aquino not only lost momentum, he lost the agenda – now set to lose the election

we have seen the poll numbers change and the changes are not good for noynoy aquino. his ratings are falling and villar whose ratings in previous polls were either holding or slightly rising has finally caught up with aquino and now in a statistical tie.

we attribute aquino’s fall on bad advertising decisions and fatal advertising blunders. (click here to read articles on the topic: why aquino will lose the election). we think what happened is that aquino has lost his momentum due to the fatal blunder of not doing anything in advertising after they aired the first ad . he used to be at the top fo the polls, clearly dominant with the 2nd placer, villar very far down the ladder but not anymore. not doing anything new and allowing a gap in the ads allowed villar to build his base and grab the agenda.

villar has grabbed the momentum away from aquino. in marketing and in elections, that is a very dangerous thing to happen, most specially at this time when we are just less than 3 months away. in these things, momentum sometimes matter more than actual numbers.

the aquino campaign has responded with more pointed and focused efforts on the message of corruption. this is a good effort but we do not think this is enough. we also think this latest effort sorely lacks the strategic thinking that was sorely missed in the fatal blunders they have made in advertising.

meanwhile, villar as of today released new ads, at least we heard this on the radio where villar talks about something personal – his brother died because they had money to buy medicines. this is a brilliant ad. 

it has drama, it is personal and it talks very eloquently of a national issue – poverty, high cost of medicines and bad health care system.   what the villar campaign is doing is that they are defining the agenda for this campaign. aquino used to do this at the start but from doing nothing, it has conceded this initiative and allowed villar to take the lead in defining the agenda and the messages.

once again, aquino’s advertising team was caught flat footed. and once again, they were too slow to react and did not have enough strategic thinking skills in doing something about it.

we think the aquino campaign is in trouble.

~~  a mindscape landmark – carlo arvisu ~~

noynoy aquino to lose the election due to advertising blunders

getting a presidentiable to win an election is really no different from getting a  mass consumer product to succeed  in the market place. the  success of a presidentiable is  measured by the number of votes he/she gets, mass consumer products are measured by market share.  how to get there, political campaigns and brand management teams for mass consumer products use the same principles, apply the same strategies, in many cases execute the same tools and analyze very similar data and research.

the election just like mass consumer marketing is all about two major components – the product and it’s advertising.  in the case of political campaigns, the product is the presidentiable while it may be a shampoo or laundry product for a mass consumer product.

advertising is probably the most potent marketing tool for both. we have seen great tv ads for mass consumer products that were able to push the brands to market leadership. same way we have seen great tv ads launched by the presidentiables that pushed them to being at the top of the polls. this is clearly seen in the manny villar campaign where it is very clear that great advertising done since many months ago has pushed his poll  ratings from nothing to now a statistical tie with the dominant front runner, noynoy aquino.

market research, specifically consumer research is very important to both political campaigns and mass consumer marketing. mass consumer marketing and political campaigns both seek to persuade the target market, voters for presidentiables and consumers for marketers to buy their “products”. understanding the consumers minds, attitudes and sentiments is most key for both.

polls that SWS and Pulse Asia conduct are very similar to what mass consumer marketers use – they also have market share data, the equivalent of polls.   polls is very much like the product tracking research done by mass consumer products.

the aquino campaign we think has committed major blunders in it’s advertising campaign. they are so major that we think it will cost noynoy aquino to lose this election.  are they reversible? yes, they are reversible but that very much depends on the aquino advertising team knowing what went wrong and more importantly what to do about it. and equally important, do they have the smarts and the energy to something about it.

these are the advertising blunders of the aquino campaign:

• losing the election by advertising default –  that is the bottom line. the aquino campaign’s biggest advertising blunder was what the they did not do, not what they did. aquino had 2 very good tv ads but they needed more ads between those two. they had a huge gap of not airing any new tv ad from the first to the second. in the meantime, villar continued to air new ads and at heavy media weights during the gap of silence  the aquino campaign had. villar eventually converted aquino supporters.
  

  aquino's first tv ad

• Naivete and ignorance on what to do on the recognition that  aquino’s popularity was the halo effect of cory’s death.   even the most inexperienced advertising student or the armchair advertising expert know that the dominant ratings aquino got in the polls at the start were mostly due to the “cory effect”, his popularity surging to an astronomical 60% and 47% . they aired their first tv ad (“hindi ka nag-iisa” ) and it was a success. that ad was well done and it very wisely exploited the sentiments of the people.  but as in all things “halo effect”, the true advertising expert  should know it will fade over time. at that extremely high start point in the polls, fading is inevitable but you do not want is for it to fade at levels too low that you give your opponent the opportunity to rise. not doing anything new at that crucial time seemed to have lulled aquino’s advertising team to over self confidence and probably stunned into inaction coming from the euphoria of tremendous poll results for aquino. what aquino’s advertising team failed to see was that the dominant position aquino had in the polls were not the result of advertising, not the handiwork of the admen of aquino but cory’s. on the other hand, not doing any new ads and aquino’s ad team sleeping on their jobs caused aquino’s decline in the polls.
• aquino was an excellent and easy product to sell, it’s the advertising that failed. at the start, we did say the two most important components in the success  in mass consumer marketing are product and advertising. there is no question, aquino is an excellent product that is very easy to  sell. aquino’s ad team was lucky that they were being given a product to advertise that already had superior qualities that all the voters wanted.  aquino also did not have apparent weaknesses. while his credentials may not exactly match those of his more senior opponents like villar and gordon, the important thing is that aquino had in his pocket this huge built-in superior advantage called “cory magic” and he did not have any obvious or glaring negatives. aquino had the momentum no other candidate had then but his ad team for sleeping on the job failed to exploit it  or make something out of it. 
  

  aquino's 2nd tv ad

• aquino’s advertising team did not know what to do with “cory magic” and was clueless on  it’s implications.  there are three fatal errors here. first, i think the ad team of aquino’s most fundamental weakness was they did not know what to do with “cory magic”. secondly, they did not know how to use it. and third, because of the two points above, they probably dismissed it as something they really cannot use much. we think aquino’s advertising team took “cory magic” as too literal and they did not bother to draw consumer (voter) insights from it for use in their efforts. they did use “cory magic” in their ads, but they were used incorrectly and too plainly used.
• failure to exploit and make something out of an excellent and superior product in noynoy aquino.  in our view, aquino’s advertising team was simply too linear in their approach to advertising. they concentrated too much on too few components that they were unable to see the nuances of the product that they were selling and failed to look at the competitive horizon.  on the last point, we doubt if the aquino advertising team has even made a meaningful assessment of competitive advertising.
• total failure on reading and tracking target audience (voters) sentiments. we do not think the aquino campaign used enough consumer or voter research, otherwise they would have been able to know what was happening to their political base. we think it would have been very plain for them to see that voter sentiments were shifting and that aquino’s voter base was  being eroded and pirated by villar. the most basic research would have made them see this evolving development.

where is the weakness of the aquino advertising team?

we think aquino’s advertising agency is very creative but we think this same ad agency and most specially aquino’s advertising team are very weak in strategic thinking.  any advertising and marketing person will tell you that strategic thinking is at the heart and the engine of any successful advertising campaign. you can have the most creative copywriters but having a poor advertising strategist will make you fail. you need both to succeed. in fact ask any creative team and they will tell you for them to succeed, they need to have good strategic thinkers.

aquino’s ad team is behaving like amateur admen. you can see that very plainly when you contrast aquino’s team efforts versus the villar advertising team.

what is the aquino campaign to do? first order of the day is for the campaign to fire the ad agency and replace its advertising team. aquino will not lose this election because of him, he will lose the election because of bad advertising.

 (click here to read articles on the topic: why aquino will lose the election)

~~  a mindscape landmark~~
 carlo arvisu

bad advertising decisions will cause noynoy aquino to lose this election

if noynoy aquino loses this election, it will be because of the bad advertising decisions the aquino campaign has made. if  aquino loses, villar will win who on the other hand would be winning the election because of excellent advertising decisions.

first, we have been a fan of aquino’s tv ads. (read here: https://2010presidentiables.wordpress.com/category/noynoy-aquino-tv-ads/). we think the first ad, hindi ka nag-iisa as the first aquino ad was perfect in setting the tone and direction of the aquino campaign. there was a lull after that first ad, then they released a new ad “Hindi ako magnanakaw” which on its own as well we thought was a very good ad. this ad defined aquino in a more specific manner, something very appropriate coming from the first ad.

as individual ads, they were very good ads. but from a campaign stand point and most specially from a political campaign point of view, what they did may have been big failures. it is this sentence in the paragraph, above that spells the failure in the aquino campaign – “there was a lull after that first ad”.

noynoy aquino will not lose this election due to the ads he has released, he will lose it due to the ads the campaign did not release at those times when it mattered. we think the failure of the ad campaign of aquino was on the error of “not doing anything” or abstention.

aquino at the polls from the very start was very impressive. in the first SWS poll where respondents were asked the top three people who will be good enough to be replace arroyo, aquino got a very impressive 60%, september 2009.

other polls that followed from SWS and pulse asia that asked specifically for presidential preferences (as opposed to 3 who can best replace arroyo) placed aquino as the dominant front runner at 44% to 47% with villar a  very far  2nd spot in some cases not even half of aquino’s ratings.  recent polls from SWS and Pulse Asia, however puts villar now at a statistical tie with aquino. villar’s kept going up while aquino softened and finally broke down in the latest poll.

what happened during that period from the start to that time that villar caught up with aquino? villar sustained his high spending in media and in fact at some point even increased spending  and he kept changing his ads to talk about various issues and messages. aquino on the other stayed put and did not move an inch. aquino continued to air nothing but  his initial “hindi ka nag-iisa” ad through those weeks when villar kept changing his messages. all that aquino did was he edited down the 2 minute ad into 30 second spots. he did not change his message on the air.

and that is what we think had hurt aquino – his ad campaign’s decision not to evolve and not to do anything versus an aggressive opponent in villar who not only outspent aquino by a mile, villar kept changing his messages or brand positioning.

a good description – nakatulog sa pansitan ang ad agency ni aquino.

while the ad agencies may apply mass consumer marketing principles in their advertising of the candidates, one principle that does not work in political ads is not changing messages. most mass consumer products will not change their ads and strategies for a time. that does not apply to political ads.

what the aquino campaign did not understand is that politics is a very different kind to that mass consumer products advertising.  in the arena of politics, issues and therefor thinking change rapidly and they can change often. consumer habits and attitudes may not change for mass consumer products for quite sometime (you shampoo your hair the same way for years), but not in politics.

national and political issues pop up very often, possible even in just a few days time. timely response to that change is of utmost importance to candidates who want to win an election, specially those running for president, a national position.

also, ad campaigns have a build up effect in politics. political ads more than mass consumer advertising shape the political minds of voters. with many national issues being put into the table, new ones introduced, old ones die out, the whole is always a composite of what has been put there.

that is what villar was able to achieve and something aquino failed at. villar with his changing messages was successful at implanting various messages on many issues in the minds of the voters that eventually formed into a strong composite whole. aquino with his sparse media weights (compared to villar) and few messages was unable to form any meaningful mass in the minds of the voters.  

the net effect of that is that villar was slowly converting aquino supporters. without a meaningful fight from aquino, they were easy target for villar’s messages, thus the conversion.

we think it is very clear – if aquino loses the election, it will be the fault of his advertising campaign that never was. aquino will lose this election by default in advertising.

~~  a mindscape landmark – carlo arvisu ~~

(click here to read articles on the topic: why aquino will lose the election)

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