Daang Matuwid failure – after 7 months, Roxas reaches only 4th and flat in the polls

Mar Roxas’ presidential campaign is unique – it is the only campaign that has single-mindedly stayed on one platform and advertising campaign since it launched in end July, 2015 with the formal endorsement of President Noynoy Aquino at Club Filipino. Roxas has stayed on “Daang Matuwid” since that formal endorsement. In the words of Aquino, Mar Roxas will “continue Daang Matuwid”.

With that announcement, Roxas got a huge bump in the polls, surging from a single digit rating to a double digit rating. That was in September 2015 where his rating at Pulse Asia stood at 18% making him a legitimate contender among the presidentiables. The surge placed Roxas at 3rd and very close to Jejomar Binay who was at 2nd, That was the first time that Roxas placed strongly in the polls.

But that surge in September 2015 was the last good news Roxas has gotten in the polls. For seven (7) months since September 2015 that Roxas has stayed on “Daang Matuwid” , Roxas has not gotten any good news in the polls.

After seven (7) months, Roxas is still 4th out of 5 candidates and his ratings has remained flat, just moving within the range of 17% to 20%, close to being within the margin of error. Being within the margin of error means the differences in his ratings are not significant, his numbers have not really changed.

 

 

This means “Daang Matuwid” is associated with failure, the most that it has given Roxas in the last seven (7) months of being single-minded on it is 4th place that is not moving at all. fourth place in an election will not win it.

In marketing and advertising an ad campaign or a brand positioning that is not delivering the results, like a rise in market share or an uptick in volume sales, is immediately dropped and changed into something else.

This action of dropping and changing ad campaigns and brand positioning is even more dire in a political campaign. A political campaign is short, lasting just months and has a definite deadline – election day. Not getting it right by election time means losing the election.

Mar Roxas’ “Daang Matuwid” for sure is a WAWAM!

Read also :

• why Mar Roxas’ “Daang Matuwid” ad campaign is failing http://wp.me/pnw03-1Z5

• Mar Roxas’ “Daang Matuwid” ad campaign is failing him – the numbers show it http://wp.me/pnw03-1YE

 

why will richard gordon lose this election?

on theory, richard gordon is a good candidate for the presidency. he is a known achiever with an excellent and highly impressive success credentials from his work at olangapo city, the rehabilitation of subic bay and his work as tourism secretary. he has no  corruption or any other scandal baggage that pulls him down or that others can use against him. in fact none of that appeared during the election. or perhaps his opponents did not find the need to bother with gordon.

and that is where the problem of gordon’s candidacy lie – nobody wants to bother with him. it is in many ways the reason why he will lose this election.

gordon is a smart man. he speaks very well, he knows the issues and offers interesting solutions to problems he sees. but he has no audience for these things. very few listens to him.

why will gordon lose this election?

• he started late in the campaign. it felt like he did not tell anyone he was planning on running for the president in this election. this is an election that started very early, by the time he announced his candidacy, his competitors, villar, aquino and estrada in particular were already way ahead of him in getting the people to form a support based for themselves.
• gordon has no constituency. he is an elected senator but he may have lost that political base through the years and as how it is in politics, voters who voted for a candidate as a senator does not automatically translate to a vote when the same candidate runs for the presidency. the criteria changes and the thinking process applied by the voters is re-invented.
• gordon is very much a lone wolf. gordon may have a very loud howl compared to some of the presidentiables and the his peers at the senate but he does not belong to a pack. he operates too much on his own and that is an automatic weakness for someone who is running for president.
• gordon has an obnoxious personality. he sounds smart all the time but over and above that, he comes off as obnoxious and a real ass hole. that is a turn off among many voters across all demographics and most specially for the bulk of the voters, the CDE. a minimum requirement for this set of voters is a likable personality if not a charming one.
• he had very little funds for his advertising and other marketing and communication efforts. aside from the historical value of this election, this one will also go down in history as one of the most expensive. manny villar started his campaign and spending many centuries ago, way ahead of everyone else. not having funds is a definite killer in this election.  we live in a world if mixed media and communication channels. funds is a prerequisite for success.

these are things that gordon should have realized as he was making his decision to run for president. too bad with all his smarts and eloquence he failed to see them.

~~~mindscape landmark~~~
carlo arvisu

whatever happened to “the transformers” of richard gordon and bayani fernando?

we likes a lot the idea of “the transformers”  of gordon and bayani when they first announced their candidacy of president and vice-president. aside from that time, there was really no mention of it afterwards. too bad they didn’t they make a big  deal of it, we think  it could have been a game changer for them,

this poster artwork we have here we think is one of the best we have seen in this campaign.  

noynoy aquino asks – are you ready to vote?

why the loren legarda campaign collapsed – the drama queen factor

loren legarda’s ratings in the poll to begin with was bad,, mar roxas dominating the polls for vice-presidentiables from the very beginning, with mar enjoying double the ratings that legarda was getting.

recent movements in the polls for the vice-presidential race show dramatic changes – with jejomar binay resurgent, roxas softening while legarda collapsing badly. 

what? jejomar binay?  

that is the question most have been asking, binay has not done anything spectacularly different and attention calling in the recent weeks., how did binay manage to now be in the running in the election?

first, it’s the halo effect from a resurgent erap estrada. estrada and binays poll results rose at about the same time. estrada gaining in the polls had a positive effect on binay.

more than that, binay’s poll ratings went up as he gained supporters from the collapse of legarda in the polls. it appears a large part of those who abandoned legarda went to binay and much less to roxas. binay was the biggest beneficiary of the collapse of the legarda campaign.

we think advertising has a lot to do with it as well. from what we have seen, legarda have had a lot more tv ads aired over binay. but a look at the ads of legarda tells us these were ads that she should have not aired at all.

the ads of legarda depicted her as the essential drama queen  with her melodramatic, pa-drama effect delivery of her lines, the slow motion camera movements (or at least that is how it seems) and the ho-hum messages.  the legarda tv ads was just too personal and intimate  – the idea of  loren legarda taking care of everyone, the mother hen who will fix everything.

what makes these ads worst is the way she delivered her lines. she delivered all of them in a hushed, slow paced, tear jerky type of delivery that it makes the whole ad insincere, fake  and we are sure to many very funny. it was just too much on the emotions. or at least a trying hard effect on tugging at the hearts of voters.

we have written about legarda here before the election and we called her the drama queen for keeping us in so much in suspense if first will she run for president, then next as vice-president, then with what political party. in every interview during that time, she kept on the drama of suspending for all of us to watch the number of times she changed her mind and the length of time she needed to decide what to do with here political career.

we think in theses ads legarda simply  carried true what she really is – a drama queen.

• at last – loren legarda joins manny villar as VP. but let’s wait till 3:30 pm for the drama queen to say it
• drama queen senator loren legarda to announce 2010 plans within the week! oh, oh – here we go again!

manny villar’s kurot sa puso “panata” tv ad

manny villar and loren legarda airs negative ad – attack tv ad against noynoy aquino

this was aired in tonight’s prime time newscast at abs-cbn — a negative, tv attack ad versus noynoy aquino.

the execution is a talking head of manny villar and loren legarda with supers that state the attack on aquino. we saw the tv ad only once and the the ad attacks aquino on no/lack of experience and no/lack of achievement. aquino is not mentioned by name but these attack points have been floated around against aquino in the past.

we think the negative ad was aired as a tactical move to arrest the decline in villar’s poll ratings. latest pulse asia, SWS and manila standard polls is showing  aquino widening his lead over villar as villar’s ratings started to deteriorate from the previous polling period.

we will post the ad here once this is made available.

aside from first name, does manny villar and manny pangilinan have something in common? – the sin of plagiarism?

the post we have on this blog on the possibility of the manny villar campaign plagiarizing the tv ad of an award winning argentina tv ad is getting a lot of  read. (click to read here: did the manny villar campaign plagiarize a Cannes Lions award winning argentina tv ad?)

it’s quite a coincidence that our other blog, WAWAM! after hours (click to view here: http://wawam.wordpress.com/) a very similar topic is also getting a lot of read.

there are two common denominators: (1) it involves two people with the same nickname, “manny” – manny villar in this blog and manny pangilinan in the other blog.; and (2) it involves plagiarism.

many pangilinan in the other blog delivered at the the ateneo de manila university during it’s graduation commencement exercise for 2010 graduates a speech that was found out to have major parts of it plagiarized from other graduation speeches delivered by barack obama, oprah winfrey, conan o’brian and j. k. rowling.

manny, as in manny pangilinan, was outed at a facebook account for ateneans (Overheard At The Ateneo) where side by side comparison was made that showed what parts were plagiarized. in many instances the plagiarism was severe with the exact words copied.

pangilinan has offered to resign from his post at the ateneo because of the incident. but fr. nebres, president of the ateneo wants to think about it first.

is this a coincidence or what? manny and manny on the same plagiarism sin.

—-

click to read :  transcript of manny pangilinan’s speech at ateneo graduation rites and the plagiarized parts and links to original speeches

click to read all posts on the topic here: http://wawam.wordpress.com/category/manny-pangilinan/

did the manny villar campaign plagiarize a Cannes Lions award winning argentina tv ad?

the above villar tv ad is a plagiarized version of the argentina tv ad, below. it copies the main creative handle. 

the ad from aregentina is from SAVAGLIO/TBWA aregentina and the local ad agency of villar is reported to be Santiago/Puno/Mangada/TBWA. it’s possible the local ad agency paid royalties to the argentina ad agency or permission was given for use in the philippines.

ad agencies belonging to the same netwrok do share their work with each other through corporate reels and that could have been how the local agency new about the argentina tv ad. there are other ways to know about this ad – the argentina tv ad is an award winning tv ad and that also gives it a lot of exposure among the international ad agencies. being award winning also gives it a lot of exposure to the public like the internet or youtube.

sharing the ad with other agencies in the same network does not necessarily result to it being used in other countries. advertising ideas and concepts are owned by the clients, not the ad agencies. clients pay the ad agencies to write and produce advertising for them, the output is always owned by the client.

if an ad agency network like TBWA philippines would want to use an idea coming from another branch like TBWA Argentina,  the philippine ad agency through the aregentina agency will need to ask the permission of the argentina client.

however, it is very unusual that a client who owns the original advertising will agree to allow another client of the agency network to use the work done for them.

it is also very unusual that the creatives of the local ad agency like TBWA philippines will want to use the creative idea from another ad agency. the  very core of being a creative in the creative department of an ad agency is that you are creative. being creative means being original. there is a lot of pride in their work and abilities.

this whole thing is confusing to us. TBWA philippines, if it is the ad agency of villar, has a reputation of being one of the most creative in the philippine ad industry. we are puzzled why they needed to copy from another even if it belongs to the same ad agency network.  

information from youtube:

This excellent political advertisement, it won the silver lion in the Cannes Lions Contest 2006.

Category: Public Awareness Messages
Title: TRUTH
Advertiser: RECREAR
Product or Service: POLITICAL MESSAGE
Entrant Company, City: SAVAGLIO\TBWA, Buenos Aires
Country: ARGENTINA
Advertising Agency, City: SAVAGLIO\TBWA, Buenos Aires
Country: ARG This excellent political advertisement, it won the silver lion in the Cannes Lions Contest 2006.

Category: Public Awareness Messages
Title: TRUTH
Advertiser: RECREAR
Product or Service: POLITICAL MESSAGE
Entrant Company, City: SAVAGLIO\TBWA, Buenos Aires
Country: ARGENTINA
Advertising Agency, City: SAVAGLIO\TBWA, Buenos Aires
Country: ARGENTINA
Creative Director: Ernesto Savaglio
Copywriter: Ernesto Savaglio – Alexis Alvarez
Art Director: Pablo Carrera
Agency Producer: Eduardo Suárez
Production Company, City: AWARDS CINE, Buenos Aires
Country: ARGENTINA
Director: Jojó/Bosco
Producer: Fernando Rambo Damiano
Editor: Awards Cine
Music: Fernando Sorín
Account Supervisor: Ricardo Martino/Diego Campos Galante

gilbert teodoro airs an epic fail tv ad, a push against surveys and himself. Teodoro has ADS? Sindrome!

this is supposed to be part of the arsenal to what an analyst calls to be teodoro’s “Battle Of  The Bulge”, a last ditch, huge effort to turn the tide of failure that seem to be the campaign’s destiny.

that is a good objective. but what we do not find good is this tv ad which seem to be not going for anyone or any principle in particular, it is going against surveys.

contrary to pronouncements by teodoro himself that he does not care about surveys, this ad confirms he does care for surveys. he cares for it so much that he feels compelled to put up an ad that goes against it. the way this execution was laid out, you would think teodoro is going against an opponent named “survey”.

well, he is not. he is however suffering in the surveys. his best rating is 7% and his latest ratings at the SWS is 6%. he has been perennially stuck at 4th. that is definitely not a good thing as it shows he in unable to convince and convert voters to his side.

i thought teodoro will climb to a respectable double digit rating by now, but that seems to be expecting too much considering it is just a few weeks till election time.

this ad is a high risk ad for teodoro. this ad actually calls attention to his poor showing in the surveys. ads, specially political ads, are supposed to highlight the good things a candidate has. this one begins the ad with calling attention to a failure of the teodoro campaign – his very poor showings in the surveys.

we do not know exactly how much of the voters are familiar with the survey results but for those who are not, this ad will push them to find what the surveys are saying about teodoro. and when they do, they will see that teodoro is a loser in the surveys. the net effect then of this ad is that more people will now pay attention to survey results and every time the voters see the results, they will see teodoro doing very poorly at them.

i don’t think there is a single tv ad for any mass consumer product where it begins it’s tv commercial telling it’s target market the brand has a very small market share  or that research shows the brand is not being proffered by many consumers or only a few consumers prefer the brand.

the equivalent message of political surveys to mass consumer brands is that a poor showing in political surveys mean the candidate is not preferred by many voters. that kind of message is hardly any positive motivation to convert non-users or non-preferers to your side.

in fact that kind of message may even demoralize or turn off his current supporters. there are not many people who will want to continue to support a loser.

we understand the intent of including surveys at the beginning of the ad. this ad is meant to show that teodoro is gaining support from a growing number of voters. they want a bandwagon effect.

that is a valid advertising idea. but did they have to use teodoro’s poor showing in surveys to set up the message of growing support for teodoro? did they have to use a negative message at the start of the ad to communicate a positive message?

no, they did not have to. there are many other ways of setting up the commercial.  in fact there a lot more positive ways of doing so.  the negative start of the ad with the message of teodoro’s poor showing in the surveys has the effect of teodoro shooting himself in the foot.

the ad also suffers from other fatal errors, to us the most major of which is the obsession of people saying his name over and over again. teodoro’s problem goes beyond name recognition. getting the people to say his name many times over in the ad is not doing anything to help him get elected.

they should have asked the on-cam talent to tell the audience why they are voting for teodoro rather than just saying his name. they had a few of those but we don’t understand why of all attributes they want people to remember about teodoro, it needs to be “batang-bata” or “maka-Diyos”.

while those are positive attributes, they do not give any meaningful  addition or address problems of the teodoro campaign. rather than give these worthless attributes, they could have chosen attributes that are consistent with his platform or those that debunk negative attribute people have of him. in other words, they should have used attributes or messages that will help him get elected.

this is a definite WAWAM! and yes, teodoro has ADS? Sindrome.

gilbert teodoro’s “battle of the bulge” tv ad – “sulong”

this is next at The 2010 Presidentiables Blog.

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