The Evolution of Political Advertising | Matt Walker

David McBee: Hello and welcome to Simpli.fi TV. I am David McBee. Our guest today is Matt Walker, founder and Managing Director of Rally Digital. Armed with a BA in Political Science from Marquette University, Matt created Disruptive Investments Inc. His mission, wield creativity, tech and partnerships to improve marketing and media to help businesses grow. Collaborating with CEOs, CMOs, and political campaigns, Matt Crafts solutions that solve problems by skillfully steering ad budgets, media planning, and multi-channel campaigns. Matt has significant experience with digital media having supported and managed millions of dollars in advertising across digital channels. He also assists businesses and campaigns to develop an overall strategy in integrated communication to reach key stakeholders. Matt, welcome to Simpli.fi TV, and thank you for being here. Matt Walker: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. David McBee: So there's a lot of mention of politics in your introduction. So how did you first get involved in political advertising? Matt Walker: I think, for me, it was around college, getting into a few campaigns, interning in campaigns. Eventually I worked with someone there who went on to have a career in political advertising, still does today, and they pulled me into a campaign in North Carolina. So I went to Marquette University and I jumped down from Milwaukee to Raleigh, North Carolina. And the nice part about getting into a campaign is that you can get a lot of experience really fast. There's not a lot of people that are senior level staff. The budgets are a little tighter. It's a startup culture and it's just a little unique and different when you're a young person on a campaign. So I did that. I slowly made my way back to Milwaukee and here in Milwaukee, I went corporate on the banking side, started up a company and over the years have just been pulled into different political projects with friends and colleagues and people I used to work with. David McBee: So you've been at it for a while. What would you say are the most significant evolutions that you've observed in the industry since you began? Matt Walker: Well, let's see, over the last decade, I think one of the biggest things has been the verification process. So there's so many different political campaigns and advertisers, but now we all have to go through this process, at least on the social channels, where we have to verify the campaigns, we have to submit our IDs. our Photo IDs, we have to file those disclaimers. So those are all different and new, maybe not so much in the programmatic landscape, and obviously that's evolved as well. I feel like programmatic existed, but it wasn't used like it is today, especially for political and the way we target households as well. That being said, I think the oversight that's come over the last, really since the 2016 election, has been the biggest change. Ever since we've had the Russia involvement and these conversations, these regulators at the federal level and Congressmen really have been asking these questions. Like we've seen it, right? We've seen it when Mark Zuckerberg goes to Capitol Hill, has to talk with them, go through these things, and there are repercussions of that. Sometimes that helps us. Sometimes that means political campaigns can't figure out how to create those disclaimers themselves. Other times it hurts us, it just slows down the process and it takes more time. David McBee: Let's talk about the programmatic element of political advertising. How do you utilize that and what's your best advice for other agencies that want to? Matt Walker: I think it depends. Smaller campaigns, we can leverage a lot of the data that's already built into our partnership with Simpli.fi. So whether that's the Data Trust or L2 or some of the other data vendors that already pull in data that we can leverage and use on voters to target those unique audiences, those segmented audiences, maybe by ward, by household, by what they're interested in, what issues they care about. And then overlay that a lot with direct mail. Direct mail is huge in political, right? We all get this crap every election year, and I'm sure most people throw it away, but there is a value in it, especially when you're trying to win an election, here in Wisconsin typically by a very narrow margin. And so whether that's Wisconsin or anyone else for that matter. I mean, especially if you're a local candidate too, I think a lot of times those races get forgotten about, but sometimes they're decided by hundreds of votes, not hundreds of thousands of votes. And on the programmatic side as well, I think it's evolving. So I think as the scale of streaming grows against broadcast and cable and these traditional linear partners, yeah the rate cards are really different for political, and yeah, there's a value in that but on the flip side, there's some things I feel like we've been able to do with your ZTV product that's relatively new, I think, to help us reach similar scale for political campaigns in various areas or various DMAs rather. So I think there's value in that. I also think it's just changing. Those under the age of 40 might be consuming their media in a much different way and if you want to reach those voters, a lot of times you have to find them where they are. David McBee: And is it your belief that they're not watching linear television? Matt Walker: Maybe they are, but they aren't at the rate that they once were. And we see that, right? I'm sure you guys see that. We see that in the Nielsen ratings that come back to us every month. We get the same Nielsen ratings that come back to us and talk to us about the growth in streaming and how that continues to grow. Do I think it's going to move over all the ad dollars next year? No, no way. But on the flip side of that, do I think that it's only going to continue to grow over the next decade? Yeah, absolutely. And at some point, I assume as these cable vendors figure out what they want to do, I mean, look at ESPN, I mean ESPN's a great product and sports is a high performing, high reach cable programming. On the flip side, we've also got Disney talking to us about how it might not be their most profitable ad set anymore. So as they look to shop that around, potentially, at least those rumors are out there. It just seems like we need to read the tea leaves a little bit and see what's coming. David McBee: Talk for a moment directly to other political campaign managers and media buyers. What's your best advice for them? Matt Walker: Best advice when working with political is probably don't. It can be a bit much depending on how those campaigns are structured, but in reality, I think what I've tried to do, at least in my career, is we're probably about, I started more political with the clients I worked with and shifted more towards the business side. And we always said that it was a matter of you had to keep yourself sane. There was so much burnout in campaigns. And really honestly, if you've never worked with a political campaign before, but you want to do media with them or you want to interact with them on the marketing side, basically you're treating that like a startup. They have no budget, sounds like a startup, and they are just figuring it out as they go. And that's really what a campaign is. It's really just a big marketing campaign built around a person or an idea or a platform, and you need to treat that like a startup. And that's really how I've seen campaigns work. And I also think that's how they operate internally. They'll only last a shorter period than a startup would hope to. So that's how I would go. Also, I think part of that is too, I think there's a balance. I don't think that everything can be so simple of just working with political, just working with business. I think there's a lot of back and forth and understanding between those sectors. And at the end of the day, they do end up having a lot of similarities, but you can also learn from a lot of these things and bring them into business habits or practices into campaigns and campaign practices into businesses. That's really, I feel like, why I started my company is because I went from a political campaign and then I went to a corporate bank and I would not have done the things that they were doing at the corporate bank 10 years ago at a political campaign. And it's just a very different experience. David McBee: All right, so last question. What keeps you up at night? Matt Walker: One thing that keeps me up at night is balance. And I think there is a fine line of balance in messaging and tactics when it comes to political. And I also think the people in the political space should be really careful with what they say and what they do because it's more delicate than a business transaction. And I guess what I mean by that is, everybody's probably seen this before, where you get a fundraising email or maybe a text message these days, which is also a huge pain. And in that it says, the other guy's terrible, give me as much money as possible. And while I understand that there's probably value that can be generated out of this and yes, I fully believe that we should be able to say pros and cons about one another, I just think we probably need to, in 2023, we probably need to reassess what is the actual value of that and is it the right balance? So that's where my head's at. David McBee: That really hits me on a personal note, honestly. Whenever I talk to businesses about our competition, it's very rare for me to ever say anything negative about my competitive companies. It's all about, Hey, they're a great company, you couldn't go wrong with them, but let me tell you why our company is great. And I've often said that I wish more political candidates would take that stance because I would really respect them, but maybe that might be a little too personal. But I really appreciate that piece of advice. Thank you. Matt Walker: Well, and maybe if I could just add one thing to that. I think the tough part for me is you said what keeps you up at night. I think that the tough part is it feels like something that we can't control all that well, and it really is a representation of how we're responding to these politicians. I think they've been doing it for a long time, and there's lots of agencies that partner with them on that, and there's a reason they keep doing it. If we keep responding to it, they keep doing it. David McBee: Totally fair. All right, before we go, I like to ask all my guests if they have a favorite podcast or book that they feel was instrumental in their success and could help our listeners. Matt Walker: One that comes up to mind, since we're talking about the political stuff today, one that was really helpful to me is I went to a training maybe a decade ago. This book was The Victory Lab, and that was Sasha Issenberg. And I don't recall being terribly familiar with the author, but basically, I think it was 2012, 2013 when the book was published and the idea was about political campaigns and how they can leverage psychology to impact elections. And I think it fits in probably pretty nicely with what we've been talking about. But in there they give all sorts of examples. And one of them, for example, is they send out a mailer, say the other person is terrible, vote for me on election day. They send out a different mailer and they have these two test groups and a control group that they're trying. And that one says, here's a list of all your neighbors who've already voted absentee. You're on the list too, and we're sending this list out to everybody. Just so you know, here's who voted in your neighborhood, here's who didn't. And so there was some psychological pull in that of both my neighbors did it, I need to do it. So there's a lot of interesting ideas I think in that book that apply to marketing and politics, but also just marketing in general. David McBee: I love it when my guests bring a very topical example. Thank you for that. All right, last thing. What's the best way for viewers to learn more about you or get in touch if they'd like to? Matt Walker: So all of our companies are housed under one parent company called Disruptive Investments Incorporated. And that's the website, disruptiveinvestmentsinc.com. David McBee: Perfect. Matt, thank you so much for being my guest today on Simpli.fi TV. Matt Walker: Thanks for having me. David McBee: And thank you guys for watching. Simpli.fi TV is sponsored by Simpli.fi, helping you to maximize relevance and multiply results with our industry leading media buying and workflow solutions. For more information, visit Simpli.fi. Thanks for joining us today. I'm David McBee. Be awesome, and we'll see you next time.