About How Poll Numbers and TV Exposure Work
This is a note to my fellow Bernie supporters about how television works, at least from the standpoint of persuasion. While I am a college teacher now, in the first half of my career I worked in advertising. I was an advertising manager for companies with large media budgets for television. The companies I worked for had me spending $25 million a year for television time. It is from this vantage point that I write, and I felt compelled to write this post, having seen these types of threads floating around DU after Hillary's Benghazi testimony:
Bad news for Sanders if he falls behind in New Hampshire
Hillary Was Handed the Presidency...On a Silver Trey
Hillary Clinton is Fading Fast (sarcasm)
In the corporate world, where sales are the be-all and end-all, we referred to television as "the faucet." A TV media flight starting was like turning on the faucet, with customers being the water. Literally, you could graph the customer visits and see how fast customers started coming in when a television schedule began.
Hillary's long day in front of the committee gave her huge exposure to the American public, plus there was the attendant coverage surrounding it, such as the evening news clips, the constant stories on CNN and MSNBC, newspaper, internet commentary, etc.
The next thing you need to know is about the role of top-of-mind awareness and polls. Also familiarity.
Familiarity is just what it sounds like, but it's used a little more specifically in the field of persuasion. The more familiar a person is with someone or something, the more likely they are to choose the familiar when presented with a choice.
I don't think I need to draw the dots for you to understand this point. When the poller calls, the familiar is what comes to mind, thus "top-of-mind." That is why television is so important in marketing: it makes the product or service top-of-mind. The customer is always more likely to choose it--unless there has been a previous commitment to some other product or service.
Nobody, not even a McDonald's, can afford a 52-week TV schedule. Eventually, the media flight has to end. What happens then?
Well, sadly for persuaders, the commitment is a very elastic thing. Think of it like a rubber band. It goes right back to where it was before.
Hillary benefits long-term only if she is able to permanently convert those influenced by television to her side. But that's really tough. The way she would do that is to swoop in right now and get them to commit financially to her campaign. Once that commitment has been made, it would be incongruous for the voter to go back to being up in the air about their candidate.
So unless she is able to convert that bump in the polls she has gained from the Benghazi spectacle and the debates, the poll number situation is most likely going back to what it was doing before: a gradual rise by Bernie, and a slow decline by Hillary (see graph in the "Hillary Clinton Fading Fast" thread).
Cher
= new reply since forum marked as read
that O'Malley's doing that's not right, but that Bernie is doing right. That is showing anger and outrage. There's a study (it's posted online) that says that the people most affected by a candidate's affect (emotional display) are the ones who pay the most attention to politics. They are most likely the ones who are registered voters, and who vote regularly.
So who needs to be influenced? The people who are registered and who vote regularly.
Hey, you can make inroads into all kinds of factions, but if they're not registered to vote, it won't do any good.
Now, how does this apply to O'Malley? O'Malley, while being an excellent public speaker, shows zip emotion. In the last debate, I could not get over how--even while discussing his projects in Baltimore--he still had a relatively straightforward, calm, demeanor. On a subject like police brutality, people want to see outrage.
Cher
