Roberts identifies voting trends based on habits
In a world of stereotypes and statistics, even the type of beer you drink might give away more about you than you think.
Robin Roberts is president and co-founder National Media Group, a family of strategic public affairs communications companies; he said the group identifies its target audience, from by what beer they drink to what kind of car they drive.
“Light beers tend to skew Republican, while regular beers skew Democrat,” he said. A voter’s beer preference could also indicate his or her likelihood of voting; Natural Light drinkers tended to be more Democrat and Bud Light drinkers tended to be more Republican, but they were less likely to vote than Guinness and Busch Light drinkers, Roberts said.
In political advertising, new media has opened a pathway to a “wild, Wild West,” Roberts, a USC journalism alumnus, told journalism students Monday morning.
While television ads have taken over both the airwaves and campaign budgets, there was a time when on-air political ads were nearly unheard of.
“Many years ago, when (television ads) first started, I used to have to almost beg TV station personnel to come down and visit with us,” Roberts said. “Now, we have a line out in our budget for a rent-a-cop to stand in the lobby to keep everybody out.”
In the Charlotte media market, there have been 28,000 political ads shown this election cycle alone, Roberts said.
Television ads are currently “wall to wall to wall,” said Roberts, but the newest emerging media for advertising are computer and mobile browsing. With the advent of smartphones and the iPad, consumers browse the internet on different devices at different points in the day, he said.
Browsing on a smartphone is most common in the morning, while computer usage peaks during normal workday hours. Consumers often turn to their iPads or multiple devices during the evening hours, according to a chart in Roberts’ presentation. Advertising strategies are now being devised to target these multi-device media consumers instead of just targeting one type of online audience.
“When you think of online advertising, you think of computers, but now you really have to think of browsing habits,” Roberts said.
The key difficulty in catering to these habits is designing ads compatible with the various screen sizes while also including the proper disclaimers in order to be in compliance with election laws, Roberts said.
Roberts was invited by College of Mass Communications and Information Studies administrators, including SJMC Director Carol Pardun, to give the first speech of I-Comm Week, a week of presentations by information and communications professionals.
“Being so close to the election ... we thought he’d be a great person to come in and talk,” Pardun said. “As he was talking, I was thinking, ‘Wow, we were kind of bold to ask him to come and get time away from the office this close to the election.’”
Fourth-year advertising student Chris Beauregard, winner of Roberts’ Washington Media Institute Media Scholars competition and Media Fellows Scholarship and a Daily Gamecock ad rep, was pleased at a “relatively high turnout for 10 a.m. on a Monday,” and thought the presentation was relevant for all SJMC students.
“I don’t think many college students know about political advertising, but it’s a really important part of communications,” Beauregard said. “The guy’s a genius; you couldn’t be learning from anyone better. It’s great to have someone like him here, especially as a J-school alum.”