17 Jun 2020
Below are short vidoes and ads that I’ve either written, co-authored or had a significant hand in developing, along with the results from opinion-lift testing. Most of the testing I’ve done has been on Swayable. (for the ones that aren’t embedded, click to see them)
My belief is that racism is a scam that has been perpetuated by elites from the foundation of this country, for the specific purpose of dividing people to maintin a system of predatory capitalism and economic domination. The stories I try to tell are about imagining a more just, welcoming democracy, based on solidarity and interdependence. A lot of these ads are based on or use bits from the Race Class Narrative, developed by Anat Shenker-Osorio. (and many others)
Way to Lead 2020
More Negative
More Positive
Overall Results:
My role was script co-author (with Jenifer Ancona) and analytics. All three ads showed statistically significant Biden support effects. More Negative had the only significant positive mobilization score overall of any of the seven ads tested. More Positive had the strongest support and mobilization effects with African American and under 35 segments, although showed some overall backfire effect on Trump coronavirus disapproval. These were produced by the brilliant, talented, and easy to work with Ted Marsden.
Justice Dems/Organizing for Justice 2020
Bloomberg Aquariums
Biden Social Security
Results: My role was overall campaign strategy, a lot of copywriting for static ads and the videos, managing the Facebook buy for one of the states, and analysis. We did not have time to complete analytics of the Bloomberg spot, but the SS ad (mainly written by Hector Sigala at Middleseat.co and produced by Ted Marsden) had a -11pt effect on Biden support. We also tried to go after Buttigieg on “choice” in health care and found that it is very tricky messaging terrain. Our news boosting program was the likely partially responsible for a slow decrease in Biden support picked up in tracking polls over two months, however it was not enough, and the rest is history. (and honestly, we’re lucky to have him as our nominee) I wrote the Aquariums ad, although the genius “Bloomberg is his own best argument for raising taxes on the rich” line was via Anat Shenker-Osorio.
Way to Win 2018
15s Issue-based candidate support, using Race-Class Narrative
For the Many - 2018 Democratic Closing Argument
Results: The 15s ad flight had mobilization effects in the top 10% of all the content Swayable tested in 2018, and For the Many outperformed both a soft/gauzy Trump ad - Trump ad 1 in the results, the very aggressive Trump ad below (Trump ad 2), and a beautifully produced Bloomberg produced moderate Dem spot, and was particularly strong with under 44s. Both the 30s and flight of 15s ads were produced by Haley Jude.
Relevant to today, this was one of the Trump ads that For the Many outperformed - this argument is substantively similar to the one being offered by the Trump campaign today, as a distrction from their failures on the virus and economy.
Background
If you’d like to read a little background on the need for this kind of work, this thread resonated quite a few people:
In the summer of 2016 a friend of mine who works for a big advertising firm (and is a 9/11 survivor, so maybe this is a good day for this) asked me why the Dems ads suck so much. I said, good question.
— Dan Ancona, Extraordinary Western Liberal (@DanAncona) September 11, 2019
I had no idea what kind of Mr Toad's Wild Ride I was signing up for. 1/11
