so many videos trying to make sure I get that one right.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: And it's just, I still am screwing it up.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: So anyway,
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Mike Mazzei and Gentner Drummond,
15:57
SPEAKER_00: the state Attorney General have advanced to a runoff in August.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: So this was an ad you did for a group called Make Oklahoma Great Again.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: That dealt with another candidate in the race, Charles McCall.
16:12
SPEAKER_03: MAGA phony Charles McCall talks big about stopping sex changes for minors,
16:16
SPEAKER_03: except there's a little problem.
16:18
SPEAKER_03: McCall voted for an emergency measure that allowed a taxpayer-funded hospital
16:21
SPEAKER_03: to hide 25 children undergoing radical gender reassignment treatments.
16:26
SPEAKER_03: Sex changes that transition boys into girls and girls into boys.
16:30
SPEAKER_03: Any lunatic pushing sex change for kids.
16:34
SPEAKER_03: You first.
16:35
SPEAKER_03: MAGA phony, transgender ally, Banana Chuck McCall, just
16:40
SPEAKER_00: too woke for Oklahoma.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: So I was curious with this one.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
16:46
SPEAKER_00: it's an attack ad against McCall,
16:47
SPEAKER_00: and I haven't actually found the other ad,
16:49
SPEAKER_00: but I assume he did an ad where he was using this banana metaphor.
16:55
SPEAKER_00: And so it was almost like...
16:58
SPEAKER_00: From like a creative standpoint and deciding,
17:00
SPEAKER_00: I guess, is it nice to be able to use things that someone else used against
17:05
SPEAKER_02: them?
17:06
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing better when somebody unintentionally walks into the trap themselves.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's the best.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's a lot of like things to delve into in this.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: So one, you know, these sort of, you know, aside from a Trump endorsement, right?
17:21
SPEAKER_02: The other most sort of powerful things in primaries are this woke,
17:26
SPEAKER_02: LGBTQ transgender line of attack in Republican primaries has become,
17:31
SPEAKER_02: you know, it's a very difficult thing to survive if you're vulnerable on it.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: And so obviously on the flip side of that,
17:38
SPEAKER_02: McCall and his positive track or message with the bananas,
17:41
SPEAKER_02: the metaphor that,
17:42
SPEAKER_02: you know,
17:42
SPEAKER_02: you're crazy if you do this and slicing the banana,
17:45
SPEAKER_02: trying to be cute by half,
17:47
SPEAKER_02: which isn't a terrible
17:48
SPEAKER_01: concept if you're not vulnerable on it.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Right.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: But, but he was trying to get ahead of it just on a positive message track.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: This ad actually ran in like November or December last year.
18:00
SPEAKER_02: So this race, there was a lot of spending in that race from basically fall last year up until
18:06
SPEAKER_02: the primary round on June, whatever it was, 16th.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: And he was on the move and spending a lot of money campaign direct and is outside.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
18:14
SPEAKER_01: we had some survey data that showed we needed to do something to stem the tide
18:17
SPEAKER_01: on his growth because there was concern that he might be a guy that could line up
18:21
SPEAKER_01: an early Trump endorsement and kind of put the race to bed.
18:26
SPEAKER_01: We got the oppo,
18:28
SPEAKER_01: and I kind of dug in,
18:29
SPEAKER_01: and we found this vote he'd made,
18:30
SPEAKER_01: which frankly,
18:32
SPEAKER_01: a lot of these kind of votes,
18:33
SPEAKER_01: because he was the Speaker of the House and a legislator,
18:35
SPEAKER_01: a lot of these votes happened well before this sort of woke,
18:40
SPEAKER_01: you know, transgender GOP primary line of attack was even a thing.
18:44
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this is a vote he made, mainly truthfully because...
18:48
SPEAKER_01: OU's the big university and hospital in the state, right?
18:51
SPEAKER_01: And they asked for things in the legislatures all around
18:53
SPEAKER_01: the country are given big hospital systems, green lights all the time.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know,
18:59
SPEAKER_01: he kind of walked into this thing,
19:02
SPEAKER_01: you know, at a time when he didn't even know
19:03
SPEAKER_02: this was a weaponizable hit.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: I don't even think he was speaker yet when he made the initial vote.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: And so we found it, we tested it.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: It was one of those things where,
19:12
SPEAKER_01: you know, some people are like, I don't know, that's going to test us.
19:15
SPEAKER_01: I trust you, me, this will be our best hit.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: And it was.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: And then we kind of fell into him doing the banana thing.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, it's as AI was really starting to become more usable in post-production.
19:28
SPEAKER_02: And I said, I got an idea.
19:30
SPEAKER_02: Just, you know, ride with me here.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: Give me a shot.
19:32
SPEAKER_02: Let me do a first cut of this thing.
19:33
SPEAKER_02: And consensus on team was, yeah, we got to run that.
19:36
SPEAKER_02: That works.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Because it's just sticky and memorable, right?
19:40
SPEAKER_01: And we were running it in November, December before a bunch of people were on the air.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: So it even popped more.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: You'll have to find it.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: The local news after it started running ran like a 10 minute news segment.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I kid you not about the AI component in the ad.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: And which to me was kind of funny because this is,
20:01
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:01
SPEAKER_01: we'd been using AI in spots last year a little bit,
20:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:05
SPEAKER_01: the off year,
20:05
SPEAKER_01: not as much work, not as much volume, but we used it a couple of places.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And so that was sort of comical to me that they, I mean,
20:11
SPEAKER_01: you'd have thought, um,
20:14
SPEAKER_01: You'd have thought we'd done some crazy
20:16
SPEAKER_02: deepfake thing other than having a banana
20:18
SPEAKER_02: in his pocket to close and have him take it out and peel it.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Subsequently,
20:23
SPEAKER_01: and we didn't have it on this,
20:25
SPEAKER_01: most states are starting to pass at the state level
20:28
SPEAKER_02: kind of like disclaimers,
20:30
SPEAKER_02: AI-generated, satire, this is not an actual event kind of thing.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: Which we're not finding as long as you
20:36
SPEAKER_01: word that appropriately.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't cause the viewer any concern.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: And honestly,
20:41
SPEAKER_01: more importantly,
20:42
SPEAKER_01: these messages where you're elevating production value,
20:45
SPEAKER_01: particularly when you've got people in races or places not doing it,
20:48
SPEAKER_01: it really works.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: And you've got to be smart about it.
20:52
SPEAKER_01: You don't want it to look like schmaltzy junk on X.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: But appropriately deployed and used judiciously,
21:02
SPEAKER_01: you can really punch up a message or a production technique or ad.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know,
21:08
SPEAKER_01: sometimes it's as simple as you want a stock B-roll shot that you don't have
21:12
SPEAKER_01: that you can now create.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's just touching up a photo.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's not as massive as this is my point.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: Like there's little things you're doing all the time just to enhance the sort of
21:23
SPEAKER_02: the product and the message.
21:26
SPEAKER_02: This one, this was a more, the concept was built around it.
21:30
SPEAKER_02: But again,
21:30
SPEAKER_02: he walked into it because he decided it'd be funny to cut a banana
21:33
SPEAKER_02: in his living room and make that the metaphor for how he'd be tough on the issue
21:38
SPEAKER_01: when, in truth, he was super, super vulnerable.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lesson there, right?
21:43
SPEAKER_01: They always say the best way to run a campaign is to run the campaign against yourself.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: You got to have a good vulnerability assessment
21:49
SPEAKER_02: and know what your vulnerabilities are before you get out there
21:52
SPEAKER_02: and start doing things.
21:54
SPEAKER_02: You know,
21:54
SPEAKER_02: otherwise you spend time inoculating instead of spending time proactively,
21:59
SPEAKER_02: just acting like you're in good shape on this.
22:02
SPEAKER_02: It probably would have changed what they did in terms of what they were leading with and doing.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, that leads me to a couple of questions.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: So first you talked a little bit about the use of AI in that,
22:14
SPEAKER_00: and it sounds like this is becoming a more and more
22:18
SPEAKER_00: regular thing for ad makers
22:22
SPEAKER_00: and people creating content.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: And I guess,
22:26
SPEAKER_00: you know,
22:26
SPEAKER_00: it sounds like for those making it,
22:30
SPEAKER_00: it's mostly upside because you can do a lot of things you couldn't previously do.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
22:36
SPEAKER_00: if people don't think it's a deep fake or something,
22:40
SPEAKER_00: it can really enhance what you're trying to do.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: No, that's right.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, the need to maybe do a pickup shoot with actors.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
22:50
SPEAKER_01: especially if you're an IE group and you can cut and produce an IE ad,
22:54
SPEAKER_01: With people or clip outs of moms talking about public safety or,
22:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:59
SPEAKER_01: affordability for a couple seconds in an ad and you're able to do that all
23:02
SPEAKER_01: with AI rather than picking up actors and doing that.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, you could really up production value, but not up the cost.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, shoots are always, they're crucial and they're important.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
23:13
SPEAKER_01: with candidate direct B roll into cameras and even some actor ads,
23:16
SPEAKER_01: you won't be able to do that with.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: They're important, but, but fundamentally campaigns always resent the shoot bill.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: You're incredibly important, right?
23:26
SPEAKER_01: Particularly when you're spending some of these Gov, Senate races on
23:29
SPEAKER_01: the campaign direct side, you're in the 10s, 15s, 20s, millions.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: An extra 15K to shoot something shouldn't be a big deal, but sometimes it feels like it is.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: And so it's really taking that kind of piece off the table.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: And it's also the speed of it, right?
23:43
SPEAKER_01: If you're in a situation where you need something faster and you don't have the time
23:47
SPEAKER_01: to,
23:47
SPEAKER_01: you don't want to take 72 hours or four days to line up talent and shoot it
23:52
SPEAKER_01: and bring it back in post and edit the ad and,
23:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:55
SPEAKER_01: you're cutting days out and you're able to do something now in 24 hours instead
23:58
SPEAKER_01: of four days or something like that.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: Those can be zero-sum win-loss decisions.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: That's the one thing about this business having
24:05
SPEAKER_02: started in ’01
24:06
SPEAKER_02: to now is just it's always required speed and intensity and focus,
24:11
SPEAKER_02: but it's
24:12
SPEAKER_01: like it's it's it's unrelenting and constant now.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
24:16
SPEAKER_01: it used to be you couldn't get an ad upright on linear television
24:19
SPEAKER_01: unless you shipped it before noon on a Friday because there's log deadlines.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, now,
24:23
SPEAKER_01: like you can get it done,
24:24
SPEAKER_01: you can start it on over the top connected television and streaming
24:28
SPEAKER_01: within 30 minutes of it being done.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: So you can start it over the weekend.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: It's just like there are no sort of boundaries on the need for speed and being able
24:37
SPEAKER_01: to execute and get things quickly.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: So on some level, it's it's incredibly it's incredibly helpful from that perspective, too.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: So it sounds like,
24:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
24:47
SPEAKER_00: just like isn't everything else,
24:49
SPEAKER_00: things are just moving faster in the campaign world and in terms of.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know,
24:55
SPEAKER_00: your ability to say,
24:56
SPEAKER_00: respond to another candidate's attack or,
24:58
SPEAKER_00: or an event,
24:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:00
SPEAKER_00: there's something,
25:01
SPEAKER_00: your candidate screws up something in a debate or something and gives you
25:03
SPEAKER_00: an opportunity.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: You can quickly try to like capitalize that kind of, that kind of thing, um, with content.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Right.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that would seemingly be the, the, the plus.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, though it does,
25:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:15
SPEAKER_00: you're, you're sort of like, uh, working constantly, uh, can I, can I catch my,
25:23
SPEAKER_01: Can I drop a tool now?
25:26
SPEAKER_01: And you learn the cadence and the pace.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: Even in a creative space and
25:32
SPEAKER_02: in operative politics,
25:33
SPEAKER_02: the key to success is just getting ahead of things, right?
25:38
SPEAKER_02: Getting as much work done yesterday as you can so that tomorrow you can deal with
25:43
SPEAKER_02: the crisis on hand that will inevitably come that you don't know about.
25:46
SPEAKER_02: It's not a space where you can ...
25:49
SPEAKER_02: not stay highly aggressive and focused on getting ahead of work.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: You know,
25:54
SPEAKER_01: like for us,
25:56
SPEAKER_01: we're very, I mean,
25:56
SPEAKER_01: we have a lot of general lecture work,
25:57
SPEAKER_01: but we've had since last June, a ton of primary work.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: And July,
26:02
SPEAKER_01: like there's a little lull here with the number of kind of races we have on the air,
26:05
SPEAKER_01: things we're doing that are
26:06
SPEAKER_02: live balls,
26:06
SPEAKER_02: but we're cranking out media plans and,
26:10
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:10
SPEAKER_02: putting shoots on the books and,
26:13
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know,
26:14
SPEAKER_01: uh, trying to get ahead of, of scripting.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just,
26:17
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:17
SPEAKER_01: July's like, yeah,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: you're a little slower in terms of things you're shipping and putting on the air,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: but it's when you're,
26:22
SPEAKER_01: it's when you're really digging in and,
26:24
SPEAKER_01: and preparing for,
26:26
SPEAKER_02: for the, for the crash of the wave that comes in early August and is unrelenting.
26:30
SPEAKER_02: It's like a couple of weeks to catch up.
26:31
SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
26:32
SPEAKER_02: there's no,
26:33
SPEAKER_02: you know,
26:34
SPEAKER_02: we're all doing
26:35
SPEAKER_01: too well at the top of the food chain and making too much money and
26:38
SPEAKER_01: for anybody to complain or feel sorry for us, but,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: but it's,
26:40
SPEAKER_01: it's a lot of work and it's, it's,
26:42
SPEAKER_02: um, It'll take it out of you if you don't stay on top of it and aren't aggressive.
26:48
SPEAKER_02: Don't build a team and operation to handle what you say yes to.
26:52
SPEAKER_02: I'm a big believer once I've said yes to a project.
26:55
SPEAKER_02: We need to step up and do our part and do it well.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: And so that starts with being way ahead of it.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: So I have a second question for you,
27:05
SPEAKER_00: but I think I'm going to save it until after this next ad,
27:08
SPEAKER_00: which I believe is from the 2024 U.S. Senate race in South Carolina.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: So it was a general election.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: I guess it would have been, because today it would have been 20, because Lindsey's up now.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: So it would have been 2020.
27:20
SPEAKER_02: Oh my God, was it 2020?
27:22
SPEAKER_02: Wow, my mind.
27:23
SPEAKER_02: Right.
27:24
SPEAKER_02: My mind.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: You're right.
27:25
SPEAKER_02: It was 2020.
27:26
SPEAKER_02: Considering the affairs and whatever,
27:27
SPEAKER_02: there have been like three DNC chairs since then, since he got it.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you're right.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: So 2020 U.S.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Senate race in South Carolina
27:34
SPEAKER_00: where Democrat Jamie Harrison was facing incumbent Republican Senator Lindsey
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Graham.
27:40
SPEAKER_00: And this is an ad directed at Harrison.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to cue that up here and let's go.
27:49
SPEAKER_03: I'm Jamie Harrison and I...
27:52
SPEAKER_03: Jamie Harrison is a liberal Washington D.C. lobbyist who made millions.
27:56
SPEAKER_03: Tell me more.
27:57
SPEAKER_03: Harrison lobbied for a hedge fund that foreclosed on the homes of hurricane victims.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: And?
28:02
SPEAKER_03: A drug company that paid $44 million to settle Medicaid fraud charges.
28:06
SPEAKER_03: What else?
28:07
SPEAKER_03: Jamie Harrison stands with radical groups like MoveOn.org trying to defund the police.
28:11
SPEAKER_03: That's crazy.
28:13
SPEAKER_03: Yes, it is.
28:14
SPEAKER_03: Jamie Harrison is wrong for South Carolina.
28:16
SPEAKER_03: Security of Strength PAC is responsible for the content of this ad.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: So obviously, you know, Attack ad aimed at a Democratic nominee in South Carolina.
28:31
SPEAKER_00: I guess this brings me to,
28:32
SPEAKER_00: which was the question I was also thinking about in the last one,
28:35
SPEAKER_00: which is sort of, how does the opposition research in this case work?
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I know the campaigns are doing it.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know if you guys do any of it,
28:41
SPEAKER_00: or are you taking sort of the oppo book they give you and then trying to find
28:45
SPEAKER_00: the potential weak points that you could really exploit?
28:50
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, so we, I mean, I really focus on doing creative and being a buying shop.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: Like I don't, I don't GC, I don't do other things.
28:56
SPEAKER_02: Like I really stay in those vertical like
28:59
SPEAKER_01: discipline lanes,
29:00
SPEAKER_01: but as an ad guy or a message guy,
29:02
SPEAKER_01: when I'm doing that side of it on a campaign, you,
29:04
SPEAKER_01: you want to be,
29:06
SPEAKER_01: I like to be,
29:06
SPEAKER_02: and I think
29:07
SPEAKER_02: most of my competitors or people in my industry that I respect like
29:11
SPEAKER_02: to be involved in.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: You want that oppo so that you can be a part of going through it and helping craft
29:17
SPEAKER_01: the survey because that survey is going to come back with what's tested
29:20
SPEAKER_01: and either you have a hand in how those things are asked and laid out and presented
29:25
SPEAKER_01: or you don't.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: So you're either going to get it because somebody else did it and you're not going
29:28
SPEAKER_01: to be happy with it or you can be a part of making the cake and it'll taste
29:31
SPEAKER_01: a little better.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, definitely super...
29:34
SPEAKER_01: I like to be,
29:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
29:35
SPEAKER_01: particularly in bigger level and higher profile
29:37
SPEAKER_02: projects and races like that,
29:39
SPEAKER_02: love being in the weeds in the oppo and helping craft the survey so
29:42
SPEAKER_02: that we test
29:43
SPEAKER_01: things the way we want to say them, right?
29:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, because that matters.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
29:47
SPEAKER_01: you can test something and you leave a couple words out or you make it too long
29:51
SPEAKER_01: and you can really undermine the impact of an attack.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'll give you a perfect example, right?
29:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, sort of the...
29:59
SPEAKER_01: The issue of the day or du jour is data centers, right?
30:03
SPEAKER_01: In terms of how are they motivating kind of populist voters and NIMBY voters and,
30:08
SPEAKER_01: you know,
30:09
SPEAKER_01: particularly with the affordability issue and,
30:11
SPEAKER_01: you know,
30:11
SPEAKER_01: are they using up too much water and driving up energy costs and,
30:15
SPEAKER_01: you know, tax, like there's a lot to this issue, right?
30:18
SPEAKER_01: But I've found recently,
30:20
SPEAKER_01: like if you just tag AI onto a data center,
30:22
SPEAKER_01: like it makes it incredibly more potent and powerful because AI sort
30:27
SPEAKER_01: of this not particularly well received macro idea by the electorate in the audience.
30:32
SPEAKER_01: So like little things like that make a huge, huge difference.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: And so when you're going through the oppo and helping craft questions, yeah,
30:39
SPEAKER_01: you definitely want to,
30:40
SPEAKER_01: you want to make sure you're involved in that process to walk away with just hits
30:44
SPEAKER_01: that work, you know, and then And then it's on us, and that's the fun part, right?
30:48
SPEAKER_01: To come up with, yeah, you could do a post-production hit.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: We do lots of those.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: But in that instance, like, hey, how about we get an actor?
30:54
SPEAKER_01: And this is how old this is, right?
30:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, Alexa was still relatively, like, new.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: New, yeah.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know that's her name anymore, right?
31:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure if they've changed it.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, certainly the size of that Alexa would, like, alarm people now.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: It's like.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: They're half that size now, you know?
31:11
SPEAKER_00: yeah, yeah.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like, now that's the size of a hockey puck, or you don't even see it, so.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: But, you know,
31:17
SPEAKER_01: trying to,
31:18
SPEAKER_01: when you're doing messages or ads,
31:19
SPEAKER_01: like along with having issues that are timely,
31:21
SPEAKER_01: like trying to catch the zeitgeist a little bit,
31:23
SPEAKER_01: like where's culture and what are people,
31:25
SPEAKER_01: you know,
31:26
SPEAKER_01: what's new and what might kind of catch people's attention,
31:29
SPEAKER_01: particularly in the context of a, you know, a campaign where there's a lot of money.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Jamie Harrison, I think raised
31:33
SPEAKER_02: like $125 million.
31:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was a lot of, there's a lot of money in that race.
31:39
SPEAKER_01: And this is a lot on the air, right?
31:41
SPEAKER_01: So you got to do things that,
31:43
SPEAKER_01: Particularly as an IE where your rates are higher and you want the same point level,
31:50
SPEAKER_01: but because your rates are higher and it costs more to do the same thing as
31:52
SPEAKER_02: a candidate side,
31:53
SPEAKER_02: sometimes you got to push the envelope a little bit
31:55
SPEAKER_02: on something being different just to grab people's attention.
31:58
SPEAKER_02: Again, be kind of sticky because it doesn't just work because you put it up.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes there's this misnomer that money matters immensely and you can
32:06
SPEAKER_01: with bad advertising and enough money win,
32:08
SPEAKER_02: but But but you do have to worry about what you're saying and the production value
32:13
SPEAKER_02: and how much I mean, that matters, too.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: It's not just a function of overwhelming will share a voice and weight in dollars.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
32:21
SPEAKER_00: to that point,
32:21
SPEAKER_00: it makes me think of, say, like Joni Ernst in 2014 in the Republican primary.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: She runs that ad about make him squeal and it like.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: You know,
32:30
SPEAKER_00: it's like the message,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: the moment, the right candidate and those things hitting and then boom.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: And then she wins.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: And that was a multi-field with a self-funder too.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: And so it's like,
32:41
SPEAKER_01: you know,
32:42
SPEAKER_01: figuring out like doing the best with the candidate,
32:45
SPEAKER_01: their story and the limited or sometimes not unlimited resources you've got is sort
32:50
SPEAKER_01: of the
32:51
SPEAKER_02: art or job of,
32:53
SPEAKER_02: you know, a campaign team at large, but particularly if you're the ad guy.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, hey,
32:57
SPEAKER_00: that's maybe a perfect transition into an ad from a Republican primary in 2022
33:03
SPEAKER_00: that I thought was cute and fun.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of bio-y because it mixes in some family,
33:09
SPEAKER_00: but it's Brett Lindstrom who ran for the Republican governor.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: Lost, but it was a really close three-way race in 2022 in Nebraska for
33:17
SPEAKER_00: the Republican primary for governor.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: And so let me bring that one back up on the stage here and we'll play it.
33:27
SPEAKER_03: My dad is always looking to cut taxes.
33:29
SPEAKER_03: In fact, he's always looking to get everything a little more.
33:34
SPEAKER_03: Let's cut a little more.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: Hmm.
33:37
SPEAKER_03: I think I'll cut a little more.
33:41
SPEAKER_03: Time to cut them.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: Like I said, my dad is always looking to cut things just a little more.
33:49
SPEAKER_03: What?
33:50
SPEAKER_03: I'm still cutting this.
33:51
SPEAKER_03: Brett Lindstrom,
33:52
SPEAKER_03: a new generation of leadership and Nebraska's only proven tax cutter for governor.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's obviously a fun one.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: You get the daughter to narrate and the candidate doing kind of funny things.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious in that respect,
34:09
SPEAKER_00: it's like sort of like highlighting things about
34:11
SPEAKER_00: the candidate you think are strengths.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: The first thing for me when I look at that ad is I remember how
34:17
SPEAKER_02: damn cold it was
34:19
SPEAKER_02: when we shot him
34:19
SPEAKER_01: outside in front.
34:22
SPEAKER_01: It was like January or February and we were,
34:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was like, They have a May primary in Nebraska.
34:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was below freezing.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: It was so cold.
34:33
SPEAKER_02: He was a good sport and still pulled it off and did it with a smile.
34:36
SPEAKER_02: We actually got some sun,
34:37
SPEAKER_01: so that helped.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: When you work for a candidate who's got… and again
34:43
SPEAKER_01: It's always about message,
34:44
SPEAKER_01: but it's also like,
34:45
SPEAKER_01: what else are you like presenting to somebody when you, when you do an ad, right?
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Like what, like the undertones are kind of, yeah, he's got young kids.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: He's living life that either you're living now or you did,
34:55
SPEAKER_01: or you've got your own kids or,
34:57
SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean,
34:58
SPEAKER_01: people forget that's sort of the emotional connection, us versus them stuff
35:04
SPEAKER_01: that really matters as much as like issues.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: Right.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: And, and in this instance, like, They were able to do it.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to do it.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: He greenlit it, you know, and it kind of came together and was fun.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: And that's one of those things, you know, we, you know, a shoot like that, right?
35:21
SPEAKER_01: You get it on the books,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: you get survey research back,
35:24
SPEAKER_01: you got a couple of weeks,
35:26
SPEAKER_01: you got to, I mean,
35:27
SPEAKER_01: we probably that,
35:28
SPEAKER_01: those two days shot 12 things, probably cut most of them, probably use five.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, there's a lot to it.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some things are great on paper and don't come together in real,
35:38
SPEAKER_01: real time, which is why you want to shoot more, not less.
35:42
SPEAKER_01: But, yeah,
35:42
SPEAKER_01: that was one that we just felt like,
35:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:44
SPEAKER_01: we're in a field with a bunch of guys that are,
35:47
SPEAKER_01: like, 20 years older than him and don't have this advantage.
35:50
SPEAKER_01: And, actually, it was sort of flattering.
35:51
SPEAKER_01: Jim Pillen won that primary.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: He's the governor now.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: And towards the end of that race, like,
35:57
SPEAKER_01: you can tell, too,
35:59
SPEAKER_01: when your stuff's,
35:59
SPEAKER_01: like, maybe getting under the skin of your, like, the candidate opponent.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: Less the team because teams have discipline and realize.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: But, like,
36:06
SPEAKER_01: he did some stuff with his grandkids later to try to,
36:09
SPEAKER_01: like, You know, so that's an ultimate form of flattery a little bit.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, no, that was a fun one to shoot.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: And these ads are fun too if you succeed, right?
36:19
SPEAKER_01: Like you can create sort of a thematic that you come back to on the next race.
36:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, that's the thing about campaigns.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: Unless you win and it's a high profile job,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:29
SPEAKER_01: the residual and the people retaining your name and the awareness in your ballot,
36:34
SPEAKER_01: your image, like that stuff goes away so fast.
36:36
SPEAKER_01: So if you get these little things from a winning campaign like this where,
36:39
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:40
SPEAKER_01: His daughter's [X] age now and in six years you do another one and it kind
36:44
SPEAKER_01: of plays off of, you know, being a teenager and have a little more edge.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: Like you can create a fun,
36:49
SPEAKER_01: you know,
36:49
SPEAKER_01: growing series with around somebody's life that people go, I remember that.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: That's fun.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: You know, so that's the stuff that that's why it pays to win.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:59
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know,
37:00
SPEAKER_00: this brings me to something you mentioned before we started recording,
37:03
SPEAKER_00: which was,
37:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
37:04
SPEAKER_00: sometimes,
37:05
SPEAKER_00: you know, it, you know, Brett Lindstrom lost in a very close three-way race.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: I think Pillen got like 33% or something to win.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: So it was obviously a very tight contest.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: But you mentioned something before about sometimes,
37:20
SPEAKER_00: unfortunately,
37:21
SPEAKER_00: you feel like you do some of your best work and sometimes it doesn't pan out just
37:24
SPEAKER_00: because of things that are not necessarily in your control.
37:27
SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know if you wanted to speak to that a little bit
37:29
SPEAKER_00: because I thought it was- Yeah,
37:31
SPEAKER_02: no, that's the most humbling part of this business, right?
37:35
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
37:37
SPEAKER_02: Somebody that I used to work with used to tell candidates,
37:39
SPEAKER_02: you know, we don't have a magic wand.
37:41
SPEAKER_02: Like there's no,
37:42
SPEAKER_02: like
37:42
SPEAKER_01: we, we,
37:43
SPEAKER_01: there's you and as good as you are and what you'll put into it,
37:46
SPEAKER_01: we'll obviously bring our best in terms of creative and things like that.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: But then there's just the political environment.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: And now there's,
37:52
SPEAKER_02: you know,
37:53
SPEAKER_02: the endorsement process by particularly by the president that really can,
37:57
SPEAKER_02: can submarine or lift the campaign
37:59
SPEAKER_01: from, from a tight race to not being in one.
38:02
SPEAKER_01: Um, And so, you know, sometimes you swing hard and like you do great stuff, but you don't win.
38:10
SPEAKER_01: And that's hard and it's frustrating.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of those people, I mean,
38:14
SPEAKER_01: and you could talk to other people that do this too on our side of the other side,
38:18
SPEAKER_01: like a lot of times you do your best work for people you just develop
38:21
SPEAKER_01: a good relationship with and you just,
38:23
SPEAKER_01: you like them, you know, it brings out the best in you too.
38:26
SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, that can be hard, but That's the thing about this business.
38:31
SPEAKER_02: You have to kind of keep a level emotional stasis because
38:36
SPEAKER_01: you just can't drink
38:38
SPEAKER_01: the Kool-Aid too much.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Because at the end of the day,
38:42
SPEAKER_01: if you're good at this, you're going to do races at the highest level.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: You're not always going to win.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: You're going to lose things.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: And it's not because you didn't do a good job or
38:49
SPEAKER_02: people didn't work hard.
38:50
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't in the cards for you that time or there wasn't an angle or a lane or a place.
38:54
SPEAKER_02: And you got to be able to kind of emotionally like set that aside,
38:58
SPEAKER_02: know you did your best and go to the next thing.
38:59
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, some of the work I'm proudest of were people that lost.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times it's you ask somebody to let you do something
39:08
SPEAKER_01: that not everybody will let you do.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: Because it requires,
39:12
SPEAKER_01: people like to sort
39:14
SPEAKER_02: of crassly suggest if you run for office,
39:16
SPEAKER_02: you got to be pretty self-focused or
39:19
SPEAKER_01: me first or whatever.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: There's a vulnerability in running too.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: And not everybody's willing to put everything in their life on display, nor maybe should they.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: But again,
39:29
SPEAKER_01: those are like typically the things that if you do,
39:33
SPEAKER_01: you end up having a bounce or you see a connect or you get anecdotal from it.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: Because again,
39:38
SPEAKER_01: like this is an us versus them kind of like people vote for people more like them
39:42
SPEAKER_01: or that'll live the path like them
39:43
SPEAKER_01: or they feel like genuinely could see their vantage point of perspective.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: And from an advertising standpoint,
39:50
SPEAKER_01: that kind of comes from,
39:51
SPEAKER_01: you know, candidates are willing to be vulnerable and let you show it sometimes.
39:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I assume,
39:56
SPEAKER_00: you know,
39:56
SPEAKER_00: it helps to have built a bit of a rapport,
39:58
SPEAKER_00: but I assume it's going to vary to some extent,
40:01
SPEAKER_00: obviously from campaign to campaign and candidate to candidate sort
40:03
SPEAKER_00: of what they're willing to do.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: You know,
40:06
SPEAKER_00: obviously that ad,
40:07
SPEAKER_00: maybe you needed a candidate who was a little like more self-effacing or something,
40:10
SPEAKER_00: you know, like,
40:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:12
SPEAKER_00: a little self, you know, willing to make fun of themselves a little bit in a way.
40:18
SPEAKER_02: Everybody is not willing to make a joke about themselves.
40:20
SPEAKER_02: That's a fact.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I believe it.
40:22
SPEAKER_01: And you typically figure that out out of people pretty fast, right?
40:25
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a big part of,
40:26
SPEAKER_02: I always joke,
40:27
SPEAKER_02: like being a, guys,
40:29
SPEAKER_02: you're sort of a,
40:30
SPEAKER_02: in a lot of ways,
40:31
SPEAKER_02: like a psychologist for the campaign or candidate too,
40:34
SPEAKER_02: because you just have to,
40:35
SPEAKER_02: you get a lot,
40:36
SPEAKER_02: a lot of ideas and thrown at you and hesitations and you kind of got
40:39
SPEAKER_02: to help people sort of work through being confident in the choice that they make or
40:44
SPEAKER_02: the thing you present to them.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: For sure, for sure.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, I wanted to sort of close out talking a little bit about how you mentioned it earlier.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: You said words like points and putting in your ad buy.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: And I just thought it might be helpful to people.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: And you also mentioned that like IEs,
41:06
SPEAKER_00: Independent expenditure groups have different rates from campaigns,
41:10
SPEAKER_00: although that may be about to change maybe a little bit and we can maybe talk about
41:13
SPEAKER_00: that for a second too.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: There was a very, very recent.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: It's very fortuitous for our talking about it.
41:18
SPEAKER_02: That's very timely for sure.
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: But I basically just to start out with, you know, you talk about like buying points.
41:25
SPEAKER_00: I assume you're talking about,
41:27
SPEAKER_00: you know,
41:27
SPEAKER_00: there are a bunch of different media markets and obviously like
41:30
SPEAKER_00: a congressional, a state might have will have multiple media markets.
41:34
SPEAKER_00: Some are bigger than others.
41:35
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the bigger ones tend to cost more.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: A congressional district might have a few.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite things to do is look at a congressional primary map and,
41:43
SPEAKER_00: you know, from a result and overlay it with the media markets.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: My favorite, yeah,
41:49
SPEAKER_02: that's like one of the front end things we do in any race,
41:51
SPEAKER_02: right, is the media planning tool, right, that's got all that.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: But one of my favorite maps is the Wyoming statewide map.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you're into that, I got to share that with you.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: It's seven DMAs.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: It's got Denver, Salt Lake.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: Billings, Rapid City, Cheyenne, Casper.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, literally there's seven markets
42:12
SPEAKER_02: and none of them are more than like 30%.
42:14
SPEAKER_02: So it's kind of comical.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so when I started doing this in 01, I mean, honestly...
42:21
SPEAKER_01: It was broadcast television.
42:23
SPEAKER_02: Cable was something that I remember the 2000 Bush campaign bragged about,
42:28
SPEAKER_02: like how much they used cable in the campaign and what a big deal that was.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: What a world.
42:33
SPEAKER_02: Not that long ago, right?
42:37
SPEAKER_01: And linear radio, maybe.
42:40
SPEAKER_01: And now we're in a world where our media planning tool
42:44
SPEAKER_01: from what it looked like even 10 years to now is massively different because
42:48
SPEAKER_02: when we work in a race,
42:49
SPEAKER_02: the first thing as a media buyer you're doing is presenting to them,
42:52
SPEAKER_02: like you said,
42:53
SPEAKER_01: there's a television market or markets and what percent of turnout comes
42:57
SPEAKER_01: from those markets.
42:58
SPEAKER_01: What's the cost per point, which is the cost to get and deliver a message.
43:03
SPEAKER_01: Usually in politics, 1000 to 1200, 1500 points is what
43:07
SPEAKER_02: you want behind a message.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: What's that mean?
43:09
SPEAKER_02: You know,
43:10
SPEAKER_02: Nielsen has been doing this a very long time and they understand how to,
43:13
SPEAKER_02: you know,
43:14
SPEAKER_02: they provide that data that we subscribe to a lot of that and use it
43:17
SPEAKER_02: where you're ostensibly, you know, buying by demographic profile groups, right?
43:21
SPEAKER_00: There's- I actually even have, I just,
43:22
SPEAKER_00: I brought up an old
43:23
SPEAKER_01: DMA map here,
43:24
SPEAKER_01: you know, just to- They don't do the old map anymore.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: We used, I used to love getting those and mounting them and having them in the office.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: Like it's a vestige of a different time, but I love them.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that's a great example, right?
43:35
SPEAKER_01: You look at Ohio where there's a lot of big things going on this year and You know,
43:38
SPEAKER_01: you've got Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland, the three big Cs.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: And then you've got some secondary markets like Dayton and Toledo.
43:46
SPEAKER_01: And some very small markets like Lima and Zanesville,
43:49
SPEAKER_02: which are amongst the smallest media markets in the country.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: They're basically single county or two, three county.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: And then you've got those river counties,
43:55
SPEAKER_01: which that's always the challenge, right, in a statewide race when you've got these.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: And you also have Youngstown, kind of that Toledo, Dayton size.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: But you've got these crossover markets, right,
44:05
SPEAKER_01: where You're always having to explain to candidates or teams like,
44:10
SPEAKER_01: yeah, you're not reaching 100% voters in your state,
44:14
SPEAKER_02: but there's three to five.
44:16
SPEAKER_02: There might be,
44:16
SPEAKER_02: I think in Ohio,
44:17
SPEAKER_02: it's close to almost 10% is in those three markets down in the county.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: So you got to weigh the return on investment on the cost per point
44:23
SPEAKER_01: versus what you're reaching.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean, is it a swing voter area?
44:27
SPEAKER_01: It's not.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: Usually it's more of a GOP turnout kind of space now.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: But for example, that's where in 2006, Ted Strickland...
44:35
SPEAKER_01: Beat Ken Blackwell in places like, I mean,
44:38
SPEAKER_01: he won overall,
44:39
SPEAKER_01: but he ran the score up for a Democrat in Southeast Ohio against [Ken] Blackwell.
44:44
SPEAKER_00: And he was from that neck
44:45
SPEAKER_01: of the woods.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: So he had the advantage of being from there.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: And so that was huge.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: And Blackwell didn't have the resources really to compete
44:51
SPEAKER_01: the level Strickland did, particularly down the stretch.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, so those things don't matter until they really matter on the edges of a race.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: Right.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: And in a political environment like this,
45:00
SPEAKER_01: where obviously You know,
45:03
SPEAKER_01: there's some headwinds for the GOP and there's,
45:05
SPEAKER_01: you know, U.S.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: Senate and a governor's race,
45:07
SPEAKER_01: like not just winning,
45:08
SPEAKER_01: but making sure you win your net out margins in counties like that are really,
45:12
SPEAKER_01: really important.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, linear television is a big part of that.
45:16
SPEAKER_01: So going back,
45:17
SPEAKER_01: so you've got broadcast television,
45:18
SPEAKER_01: you've got cable, which,
45:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
45:20
SPEAKER_01: can be bought one of a lot of ways,
45:22
SPEAKER_01: interconnect,
45:23
SPEAKER_01: soft zones, meaning, you know, soft pockets that they break up that you can buy.
45:27
SPEAKER_01: There's satellite that you buy programmatically now.
45:29
SPEAKER_01: There's cable addressable.
45:31
SPEAKER_01: There's linear radio.
45:32
SPEAKER_01: There's audio radio.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: Most campaigns don't integrate fixed sports in their base buys.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: Those are like add-ons, particularly if like you're running a statewide race in Ohio, right?
45:42
SPEAKER_01: You're buying Ohio State football games,
45:45
SPEAKER_01: Browns and Bengals games,
45:47
SPEAKER_01: but you're buying them as standalones to make sure you're within those
45:49
SPEAKER_01: because they pull big ratings.
45:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, getting back to Nielsen and TV, you know, A rating is affixed to every program.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: And so that's how you get to that thousand gross rating points, right?
46:02
SPEAKER_01: That's the cumulative over,
46:03
SPEAKER_01: let's say it's a week you're buying television and you want 1,200 points
46:07
SPEAKER_01: in Cleveland.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: Then all the programming you've got against the audience you're trying
46:11
SPEAKER_01: to communicate with,
46:12
SPEAKER_01: whether it's adult 35 plus,
46:14
SPEAKER_01: adult 50 plus,
46:16
SPEAKER_01: females 35 plus,
46:17
SPEAKER_01: whatever your demographic profile group is,
46:20
SPEAKER_01: that cumulative number of rating points equals that amount.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: You know,
46:23
SPEAKER_01: and that rating is,
46:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:25
SPEAKER_01: that's based on,
46:26
SPEAKER_01: that starts to get in the weed and why you have to have software and why you have
46:29
SPEAKER_01: to have ratings is because those ratings are,
46:33
SPEAKER_01: a rating that's five in the morning at news is not the same as five in the evening,
46:38
SPEAKER_01: right?
46:38
SPEAKER_01: Because the audience size is different.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: And that rating's all built off of how many people are watching in
46:45
SPEAKER_01: that particular moment that show.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: Again, like that's why software and ratings are so important on building that stuff.
46:51
SPEAKER_01: Now in 2008,
46:52
SPEAKER_01: I guess it was the reelect, ’12,
46:55
SPEAKER_01: there's a great,
46:56
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:56
SPEAKER_01: if anybody out there who hasn't read it,
46:58
SPEAKER_01: that's maybe younger and kind of missed that moment or whatever is
47:01
SPEAKER_02: Victory Labs,
47:02
SPEAKER_02: a great book by Sasha Issenberg.
47:04
SPEAKER_02: And he gets into the weeds on how the Obama campaign sort of developed the idea of,
47:10
SPEAKER_02: you know,
47:10
SPEAKER_01: voter based ratings.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: So, up until that point,
47:13
SPEAKER_01: we bought exclusively demographically,
47:16
SPEAKER_01: adult 35+, 50+, whatever, kind of like consumer advertisers do.
47:20
SPEAKER_01: They decided to take sort of the mail, phones,
47:23
SPEAKER_01: door-knocking,
47:24
SPEAKER_01: one-to-one model and try to come up with large custom ratings for voter groups.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: And so I forget what they called it, but fundamentally, they developed it.
47:37
SPEAKER_01: Our side,
47:38
SPEAKER_01: via Optimus and,
47:39
SPEAKER_01: frankly, Deeper Analytics kind of came up with our version of that later.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: But now you can,
47:44
SPEAKER_01: my point in that is you can target primary voters or general election voters
47:48
SPEAKER_01: or specific segments on television as broadcast television as well.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing I didn't talk about on the media planning tool, streaming.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the amount of every month,
48:00
SPEAKER_01: the more and more or higher percent of people
48:03
SPEAKER_01: that are consuming via streaming products.
48:06
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's two things that are holding up linear advertising.
48:11
SPEAKER_02: One is it's still the dominant video-based advertising consumption space for anybody
48:16
SPEAKER_02: over 50 years old.
48:17
SPEAKER_01: But as habits change with people under and they're consuming at 80% clips
48:21
SPEAKER_01: on streaming, that eventually changes.
48:23
SPEAKER_01: The other thing is the fixed sports kind of monopoly by
48:27
SPEAKER_01: the linear advertisers has always been their strongest sort of structural play,
48:31
SPEAKER_01: the NFL,
48:33
SPEAKER_01: college football,
48:35
SPEAKER_01: all this program that right now the World Cup, Fox is making a killing.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they got this thing in a deal.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: They're pulling like 23 ratings nationally on these U.S. games.
48:46
SPEAKER_01: If you don't follow us on X, a good follow for this stuff is Medium Buying.
48:52
SPEAKER_01: We're on Twitter, and we're pretty good about sharing overnight.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: Good follow.
48:56
SPEAKER_00: I second that.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: Clipping ads.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: Early on, we're like, how do we do marketing in our industry that's sort of fun, too?
49:05
SPEAKER_01: So we were like, well, let's just share the stuff we care about.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes it's...
49:10
SPEAKER_01: You know, business journal, sports stories.
49:12
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's competitive stuff, what primaries are up, historical stuff.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: We just have fun with it.
49:19
SPEAKER_01: But check us on, you know, I don't know.
49:23
SPEAKER_01: When is the U.S. game?
49:24
SPEAKER_01: I think it's Monday night.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: So by Wednesday.
49:26
SPEAKER_02: Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, I believe.
49:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Fox will get those overnights out pretty fast.
49:31
SPEAKER_02: So it'll be interesting.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: A lot of people think it could pull a 30, which is, you know, that's a huge number.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: In the middle of the summer, too,
49:37
SPEAKER_01: when This is always like,
49:38
SPEAKER_01: if you're an August primary,
49:39
SPEAKER_01: it's a slog to move the dial as an advertiser,
49:42
SPEAKER_01: both with creative and buying,
49:44
SPEAKER_01: because people's,
49:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:45
SPEAKER_01: advertising is based on people's life cycles and consumption of video or whatever's
49:50
SPEAKER_01: on to being consistent, right?
49:52
SPEAKER_01: And everything gets thrown away with camps and kids off school,
49:55
SPEAKER_01: people traveling, all that kind of stuff.
49:59
SPEAKER_01: But to get back to the streaming piece, the fixed sports is keeping it up.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is too,
50:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:05
SPEAKER_01: There's still some major,
50:06
SPEAKER_01: major streaming providers that don't sell to political advertisers, right?
50:10
SPEAKER_01: Amazon doesn't sell.
50:11
SPEAKER_01: Netflix doesn't sell.
50:13
SPEAKER_01: And those are huge.
50:14
SPEAKER_01: You know,
50:15
SPEAKER_01: you're talking about the entities that don't sell to political are like 35,
50:20
SPEAKER_01: 40 percent of all streaming impressions.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: So it's like that minimizes their overall kind of growth
50:26
SPEAKER_01: and eventually probably taking down and beating linear media.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: But I think, you know, radio was supposed to be dead 30 years ago, though.
50:34
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, all these things take so much longer.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that streaming's realized wisely is that the competition's not
50:43
SPEAKER_01: over being on your device, per se.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: It's about being on the living room screen.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
50:49
SPEAKER_01: and that's why YouTube more than anyone is really dominated or grown
50:53
SPEAKER_01: the last few years,
50:53
SPEAKER_01: because between YouTube television and YouTube connected TV,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: they're the they're the they are the biggest video streaming player out there.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: And it's because they realize with their kind of the YouTube TV segment,
51:05
SPEAKER_01: like that's where people still dominantly feast on video.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: They just do, particularly post pandemic and people working more from home.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, just like it's just that was a smart move on their part.
51:17
SPEAKER_01: But But yeah, you know, little things change it all the time though, right?
51:22
SPEAKER_01: Like Fox just bought with, you know, they already have Tubi and they just bought Roku.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: So that's,
51:27
SPEAKER_01: that makes them immediately like the number three legacy or not,
51:30
SPEAKER_01: I think the top legacy old linear player in the streaming market.
51:33
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, it's constantly changing and moving.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: I think there were probably one too many options before it's consolidating,
51:40
SPEAKER_01: which makes buying easier,
51:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:44
SPEAKER_02: and as more of them realize like politics is a vertical they should include
51:47
SPEAKER_02: in sales, I think I've got to think eventually Amazon and Netflix get there.
51:51
SPEAKER_02: There's just,
51:52
SPEAKER_02: there's too much money
51:53
SPEAKER_01: in it.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: Too much money.
51:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: And what's really probably going to happen is,
51:57
SPEAKER_01: you know, the FCC is going to at some point be like, there's too much.
52:01
SPEAKER_01: You can't just silo yourself off from, from, from political advertising, like FCC, FCC.
52:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're going to do something about, about making that be a part of the equation.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: And frankly,
52:13
SPEAKER_01: also a limit,
52:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:14
SPEAKER_01: that's the one thing I talked about competitive is like,
52:17
SPEAKER_01: and this is a concern I have is kind of a,
52:19
SPEAKER_01: of a buyer practitioner is as we do more money and as more money goes to over
52:23
SPEAKER_01: the top connected and streaming,
52:25
SPEAKER_01: there's a huge amount of money in American politics that we don't really know.
52:29
SPEAKER_01: We do on the reports to some degree,
52:31
SPEAKER_01: we don't know where it's being spent like we do linear broadcast.
52:34
SPEAKER_01: Like I can tell you last week on a race I'm tracking how much somebody spent in
52:38
SPEAKER_01: the NBC affiliate in the Kansas City market relative to the rest of the market
52:41
SPEAKER_01: and state down to a dollar, right?
52:44
SPEAKER_01: I can't do that with over the top.
52:47
SPEAKER_01: You know, this is like elections and who's in charge at stake.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: At some point,
52:50
SPEAKER_01: there's going to have to be some transparency and it's not going to be so black box
52:54
SPEAKER_01: and exclusively, you know, programmatic.
52:57
SPEAKER_01: And we just have these kind of estimated model big sums.
53:01
SPEAKER_01: There's going to have to be some,
53:02
SPEAKER_01: I think,
53:03
SPEAKER_01: more better transparency on either the providers and sellers of that get to
53:08
SPEAKER_01: that point or they're going to realize government's going to force it because
53:11
SPEAKER_01: when linear is gone completely,
53:12
SPEAKER_01: it's not like they're going to allow all the advertising spending
53:15
SPEAKER_01: in American politics just to go.
53:17
SPEAKER_02: You know, to not know exactly how it's going out.
53:19
SPEAKER_02: That's just not going to happen.
53:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, just maybe just to close out,
53:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
53:25
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned it a minute ago,
53:26
SPEAKER_00: but the Supreme Court just issued a decision basically saying
53:30
SPEAKER_00: that you can't basically that political parties have been sort of siloed
53:36
SPEAKER_00: From coordinating with,
53:38
SPEAKER_00: well, there's been limitations on how much parties and candidates can coordinate.
53:44
SPEAKER_00: And essentially they said it was like a violation of the First Amendment.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: So ironically,
53:51
SPEAKER_01: Vice President Vance teamed up with Congressman Steve Chabot and filed
53:56
SPEAKER_01: the initial suit in Ohio.
53:57
SPEAKER_01: And it worked its way all the way up to the Supreme Court with,
54:00
SPEAKER_01: as you laid out,
54:01
SPEAKER_01: ostensibly challenging the coordination limits between national committees
54:06
SPEAKER_01: and campaigns direct.
54:08
SPEAKER_01: And prior to now,
54:09
SPEAKER_01: if you were a congressional race,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: like there was a certain amount that the campaign committee,
54:12
SPEAKER_01: the NRCC could do in coordination.
54:14
SPEAKER_01: Most of their spending would happen with an independent expenditure arm.
54:18
SPEAKER_01: Senate side,
54:18
SPEAKER_01: it was a little bit more and it
54:21
SPEAKER_02: was a math equation that was figured every year
54:23
SPEAKER_02: by population of state or something like that.
54:27
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, that's gone now.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: So now the NRSC,
54:32
SPEAKER_01: the NRCC,
54:33
SPEAKER_01: the Democrat counterparts can now coordinate directly with the campaigns,
54:37
SPEAKER_01: meaning they can send their resources to them.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: And because they're candidates,
54:42
SPEAKER_01: they're able to get a rate that's candidate rate driven off
54:46
SPEAKER_01: the lowest unit charge rate card.
54:48
SPEAKER_01: And the difference at the end of a campaign could be a cost per point for
54:52
SPEAKER_01: a candidate that's $300k, and an issue group that's $1.2 million.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: The degree to which the resources now go farther out of the institutions to
55:01
SPEAKER_01: the campaigns is massive.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really, I think it's not going to change how much money per se is in the system.
55:08
SPEAKER_02: It's just that money goes much farther in terms of delivering messages, having mediums.
55:14
SPEAKER_02: You know,
55:15
SPEAKER_01: you're not paying this prorated issue rate
55:17
SPEAKER_01: because people forget all this advertising is,
55:20
SPEAKER_01: it's driven off supply and demand, right?
55:21
SPEAKER_01: It's particularly the issue rate card always was.
55:23
SPEAKER_01: And if you're in a state with a,
55:25
SPEAKER_01: like an Ohio gov race and a Senate race,
55:27
SPEAKER_01: not to mention all the other things,
55:28
SPEAKER_01: down ballot,
55:29
SPEAKER_01: congressional,
55:30
SPEAKER_01: because it's a competitive,
55:31
SPEAKER_01: sophisticated state where lots of money gets spent,
55:33
SPEAKER_01: you know, your issue costs go up because it's a supply demand issue.
55:37
SPEAKER_01: They had to provide it to campaigns, had to provide access to campaigns.
55:41
SPEAKER_01: So then to make up for that,
55:44
SPEAKER_01: The issue groups,
55:45
SPEAKER_01: they really, you know, they could, for lack of a better word, gouge and still can.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: And gouge is probably a little
55:51
SPEAKER_02: too strong.
55:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean,
55:52
SPEAKER_02: they're just dealing with the supply demand reality of having something people want,
55:56
SPEAKER_02: selling it at a number that That's fair, they can monetize.
55:59
SPEAKER_02: And buyers and campaigns have the ability to leverage them against each other.
56:03
SPEAKER_02: And that's the art of being a good buying shop, right?
56:05
SPEAKER_02: Is not just accepting what a station gives you,
56:07
SPEAKER_02: but saying,
56:07
SPEAKER_02: well, we've got ratings and you're way out of
56:11
SPEAKER_01: line and this station's here.
56:12
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot that goes into that work inside of the business.
56:16
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, this is going to massively change.
56:18
SPEAKER_01: And it's an advantage for Republicans because we've got fewer donors
56:24
SPEAKER_01: that can give more that Democrats are kind of living off $200 and
56:29
SPEAKER_01: under national donor bases,
56:31
SPEAKER_01: which put a ton of cash into their campaign directs,
56:35
SPEAKER_01: which allowed them to have that advantage.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: And now this should level the playing field a little
56:38
SPEAKER_02: bit in terms of,
56:40
SPEAKER_02: you know, because all that money turns into messaging bullets, as we like to say.
56:43
SPEAKER_02: And so now we've got a crate of bullets is as big as the other side's crate
56:47
SPEAKER_02: of bullets and kind of equals the playing field.
56:51
SPEAKER_01: And the question is, when or how will the Democrats
56:54
SPEAKER_02: adjust or take advantage of this versus doing things
56:57
SPEAKER_02: the way they have?
56:58
SPEAKER_02: And so our side was clearly more prepared to take advantage of this moment
57:03
SPEAKER_02: and will probably,
57:04
SPEAKER_02: you know,
57:05
SPEAKER_02: on the cycle,
57:05
SPEAKER_02: I would be very surprised if they don't net out significantly from
57:08
SPEAKER_02: a structural advantage standpoint.
57:12
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a last ditch effort for them to try to
57:15
SPEAKER_02: stop it with another legal,
57:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
57:17
SPEAKER_02: they're You know,
57:19
SPEAKER_02: there's some other new, but I don't, most people don't expect that to work.
57:24
SPEAKER_00: Well.
57:26
SPEAKER_00: Nick, this has been a fabulous interview.
57:30
SPEAKER_00: This is fun.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for you guys providing such fantastic election night returns and information.
57:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
57:37
SPEAKER_01: I love being the first person to share somebody with DDHQ because they're like,
57:41
SPEAKER_01: wow, I didn't know I had this.
57:42
SPEAKER_01: And this year,
57:44
SPEAKER_01: adding the county levels within the state break, I mean, just the nuance this year.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: You guys have outdone yourself.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: It's fantastic.
57:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, we're, thank you.
57:52
SPEAKER_00: We're, yeah,
57:52
SPEAKER_00: we're feeling pretty good about it,
57:54
SPEAKER_00: but this I think was a really fantastic look into how
58:02
SPEAKER_00: ad making and ad buying works
58:04
SPEAKER_00: in campaigns.
58:05
SPEAKER_00: Some of the,
58:06
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:06
SPEAKER_00: the considerations that you have to make being in this business, how,
58:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
58:12
SPEAKER_00: working with candidates can go and,
58:16
SPEAKER_00: you know, how,
58:18
SPEAKER_00: Also how it's changed,
58:19
SPEAKER_00: because obviously you've been in this game a while,
58:22
SPEAKER_00: and so you've seen some shifts,
58:24
SPEAKER_00: and you talked about going from it being so linear,
58:27
SPEAKER_00: TV-driven, to now this mix of stream.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: It's just a real hodgepodge of different places.
58:34
SPEAKER_02: Facts and issues to emails.
58:35
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
58:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, facts and issues to emails.
58:37
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
58:37
SPEAKER_02: All these things.
58:38
SPEAKER_01: I can't even.
58:39
SPEAKER_02: I explain to the young people in my shop how it used to be,
58:42
SPEAKER_02: and they look at me like I'm a thousand years old.
58:45
SPEAKER_02: An alien, yeah.
58:46
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
58:47
SPEAKER_02: An old unk,
58:48
SPEAKER_02: as the kids like to say.
58:52
SPEAKER_00: Well, again, Nick, thank you so much.
58:54
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being on.
58:55
SPEAKER_02: This is fun.
58:57
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
58:57
SPEAKER_00: No, I'd love to have you back at some point in the future.
59:01
SPEAKER_00: Loved hearing also some of your,
59:04
SPEAKER_00: not just like your practitioner stuff,
59:06
SPEAKER_00: but obviously sort of some of the,
59:09
SPEAKER_00: just your experiences day to day dealing with candidates and campaigns
59:13
SPEAKER_00: and how you go about making all this work.
59:16
SPEAKER_00: And again, Just for folks at home, again, this is Nick Everhart.
59:19
SPEAKER_00: He's the founder and president of Content Creative Media and Medium Buying.
59:24
SPEAKER_00: He's been working in the campaign public affairs on the Republican side for about
59:29
SPEAKER_00: a quarter century and had, well,
59:33
SPEAKER_00: you know, that's given you a lot to share and we were the beneficiaries of that.
59:36
SPEAKER_02: No, thanks for having me on this phone.
59:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, again, I'm Geoffrey Skelley, the host here at Decision Desk HQ, the podcast here.
59:44
SPEAKER_00: We will be back.
59:46
SPEAKER_00: Soon with more content, it's election year, so there's a million and one things to talk about.
59:51
SPEAKER_00: But again, Nick, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
59:54
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.