Winning the vote
Left to right: Gaurav Shirole, Chris Frommann, Chauncey McLean, Will St. Clair.
Law enforcement unions and associations should get familiar with the data-driven strategy used by the 2012 Obama campaign that zeroed in on undecided voters in swing states and made a plan to reach them. The geniuses behind this effort have been lured from politics for the moment by big commercial interests who are desperate to do more effective “target marketing.” A Las Vegas casino is just one enterprise that saw the potential in this new kind of data driven marketing. There are important lessons here for unions who are constantly undertaking political campaigns similar to a presidential election. Mastering some of these techniques could lead to more wins! The New York Times published an indepth article by Jim Rutenberg on just how the whole thing worked.
Here’s an excerpt:
“The optimizer software would then comb advertising price and viewership data to figure out the top-rated time slots among those on the Obama persuadable list — which could vary from market to market — and then rank them based on which produced the highest concentration of the Obama swing voters at the best rates. The results were striking. The campaign determined that two of the top shows to buy were 1 a.m. repeats of “The Insider” and afternoon episodes of “Judge Joe Brown” — shows that were far cheaper than the evening news or anything being shown on the networks in prime time. “When you’re talking about ‘The Insider,’ that might be shift workers in a state like Ohio, folks who are working class and aren’t getting home until midnight,” said Daniel Jester, the head GMMB buyer, who was aggressively locking in low rates early. “The person watching ‘Judge Joe Brown’ in the afternoon also may be the same viewer watching ‘The Insider’ at 1 a.m.”
To read the article in its entirety visit the New York Times.
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
