noynoy aquino calls supporters to go out and vote!

gilbert teodoro set to do last minute push for a win, here is why it will fail

gilbert teodoro, the standard bearer of the admin/(supposed) dominant political party LAKAS-KAMPI-CMD know that he is losing this election campaign. he has not moved up in any significant way in the polls, being stuck at a very far fourth in the rankings and getting at best 7% while the front runners are at a staggering 36% for aquino and 34% for villar. it is bad enough that the two front runners are way ahead of everybody, on top of teodoro is estrada who is in the range of 15% , showing strength at that level and even gaining slightly.

the question that teodoro’s campaign needs to answer is this – for him to win, where will he get the votes from? the weakest of the three front runners, erap estrada is not exactly weak. among the presidentiables, estrada is the candidate that has the most experience and time as an elected government official not to mention he was actually elected president once before. teodoro compared to erap looks puny.  if teodoro can’t get pat estrada, how does he expect to get past villar and aquino, the two most popular presidentiables in this campaign?

it is interesting that an article appeared at the PDI yesterday where the teodoro campaign seem to be preparing for what the writer calls a “battle of the bulge” – a last minute, well last few weeks campaign to get teodoro elected. in marketing, it is called a marketing blitz. in a political campaign it’s most likely called a “failed election bid”.

we will be using that article as a pick up point for this post.

The ruling coalition, which enjoys a headlock on 70 percent of local government positions, is pinning its hopes on superior resources and widespread party machinery to swing the tide of battle.

Banking on these advantages, it plans to assert its superiority with carefully synchronized offensives timed at the start of the campaign for local positions on March 26.

this is what party officials call the “political machinery”. it’s supposed to be potent that only the admin/ruling party has a monopoly on. all the party officials, including teodoro are saying that is what will make him win this election. they conveniently forget that in the last senatorial elections, they said the same thing about the potency of THE machinery. the results – almost all the admin/ruling party senatorial best lost in that election while almost all the opposition senatorial bets won the election.

the results of that election was so bad for the admin/ruling party that pichay who spent the most in advertising during that time did not get elected while trillanes who was in jail, unable to campaign and practically had zero advertising money won the election.

the opposition won that election mainly on the basis of the people exercising a protest vote where they elected the opponents of arroyo’s candidates. arroyo at that time was very unpopular and the people have had enough of her so much so that they even said they do not want her candidates to win.

after the election, LAKAS party officials admitted the machinery did not deliver. apparently the local candidates and officials of LAKAS abandoned the admin senatorial candidates when they felt the people were going against them.

the situation then compared to now is about the same – arroyo is unpopular and in fact probably even more unpopular than before. everyone knows teodoro is arroyo’s candidate and based on surveys, voters said they will not elect the candidate that arroyo is endorsing.

we think it’s foolish to rely on the “machinery” to get teodoro elected. the machinery is a myth.

The opening salvo of this make-or-break offensive will be new TV commercials targeting the youth on Monday.

Teodoro’s spokesperson, former Press Secretary Mike Toledo, said the commercials would be aired with frequencies rivaling those of the front-runners, Senators Benigno S. Aquino III of the Liberal Party and Manuel Villar of the Nacionalista Party. Between them, they have spent close to P2 billion, dominating the airwaves, according to the media firm AGB Nielsen.

Teodoro’s ads will zero in on the target segment that the coalition hopes will swing the tide of battle to his side, the youth ranging in age from 18 to 39, who constitute 52 percent of the 50 million voters registered, according to Toledo.

Teodoro has been doing well in mock elections in schools recently. Campaign strategists have selected this key segment to focus on, Toledo says.

political campaigns seem to have a love affair with the youth vote. all of them seem to think that is the key to their success. villar, aquino and villanueva aired tv  ads targeting them. but if you look at the movements of villar’s ratings, it is not the ad that targeted the youth that earned him a lot of points, it’s the other ads that he aired.

aquino with his rap tv ad meant for the youth got mixed  reviews with people liking it and others throwing up hearing aquino do a rap in the tv ad. they abruptly pulled off that ad. villanueva aired one too but that did not help him either.

teodoro did not seem to learn the lessons the other presidentiables learned – they will air an ad targeting the “youth” on monday.  we now think this obsession with youth ad is probably the fault of the admen hired by the campaigns for their ad needs. all of them seem to be saying the same mantra.

maybe teodoro will find the secret weapon in ads for the youth and can get him to win the election. it is good in theory, forgetting for the moment the failures of the other presidentiables, but we think teodoro’s thinking is fatally  flawed.

the critical failure in the ad that will be aired on monday for the youth is the demographics definition – “age from 18 to 39“. the age range is too wide and probably covers at least two distinct groups or even three. the psyche, needs and  attitudes of the 18 year old, a first time voter is very different from a 25 year old who probably has a young family already to someone who is 30 years old who has a not so young family. for sure a 37 to 39 year old is extremely different from an 18 year old, to a 23 year old and a 30 year old.

it is hard for us to understand and we think it is not possible to have an ad meant for the “youth” that will be effective in convincing this wide and un-alike age grouping of 18 to 35 years old.

the admen who sold the idea to the teodoro campaign spoke badly in thinking that an age range as wide as that is a proper segmentation of the target audience. we do not think you will find any adman who will agree to that kind of segmentation.

target audience definition is the very first critical step in developing an effective tv ad. get the definition wrong, or even weak and the ad fails. it will confuse the creative team as it gives them too wide a range with very dissimilar traits and characteristics.

we await this new ad of teodoro. it is supposed to be a miracle tv ad for him. given the potential flaw of the thinking, it will either be a miracle ad or a miracle dud.  we will probably see a WAWAM! on monday.

read PDI article here: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100322-260115/Lakas-Kampi-coalition-plans-decisive-Battle-of-the-Bulge

~~~mindscape landmark~~~
carlo arvisu

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.

SWS Presidentiable Poll february 2010 shows clear danger of aquino loss in election

political polls are always tricky. the nature of political polls is one where change can occur often and rapidly. that comes from the design itself – political polls measures the attitude of the respondents, in this case voters at a given point in time.  current events and the latest developments in the country, in the political arena and most specially among the presidentiables themselves influence the attitude of voters. in other words anything and many things can influence the mind of the voter.

that is when you look at one specific poll result. it becomes a slightly different story when you have several of these poll results, the same question being asked across several points in time. from there you can see a trend.

looking at the SWS presidentiable polls across several polls conducted since early december 2009, it clearly shows the steady decline of the poll ratings of noynoy aquino.

while the decline in the first three polls are negligible being within the margin of error or just about there, the last one in end february is a clear red flag as that is statistically a significant drop from the previous.

while that to some degree may not be as worrisome as he continues to enjoy front runner status, the alarm bells come off when we look at the ratings of the other presidentiables, specifically manny villar. there is a clear upward trend on the ratings of  villar to the point that villar has statistically tied aquino as front runner.

the other thing to consider is erap estrada. we were expecting estrada’s ratings will eventually drop as the campaign period went on but his actual ratings on a trend is the opposite. it has not gone down but it has basically remained at the same level and the recent data shows a slight increase (though not statistically significant).

within the context of a contest to which this presidential race is, at the minimum it shows a picture of aquino losing ground while his opponents are gaining ground.

this seems to indicate that aquino’s supporters are vulnerable to poaching by the other presidentiables. that generally indicates aquino is not doing enough to protect his franchise.

his main opponents on the other hand, villar and estrada have been doing many more things than they used to before the campaign period. most notably villar has had dramatic changes in his ad campaign with a slew of new executions and changes in strategy, including huge and aggressive public meetings.

even estrada has changed his tv ads. from the nostalgic ads he had before, he is now into more specific messages and positioning plus aggressive public meetings.

we also think aquino will lose this election by default – he has not done enough and he did not do anything at the time he was supposed to. we wonder if it is over confidence. we think it is really more of a strategic blunder.

can aquino recover and change the outcome to a win in this election? yes he can. but he needs  to do a lot more than what he has been doing and he needs to get his campaign strategies right.  the first one is easy but we think the second one is not. specially for the aquino campaign. we think poor and weak strategic thinking is the aquino campaign’s greatest weakness. unfortunately, we do not think they know that.

~~  a mindscape landmark – carlo arvisu ~~

noynoy aquino tv ad “parang bahay”

negative campaign tv ads : gilbert teodoro did it first & what ferdinand marcos & john mccain have in common with gilbert teodoro

the last time negative advertising was aired in the philippines by politicians was when cory aquino ran against ferdinand marcos in the 80’s, the pre-event to the The People Power EDSA Revolution.

marcos aired ads that depicted cory  as just a “housewife”, saying she does not know anything about running a country. cory of course in truth was just a housewife when she ran against marcos in the election. she did not hold any elective position or any government position before that time. what marcos forgot and the people never did was that cory was the widow of ninoy aquino who was assassinated at the tarmac when he returned home from exile in the US.

a most powerful man in marcos cheating just a housewife in cory in the elections was just too much for the people to take. the people kicked the dictator out of the country and installed the housewife in malacanang.

that negative ad, a first in philippine politics back-fired.

this 2010 election has a kind of negative advertising. this ad was aired by gilbert teodoro.

(read full write up here: gilbert teodoro’s “galing at talino” tv ads – anti-noynoy, anti-humility, generic promises)

in these ads, the announcer voice-over says “dapat lider na hindi lang puso ang alay kung hindi galing at talino“, an obvious reference to noynoy aquino., the expected front runner during the time the ad was first aired.

it is mild and indirect but we do not think anyone missed the reference to aquino. the ad points out aquino’s inadequacy to be president and attempts to discredit the strength of aquino in this campaign.  having  just “puso” was positioned here as not enough or inferior and compared to teodoro’s strength which were enumerated in this ad. the whole ad except for that single line talked about the  credentials of teodoro. it positions teodoro as superior to aquino.

this ad of teodoro is the only political ad in this whole presidential campaign that makes a reference to an opposing candidate and a negative tv ad.

we can’t say for sure that this negative ad of teodoro backfired for him but we do know his ratings at the polls have put him at best 5% while aquino remained the front runner in this election.

we disagree with the way this ad has been done. the attempt at discrediting aquino was too mild and of no consequence in this ad. it’s an ad that is neither here nor there. we think if they really wanted to draw the attention to teodoro’s superiority over noynoy or noynoy’s inferiority to teodoro, they should have gone all the way. doing it in this piecemeal almost forgotten way will not do anything for teodoro but only eat precious seconds. they could have removed that line and the ad would have worked as well. they could have used the freed seconds to add more good qualities of teodoro like having a hot wife or that he drives a BMW 7-series.

in the US negative TV ads are more direct and biting and has no qualms in mentioning the other candidate by name. in fact these ads talk about the opposing candidate and at the end puts to question the other candidate’s credentials or capabilities.

these ads are against barack obama aired by john mccain meant to stop the momentum that obama was enjoying at that time.  negative tv ads are usually aired when an opposing candidate is very much leading in the polls and needs to be stopped. it’s very much like a hail mary pass where close to the election, the candidate airs negative tv ads hoping it will spark a rally  among his supporters and recruit new ones.

results of negative ads are mixed in the US. some worked and brought down candidates and some didn’t. political strategists have always said it is very risky but for a candidate who is not doing well, it is surely very tempting to do. this mccain negative ad against obama obviously did not work.

interestingly enough, these anti-obama negative ads aired by mccain are very much applicable here in the philippines against noynoy aquino or at least that is the negative campaign the presidentiables are saying during debates and press interviews.

are we going to see negative ads soon?

The celebrity backers of Barack Obama say
they are not like Paris and Britney.
[ Los Angeles Times – July 31, 2008 ] :

TO HOLLYWOOD it smacked of desperation.

That’s why the reaction to a new John McCain ad attempting to portray Barack Obama as a kind of mindless celebrity — likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears — drew collective yawns and shrugs of irritation from politically active members of the entertainment industry.

Just for a start, industry types say the ad is wrong: In the Hollywood lexicon, Obama is not a celebrity. He’s a rock star. (Note to McCain strategists: That’s the difference between Jessica Simpson and Bono.)

Then there’s the small inconvenience that Paris’ parents, Rick and Kathleen Hilton, are supporters of McCain’s Republican presidential bid. According to federal campaign records, they gave the maximum $4,600.

No word on their plans for the general election, but this much is certain: Their daughter has never paid to attend an Obama campaign fundraiser. (It’s unclear whether she’s even met the senator, or whether she’s even registered to vote. The same goes for Spears.)

McCain’s latest attempt at discrediting his handsome, photogenic young rival particularly galls stars and executives with a memory, because only eight years ago, McCain was a fixture in Hollywood fundraising circles when he tried to raise money from the very people his ad now ridicules.

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)

please read the latest: noynoy aquino to lose the election due to advertising blunders

presidentiables ad themes: villar-poverty, aquino-corruption, estrada-nostalgia and teodoro-ego trip

as we go to the last few months of the campaign, we see the presidentiables reshaping their campaign themes. in advertising this is called brand positioning. the major candidates have changed their brand positioning that they started with since last year. what we have now may very well be for most of them the positioning that they will have till the end of the campaign period.

manny villar: anti-poverty

manny villar: “all out war on poverty”. villar  has re-shaped his campaign into a theme of anti-poverty. this he actually declared this is what his campaign will take, an all out war on poverty as he put it around the December 27 time.  (read here: manny villar’s “all out war on poverty” platform and manny villar’s “magtatapos ng kahirapan” tv ad – a bold shift in advertising strategy, 5 stars!)

poverty is a key issue not only in philippine politics but more importantly in real life. a significant portion of the philippine population belong to the poor or the DE socio-eco classes. a significantly high proportion of the population are daily wage earners, many don’t even have regular jobs. a large number of families belong to below the poverty line.

aside from the grim statistics and reality, many politicians have won elections on an anti-poverty campaign. in fact most of the politicians do but the most notable winner using this platform is erap estrada.

noynoy aquino – anti-corruption.   in the last few weeks and perhaps as a reaction to his poll ratings softening allowing many villar

noynoy aquino : anti-corruption

to be on a statistical tie, the aquino campaign has focused on “anti-corruption.

corruption just like poverty is a key issue in philippine politics and real life. we see corruption in our daily lives with most of us being victims of it. they may be small for ordinary citizens but we have read in the papers big time corruption scandals.

president gloria macapagal arroyo based on surveys is known as one of the most corrupt presidents of the country since ferdinand marcos. corruption or the suspicion of it, because they are all unresolved will probably be the enduring legacy of arroyo. being under arroyo for 9 years, this is certainly a key issue for the people.

international agencies and think tanks have put corruption at a staggering rate of 25% to 50% in government contracts. that means most of the government contracts are inflated by that rate as that is the rate corrupt officials get out of government projects.

erap estrada – nostalgia and return to power. estrada is asking voters to bring him back to malacanang on the basis of returning him back to office, according to him to allow him to complete his unfinished business which was cut short by a EDSA DOS.

erap estrada : nostalgia

frankly, we do not understand this positioning of estrada. it is one of the weakest among the presidentiables. there is a gross failure in that positioning as this speaks only to estrada supporters which by the time, estrada’s glory days long gone must have shrunk to a small slice.

many of the current voters may not have known what the estrada presidency was during his time. worse, many of them probably know only the bad things, his conviction of plunder more specifically.

appealing to nostalgia means alienating every one else who were not supporters of estrada. they are a minority and getting a minority of votes will not get him elected, a majority will.

this is a WAWAM!

gilbert teodoro – credentials and ego-trip.  we think teodoro’s campaign has suffered the most among all the presidentiables. it has taken a whipping from the get go and continue to make disastrous blunders from the very beginning. quite frankly, we do not think the teodoro campaign has done anything right since it started.

and this positioning of teodoro – an endless propping up of his credentials, even though we are not asking  for it is no more than just an

gilbert teodoro: ego trip

ego trip. we find it strange that an ad for a politician is adapting a positioning of an ego-trip.

teodoro wants us to elect him for his “galing at talino”. teodoro is the only presidentiable who is asking us to vote him based on his personal qualities. all other presidentiables are asking us to vote them for what they will do for the country or what they will solve, teodoro is asking us to vote him for his ego.

his ads endlessly talk about his qualifications, his latest tv ad bragging that he is an accomplished pilot. (read here : gilbert teodoro’s new tv ad “lipad” does not fly, gilbert teodoro’s “galing at talino” tv ads – anti-noynoy, anti-humility, generic promises and gilbert teodoro’s “posible” tv ad – a change of strategy to save his campaign)

this ego-trip obsession  is obvious in teodoro’s tv ads – he enjoys spelling his name in his ads. before the election campaign, when he was still DND chief,  teodoro aired a disaster preparation ad that had his messages spelling out his last name T-E-O-D-O-R-O. (read here:  gilbert teodoro’s tv ad – promises made, promises broken)

we are not surprised to note that his selling line, “Galing At Talino” also spells out his initials. that is incontrovertible proof that teodoro is on an ego-trip positioning.

will an ego-trip positioning appeal to voters? apparently not as we see teodoro’s poll ratings remain at disastrous levels, 4% to 5% at this late stage of the election campaign.

this is a WAWAM!

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up next at The 2010 Presidentiables Blog are the positioning of the laggard presidentiables.

Memo To: Noynoy Aquino – fire your communication team and ad agency or lose the election

we think noynoy aquino’s recent performance in the pulse asia january poll where he lost precious points and now is statistically tied with villar says this – aquino needs to fire his communication team and ad agency.

 villar able to finally catch up with aquino is mostly because ot the marketing  and advertising efforts he has launched so far. it is a very professional campaign.

~~  a mindscape landmark – carlo arvisu ~~

this is next at The 2010 Presidentiables Blog.

noynoy aquino’s new tv ad – pinoy noynoy rap

this is next in The 2010 Presidentiables Blog.