political ads: small banners that think small a big waste of money

you can't miss it, every city has it. actually every city has lots of it - these ubiquitous small banners with the faces and names of current barangay (smallest town unit), city and provincial officials. depending on certain months, congressmen and senators get into the act. well, ok actually almost everyone in government does it.

but do they work? do they have a marketing and advertising value?

looking at these ads, you can say there is an advertising campaign being followed here, complete with a copy rotation plan and an annualized media plan. the copy rotation and media plans follow events during the year - christmas, new year, graduation, valentines (yes, even that), summer, fiestas and anniversaries just to name a few. on those alone, we are looking at minimum 7 executions in a year or an average of something new every two months.

that number does not yet include ad-hoc campaigns announcing the govt officials specific programs for his/her constituents, plus the occasional barangay hall repainting or free inoculation activities.

from 1 mayor, 1 vice-mayor, add half a dozen to a dozen councilmen, 1 or two congressmen and 1 barangay captain per barangay - we're talking of a gazillion (that's an exaggeration) officials releasing their own small banner ads on every other street corner and every other empty wall. whew!

looking at copy - these ads are no more than just name and face recall. they really don't contain much in terms of content. to say it positively, they are minimalist in messages. they are usually just the face of the local government official and copy that says "Happy Fiesta To All" if its fiesta time or "Happy Valentines To All".

given those, the ads do nothing more than generate just face and name recall. oh wait, it does more - it irritates us and it uglifies the city! we are of course assuming that people who live in the city actually look at any of these small banners. (i doubt it, though.) and also assuming, people who live in that city do not know the names of their local government officials and they do not know how they look like. that also assumes the local residents did not vote them in the last elections.

that's exactly the point - these ads are nothing more than just irritants. we doubt if these small banners with a minimalist message really do anything to endear these officials to the electorate. from an advertising standpoint, many of these ads just duplicate what is already existing. they were elected by the people, i'm sure all those who elected them into office know their names and their faces. come on now, do they really think voters will say anything like this - "Wow, Mayor de la Cruz greeted me "happy valentines", i'll re-elect him in the next election!"???

if these small banners don't do anything to the likability of the local officials, what do they achieve? one sentence - they uglify the city and a true blue WAWAM.