Groundswell Recap 2015 | Oct. 26 thru Oct. 30-draft

Welcome! This is a beta-test site for a weekly recap/update page for Groundswell. Plans are for me to include examples of television campaigns from the right or left, to identify best practices and make recommendations. I am also attempting to provide links contained in a week’s worth of emails. I thought it may be helpful to provide a single destination to check for information rather than take the time to wade through countless emails to find something within a long thread. What is listed now only represents one and half days out of a five-day period. The caveat is the link has to go to destination without the need to sign in or acquire a subscription for viewing.

Right now this page is using a private link to an unpublished page on my website. The plan is a new link will be generated each week and we may password-protect the page. This is a work in progress. Please contact me directly with comments and suggestions. Thanks! – Demos

BEST PRACTICES – VOTE4ENERGY.ORG | American Petroleum Institute

American Petroleum Institute recently launched a TV campaign that highlights API’s position on energy independence targeted to identify and motivate “Energy Voters” as a collective voting block in the upcoming 2016 election cycle.

A new spot called “Vote4Energy: 30 2016 TV Ad” was launched online 10/27 and appeared on CNN Sunday morning, November 1st, where it caught my eye.

The spot has a clean, uncluttered, benign look meant to invoke the buy-in of “everyday people” using actors and/or real people whose age, race, and ethnicity are carefully matched to every phrase of the script to evoke a real-life commitment to the energy position promoted by API. The campaign also includes follow-up 30-second commercials titled “2015 Energy Views: (candidate’s name)” launched September 15th that include Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal.

LESSONS LEARNED: What is important to note is how early API’s campaign is being launched (nearly a year before the 2016 election). The NRA’s “Freedom’s Safest Place” campaign is also an example of early messaging designed to both motivate and help grow membership while framing the argument and defining the issue well in advance of the upcoming elections. These dual-use spots also have an uncluttered visual approach but the lighting and music are much more dramatic and meant to compliment the bold emotionally compelling testimonials of real NRA members.

Campaigns that go all-in at the last minute due to a variety of factors (timing of funding, delays in research, over-refinement of messaging, etc.) leave little time for messaging to to cut through the noise. A compressed timeframe does a couple of things to the creative/production approach worth noting:

COMPRESSED TIME FRAME. When time is short, the intensity level of the messaging approach has to be ramped up to creatively “shout over” the noise coming from the MSM, lay the groundwork for the potential for messaging to go viral, and quickly motivate our target audience. Timing is critical. Too soon, and the crescendo peaks too soon and our opponents have time to counter. Launch too late, and the audience’s ability to absorb, process, and react to information is limited. If this was two weeks from the election, our messaging would have been forced to center around more life/death issues: loss of jobs, energy dependence on an unstable Middle East.
LONG-TERM CAMPAIGN. In contrast, if API sustains this campaign throughout the year, they can continue to use a more low-key user-friendly approach to their energy messaging and still have the option to ramp up follow up spots with more compelling stories of people feeling the negative outcome of America’s short-sighted energy policies. Spots like this can more carefully shape and recalibrate public opinion in real time and help keep API’s overall messaging on target.

EMAILED LINKS

Selection of links emailed to GS members that do not require “joining” or subscriptions to view.

10/26

Matt Boyle: TV Comedian Jimmy Morales Elected President of Guatemala

George Rasley: “Speaker” Paul Ryan Waiting For “President” Clinton, Bush Or Rubio To Pass Amnesty

Bridgett Wagner: Bannon to headline new daily radio show on Sirius Breitbart News Daily Press Release

Andrew C. McCarthy: Hillary’s Breathtaking Mendacity

Janice Rurup: Judicial Watch Weekly Update for the week ending October 23

Andrew C. McCarthy: Trump Is Right that We Were Better Off with Qaddafi in Libya

Frank Gaffney: Secure Freedom Minute

Connie Hair: 12 Times the GOP Establishment Kicked the Conservative Base in the Teeth

Matt Boyle: Paul Ryan’s private victory party