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Political Advertisements
During political campaigns, candidates usually come up with advertisements that are seen to attack the others while giving advantage to them. Sometimes this works for them positively or sometimes draws the voters away from them. In this case, it would be prudent to look at the campaign strategies applied by Barrack Obama and his campaign team against his rival Mitt Romney in the past election. Obama’s digital campaigns clearly be explained to target specific voters in the country. A few weeks before the elections were carried out on November 6th, 2012, Obama exploited the cable televisions and programs in order to indulge the targeted voters. For the women, he embarked on initiating advertisements Food networks while for the men he used sport channels especially ESPN.
Obama’s campaign team took the battleground states and tailored their media advertisements to fit the society. it is reported that Obama’s media campaigns used $200 million. This was used in paying the actors and the production team that was involved in producing the advertisements. Majority of the advertisements targeted specific people and thus the nature of the advertisement. This meant that the targeted group had a specific advertisement, which prioritized on the issues they wanted to be addressed. This strategy was known as the ‘optimizer’ according to campaign team. The Obama campaign team took time to collect information on their electorate and understood things that would woo their voters to the polling stations.
They strategized their campaigns in accordance to the viewing habits of potential voters. Sometimes the team used personal information of individuals in order to initiate an advertisement on the cable channels they watched. This strategy might have interfered with the privacy on the individual in accordance to the Kantar Media/CMAG, which was mandated to overseeing the media campaigns. However, this strategy might have worked for them, as they were able to lure the voters towards their camp. This meant that they used technology to their advantage. It is explained that the Republicans were well financed though they did not understand much about the use of technology as the Diplomats did. The only way their opponent used the technology was to urge the millions of uninterested voters to turn up in polling stations. They had anticipated that the individuals who never wanted to vote would turn up and support them.
“The Optimizer” was all about rating the voters and understanding their interest. This meant that the campaigns were based on advertising rather than being politically instigated. This meant that the campaigns were developed against the television and media traditions in regards to political campaigns. This meant that the campaigns were rated under advertisements and their capability to lure potential buyers and not voters. At the same time, all the credits should be given to Mr. Romney’s team who were spending most of the time developing anti-Obama campaigns giving room for Obamas team to develop a different strategy against their advertisements.
In conclusion, one can say that collection of array of information through social media, emails and one on one data collection on voters aided in the development of campaign advertisements used by Obama campaign team. At the same time, the team also managed to predict the number of voters on different states in the country. This meant that the team managed to address the issues that the voters wanted to hear from the presidential candidates.
Works Cited
Burton, Michael J, and Daniel M. Shea. Campaign Craft: The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign Management. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 2010. Print
Denton, Robert E. The 2012 Presidential Campaign: A Communication Perspective. , 2014. Print.
Willis, Deborah, and Kevin Merida. Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs. New York, NY: Amistad, 2008. Print.
