The revolution won’t be televised
Why every campaign has it wrong
Campaigns will spend $4.4 BILLION on television advertising in 2016. While TV works to boost name recognition, there is relatively little evidence to prove they persuade any votes. Which leaves two logical possible conclusions:
- We vote for the idea of a candidate, not the candidate themselves.
- Campaigns consume so much airtime out of habit and comfort, not strategy.
NPR put it well:
“It’s the need for name recognition, at first. Later on, fear, habit and the hunger for the small sliver of votes at play also drive the huge spending.
Meanwhile, political campaigns prepare ever more robust media campaigns while the undercurrent of unrest flows right past them. There is a revolution on the horizon — what some might call the next and inevitable iteration of the American Revolution.
And the revolutionaries are using new, digital platforms to organize and communicate. They’ll use these platforms to agitate a new breed of activists that the political establishment will have no hope to stifle. The revolution will grow in power because they don’t see it coming, they don’t have the tools to combat it, and they simply don’t understand it. Here’s why.
Millennials — now the largest generation — use a completely different communications framework than political operatives think they use. This critical misdiagnosis is due to the continued reliance on landline polling and age-skewed focus groups. Millennials have been previously untapped for information — this to the detriment of those who wish to co-opt us.
If you buy network TV time to sway my vote, you’re part of the bygone class, and you won’t reach me or the 87 million others in my cohort.
This revolution won’t be televised, it will occur behind the curtains, until it rushes forth with such power that nobody can stop it.
The catalyzing issue that will get millennials moving? Equality. Millennials have been cast aside by those holding concentrated power afforded to them by vast resources. It’s no wonder they feel politically neutered and incapable of affecting change. Therein lies the paradoxical sleeping lion.
Millennials feel helpless — until they realize their capacity to drive our national priorities. Case in point: Presidential campaigns drool over big union endorsements that represent roughly 18 million Americans. Imagine the voting power of 87 million millennials.
Millennials have the numbers, money and power to fix democracy first. Then — and only then — can we move on to the other major social justice challenges of our time.
As a millennial myself, I am excited to be part of the next American revolution to save our republic. The old guard has protected their power by manipulating a large but shrinking population of voters — pretending to fight for their broad interests all the while selling regular people off like commodities.
To the detriment of us all, this small collection of powerful, moneyed interests has stood in the way of real progress. It is to this old guard of political power that I say: Step aside. We’re coming for our country.
