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The Presidential Campaign A Special Report on Political Marketing in the Hispanic Market Eight years ago, then-Vice President Al Gore's campaign tapped Jim Learned's D.C.-based ad agency, Elevación, to create ads to target Hispanic voters. Learned got the call two months before the 2000 election. "In the Gore election, we were brought in September before the election," said Learned, a Peruvian-born strategist, hired far earlier this year by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. This time around, Elevación landed on the campaign payroll in August - of 2007 - more than a year in advance of the November 4th general election. "We were certainly engaged earlier than in previous years - so that's a great sign." Business has been hot from the beginning of this campaign cycle. Firms with a specialty of targeting the nation's burgeoning - and ever-more complex mix - of Latino voters have been in demand long before the general election. Chalk it up, in part, to the steep competition in the primaries that is inevitable in a race without an incumbent president. Then there was the new front-loaded primary calendar that included several Latino-rich states voting earlier than in years past. With more Hispanics than ever coming of voting age and millions more becoming voter-eligible as newly naturalized citizens, the numbers became inescapable from the start on a campaign strategist's ledger. Particularly when those votes could make the difference in four states where President George W. Bush barely edged out Democratic Sen. John Kerry the last presidential go-round: Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Nevada. Getting On Board.- The primary campaigns, particularly on the Democratic side, put their teams in place earlier than ever this campaign season. The proof is in the campaign spending reports:
Between May and August, the campaign has paid him more than $100,000 for get-out-the-vote consulting, according to McCain's campaign finance reports. Martínez has been part of a San Antonio-based triumvirate of strategists - including Hispanic political ad pioneer Lionel Sosa, a co-chair of McCain's ad committee; and Frank Guerra, who places all the media buys targeting Latino voters - that helped Bush achieve unheard-of 40-percent shares of an electorate that had long been considered base voters for Democrats.
Despite this earlier-than-ever focus on Hispanic strategy by the primary presidential campaigns, the general election ad wars just began in earnest on the Spanish-language airwaves in mid-September. On the other hand, both candidates have been actively advertising in the English-language television market for months since becoming their respective parties' presumptive nominees. McCain, his party's presumptive nominee since March, aired a few Spanish-language television commercials before this post-convention onslaught: An introductory ad in March and a salute to Hispanic troops on Memorial Day. Both aired in the crucial battleground of New Mexico. He aired an economy-focused television spot in Nevada in early June. That was followed by similar radio commercials just as the Democratic primaries were coming to an end. During the summer, Obama also hit the radio airwaves in some battleground states with Spanish-language radio ads featuring family and friends - including his sister Maya, and Hispanic elected officials - introducing him and his values. A Late Start?- Long expected to be the biggest campaign year ever for Spanish-language advertising in a presidential race, viewers who tune into Spanish-language television are now seeing presidential campaign commercials regularly in mid-September. That's when McCain first launched an ad accusing Obama of blocking immigration reform - and Obama responded with a similarly sharp volley of accusations questioning McCain's commitment to immigration reform. The spots began airing in the three heavily Latino Southwestern states where Bush won reelection in 2004 by a sliver of a margin: Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. Those followed in the significantly more expensive Florida media market. Obama blanketed the four states with Spanish-language ads a few days later in the midst of the economic crisis. The ad focused on McCain's September 15 statement that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" while stark figures appeared on screen with statewide numbers on unemployment, mortgage foreclosures and the uninsured. McCain, meanwhile, ran a Florida-only ad that attacked Obama for saying he as president would meet with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, a particularly reviled figure among Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants in Florida. Just how significant has it been so far? The campaigns won't provide specifics, citing competitive reasons. The television networks won't reveal their numbers, either. Philip Wilkinson, COO at Entravision, the Spanish-language media company with television, radio and outdoor operations, had this to say about the mid-September broadcast ad launch: "It's very significant weight in all television and radio. For us it would be heavy frequency by both candidates... What we anticipate, once they started advertising in these markets, they'll continue all the way through the election." Wilkinson points out that McCain's September buy targeted six markets in four states in both television and radio, and Obama followed closely on McCain's heels there: Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and El Paso. While Texas is generally considered a safe Republican bet - and not a battleground state - stations in El Paso were added into the mix since they reach viewers throughout much of southern New Mexico. Wilkinson notes that Obama's campaign also ordered airtime in Florida - in the Orlando and Tampa markets, and that Univision's Miami station, WLTV-Channel 23, also got an order from Obama. Telemundo's senior vice president for local market sales, Enrique Pérez, also cites similar ad buys in the same markets. He calls it "encouraging," with a caveat. "They're definitely active in the market, but nowhere near the investment in the general market for the rhetoric they've been giving," says Pérez. "It's a good on-air presence, but I still don't think anywhere close to what we're seeing in the general market." It was different in the heated primaries - particularly the Democratic race this year, Pérez says: "In past presidential primary campaigns, you would see candidates start advertising only five days before the election. They would decide to do Spanish if they had the funds. In the case of this year's primaries, when they started on English-language television, they were starting on Spanish-language television at the same time. That was the first time, in my experience, across all markets, where we saw that." Brian McCullough, Azteca América's vice president and director of spot sales, echoes Pérez' concerns about the latebreaking general election campaign buys. He explains that Obama's campaign made its first buys on the network's stations in the southwestern battleground states on September 17, on the heels of McCain's Spanish-language ads. Obama, he adds, also asked about 60-second spots in Miami that week. "This only just started the week of September 15th. Seven weeks before the election is ridiculous compared to what the candidates have been spending in the English-language market for months," says McCullough. "It should have started in August." He adds that the highly ballyhooed Latino-focused advertising activity boils down to this: "Hispanic political television spending is a drop in the ocean compared to the general market, in spite of the power and growth of the Latino vote over the last 10 years." Executives at Univision declined comment on their recent political ad revenue from the campaigns, pointing instead to predictions for political spending made during the network's second quarter 2008 earnings call in August. At the time, CFO Andy Hobson forecast that the network would bring in between $17 million and $20 million in total political ad revenue in the last half of the presidential campaign year. The total would include all political ads bought during the electoral season, not just presidential spending. If his prediction rings true, it would be record spending. In 2004, the last presidential campaign year, Hobson said the network got $16.2 million in political advertising for the entire year. By contrast, in the first quarter of 2008, during the heated presidential primaries, the network had already pulled in $8.1 million. "We have to see," Hobson said during the earnings call. "You can certainly build optimistic thoughts about it when you hear the amount of money that's being raised and the importance of Hispanics to this election cycle, and Obama talking about spending well in excess of $20 million just himself against Hispanics." Talking About Spending.- In late July, Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced they would jointly devote $20 million to what they described as an "unprecedented" effort to "engage and mobilize Hispanics" for the election. Just what that means for the general election broadcast advertising war is unclear. The joint statement said that $20 million would go to paid advertising. But it would also cover a number of efforts aimed at getting Latino voters to go to the polls and vote for Obama, including "voter mobilization, voter registration, online organizing, community outreach." Vince Casillas, the Obama campaign's Hispanic media director, cites competitive reasons for not saying precisely how much of that $20 million, the campaign expects to invest on broadcast ads. "We do know this: a significant amount of the $20 million is going to go toward paid advertising, especially as we get to the month of October," says Casillas, adding that the dollars would also go to Spanish-language weeklies. "You'll see a lot of paid advertising in local weeklies in Las Cruces, New Mexico, or Greeley, Colorado." By default, regardless of what the final spending amount totals, it's expected to be a record. Obama became the first major presidential nominee to opt out of public financing for the general election campaign. For candidates like McCain who accepted public financing, they also must adhere to spending limits. As a result, many of McCain's ads - Spanish-language and otherwise - are being co-sponsored by the Republican National Committee. Obama faces no such limits, so his campaign is expected to spend more on everything - including Spanish-language advertising. Just in the Democratic primary, Obama and Clinton already likely set a primary record by spending more than $4 million on Spanish-language television ads, according to an April report by Adam Segal, founder of the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins University. Most of the dollars went to ads for the Democratic battles in California and Texas. And the Democratic primary season still hadn't ended when Segal's report was published. After that, Segal said in an interview, the Democrats aired Spanish-language television ads - "another $300,000" worth - on the primaries in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico. That brought the total primary spending by the Democrats to more than $4.3 million. Obama paid Media Management and Partners of Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, more than $253,000 for consulting, staging events, and print and broadcast media buys, during the month leading up to the June 1st primary. That $4.3 million is almost equivalent to the amount that both 2004 presidential nominees allocated to Spanishlanguage television ads for the entire year, according to another Segal report. He estimated Sen. John Kerry invested $1.3 million on Spanish-language television spots and incumbent Bush allocated $3.3 million to the medium in 2004. Total presidential ad spending on Spanish-language television in 2004 was $8.7 million, including those aired by outside groups and independent party expenditures, Segal reported. GOP Expecting The Biggest Challenge. - As co-chair of McCain's ad committee, Sosa offers kudos to Obama's campaign for its stepped-up finances this year - including the $20 million announcement. This is the San Antonio ad man's seventh presidential campaign - he worked on Hispanic political advertising strategy for both of Ronald Reagan's campaigns, George H.W. Bush's races and for President Bush's campaigns. "There is no doubt this is going to be the toughest race to win the Latino vote that Republicans have ever had," Sosa says. "In the past, we've been very lucky...Only Republicans have spent the money to get out the vote. Before, Democrats took the Latinos for granted." Sosa is considered the pioneer of presidential ads targeted to Latinos by Republicans and Democrats alike. He and his wife, Kathy Sosa, are part of the strategy, but they haven't appeared as paid in campaign finance reports. "I'm a volunteer," he says. Leonard Rodríguez, a strategist for President Bush's campaigns and a former staffer in the president's White House political affairs office, is also a strategist under the contract with Martínez' MAS Consulting firm, Sosa said. Guerra, founder of the San Antonio-based GDC Consulting (Guerra DeBerry and Coody), handles all of the media buys that are targeted to Hispanic vote, and he works off a commission of those media buys. But the Latino market buys are being processed through the Bethesda-based MH Media, which handles the McCain campaign's non-Hispanic media buys. Similarly, Obama's Spanish-language ad buys are being funneled through Omnicom Group's GMMB, the D.C.-based firm that handles the non-Latino buys as well. So there's no sense of what Guerra's piece of the pie has been. He declined to provide details: "Since we're working off a commission structure, it might tip the hand to what that media buy is," says Guerra. His firm has, however, did receive just under $3,000 in August of last year for finance consulting, according to McCain's finance reports. Segal reported that the most significant primary buys in Spanish-language television for the Republicans came in January - for the primaries in Florida. Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and McCain all had heavy ad buys in the state where Hispanic voters are more likely to vote Republican than in other parts of the nation. Recent statistics show 1.2 million of Florida's 10.7 million registered voters describe themselves as Hispanic. Of those 454,798 are Democrats, 424,866 are Republicans and 341,382 list no party affiliation. Tough Lessons Learned.- On the Democratic side, most strategists don't necessarily disagree with Sosa's contention that their party took the Hispanic vote for granted. In fact, after Kerry's loss to Bush in 2004, a group of political operatives who carried out the Latino strategy for his campaign issued a critique of the party's attitude, which they said contributed to Kerry's loss. "Party managers have to accept that Latino voters have slipped away from our base and become part of the coveted ‘swing vote'," noted the 12-page memo dubbed "The Coronado Project." It was written by five Latino Democratic operatives, including Lorena Chambers, the Hispanic media consultant who handled Kerry's Spanish-language advertising in 2004. "Over the last three election cycles, the Democratic Party has lost 28 percent of market share among Hispanic voters," the report stated. "This lost share represents crucial winning margins in states like Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado - all states that could have helped John Kerry become president." The memo said that high-level party executives and campaign consultants didn't listen to the Latino consultants who were suggesting devoting more attention to the battleground states with significant Latino populations. The executives, the report revealed, saw a July poll that suggested Kerry would win at least 65 percent of the Latino vote and began devoting resources elsewhere. In the 2004 race, exit polls showed that Bush, who speaks Spanish, was able to secure at least 40 percent of the Latino vote nationwide, a record level for a GOP candidate. In a number of the southwestern states where the operatives had unsuccessfully urged for more targeting of Latino voters, the difference was significant, according to exit poll data analyzed by the Pew Hispanic Center:
"It was a critique. But it was really meant to put down a marker for future campaigns, which we hope they will heed. Because we could see the Southwest as an alternative strategy," said Chambers, CEO of the Arlington, Virgina-based Chambers López & Gaitán consulting firm, of the Coronado Project memo. "We will see on November 5th how the strategy worked. We only hope for the very best." Los Otros: Outside Groups.- The presidential campaigns aren't alone in going after Hispanic voters. There are other groups using Spanish-language media to push their issues. By law, they aren't allowed to coordinate directly with the campaigns themselves. In 2004, outside Democratic-leaning groups stepped into the Spanish-language advertising void. Most significantly, the New Democrat Network devoted at least $2.3 million to Spanish-language television ads to promote the Democratic brand in the election - almost double what Kerry's campaign spent, according to Segal's Hispanic Voter Project report. The group, reconstituted as nonprofit NDN, also intends to have an ad presence - a nonpartisan presence - in those battleground states in this election cycle. But not nearly as much as in 2004. "Groups like ours were discouraged from outside spending, because the Obama campaign earlier this year said to donors, ‘We don't want outside groups advertising'," says Andrés Ramírez, vice president of Hispanic Programs for the NDN. "In 2004, we were up in ads since June and we didn't go down. Right now, in those states, there's just not enough airtime for us to buy, even if we had the money. We will spend less, but I still think we will spend an effective amount." Through a nonpartisan, nonprofit affiliate The New Policy Institute, the group began airing get-out-the-vote ads on September 22. The $50,000 buy, the group's first of the season, featured hundreds of Spanish-language ads through the election on seven Colorado radio stations in Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Fort Collins and Greeley. Two days later, it started airing the ads on Las Vegas radio stations. On October 3rd, the group began airing its ads in the Washington D.C. area - including the battleground state of Virginia. NDN President Simon Rosenberg says the group will spend "hundreds of thousands of dollars" on Spanish-language ads through the election - and in other states. "Our goal is to both inspire and educate," Rosenberg says. "We expect a very large number of first-time voters. They may not be aware of how absentee ballots work or how early voting or traditional Election Day works." One of the Coronado Project's suggestions was that the campaigns devote not just more airtime dollars - but more polling research to better understand the ever-changing Hispanic electorate. Casillas, the Hispanic media director for the Obama campaign, points out that Bendixen & Associates was actively polling in August and September. "He's doing 14 different polling studies right now," says Casillas. "For Senator Clinton's campaign, he did six or seven. So we've given him a lot more resources to work with." Numbers That Matter.- The polling matters, the strategists say, because of the significant new numbers of Hispanic voters. The Pew Hispanic Center says that the nation's estimated 46 million Hispanics make up the nation's largest and fastest growing ethnic group. They represent 15 percent of the total population, and about nine percent of eligible voters nationwide this election cycle. The youth of Hispanics accounts for a part of the ineligible voters; lack of U.S. citizenship status is another. Turnout is another issue. Hispanics represented just six percent of all votes cast in the 2004 presidential election, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates, despite totaling eight percent of the voters eligible to go to the polls that year. There are many things, this time around, that could change that. The major networks - Univision and Telemundo - have joined civic groups in actively promoting both citizenship drives as well as voter-registration drives among Latinos. After the immigration marches in the spring of 2006, civic groups including the NALEO Educational Fund and the National Council of La Raza began promoting a civic participation drive - "Ya es Hora" - to persuade Hispanics to empower themselves politically. The efforts promote naturalization, voter registration and voter turnout for elections. Univision Communications was the broadcast partner in the effort - additionally, Entravision's radio stations and its 32 Univision affiliates participated. A year ago, Telemundo launched a voter registration drive jointly with its bilingual youth cable network, mun2. The "Vota Por Tu Futuro" Hispanic voter registration drive set up partnerships with Rock the Vote, Democracia USA, the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute a and the League of United Latin American Citizens. "There are more Hispanics going to vote and really making themselves heard at the polls," says Pérez, from Telemundo. "I think Spanish media has done more than ever before to engage our audience and our community around the election process." In the October 2007 launch of the PSA campaign at the National Press Center in Washington, D.C., Telemundo also released some statistics clearly meant to attract candidates' attention to the network's revenue-generating side as well. The survey, of 600 Spanish-dominant Hispanics conducted by Telemundo in major Hispanic markets including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Miami and Denver, found that 70 percent "are in favor of the presidential candidates communicating with them in Spanish." Fernand Amandi, executive vice president of Bendixen and Associates, says that Spanish-language advertising will be key in this election. "Forty-five percent of the Hispanic electorate is what we call Spanish-dominant; they only get news from Spanish-language television and radio. You lose a large swath of that electorate if you don't advertise." Focus On Strategy.- Going after Hispanic voters has become more complicated than ever for presidential campaigns, say the strategists, the campaigns and a new PBS documentary that will air this week. "Latinos ‘08", which will air at October 8th at 9PM, includes a bit of the history of presidential campaigns marketing efforts to Hispanics. It pegs the genesis as John F. Kennedy's campaign with Jacqueline Kennedy's Spanish-language television spot - and running mate Lyndon B. Johnson's appeals to Mexican-Americans in his home state of Texas by stumping in Latino neighborhoods with Mexican comedian Cantinflas in tow. Experts from political strategists to academics and former Cabinet members discuss how broadly diverse the Latino voter population is today. The differences in voters range not only from their countries of origin or ancestry - but from their status as well as immigrants or native-born Latinos. Phillip Rodríguez' documentary notes that in some ways, the marketing hasn't caught up to the diversity - as Spanishlanguage networks, for advertising purposes, often still seem to be targeting Hispanics as if they were a more of a homogenous, Mexican-American audience than they are today. Commentators seem to agree that despite Hispanics' broad diversity, they could wield more political clout by becoming less predictable at the polls. That's something political strategists would say is already happening - and is proven by the millions of dollars that are being devoted by the presidential campaigns and their parties this year. Aldrete, the Austin-based consultant who is producing ads as part of Obama's Hispanic strategy, said the strategies vary from market to market. Spanish-language ads are a must to reach voters with a lot of recent immigrants like Nevada, he said. Not so much in New Mexico. "In New Mexico, 80 percent [of Hispanic voters] are born here, founded the state, [and are] multi-generational," says Aldrete. "It's a very bilingual community, but much of their news is from English-language media. So in a state where you have more native-born and English-dominant Hispanics, the budget will go more to general market media than Hispanic media." McCain's Hispanic strategy team is producing ads in both languages. To wit: Martínez of MAS Consulting, who is shooting and producing the commercials, points out that the campaign launched English-language ads focusing on Latino issues in New Mexico in late September. "The voter moves between both worlds: one-third is Spanish-driven, one that's fully bilingual and another is Englishspeaking," says Martínez. "If you want to effectively talk to the voter, you have to do it in both languages." Strategists Get It. Do Candidates?- The strategists understand the diversity of the Hispanic market. They know how to target English-dominant Latinos in New Mexico who get more of their information in English. And they know how to speak the language of the recent arrived immigrants in Nevada and Colorado. They can talk to older, more conservative Cuban-American voters in Miami. And to the Puerto Rican voters in the Orlando and Tampa markets. McCain's Texas-based team knows Florida as well as they do Texas. They've worked campaigns for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Guerra, the Hispanic media-buyer for McCain's campaign, knows that the diversity of the ad buys are just as important. Hitting radio, he said, is just as important as television spots - particularly for attracting those Latino voters who are not English- or Spanish-dominant, but fully bilingual Latino voters. "The interesting thing is, you have a lot of English-speaking Hispanics who listen to Spanish-language radio, because it's great music," says Guerra. Obama's campaign is addressing the diversity by hiring different strategists in different parts of the country. While Aldrete is producing ads in the Southwestern states, the campaign last month hired Miami's Freddy Balsera, of Balsera Communications Group, to focus creatively on Latino voters in Florida, explains Casillas. The campaign strategists haven't been alone in trying to persuade the presidential candidates of the importance of the Hispanic strategy this season. In summer, Entravision CEO Walter Ulloa and Wilkinson made their own personal pitch to the presidential candidates themselves. And Wilkinson said they've heard it this year. "We've told both campaigns that the key to winning this election is winning New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida - and the key to winning those states is the Hispanic vote," Ulloa says. "Absolutely, positively, they understand. They get it." |
