who gets fired?

…”we helped leave this race a statistical dead heat.”- stated after spending $250 million dollars

The Wall Street Journal outlines that an unprecedented amount of money is being spent in the American election. The total is somewhere near $500 million to date in advertising (here is tracking to date: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/track-presidential-campaign-ads-2012/).

Oh my. Think what that money could be used for … okay … that is a different article.

The spending, and number of ads, has become a little wacky this year because it isn’t just the candidates money nor is the majority of spending being done by the actual candidates <now there are random political ‘super pacs’ … people who say what they want to say and spend what they want to spend>.

Regardless.

Apparently all the spending hasn’t done jackshit to influence voter opinion.

Here is a humdinger of a Republican quote “we believe we have kept a number of races competitive and put important issues on the table.”

That is code for “our money didn’t do jackshit.”

Another quote <republican> …”we helped leave this race a statistical dead heat.” Please note that this was said despite the fact Romney’s poll numbers continue to lag the incumbent.

Wall Street Journal also did a spectacular job highlighting the spectacular ineptness of the advertising in specific areas where republicans overinvested in order to create the desired behavior <vote Republican> and reported spectacular failure to do so <in some of these states/areas Romney’s scores have actually declined>.

So.

Here is my question.

Who is getting fired?

Why do I ask that? Well, let’s try this whole situation out in the business world.

P&G spends over $4billion (in the US I believe). Pepsi spends an estimated $2.1 billion a year on marketing, McDonald’s $1.2 billion, and Coca-Cola is not far behind at $895 million. Let’s get closer to apples to apples comparisons … State Farm spends $860million, Apple around $650million and Volkswagen $730million.

I am either the CMO or the advertising agency standing up at the end of the year giving my report (just to be clear … any sane CMO would be putting their advertising person up at the front of the room to tell this story).

–          “Gee. The <plug in any of the billion or million dollar number from above here> kept us competitive. We didn’t gain any sales but, gosh darn it, statistically it was a dead heat! In addition … I would note we were absolutely disappointed with the lack of results in the places where we made investment spending <translation: we overspent and under delivered>.”

Needless to say … I am fired.

Heck.

I would fire me.

Why? Because some smartass <like me> is sitting off to the side saying something like “how the fuck do you spend $250 million dollars and get no return or increase?”

But you don’t even need a smartass like me sitting around in the business world because in the general business world $250 million is a lot of money and people expect to see some <positive> results if you spend that amount.

However, let’s assume that didn’t get me fired.

I actually make it to Q&A. I guarantee you someone <most likely the CFO because that is the person who seems to ask this question the most> will ask “what did we actually do and do we have any thoughts on whether it was the right thing to do?”

Here is where I figure out how to shift from my 110 page powerpoint presentation, where I had manipulated numbers to mask the disappointing results, to video so I can show the television executions. Yup. Of which almost 80% are negative messaging.

Needless to say … I am now fired.

And, once again, I would fire me.

Let me begin here by saying that with this large a budget I could live with running some <maybe 15-20%?> negative ads because they speak directly, and only, to my core audience who wants to think bad things about the other choices. Inevitably the negativity solidifies my base because I am simply saying what they want to hear <even if it may not be completely true>.

All that said … if the majority, the significant majority. Of my messaging is negative … well … ‘Houston, we have a problem.’

In general business negative advertising is specious at best in a short term effort and never an option long term.

In politics negative advertising is (1) unbelievable to the general audience, (2) polarizing in an unhealthy way and (3) well … as the British would say … ‘it’s just not cricket’ … <the equivalent of “not according to Hoyle”> ,in other words, it is diminishing through negativity rather than expanding through positive. Negativity increases your value by diminishing the other (so you could simply become the tallest midget). Negativity has never been an effective communications tactic and it has never been proven to build long term brand value.

I would tell politics the same thing any business industry knows … in a negative war of words no one wins. The entire category loses.

I would stand up in front of any politician right now and unequivocally state that the advertising war currently going on is not only a losing strategy for the candidates but a losing tactic for the country’s psyche.

Regardless, this isn’t a business lesson; this is me wondering who is going to get fired for wasting $500 million dollars.

I find the entire topic if not insane certainly inane.

Well.

The only people who I can envision taking solace in this entire insane topic are the Belarusians.

Huh? Belarus? Yup.

Belarus just had a round of elections in which the opposition candidates were ignored by television and newspapers declined to publish information.

Someone should send the opposition party the Wall Street journal article and suggest they just saved a shitload of money because any advertising they did was not going to make any difference anyway.