Getting a specific sales message across to the whole of America is expensive. Very expensive. An advertisement just 30 seconds long costs around $5 million to flight at half time during the Superbowl. But companies pay that. Because (almost) the WHOLE of America is watching, and it’s worth that much money to get your message across to the entire United States.
But this time of year isn’t Superbowl time. Instead it’s time for the US Congressional mid-term elections.
And what has the WHOLE of America been watching? Not an ad for a car or a gadget. They’ve been watching the excruciating confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh. And make no mistake, the entire United States has been watching this unlovely saga unfold. It’s been everywhere, TV to digital and everywhere in between. Flights were delayed so that people could watch the hearings. Events were cancelled so that people could watch the hearings. America was talking about almost nothing else.
For women watching this coverage, the message pounded home again and again and again is simple: the Republican party doesn’t take women seriously. It doesn’t take women’s issues seriously. And it doesn’t take the issue of sexual assault seriously. This may not have been the Republican Party’s intent. But that was the take-out of this media frenzy.
And this message hasn’t been flighted in short 30 second long bursts like a Superbowl ad. It has been one long continuous ad that has been flighted for a month. Just as voters (women voters) are about to head to the polls to vote, the airwaves have been saturated with a month long campaign where the Republican party has effectively been telling women that they are not the party for women.
Given that showing a 30 second ad to whole of America costs $5 million, by my exceedingly rough calculations, if the Democrats had needed to pay to get this message about their opponents across it would have cost them roughly half a TRILLION dollars in media spend.
That’s roughly three times the amount spent on ALL other advertising in the US combined for an entire year.
We all know that the Republicans really really wanted to get Brett Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court. The question is, did they want it half a trillion dollars badly? And what will the effect of this unplanned media spend be on voters as they head to the polls?
