I live in the greater Charlotte, North Caroline area. Charlotte is located right on the border with South Carolina, and many people that work in Charlotte actually live in the suburbs and towns just south of the border, because South Carolina has a slightly lower cost of living.
It was clear from the beginning that North Carolina had become a battle state, as it had slowly turned from reliably red to “unpredictable purple” over the last decade. This is a result of the fact that Charlotte has grown incredibly fast. The city recently peaked as the fastest-growing city in America by total volume, adding over 20,000 residents in a single year.
Many of these newcomers have moved into city-adjacent burbs, and their influx has decidedly changed the political composition of both states. As a result, PACs and both parties decided to push an enormous number of ad dollars into both regions. Watching TV (including streaming) in our home became a game of “how fast can I hit the mute button?” to avoid having to listen — again — to why candidate XYZ is an absolute disgrace, and a danger to society.
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Every candidate, regardless of political persuasion, told us that they, and they alone, were going to lower the cost of living by changing the price of gas at the pump as well as groceries. And they were either going to ensure no men were going to be in girl’s locker rooms, fight the radical left, or ensure no taxes would be increased (the favorite talking points on the right), or they were going to stop the corruption, stand up for hard-working families and stop the rich/oligarchy (the favorite left-leaning talking points). On top of that, they warned us about “the other” candidate releasing criminals, enabling child molesters or opening the borders (these arguments were used both sides of the aisle).
Traditionally, political campaigns concentrate up to 80% of their budgets into the final weeks of a race, funneling cash into linear television and programmatic video across a small cluster of swing markets. This creates artificial inventory scarcity. Local television stations bump commercial advertisers and raise rates to peak allowable levels, and campaigns happily pay those inflated rates to blast the exact same voter 20 times a day. Political advertisers paid inflated rates to deliver impressions that achieved zero incremental reach.
In fact, I think (with Erwin Ephron in mind) that audience saturation partly created voter discontent. PAC media schedules pushed the identical 30-second spots into high-repetition rotations, producing diminishing returns and audience fatigue.
On top of that, media weight cannot fix product deficits. The strategic premise was broken from the start: the assumption that raw media volume could overcome a fundamental product flaw. Shouting a message louder does not persuade an unconvinced buyer. When independent and moderate voters signaled clear objections and disconnects to policy positions and/or candidates, the campaign response was to buy more gross rating points.
I guess the good news is that, for the next 12 months, most of us will no longer have to mute tone-deaf, excessive-frequency political ads. We can just go back to muting excessive frequency pharma and insurance ads — to keep our thumb reflexes trained for the next election cycle.
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