While robocalls are mostly useless by most politicians, Bloomberg, spending $85 million, may be the most sophisticated target marketing politician in history.
According to this AP article, Bloomberg's campaign will send out 75 different types of robocalls this week to almost 900,000 voters in the New York City area.
Now, while I wish that the Mayor would send out NO robocalls (or at least give voters the option to opt out of receiving them) the news that his campaign operation is spending the time and money to micro target 75 different types of robocall messages is GOOD NEWS.
What? Robocalls good news? What could you be thinking Shaun? You HATE robocalls!
Well, yes and no.
The biggest problem with most robocalls are that they are done at the last minute by campaigns throwing everything, including the sink, to see what will stick with the voters.
There is usually no strategy. No coordination with other communication channels (direct mail, volunteer phone calls, etc...). Nothing but spray and pray communications.
Usually this does one thing, really well.
Piss off voters. In droves.
But, here comes the news that Bloomberg is using technology and databases to deliver messages to the right person at the right time.
Better than no robocalls? Probably not. Better than the usual spray and prey?
You bet.
Here is the story (BOLD MINE):
NEW YORK - Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent millions of dollars to
get inside the head of every New York City voter, hundreds of thousands
of whom will get pre-recorded "robocalls" narrowly targeted to appeal
to their tastes and urging them to get out and vote.
Chinatown
residents older than 45, for example, could get a call that is
two-thirds Chinese and one-third English. Younger voters would hear
more English with a bit of Chinese. Caribbean-American voters could get
calls in English, but with a Caribbean lilt.
Those who live in
large apartment complexes might hear a recording of their building
manager or a well-known resident. New Yorkers who live in liberal,
politically active neighborhoods like Brooklyn's Park Slope could get a
call from the leader of Planned Parenthood or another group that
advocates for a Democratic issue.
It is one of the highly
meticulous ways that the Bloomberg operation is using its extensive
voter database to contact New Yorkers before the Nov. 3 election, and
part of why the billionaire mayor has already managed to spend $85.2
million on his campaign.
Automated calls to get out the vote are
nothing new in political campaigns, but the Bloomberg campaign's
specificity is rarely seen at the local level. Campaign officials
estimate they will have 75 calls reaching 890,000 people.
Most campaigns "would do between five and 10 calls," says veteran Democratic strategist George Arzt.
"Everything in the mayor's campaign is done to excess," he said. "You will never have another campaign like this."
Bloomberg is not a member of any party but is running on the GOP and Independence Party lines.
"We
are thinking really, really local," said campaign manager Bradley Tusk.
"We try to make it really relevant to every single community."
Campaigns
typically record automated calls using the candidate's voice or a
celebrity endorser. The mayor's opponent, Democrat William Thompson
Jr., is using that method; he plans about 10 versions of calls.
Bloomberg
is using big names, too - former Mayor Ed Koch among them. But the
mayor's campaign sees more value on using people who have local appeal.
The Chinatown calls are being recorded by Justin Yu, the president of
the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, who is known as the
"mayor of Chinatown."
"We try to talk to voters not only in their
language, but also through validators that they really care about,"
said Maura Keaney, who runs field operations for the Bloomberg campaign.
And
how do they know what matters to each voter? Using an approach known as
microtargeting, the Bloomberg campaign collects comprehensive
information about voters and uses that to build profiles to predict
what messages might appeal to them.
Microtargeting involves
gathering bits of information like whether voters own a home or have
children in college, what kind of car they drive, income and
educational background, what kind of computers they use, what they
watch on television, which magazines they read, and whom they supported
in past elections.
That information is then supplemented by data
gathered from conversations with voters during phone calls and
door-to-door canvasses. All the pieces create pictures of every person
that are used to predict appealing messages in mailings and other ads,
plus what it will take to get each to come out and vote.
As of
Oct. 13, Bloomberg campaign canvassers had knocked on 1 million doors.
The campaign predicts a low turnout of some 1.4 million voters on Nov.
3, out of more than 4.5 million registered voters.
Microtargeting
is common in presidential and gubernatorial elections but is not seen
in municipal races, according to Alex Gage, founder of TargetPoint
Consulting, which is credited with its pioneering use of the tactic to
help President George W. Bush win re-election in 2004.
Barack
Obama expanded on the concept in 2008 to broaden his electorate,
identifying millions of unregistered voters and motivating them with
targeted messages.
Bloomberg enlisted Doug Schoen, an adviser to
former President Bill Clinton, to build his database in 2001 and 2005,
spending more than $10 million on the effort in 2005.
This year
the mayor hired Ken Strasma, who was Obama's national targeting
director in 2008, to take over the work for his third-term campaign.
Bloomberg has spent more than $2.3 million refining and adding to his
database this year.
Thompson relies on the Voter Activation
Network, which uses information provided by the Democratic National
Committee to create a national voter database. State parties can then
give local candidates access to the information, founder Mark Sullivan
said.
