![[Matter Header Twitter.png]] Too few campaign organizations make meaningful distinctions in audience. It's time. We never have one audience. Because there is no one media. And we have to foist ourselves with resources (creative or placement, or investment in cultivating "earned") onto audiences wherever they can be found. Paper carrying your message that [someone else pays to distribute](https://www.statista.com/statistics/183422/paid-circulation-of-us-daily-newspapers-since-1975/?srsltid=AfmBOopn0_dqw-rtLLSd573aDlqN3NaC2XR_FEiWRR4r2QWOKqsgNHAO) is dead. (Long live USPS and non-profit rates!) Broadcast that someone else carries for you is in hospice care. Wires that carry your message for a fee are well into their dotage. Ordering your decision making - or, frankly, your vendor team - by the physical means through which a message is delivered is a dead letter, and the kind of thinking that leads to losing. We tell clients: have one or more of four audiences in mind when developing any form of creative: 1. Insiders 2. Elites 3. Donors & Activists 4. Voters This seems intuitive, but how much content, time and hand wringing do we produce in the course of any campaign that could be saved if we headlined every conference call or comms decision, at any level, with "whom is this for?" Here's three practical tips we're thinking a lot about in the heat of primary season: #### 1. Exploit Lower barriers to entry for "TV" advertising. You don't need to hit a critical mass of broadcast [[Three things we're watching in '26#^0be8dc|points]]. Bigger shares of audiences are targetable. For good or ill. So you might not need to wait as long as you thought to start talking to voters, en masse. Stretch out the camel's hump at the end of the campaign. Of course- that means you need [[Our Eight Rules of Ad Making|good creative]]. Stop talking about the top three issues in the campaign and start talking about the [[On Clarity and Consistency in Ad making|one thing]] voters need to know about your guy or gal. #### 2. Are you the show, or are you interrupting the show? Zohran Mamdani got a lot of buzz for his social media strategy. Rightly so (though he still bought a *lot* of [broadcast news adjacent traditional ads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ukABIlFswY).  ^ That's a solid traditional testifier spot. Less flash and splash, but a clean message from a trusted and believable voice. Gets in a nice hit on Cuomo without the spot seeming gratuitous. Beyond a good set of populist messages; Mamdani got social media traction for three reasons: 1. He knew his audience(!). Brooklyn hipsters like [short form video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4avWInD7c). 2. He's a good performer (being a good faker is hard to fake). 3. His team knew they had to make little shows. So they did. Jump in the Long Island sound to talk about freezing rent. Har Har Har. Key reminder: **this is not the same as making cinematic 30 second advertising for news-adjacency**. Then, you're interrupting the show. You're making yourself known, and interrupting context. You're trying to stop a bathroom break. In reels, you're trying to keep the attention of someone who is bored with the game where your :30 is running. If your team isn't producing differently depending on this principle; fire them and [hire us.](https://bullhorncomms.com/) #### 3. Stay mindful of the branding power of anthropological feeds. We should think more about how a voter comes to find our clients online -- or if they're coming looking for our clients at all. When they do - what does the anthropological look back on a candidate's feed say about that candidate? What aesthetic are they presenting in collage? Is every picture on FB at some candidate's rally, in a nondescript location? Can voters recognize the landscape backdrops on the website? Does this person only ever sweat through polo shirts at parades, or wear ties to fundraisers? Do they ever go to a bar or eat at a restaurant with people they appear to like, as the rest of us tend to, when we post to social media? Do they have... friends? Family? Think about how you behave when you're about to attend a sporting event for which you have only passing understanding, but a new rooting interest; because your boss is bringing you and he's a die-hard. You google a minute to see who the players are, what the buzz is. [[No one believes us|Assume voters approach voting decisions similarly]]. They do.