Making Campaign Creative Budgets Go Further – Danny Laub (Poolhouse)

Danny Laub:

Why don't we take just a teeny little bit off of the placement and make a damn good ad.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. This episode is all about how campaigns can create media for their ad campaigns on a low budget. Despite an increase in political spending, especially when it comes to media, the need for campaigns to create content is growing every day. So campaigns of all sizes now need to think about how they balance output and costs. Our focus today is going to be on video creative, since it's the most in demand and frequently the most expensive. To help us understand and to dig into this topic and more, we're joined by Danny La, partner at Pool House who serves as a key political advisor and media consultant, full Republican campaigns across the country. We talked with Will Ritter, another partner and co-founder of Pool House in an earlier episode of The Business of Politics Show, which will be linked in the show notes. If you wanna go back and listen to that, Danny, instead of starting this conversation in the obvious way about what we can do to save costs in media, I wanna go to the other side of the coin. In your mind, what corners absolutely should not be cut no matter what in developing campaign creative?

Danny Laub:

Well, I think ultimately, Eric, you know, there's a few key components. I'd start with hair and makeup and audio <laugh>. I think the places where, where, you know, you cut corners in the wrong ways and it doesn't work in any way That makes sense. Those are kind of the, like the technical side of it. Yeah. But, but a key component too that I think is often overlooked when you're thinking about what you're trying to cut is that a lot of what we do on the ad making side and the creative strategy side is based off of ideas and written words and concepts and messaging, which they equal time, not necessarily a monetary thing you can cut. So allowing the time to get it right is super important, and dedicating that time, I think is crucial to success.

Eric Wilson:

So it's, I wanna dig into more of the, the, the, the, the hair and makeup and the audio. But yeah, I think if I could summarize it, it's the storytelling and having something compelling to say or or worthwhile to say that you cannot overlook in creating ads or media for campaigns.

Danny Laub:

Yeah, I think in a crowded media landscape that we live in now, we are seeing a lot of the same type of cookie cutter ads over and over and over cycle after cycle. It's a scenario where those ads, the message is bad and the quality is bad, and it's all just doesn't break through. And ultimately you can have the most creative ad on any budget, and if the message sucks, it's not gonna penetrate.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And, and so let's, let's talk about the hair and makeup and, and audio. How would not having good hair and makeup manifest itself in a negative way?

Danny Laub:

You know, ultimately whether you're putting an ad on digital or whether you're, whether you're taking photos for, for stills or banner ads, or whether, whether you're making a six second, a 15, a 30 or 60, or an intro video that's longer for a candidate or a cause you're selling a product and your product is your candidate, and ultimately putting them in the best light possible to be taken the most seriously is important. And a little hair and makeup goes a long way in making that polished image happen and making sure people can connect with you. Cuz ultimately, if, if it's off-putting imagery, they're probably not gonna listen to what you have to say. Anyway.

Eric Wilson:

There is this, this phenomenon of, you know, we're not just competing against other campaigns or candidates. Yes. When we're creating these, we are create, we're we're competing against all the other content that people consume. So think about that influencer who all they have to do all day is create YouTube videos. And so, you know, they may even be creating content around hair and makeup. So you're competing with that the, the level of, of sort of amateur content, not just the, the high definition stuff that you're seeing you know, on, on TV or network news. And so it is important that it at least rises to a bar of credibility or, you know, passes the, the smell test to someone who, who sees what real hair and makeup looks like every day.

Danny Laub:

Well, and also Eric, I mean, you just think about it when you're watching Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy or, or the local news.

Eric Wilson:

How old do you think I am? I'm bet

Danny Laub:

<Laugh>. All right, fair point.

Eric Wilson:

All right. In a hypothetical world, <laugh>

Danny Laub:

Hypothetical, if you were watching these amazing game shows, I would say like, you know, you're gonna see a local car commercial mm-hmm. <Affirmative> that's probably produced really poorly. You're gonna see a political ad or two, and then you're gonna see an Oreo commercial, right. And those, and, and those production values, and oftentimes you are going to be viewing those with the sound off anyway. Right. So all you have is the text, or all you have is the visual. So you're honestly, if you're not, if you're not investing the resources, albeit limited occasionally into that image in that text and what that looks like with the audio off, you're, you're losing a portion of your, of your message anyway.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And that's a really important point that we don't consider. I mean, you know, you and I have been on these campaigns where we, we argue about every single second of a video and, and what it shows and what it does. And, and you lose the forest for the trees of of where it's going to appear. Right. It's, this is, no one else is going to study it as as closely as we are. That's obviously very important. And then, so in the case that someone does leave their volume on, we want that audio to be clear and professional and crisp.

Danny Laub:

Yeah. And, and I think there's many ways to do it. I mean, I mean, even on the digital video side, you know, I, I'm fascinated by these TikTok recorder little microphones that all these influencers mm-hmm. <Affirmative> are, are using that, you know, are, are a couple hundred dollars, oftentimes under a hundred dollars, but the, the audio is clear, and albeit it looks like you have a weird square in your clothes. So like, it wouldn't

Eric Wilson:

You get like a Caterpillar crawling on you. Yeah. Right,

Danny Laub:

Right. It wouldn't work in every scenario, but if you're doing a digital video, you know what I, when I started on campaigns in, you know, we used to call this new media, which is still hilarious to me. Back, back then, the director of new media or the new media director or whatever you wanted to call it. Right. It, you know, it, it was, you yelled at A D S L R from, you know, eight feet away about your fundraising goal mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. And I think those TikTok influencers or those other, you know, because of we're in such a content generation, we've been able to adapt things you don't always need just to have a professional audio tech to have professional enough audio to accomplish our mission. Yeah. And I think there's creative ways and there's budget friendly ways to accomplish that without having to sacrifice.

Eric Wilson:

So let's, let's get kind of specific here. W what's an example of a, a campaign ad that you've worked on that was probably on the, the smaller end of the, the budget, but, but had an outsized impact?

Danny Laub:

We did Governor Jenkin's Media in the 2021 Race. A variety of ads come to mind. We, we did one about the governor's now grocery tax repeal. Right. And it's, it's called Common Sense C E N T S, because we like puns and funny things here. So it's called Common Sense

Eric Wilson:

Puns on things that you can't see <laugh>. Yeah,

Danny Laub:

Exactly. <Laugh>, it was much more funny when we were shipping it to the TV station. Yeah. than it is on

Eric Wilson:

Had to be there.

Danny Laub:

But, you know in, in that ad has, has now Governor Youngen that the time candidate Youngen walking through a grocery store, you know, picking things up. He's at the checkout line and he says, it's not your imagination.

Governor Youngkin:

Consumer prices are going up. And to make matters worse, Virginia is only one of 13 states to tax groceries as governor. I will eliminate Virginia's grocery tax career. Politicians will call it radical, but to me it's just common sense because saving a little extra on milk and bread and all of this, it adds up it's time to make it a little easier to live, work and raise a family here in Virginia. Mm-Hmm.

Danny Laub:

<Affirmative>. And it's a very simple ad. It's shot in a grocery store. It's only a couple of shots. It, there's some, you know, cool animations on it, but it, it wasn't a terribly complex ad to shoot, but the message is really powerful. And it resonated with a lot of people. And, and we've heard a lot of feedback even since then. That of all the ads we ran, it was one of the most impactful, but in, in terms of the production of it, we had a very small crew. We shot it in about 45 to 50 minutes. Oh, wow. That credit to the governor for being, you know, a great, really great on camera. So I can't think good

Eric Wilson:

At reading his cue cards. No, I'm, I'm kidding.

Danny Laub:

He probably memorized the script if I think back now on that day. But all, all of that to be said, it, it wasn't, you know, jumping out of airplanes and it wasn't 97 locations. It was a right four message in 74 words. It was a really stark visual of a grocery store that puts you in a setting, and it was a one singular message, and it was able to penetrate in such an obvious way. And so many people would just watch that ad and be like, duh, this is so obvious. He's clearly speaking to the kitchen table issues that so many people in Virginia were feeling the squeeze on at time.

Eric Wilson:

Right. And it led to a bunch of copycats throughout the rest of the cycle be, I mean, not only just because of the campaign that he ran and, and the success, but that that issue was top of mind for a lot of voters. So it really was a, a trendsetter in that regard. And, you know, one thing that we've noticed over the years is that really high production value, especially when it comes to graphics and edits, doesn't necessarily translate to reach via social media. So like this, this vertical video, the, the full screen on mobile devices like we're seeing on TikTok or Instagram reels is really taking off. And of course that's primarily made with your phone. What do campaigns need to know about incorporating vertical video into their media strategy?

Danny Laub:

Well, that's, it's really interesting. The vertical video stuff I think is fascinating. And it, and it reminds me of, as an ad maker and a strategist, you try to test as many things as possible all the time, as much as you can mm-hmm. <Affirmative> in different platforms because you never know what's gonna pop or where it's gonna go. And vertical video, I think, has totally taken off. And, and we, we've found that even when we put up, put up an ad in a typical way on, on Instagram, and then we put up a similar ad for a similar client, or the same client that was made for vertical video that you obviously cut vertical obviously has, you know, significantly more text has more of that like TikTok style of mm-hmm. <Affirmative> of text popping up everywhere, or even subtitles at the bottom. You know, we're seeing, you know, two and three and four times the views, the engagement, the shares on those videos. And quite frankly, it's the same content. It's just formatted slightly differently. So on a lot of the digital video stuff, we are now starting from vertical video.

Eric Wilson:

Oh really?

Danny Laub:

There's oftentimes where it's like, you know, we say, okay, we're gonna do this 15 second ad and we're gonna start it from the vertical video and build backwards. A and you know, there's some things you can do in terms of the way you layer creative and the way you do text o on a vertical that is just a little bit different, so you have to adapt it. But it's, it's pretty close in my mind to, to being the same. It just goes back to being super intentional about where the medium and where the pieces of creative are. Right. You know, you're not gonna treat a six second ad the same way you're gonna treat a 32nd ad when you're conceptualizing it, and you shouldn't do it any, any other ways.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And it just reminds me of our original point of it is getting so much more complex to create enough media and content for these campaigns. So, you know, we, we were in the early days of like, okay, we've gotta, we've gotta get a 32nd for digital, we've gotta get a 15 second for digital, a six second for a YouTube bumper. And that was, that was kind of a, a heavy lift. And now it's, if you're not doing vertical, you're really missing out. I mean, you're just leaving views and reach on the table. It's

Danny Laub:

A similar thing though, Eric, on the vertical stuff as the six or the 15. It's not terribly difficult to, if you're thinking creative first to build those assets in a full suite with, you know, make it all look the same. We'll use the grocery tax ad as an example. Like, you know, y your static graphics should look the same as your vertical video, as your TV ad as, you know, as the 15 second bumper that's running as the six second, as the pre-roll nons skippable, it should all be in the same family. And if you're thinking of that first, rather than the old fashioned way of, we're gonna make a 32nd ad, and then other digital guys can go figure out what their content is.

Eric Wilson:

You're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with Danny Laub from Pool House about how to create media on a low budget. And so Danny, as a professional on the creative side, where do you see the, the role of message testing in the process? Obviously you've gotta have a, a, a, a core message to build your media around, but where does, where does testing and data fit into that equation for you?

Danny Laub:

I think that oftentimes we over test and overanalyze, you know, when it comes to some of these things, like there's a lot of of politics which is done on feel and experience and creative. And, and I think there's a value in the testing and there's a value in seeing what works and watching how things perform both digitally and, and otherwise it, you know, but ultimately the number one metric that matters in politics is winning. Like, I truly don't care how you busted the impression lid off of what's previously been done if you get your butt kicked by 12 points on election day. So I think a lot of times on the testing front, it's, it's helpful to know where it goes. But at our firm, we oftentimes know when we've built an ad that's going to do well by the feel of it, by how it plays, and we're generally pretty right. We're often not surprised too much about what ends up testing well and one ends up moving voters well. And ultimately we look at it and say, you know, you can test things to death. Right. So I, I think the role of testing matters, but we are getting into the overly testing series of, of politics.

Eric Wilson:

I, I think that's right. Particularly on the, on the front end, right. Of, of you, you, you know, these, these videos or, or ads where it's like, okay, I know what your top seven issues were in the poll that you, you fielded cuz you just listed them as bullet points. And really being overly driven by, we've gotta say these words even though it's awkward and not what people talk about. The thing that I think is, is missing, particularly with how difficult it is to reach voters on with different forms of media right now and with, with how much money we're spending behind this is, is testing the finished product to make sure that it does what we hope it will do before we then spend a million dollars promoting it. And, and that's one thing that I see the left doing a lot of work on where they're, where they're doing these randomized control trials and testing things out. And I, you know, I think that that's an important gut check cuz I've, I've worked on campaigns where, you know, we, we followed the data, we created a, a story and then the ad just didn't have the, the desired effect. And if we had run a, a simple test, it might have might have caught that. Well,

Danny Laub:

And, and it goes back to people buy products or people buy ideas or people buy plans or concepts from things they trust mm-hmm. Things they like, people they trust, people they like. And ultimately, like you can have the best 74 word poll tested ad that chew horns. The five images are the five issues into it. And if there's no connection with the viewer, there's no engagement, there's no, there's nothing. It is just a me ad It doesn't matter how good that that message is. So a lot of it is, is thinking about how you can marry up all of the things to ultimately achieve the goal, which the end goal is to win an election. Right. And oftentimes before winning an election is moving numbers to get there.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. So let's talk about campaigns that might be more d i y or don't have as big a media budget to be on tv. What are some strategies that, that you'd recommend ar around their media or video creation?

Danny Laub:

Well, I, I think it's a misnomer that you shoot an ad necessarily for TV or, or digital and on different cameras, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, there's obviously cameras that of all of all kinds and, and I I think, but you should be shooting quality ads and, and the cost of cameras have gone down drastically to where a lot of it is putting content, create making content creators out of your staff. And it's using that to, even if your campaign is not something that has a huge media budget or isn't gonna go on TV or isn't gonna do that, it's making sure you're pushing content out and, and some content is better than no content or imperfect content is better than no content. Right? Right. So ultimately in my opinion, it's about, you know, you can do a lot these days with a GoPro, you can do a lot with an iPhone. You can edit videos on an iPhone. I mean, I, I remember I was with a campaign not too long ago and I was, was on the road with them and their body guy looks over to me and says, Hey check this out. And played me a video that was honestly rivaled some of the professional on the road videos I've seen. And he literally shot and edited on his iPhone in his spare time. And the, the barrier of entry on this stuff is just so low, you should just be doing it.

Eric Wilson:

Right. Yeah. I find that that equipment can be a safety blanket for people for, because they're afraid to put something out there and get it criticized. They say, oh, well I don't have the right camera. And yeah. So it is, it's such a, it's such a balance of, of you wanna have good quality, good production values, but you know, well,

Danny Laub:

Well it's like some, sometimes not to bash anybody on either side of the aisle here, sometimes you see these pictures that people post on social media or they post on their, their stories of these huge political setups, right? Yeah. That it's like that if, if, and anyone that's ever been on a film set could tell you that two thirds of that is all for show. It's like how much equipment do we pull off the truck so that we, we can play this charade of a Hollywood, you know Yep. Film game instead of saying, what do we need to be successful? And ultimately if that isn't a bunch of gear, that's okay. But they're playing this, this charade of Hollywood filmmaker versus you know, what actually serves the client well.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. So Danny, where would you put the, the ratio of content versus distribution for something like a campaign launch video? And I'm, I'm mean by that, like what percentage should a campaign be committing to creative and, and what remains for, for promoting it? Cuz it's kind of this problem if a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it did it really fall?

Danny Laub:

So it used to be that intro videos were the thing on both sides of the aisle. They were for on the thing on the Democrat side before the Republican side, and then they became the cool thing, and then everyone freaking did that. Now there's no novelty in them. And, and a lot of times, you know, in the last couple cycles in this cycle, last cycle, particularly unless a candidate has a particularly compelling story or there's a particularly important part that, you know, you want to bounce it off of DC for fundraising or you want to do, you know, some kind of national targeting or, or you're trying to, you know, do a political objective. My recommendation is not to do an intro video. And, and I think one of the reasons is you, you get suckered into it, you put a lot of time, a lot of money, all these things, and everyone is just doing them. And you know, you'll have a race, you know, in a crowded congressional race where seven candidates have an intro video, right? Right. And, and you go to YouTube and each of them have 32 views or 61 views or 19 views, and it's like you probably spent, you know,

Eric Wilson:

Significant. Yeah. What is your cost per view <laugh>, right.

Danny Laub:

Significant amount of money. So unless you have a really good story to tell, and obviously it's very subjective or a really strong political point, you know, I think you roll that money into your first ad and that's my recommendation at least of, of recently. You know, you get in the intro video trap. The other thing with intro videos are they're just all kind of the same these days, right? There's very few things that differentiate candidates in any real way. So I think it's an intro video trap because candidates want to feel like they're doing something when ultimately, you know, you could accomplish 99% of what they accomplished with a really good press release.

Eric Wilson:

Right. That's a good point. And, and you and I could probably write the script for just about every intro video you know, in about 15 minutes. And, and it really has, has kind of become homogenized across the, the landscape. I am struck at how it gives people the, the feeling that they've done something. So there's this constant problem of confusing action for progress and, you know, we, we gotta do it intro video and that's how people do it. And you know, there, there's some of that's in, in the right place, right? Because, you know, no one very, very few people I'll say, need a a, a launch rally where you have as many people as you possibly can in, in one place. But you know, to your point, if, if your video is only seen by 60 people, you, it's like an, an an empty room for your, your campaign launch.

Danny Laub:

Well, and and I, I can't think of any person, client of ours or otherwise on either side of the aisle where I, on election day said or after said, did this campaign, the launch video, it propelled strong victory. So it's, it's just, it's, it's a thing that I think campaigns are gonna start getting away from more and more. But going back to your original question of creative versus the content versus the placement, which was your question that I kind of sidestepped, it's,

Eric Wilson:

Well, I think you said zero on zero for the, the, the launch video

Danny Laub:

<Laugh>. Yeah,

Eric Wilson:

Well, a hundred percent for media

Danny Laub:

<Laugh>. Yeah. Well, and it's, and it's funny because, and I, I told this story to a lot, you know, I, I worked for a super PAC a couple years ago, and they're like, they're like, you have $800,000 budget for this ad. And it was an ex expensive market. Super pacs are, are, are obviously their own interesting world. And they said, okay, your production budget for the ad is $5,000. And we're like,

We're like, why don't we take just a teeny little bit off of the placement and make a damn good at, and ultimately that's highlighted what kind of I think you're getting at, which is you have this teeter totter balancing act between, you don't, you don't wanna make an art project that's super expensive that you don't have much money to put behind it, and then you don't want to, you know, suck all the money into placement and, you know, you make the quality ad so poor, it doesn't matter that you're delivering a crap message <laugh>. Right? So I think the teeter-totter there is very important in it's understanding both what you're trying to accomplish in the media. I mean, we tell clients all the time who call us, especially on like State House or state senate races across the country who wanna shoot an ad and they're like, we wanna shoot an ad and be on TV and our entire campaign budget is $25,000 <laugh>. Right? It's like, it's like, I could say this was a good idea, but I would not sleep well at night. Right? Doing that, you should go invest in, whether it's a digital plan or whether it's static ads, or whether

Eric Wilson:

Direct mail <laugh>, right.

Danny Laub:

Or, or other opportunities to do it in. And so it's all about finding that balancing act of, of what does a creative need to be in the quality sense versus the placement sense and making sure that neither are out of whack.

Eric Wilson:

So speaking of those down ballot campaigns, what, what's a trend that we're starting to see or you expect we'll see in the presidential campaign creative, which, you know, is just a totally different beast that, that these down ballot campaigns should not copy.

Danny Laub:

Generally, my opinion on presidential campaigns is you should take no lessons from, from them at all on the down ballot races because they're fake in the terms of you're comparing these campaigns that all have, for the most part, you know, a huge amount of digital staffers. They often have traveling photographers, traveling videographers, traveling editors. They have all of these communication strategists and all of these humans who are doing the work that on a lot of, you know, do-it-yourself campaigns don't have that. Right. And ultimately, you know, you look at them and you're, wow. You're like, wow, they're able to produce four, you know, beautiful rallies a day, <laugh>, and three hype videos from them every day. And it's like, yeah, but what you don't see is the army of people in the army of costs that it takes to get there. Right? You know, ultimately that's just a different level of politics.

And I, I guess what, what my, what my overall takeaway to tell people would be is don't let that discourage you from doing something, from creating content, from pushing things out on social media. Like what is right for someone else is not always right for you. You know, if your state rep budget for digital is only $6,000 for the whole campaign, make that $6,000 the most magnified, best $6,000 with the most creative and interesting content you can do. And comparing yourself to, you know, what, what Nikki Haley's doing at her launch in South Carolina, or Tim Scott's, you know, a hundred thousand dollars Iowa production event, or Donald Trump's $250,000 produced event in New Hampshire. It's just like different world.

Eric Wilson:

Well, my thanks to Danny for a great conversation. You can learn more about Pool House and I'll, I'll link to that ad that he mentioned in the show notes as well. If this episode made you a little bit smarter or gave you something to think about, all we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague. You look smarter in the process, more people find out about the show. So it's a win-win all around. Remember to subscribe to the Business of Politics Show wherever you listen to podcasts, so you never miss an episode. You can also sign up for email updates on our website at business of politics podcast.com. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

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