How to waste $50 million dollars!!!

A simple disclaimer this blog is not a political commentary it is unbiased and has no preferences.

Cool now that we have that out of the way, we can talk about the political party One Nation and how they are throwing their money down the drain and at this stage its 50 million dollars’ worth. To quote a title of a magazine article “Clive Palmer’s reported $50M Mega Ad spend fails to woo voters with support at 1%”(B & T Magazine, 2019). Wow just wow!

The main issue of One Nations approach to digital market is that they have been overly focused on the idea that more is better. In some cases that is true, for example in emails if they are subscribed to the email list then they are more than happy to receive more emails however One Nation aren’t using emails, they have been using three other channels; outdoor advertising (billboards), TV ads and Social media. Their use of outdoor advertising is appropriate and is creating awareness and the TV ads are numerous in its numbers and frequency. For example on Monday last week I was eating dinner with the news on in the background during ‘prime time’ and there were 3 different One Nation advertisements in the single ad break which to some may seem excessive but to me it got my attention and did the job of not only raising awareness but providing me with knowledge. However, to go from this to then onto my phone and scroll through Facebook and other social medias to be confronted by ad after ad, over and over again on One Nation. I was done, past awareness and knowledge and was annoyed.

After having noticed the 3 ads on TV to then be bombarded on social media by the same video ads as well as memes (which were created by the party as a way to connect with younger generations) and also sponsored posts, advertising an app that One Nation created that was a game for young kids… it was overwhelming. As a millennial the common characteristics and stereotypes of my generation don’t particularly coincide with One Nation’s policies and political leader’s opinions. They are marketing heavily on social media whose main users are of my generation. They are over saturating these channels with their ads to consumers who aren’t necessarily willing ‘brand switchers’.

To give One Nation my advice it would be to have a look at ‘The Rule of 7’ (Kruise Control INC, 2018), which states that in social media you must ‘touch’ the customer at least 7 times to create engagement. However, they are ‘comboing’ social media with TV and outdoor creating this overwhelming experience of over 20 touches a day which is excessive and a waste. On top of this, one of the most effective attributes of digital marketing is the targeted nature of it, where you can target a certain consumer group by marketing your product based on their preferences and searches, however they are throwing money into it without careful consideration of who they want to target. They had spent $50 million on digital marketing alone for the result of over-saturating the market and it shows in the result with it only providing 1% increase in the polls (B & T Magazine, 2019). If they had targeted their campaign and reduced the amount online by 25% then it would have been much more successful.

So, what do you think of this? Do you think this is crazy, or it is just how politics work? Let me know if you enjoyed the critical analysis and if you want more in the future. Next week I will delve deeper into that topic of frequency optimisation (e.g. the rule of 7 and how many times you should ‘touch’ the consumer). What do you think? Would that be engaging? Let me know in the comments below!

B & T Magazine. (2019, February 13). Clive Palmer’s Reported $50M Mega Ad Spend Fails To Woo Voters With Support At 1%. Retrieved from Bandt: http://www.bandt.com.au/media/clive-palmer-no-hope-hell-election-spamming-australia

Kruise Control Inc. (2018, March 29). Rule of 7: How Social Media Crushes Old School Marketing. Retrieved from Kruise Control Inc: https://www.krusecontrolinc.com/rule-of-7-how-social-media-crushes-old-school-marketing/