Can good creative win elections?
Good creative isn’t simply clever or well designed
I moderated a panel at the American Association of Political Consultants’ 2023 Pollie Awards Conference about whether good creative can win elections, and the answer, according to panelists, was a resounding yes. They have a point.
Here are some of the examples of election-winning creative the panelists shared with us, and why they said good creative is crucial in political communications:
For Gaby Cardenas, founder and CEO of Colibri Collective, cohesive creative helps to build trust through consistent branding and messaging.
“We have to build trust,” she said. “We have to make sure that there’s consistency, whether they see a mailer, whether they see a digital ad, it’s really a trust thing.”
Her agency, which has offices in Washington and Phoenix, caters to Latino voters on the left, and in last year’s midterm campaign in Arizona, their Lucha Blue campaign included information on how and where to vote, as well as digital, out of home, and print advertisements.
For their voter education materials, “we really focus on having a shelf life so this could sit in household,” Cardenas said. “They needed to have something that sits in their home so they understand how to vote, why to vote, and where to vote.”
But not every mailer needs to be designed to live on coffee tables for an extended period of time. Colleen Learch, president of KRC Research, said mailers can even have an impact if they’re immediately tossed out.
“What voters tell us from mail is that they might not read the two paragraphs of content between their mailbox and recycle bin, but they see it there and the headline and the subhead and the image is very related and just the sight of the content lends some credibility,” she said.
Learch’s firm helped conduct research for a U.S. Postal Service white paper which found direct mail to be the most credible political advertising channel for 63% of surveyed voters. When it comes to young voters, she said they are especially sensitive to divisiveness in political communication.
“Younger voters haven’t really been conditioned, they came of age during a pandemic, they’re sort of still feeling things and crafting what their young 20s look like, and if they see something divisive, that makes them feel stupid, they’ve got plenty of other options to engage in other ways or complain or voice their opinion,” Learch said. “They do not have to show up on Election Day or mail a ballot in.”
Christina Sheffey, group creative director at Bully Pulpit Interactive, said a campaign she worked on for Patagonia last cycle reached voters of color between 18 and 24 in Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania to flip the Senate, and “we actually didn’t run any advertising about those candidates.”
“We didn’t run anything about necessarily political messaging you would pick up, we ran ads about you have the power to create the world that you want,” Sheffey said. “How do we empower people to see themselves in our political system? It can feel extremely divisive and so how do we make people want to get involved and want to be a part of it?”
The campaign included voting rights activists who shared their own content “so it wasn’t just push advertising from Patagonia and a paid traditional channel.”
“A lot of the really successful campaigns that we’ve seen, last cycle particularly, really encourage that dialogue versus just pushing their message,” she said.
Campaigns usually don’t have very generous creative budgets, but creatives should embrace that said Daniel Huey, a partner at Something Else Strategies, a Republican firm.
“No campaign is ever going to have the budget of the Apple or the Geico or whatever else your spot is bunched in between, so don’t try to compete, you’re never going win that battle, so try to embrace the inherent low-budget nature of political advertising,” he said.
When working with candidates, it’s key to work with what you’ve got, whether it’s a candidate’s bio or good research. “It sounds very basic, but strip it down and play to your strengths is going to bail you out in a lot of situations,” Huey said.
For a spot with Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, they leaned into her personality to fend off conservative primary challengers. In a 2022 ad, she says her parents taught her that if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all, then: “Here’s what I have to say about Joe Biden,” followed by silence.
“Consultants lose their minds, like, you have 10 seconds of dead air in the ad? Yep, sure do, but it gets people’s attention,” Huey said. “It gets across the point that she’s super conservative, she’s one of us, and you can reelect her.”
One piece of advice from Chris Mottola, the owner of Chris Mottola Consulting, Inc., who’s worked with Republicans like John McCain and for a hot second, Jeb Bush, was to listen to everything from focus groups. All of it.
“With the focus groups, watch the whole thing, as painful as it is, because the Rosetta Stone to the campaign is going to be on night two, and it’s going to be someone mumbling in the back at the 46 minute mark and you’re going to hear that and you’re going to go, ‘Oh my God, that’s it, I can win the campaign,’” he said.
Good creative is a process, Mottola said, and the right concept lies somewhere in intersection of what voters want and what a candidate believes. He said it’s important for creatives to have knowledge of contemporary and historical culture.
“Know the Netflix shows, know what Snapchat does, watch TikTok, listen to new music, even stuff you don’t like. You have to know what’s going on with the culture,” he said. Go to museums, read the classics. “You can literally steal from them.”
For an ad for former Sen. Gordon Smith, a Republican in liberal Oregon, “voters wanted evidence Gordon Smith was a moderate,” Mottola said. He had an endorsement from Judy Shepard, whose son Matthew was kidnapped and killed after leaving a gay bar in 1998. For a spot with Shepard, she spoke stream of consciousness. “There’s absolutely no sell at all,” Mottola said. He was inspired by Michelangelo’s Pietà, showing Mary grieving over her son, because it conveyed grief, strength, and grace, and he placed Shepard small in the frame.
“The whole spot is done at a whisper,” he said. “Michelangelo did all the hard work for me. As soon as that image came into my mind, I knew exactly what the spot was. The spot became pretty easy.”
A good logo on its own can win no election; if the most compelling TV ad is seen by no persuadable voter, it changes no one’s mind. Good creative isn’t simply clever or well designed, but if it’s consistent, authentic, and speaks to voter’s needs, it can be the difference between getting your message across to voters or not.
Have you seen this?
The Biden-Harris 2024 reelection logo is here. President Joe Biden is officially running for reelection with a new logo that shows the red stripe E in his last name now waving like a flag. Say hello to Biden ‘24. [𝘠𝘌𝘓𝘓𝘖]
Inside the Costume Institute’s “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty” exhibition. The expansive showcase will open to the public at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 5. [Hypebeast]
NASA’s new wonder material can withstand the heat of hell. NASA’s GRX-810 alloy is 1,000 times durable and twice as strong as the current alloys NASA can 3D print. [Fast Company]
Art critics and government officials slam Italy’s “humiliating” tourism campaign turning Botticelli’s Venus into an influencer. The campaign cost €9 million. [Artnet News]
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Political designer here. Just seeing this, but I agree with consistency being the key. The mail often gets glanced at only long enough to determine it can be tossed, and a strong logo and memorable color scheme is a must. (Good, bad or ugly, it should be consistent.) When you repeatedly toss the same campaign's mail, you'll start to notice the name, and maybe read a line or two. And if you don't know all the local candidates on election day, you'll remember this one.
It's tough to brand a person in a very short time. Even the younger candidates lean traditional with design styles and they're not fluent in design trends, so it's a tough balance.