Mar Roxas to get boost from President Aquino’s rising popularity

Aquino satisfaction best since Q1 2014

PUBLIC SATISFACTION with President Benigno S. C. Aquino III hit its highest point in one-and-a-half years this quarter, fueled by significant improvements in most geographical areas except Mindanao and across socioeconomic classes except ABC, according to results of the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey.

read more here : http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=TopStory&title=aquino-satisfaction-best-since-q1-2014&id=115452

latest poll shows president aquino’s net satisfaction rating is on the rise, highest since Q1 2014 according to SWS as published at Business World. this confirms once again that president aquino is the country’s most popular president.

this rise in satisfaction rating comes at a great time for Mar Roxas who recently had announced he is running for president under the LP. this is a benefit to Roxas as Aquino has endorsed Roxas’ run for the presidency.

Roxas has declared he is ready for the presidency and accepts the challenge of continuing Aquino’s “daang matuwid” governance and the platform by which aquino won the election by a landslide.

the “daang matuwid” and aquino’s rising popularity is in contrast to the continuing unanswered graft and corruption charges against Roxas’ main rival for the presidency VP Jejomar Binay.

Roxas is a far third in the latest polls although he has recovered significantly in the latest poll from the previous. Aquino’s endorsement of Roxas may give Roxas the push to challenge the leader Poe and the previous leader Binay. Poe now leads the polls, followed by Binay and Roxas at third.

the latest presdientiables surveys will be released soon, lets see how this all plays out for Roxas.

the key reasons why a landslide win is possible for noynoy aquino

one day before the elections and we are putting our foot down – either to be cut by rampaging train if we are wrong or we start a rampage on our own if we are right.

we this election is for aquino to lose villar to win and estrada to upset his opponents as the dark horse.

we think  given the trends from the polls and the actions aquino and his opponents have executed in the past few days, we think aquino is not set to not just win, but a possibility of a landslide win is in the horizon.

these are the key points why we think a landslide win is now possible for aquino:

• aquino has led in the polls from the very beginning
• not once was aquino threatened by any other candidate in the polls
• his closest opponent, manny villar took drastic declines too close to the election. arresting the decline, recovery from it and reversing the trend is impossible to achieve given the the time available
• manny villar, aquino’s strongest opponent is now suffering with a declining trend
• erap estrada gaining in the polls came too late, he no longer has time to build on his momentum. he will fall short of his target.
• none of aquino’s competitors did anything dramatic to propel themselves to the top or bring down aquino
• aquino has sustained his stature, no huge scandal has erupted in the last few days
• aquino’s rating of 42% is formidable given that his closest  rival, villar and estrada are at 20% to 19%, one half of aquino’s rating. that margin is insurmountable given just a few days from survey time to election time. this is not a close election anymore, it is a rout. one more way of appreciating the margin – even if you combine the ratings of his closest rivals, 39%,   aquino’s 42%  will still make him win this election.

the bottom line is that given the above, aquino with just a few days to go in this election has gained a very strong upward momentum while his closest rivals are on a decline trend (villar)  and on a slight  upward trend (estrada) but with no time to reach aquino.

an increasing trend only becomes viable if the leaps are very significant like the way binay is aggressively gaining on roxas. estrada’s upward trend is not as impressive as that of binay.

with just a few hours to go until the poll opens, the aquino campaign has much more to celebrate.

Iglesia NI Cristo endorses noynoy aquino and mar roxas – is it worth anything?

this is philippine politics tradition – waiting  for the Iglesia Ni Cristo’s endorsement of who they will be asking their flock to vote in the coming election, for this one, noynoy aquino and mar roxas got INC’s endorsement.

the timing is also perfect – just a few days before election day. this is an excellent boost to name recall and will re-energize the aquino and roxas supporters and campaigners. it’s excellent timing to get an army of supporters going for the kill with just a few days to go.

is there any value to this endorsement?

iglesia has a reported command vote of 3 million to 5 million. we think that is an exaggeration. we also think command votes from religious groups do not really materialize. 

the real value of this endorsement is bragging rights and excellent media mileage, not actual huge numbers of votes. this kind of news is excellent news for the media to write about and for the people to talk about. it is also an excellent topic for the aquino campaign to banner.

we will most likely be reading about this in the next day or two and will get a lot of media interviews for aquino and roxas. this is best used for press interviews but might not be a good idea to talk about it extensively during public meetings as it has the potential to turn off none iglesia members.

certainly this has the potential to tip the scale in favor of aquino from a bragging rights point of view with pastor quiloboy endorsing gilbert teodoro the other day. iglesia is a much larger religious group than the pastor’s.

the key question now will be how will the other campaigns handle the situation? this leaves manny villar in the cold and puts teodoro back down to earth with his lowly 7% rating in the polls.

there is a clear momentum for the aquino campaign now.

noynoy aquino – the teflon presidentiable, nothing sticks!

the 2010 election is probably one of the nastiest philippine presidential election in its history. not that philippine elections are known for intelligent debates on national issues, but noynoy aquino in particular have received the worst kinds of negative attacks.

there is a very long laundry list of negative and even personal attacks on noynoy aquino that started almost on the day after he announced his candidacy. almost all the attacks were personal – lack of achievements,  lack of experience, being a bachelor, being autistic,  his cigarette smoking, his hair or lack of it, his use of his parents credentials and  the most recent, the double fake psyche reports.

but none of it, not a single negative attack  got to stick to aquino. that makes aquino a teflon presidentiable.

aquino’s standing in the polls since the very start has not changed  – he has been the front runner. while his current rating may not be as high as what it was at the start, he continue to dominate the other presidentiables.  shrinkage from his going in rating is normal and expected. what is unusual and admirable is that he has maintained his front runner status from day one till now even though black propaganda against aquino was always there in various and new forms.

how was aquino able to survive such atttacks?

—–

this is next at The 2010 Presidentiables Blog….

corruption is the number 1 issue in the 2010 philippine election

manny villar shows vulnerability – villar’s voter base an open path to victory for laggards

in marketing, this is under the heading “source of business”. it is a mostly forgotten question by many brand managers but it is a very critical question.

in preparing a marketing plan specially for new brands to be launched in the market, that should be one of the first questions that need to be asked – where will this brand get market share from?

markets are never 100% virgin markets.  new products are launched into the market and they will seek to replace a product or service that is already existing. when you launch a brand, you need to ask yourself the question – what existing brand or service will my new brand replace.

it’s the same thing in elections. if your candidate is not in the top and you want to win the election, in drafting your winning strategy for the laggard, the question you need to ask is this – who among the presidentiables will you target for supporters?

based on the latest Pulse Asia poll (read: March 2010 Pulse Asia Poll: villar rating drops, aquino lead widens, no change among laggards – point of no return?), villar’s declining ratings seem to indicate his supporters are prime target for other presidentiables. villar’s voter base seem to be the more fluid among the top 3 contenders.

aquino’s base has not moved much at the current level, estrada has been relatively secure and in fact in other surveys seem to be moving upwards but villar has been on a constant move. it used to be moving constantly upward until the last survey dates when his ratings went down instead. for it to move downwards at this late stage in the campaign is a very serious matter.

getting  close to the ending of  the campaign period might not give him enough time to recover or re-convince those he already lost. the only thing going for him is that the number of “undecided”  increased.  but even the undecided are also prime target for the other presidentiables.

if the laggards are developing their win strategies now, the wisest thing to do is to target villar supporters. it is i think a newly opened  path to victory.  

~~~~~a mindscape landmark~~~~~
carlo arvisu

 

is kris aquino a liability or an asset to the noynoy aquino campaign?

this is the kris aquino in tears video at The Buzz which happened over the weekend. it can break your heart or make you laugh. you can believe it or not.

the question is this – is kris aquino a liability or an asset to the noynoy aquino election campaign?

this is next at The 2010 Presidentiables Blog.

vote in the poll:

noynoy aquino’s “kayo ang aking lakas” tv ad – arguing with success or with boredom?

who can argue with success? these are all very familiar images for most we have seen them on tv and for some we were there when these things happened but for all we re-experienced it all of it again recently when cory aquino died and we were all out on the streets saying good-bye to cory.

(click here : http://1millionprayers.wordpress.com/)

these images did something to us and we can;t escape the fact that noynoy aquino and his presidential bid sprang it. to a few they were not conscious of it but for most we asked noynoy to run for president.

seeing these images and hearing these words are difficult to argue with. they are already embedded in our hearts and minds and this ad serves to remind us that they exist there.

we have a nasty suspicion that this ad was developed as a direct answer to manny villar’s emotional ads of his brother dieing because they had no money to buy medicine for him. that villar ad in the minds of the admen in the aquino camp must have thought villar’s tv ad was soliciting empathy with the voters. their answer is to “out-empathize” villar by reminding people about two, not one emotional event in noynoy’s life – noynoy’s dad was assassinated and his mom got sick and died in front of us.

that thought this ad being a direct answer to villar’s emotional tv ad  immeditaely came to us after hearing the first sentence noynoy said in this ad –  “Kami rin inapi nang walang kalaban-laban.”. a few bells rang in our mind when he started the sentence with “kami rin”. question – sino yung ibang inapi? answer – villar when his brother died without the benefit of medicines.

that thinking must have brought goose bumps to the creative team who thought about it but we think it’s really amateurish thinking on their part. it is also quite a cheap trick to do. they will not win any award soon on strategic thinking on this one.  we do not think it will even be nominated for “The Strategic Thinking Award Of The Year”.

will it be effective? that is the question that is even more difficult to answer. from the point of view of getting more votes for noynoy, i think it will to some degree but i do not think it will be of much significance.

whether the aquino campaign knows it or not, noynoy’s campaign has moved away from these messages and strategy. if it was not conscious of the move, his competitors, most specially manny villar who is co-front runner made sure of that.

this we think is a very good tactical ad but we do not think this has legs to be the main brandsell advertising for the aquino campaign. putting this as the main brandsell tv ad we think is a major strategic blunder by the aquino campaign.

weak, poor and failed strategic thinking is what we think is the greatest weakness of the aquino presidential campaign. that is most obvious in the waste they allowed to be made when from a high of 60% in preference to the 47% in presidential choice, aquino’s ratings had consistently gone down seeing it now on a statistical tie with manny villar.

that alone tells the weakness in strategic planning for the campaign for squandering such a huge lead over his rivals. the aquino campaign group was given on a silver platter a brilliant and superior product to sell but they did not know what to do with it and lost the leadership.

the ads are creative and well done. the writing is close to crisp and almost memorable and the production values are excellent but the strategic thinking is where they fail. the strategy laid down seems to look at just ads, almost as stand alone ads when they are supposed to be running a campaign with a beginning, a middle and an end. there is no continuity in strategic thinking nor is there any worth in it.

they fall in love with creative executions and get stuck there, completely forgetting that ads and most specially campaigns that succeed are those that begin with a brilliant strategy and heads up thinking.

we do not know what is next to this ad but we hope there will be more . we hope this is just a tactical ad and that we will see the main thematic or brandsell very soon. running tv ads will not make them win, it is running an ad campaign that will.

the key questi0n – who can argue with success or are we arguing with boredom? 

~~  a mindscape landmark – carlo arvisu ~~

 

ps: a note on production values : the director should have seen that noynoy’s brows are forming at the center of his forehead making it look like noynoy is angry while the emotion in this ad should have been serenity,  sincerity and concern.

polls & surveys on presidentiable preference : losing out on the formula to win (part 1)

we are publishing here an email we received from a reader, carlo arvisu who is a marketing and advertising practitioner.

——-

election polls is the rage these days – it is the stuff of newspaper headlines and tv newscasts. presidentiables are asked about them and predictably those in the lead are thankful for the results while those at the bottom or not improving are all against it casting doubt on the results by attacking the research agency, those who commissioned the poll and the methodology.

the irony of it all is that most of the major candidates and even the laggards actually subscribe to the election polls we read in the papers. the election polls conducted by SWS and Pulse Asia are syndicated polls. they run this on their own but they make available to the candidates its results on a subscription basis. not only can candidates subscribe to it, anyone else who has the money can subscribe to them.

the rate of subscription vary on the kind of service a presidentiable wants. the rates differ on how  the presidentiables want the results presented to them or what results they want to have.

the biggest clients of research agencies are mass consumer marketing companies like uni-lever, jollibee and procter & gamble, although they use other research agencies like TNS and AC Nielsen. SWS and Pulse Asia do these types of research but very seldom, their specialization is polls on political and national issues.

the problem with surveys and research both for mass consumer marketing companies  and presidential campaigns is how to answer  two  questi0ns, the last one being   –  what do we do, what steps do we take as a reaction to the research results.

research and polls give a snapshot or a profile of the consumer mind and voters mind at a certain point in time. the consumer and voter mind is a living thing, it is dynamic and can change in whatever direction in no time depending on the stimulus or what the voter or consumer experience.

change in the consumer mind may not happen often and not as quickly but change in the voter mind can happen very often and very quickly.  current events is the stimulus for this change and current can mean something yesterday, today or in a few hours time.

with readily available , evolving news reported and brought to the consciousness of voters, change in the voter mind can occur in a beat. we not only have tv, radio and print now,  there is the internet, the social websites, blogs and even cellphone text.  all of the above can influence the voter mind in an instant. 

we saw the power of instant communication  during EDSA DOS where  hundreds of thousands of people exchanged cell phone text  to express their disgust on the developments regarding the unopened brown envelope during estrada’s hearings at congress. from disgust, the text content turned into people asking others to converge at EDSA and that led to the eventual ouster of estrada.

having the data gives the political campaign a picture of the current state of mind of the voter. with a picture in front of you, you can now plot your actions to change that picture. 

the problem is very few know how to do it properly. that problem is not limited to political campaigns but it is also true to mass consumer marketing companies.

knowing what to do or not knowing what to do is actually the second of two questions. the first question is this – what is the meaning of the poll results? and the twin question which is more important – what are the insights that we can draw from these results?

research and poll agencies will give the subscriber results, basically statements or answers to the questions asked of the respondents with corresponding numbers or ratings.  these are in essence the statistically analyzed raw data. the poll and research agency will not give them the meanings and more importantly the insights from the data.

the data will need interpretation and that is supposed to be done by the client. and there lie the other problem.  even mass consumer marketing companies are not very good at this, in fact many of these companies do not even have competencies to do this. we do not think political campaigns have these as well.

insights is a very elusive thing for many. in fact the marketing and advertising managers we have encountered do not really know what insights are. many of them think research data and results are already insights. when they are really just raw data that they will need to draw insights from.

the political campaign now has the data from the polls, what will they do with it now? this is next in part 2.

~~  a mindscape landmark ~~
 carlo arvisu

Pulse Asia February 2010 Presidentiables Poll : villar rating drops on corruption issue

it is interesting how the national surveys seem to be releasing consistent findings. this latest pulse asia poll result conducted late february is consistent with the findings of the TNS survey result, another national poll. (read here: new presidentiables survey jan-feb TNS: aquino at 42%, villar at 31%. villar should resolve C-5)

this pulse asia  poll shows aquino still the front runner with no statistical change from previous poll with a of 36%. the poll has a margin error of +/12% at the 95% confidence level. 

villar was unable to continue to push up his rating and in fact suffered a loss of -6% points to now 29%. villar was on a continuous growing trend in previous polls.

we think villar’s loss was due to the C-5 controversy that he found himself at the start of the year that peaked with the speech he delivered at the senate denying there was any wrong doing, something that occurred during the fieldwork of this poll.

we wrote previously on this issue when TNS released it’s poll results.

 it looks like C-5 will hound the candidacy of villar. also makes us think that should he win the presidency, just like arroyo, villar will have a corruption issue hanging on his head throughout his presidency. it was the ”hello garci” case for arroyo, it might be C-5 for villar.  as in the “hello garci” case, the C-5 issue will not go away for villar. we think it is best that villar mop out a plan to get this issue to be resolved after the election, especially if he wins the election. he should do this for the sake of his presidency and the country.   the country needs closure on this issue.

click: new presidentiables survey jan-feb TNS: aquino at 42%, villar at 31%. villar should resolve C-5

it was also at around that time when noynoy aquino changed his advertising campaign from the badly strategized rap tv ad targeting young voters to the more hard hitting and focused “hindi ako magnanakaw” tv ads.

by a happy coincidence (or planned conspiracy by the noynoy camp), corruption was directly brought up by aquino as an election issue and his message while the the C-5 corruption controversy was heating up in the senate. the C-5 issues has been there for months but disappeared from the radar only to reappear interestingly during the heating up of the presidential campaign.

corruption we think  probably belongs to the top 3 issues voters have in this coming election. we also think it is one of the reasons why aquino continues to float as top contender in this election as it is one of the enduring brand images of aquino. aquino as seen by the people as clean and incorruptible given the legacy he and his family holds in the minds of voters. 

on the other hand, corruption is the enduring legacy of president arroyo . though unconfirmed, it is a sticking point on arroyo with many corruption scandals unresolved. people are tired of both arroyo and corruption.

aquino having his parents as heroes of  the country, ninoy and cory enjoys an image of  it is one thing that noynoy will not do.

it was great timing that  aquino’s ads spoke of no corruption for him  and corruption was the issue being hurled on villar. 

in today’s PDI headline story, it said it was the Villarroyo charge that pulled villar’s ratings. we disagree. the charge that villar is arroyo’s secret presidentiable did not really get a lot of media play compared to the C-5 and corruption messages of aquino. 

Villarroyo was mentioned by mar roxas at the tail end of the C-5 controversy and got some press play but it was really not explained or given enough meat for the people to understand and remember it.  the C-5 controversy on the other hand got long and in-depth media coverage by the press and extended for a few weeks.

it appears the voters understood what the C-5 is really about at its core. they were able to see that this goes beyond senators having a lover’s quarrel or a man of power exerting undue influence but as a form of corruption.

in simplistic terms, the voters had this in their minds – aquino who is clean versus villar who is tainted. for a moment there villar got defined as corrupt and aquino re-confirmed as not corrupt.

the aquino and villar campaigns should look at this poll results very closely and understand how it got there and what are the implications. they should do more in-depth study and analysis and conduct further research. we think doing this and extracting the appropriate insights  has a very strong possibility that it will give them the winning formula for this election.

(view rap ad here: noynoy aquino’s new tv ad – pinoy noynoy rap,
read here : noynoy aquino’s “hindi ako magnanakaw” tv ad – the power of credibility in a powerful tv ad)

 

The survey fieldwork was conducted from February 21 to 25, 2010 using face-to-face interviews. Several developments dominated the news headlines in February 2010. Among these are the:

• (1) speech delivered by Senator Manuel B. Villar, Jr. before his colleagues wherein he reiterated his innocence in connection with the C-5 road extension project controversy and the failure of the senators to vote on the report of the Senate Committee of the Whole seeking to censure Senator Villar;

to win, erap estrada should drop his nostalgia campaign and air his old ads instead

~~this is next in The 2010 Presidentiables Blog~~

pulse asia survey: aquino and villar big time on trust, teodoro suffers, same as estrada

perhaps to have manny villar and noynoy aquino’s trust ratings to be high and dominant is not surprising, they are after all the front runners in the 2010 election. we do not think one can be a front runner in the presidentiables poll if your trust ratings are low. there is no surprise in villar and aquino’s ratings.

what is surprising is when you look down at the other presidentiables.

erap estrada’s trust ratings are as low as gilbert teodoro’s and estrada’s trust ratings are as high as teodoro’s.

• estrada trust rating at  33% vs teodoro’s distrust rating at 32%
• estrada’s distrust rating at 37% vs teodoro’s distrust rating at 31% (there is significant difference here)

we are surprised by it as we did not think estrada and teodoro would be seen by the respondents as anything similar to each other. erap estrada may have a string of  nationally elected position like the presidency to his name but he is a convicted criminal, the crime of plunder whose liberty was made possible only through a presidential pardon by president arroyo. Teodoro may not have had a nationally elected position to his name and may not be as well known as estrada, he is very much a clean politician versus estrada. we thought they were black and white in character and credentials, getting the same kind of ratings on trust and distrust is very surprising.

now we wonder that perhaps teodoro’s low trust and high distrust rating that is practically the same as the convicted criminal estrada may be due to his close association with president arroyo. arroyo’s trust and distrust ratings are also disastrously embarrassing with a measly 11% trust and a huge 68% of distrust. we did not expect that arroyo’s kiss of death on teodoro will go this far.

comparing the frontrunner’s trust and distrust ratings to those of estrada and specially teodoro is another matter of strong interest for us.

aquino and villar’s trust ratings are double in size compared to teodoro’s and estrada while the front runner’s distrust ratings are almost only 1/3 of teodoro’s and estrada’s. this may indicate the front runners are way ahead in this election and the laggard’s group has a lot of catching up to do.