Campaign Season Wrap Up

Well, Today I’d like to provide you with a Campaign Season wrap up. It was a long and difficult campaign season, and from a production standpoint, certainly kept us all on our toes.

We set up our media campaign to utilize the best, most cost effective solutions we could offer to demonstrate to the citizens that a fiscally responsible campaign was the right thing to do during tough economic times in a small town. We produced podcasts and all the radio spots in house, and delivered everything to the station electronically, showing that internet tech can not only be fast and convenient, but green to boot.

When designing the campaign, we decided on a progressive philosophy. We wanted to stay on top of the campaign as it evolved, so all we had to do was simply outline this approach to the radio stations’ ad person who in this case conveniently serviced both stations that we used locally. When addressing our concern to have a flexible rotation setup and the ability to change “on the fly” as it were our content and frequency with her, she assured us that the block of ad’s we purchased, in this case 1200 :60 Second spots, would come with the ability to change content and rotation as we saw fit with a mere 1 day notice to effect the changes.

She made it a painless process. We ended up with 11 different spots, everything from ad’s delivered by Don, the candidate, to testimonials from a variety of folks including one from me personally.

Here’s a sample:

Don Allaire Spot 11 Final

Now we’ll look at Podcasts. As I’ve spoken about in previous postings, they were a chance to speak at length about key points without the constraints of time that you usually see with moderated political forums that run on a clock and end up being reduced to biased gotcha shots back and forth from the audience. Not to mention that when you’re producing a podcast, you have the added benefits of crafting your source material to maximize the impact, being able to edit the project together as a whole to fit your needs and adding production elements to add that professional touch.

 

I’ve put together an example of 3 excerpts from the last campaign podcast to share with you what I’m driving toward:

 

Podcast 9 Excerpts

 

Like the rewinding tape cuts? Thought you might. My point is that with a little bit of creativity, we were able to bring big dollar tools to the table for small dollar investments. Champagne on a beer budget as it were. It was a lot of fun and a great learning process for Don. He was the best student I’ve had in a long time. He has a background in engineering, so his understanding of waveforms and what I’m doing while working very quickly with them made the whole process more enjoyable for both of us. It’s always nice to have a preset understanding of the shorthand that goes on while working in a studio environment.

 

The podcasts were incredibly well received by all who took them, and we cranked out about 200 of them or so during the course of the campaign, containing the three most recent podcasts available depending on where we were on the timeline. It was a tool that was not duplicated by any of the other candidates in any of the races. Makes me feel good that I have the ability to help someone stand out in a crowd. :)

 

Never forget that you can use what you have, whether it’s put together with chewing gum and electrical tape or the latest top of the line production gear and still put forth a great product and above all, with a little vision, help someone who wouldn’t have those tools available to them otherwise to make a difference and maintain an edge over their competition whether it’s a political race or a commercial ad campaign. Look locally, act globally! :)

 

 

 

Till next time,

Bye for now