PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton has so far been putting on a better television show in Philadelphia than Donald Trump did in Cleveland.
Expectations had it the other way around. Trump is the bona fide television sensation, a former maestro of a hit reality series, and he had promised to bring some “showbiz” to the proceedings. Yet it’s Clinton who has had the celebrities and musical acts that “Tonight Show” bookers’ dreams are made of — Alicia Keys, Meryl Streep, Paul Simon, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz and Lena Dunham. It’s Clinton who has had the more professionally produced show. And at least for the first two nights, it’s Clinton who has had the bigger ratings, by several million people.
Her team planned its schedule to take maximum advantage of a major-party nominee’s great media prize: nearly total control of four nights of prime-time television on cable news, and at least an hour, 10-11 p.m. Eastern time, on the broadcast networks.
Even Trump gave the Democratic convention credit when he called Wednesday night to discuss the differences between the two conventions. “I’ve liked both shows,” Trump said, though, he said, no true judgment can be made until after the last night, when the two candidates’ speeches — and ratings — can be compared.
Here in Philadelphia, each of the Democratic speeches has had its own distinct aim: Fire up the base (Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and the mothers whose unarmed sons were slain by police), attack Trump (Sen. Elizabeth Warren and actresses Lena Dunham and America Ferrera), unify the party (Bernie Sanders and Bernie Sanders), fill out the nominee’s biography (Bill Clinton), draw in independents (Michael Bloomberg). The acts and speeches were choreographed down to the minute so that not a precious second of prime time would go to waste.
Yet even as it became clear that Clinton’s convention planners were doing a far better job of making use of the television time, the question that has hung over the campaign all year remained: Does it matter?
Trump has gotten where he is through asymmetrical media warfare. He’s forgone traditional campaign tactics like heavy television advertising and the sophisticated data targeting that President Barack Obama perfected over his two campaigns. Instead, he’s filled television and Twitter with a running, multiplot reality show that when working to maximum effect starves his opponents of media oxygen.
Clinton has followed the old media playbook by which presidential elections have always been won in the modern era: message discipline, if to a fault (given her severe allergy to news briefings); heavy television advertising; and classic door-to-door get-out-the-vote legwork.
The back-to-back conventions are a great test case of which approach will work better, and we won’t know for some time. So far, Trump has defied all the traditional rules of political media. If his approach to the conventions proves to be the more effective one, then he will have certainly rewritten them.
Trump said he would ultimately win because “we have a much better message, and we have a better messenger.”
Reporters leaving Cleveland quickly formed a consensus that the Trump convention had been a “hot mess,” as some of them wrote. Trump wrote Tuesday night on Twitter that his convention was “far more interesting.” More like fascinating, in a highway-rubbernecking way.
In a sense, it was the show Trump had promised — even if it was at times more like “The Apprentice” than a national political convention.
It had twisty-turny plotlines (how did lines from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech wind up in Melania Trump’s 2016 speech?), intrigue (did Team Trump know Ted Cruz was going to use a prime-time speaking slot to deny Trump an endorsement), and villainy (should Hillary Clinton be locked up, and is she inspired by Lucifer?).
What the news media saw as a hot mess, Trump’s supporters saw as refreshing, telling-it-like-it-is change. And at least two respected polls, CNN/ORC and the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times, showed a bounce for Trump.
Trump said that proved that he got “the intended result” out of his convention. “I got the biggest bump,” he said.
The polling is still more remarkable when you consider the following: Clinton and the super PACs supporting her have spent $68 million on television advertisements, compared with less than $6 million by Trump and his supporting groups, according to the ad tracking firm Kantar Media.
There has been a lot of debate in recent years over whether 30-second commercials work in politics the way they once did. But there was always one circumstance in which there was not much doubt that they were effective — those rare occasions when one side could run commercials unopposed or nearly unopposed.
“Historically, lopsidedness in paid media has worked for whoever’s been able to spend more or spend more effectively,” said Elizabeth Wilner, who monitors political advertising for Kantar Media. Now, she said, “the disparity is astonishing.”
If this advertising disparity continues and Clinton still loses, there would be reverberations beyond national politics; Madison Avenue and its clients would have to further assess the effectiveness of what has been considered the most important marketing tool in media history for the better part of the last four decades.
David Plouffe, who helped spearhead Obama’s 2008 effort, said presidential media was a long game, and its efficacy could truly be judged only in November. It’s all working toward motivating the winning combination of voters to get to the polls in the states that matter in the Electoral College.
“This is not a one-act play,” he said, “and I think the cumulative effect of smart targeting and smart spending still matters.”
A convention has the potential to be the ultimate advertisement, a four-night infomercial in prime time that can “move the needle further and faster than advertising does,” as Kevin Sheekey, a longtime adviser to Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, told me.
The true effect of the two conventions won’t be known for a while, and it will set the dynamic until the next big presidential miniseries: the debates.
Pop your popcorn.
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