As an actor who’s voiced tens of thousands of commercials, (hundreds of them, political ads) of course I am going to advocate securing a strong, capable voice over talent to drive your candidate’s message home to their constituents. Really good ad makers know your hired-gun storyteller is more than just an audio-element afterthought. As the LA Film School says “poor audio can ruin the best visuals.” What’s the value of voiceover? Let’s break down the cost of political ad sound-scape in the context of the multi-billion dollar 2020 spend.
Money and politics are obvious BFFs, attached at the hip, the “life of the party”, buying everyone drinks until closing time. Money = influence = power isn’t a new concept by any means, but the numbers just keep getting bigger and bigger as media platforms get more tech-heavy and prevalent. As I mentioned in my post on the Timeline of Political Advertising, the 2020 elections will see digital and tv spending on advertising surpassing all previous campaign cycles. And after recent changes to campaign finance laws, there really is no end in sight.
Recent Political Spending (Without Voice Over in Mind)
We’ll get to the voice over spend, but before we do, let’s look at recent totals. Just in the last four years, the tally in campaign spending has risen exponentially. The 2016 presidential and congressional elections clocked in with $6.5 Billion – $6.8 Billion in total spending (sources differ on the total, so let’s just call it a whopping gob of money). $2.4 Billion give or take of that spending was on the tug of war for president with the remaining $4.1 Billion or so on congressional races. The tally includes spending by campaigns, party committees, and outside sources. The 2018 Mid-term elections smashed the now measly $4.1 Billion to land solidly above $5 Billion (that’s a 25% increase). According to the website VOANews, the 2020 campaign is slated to be the costliest in history.
Where Do the Multi-Billions for Political Campaigns Come From?
Thanks to the Supreme Court cases Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission the floodgates have been opened and corporations, unions, other groups for political campaigns as well as individual donors to federal campaigns and political parties have turned their contributions to political campaigns up to 11. (a.k.a billions)
And as a counterbalance to the narrative of big corporate greed and influence in politics, many campaigns have turned grass-roots and are only taking small-dollar donations (though these come from donors numbering in the millions).
For his part, Donald Trump never stopped campaigning, rolling his 2016 election campaign directly into a bid for 2020 and with the Democratic roster of candidates the longest in history, requiring earlier announcements and much longer runs at raising money, basically everyone and their dog has and will continue to have ample opportunity to contribute financially to the political races in the US.
Where Does Voice Over Fit in the Political Spend?
Every campaign spends money a little differently, depending on what the candidate and their teams have decided are the priorities, but in general, some areas for spending by campaigns (taken from Metrocosm.com’s awesome post Where Does All That Campaign Money Go?) include:
Administration (not including payroll)
Equipment
Events
Media (yes! Here is where voice over for political ads fits in – more in a moment)
Payroll
Strategy & Research
Technology
Travel
Other Expenses
As an example, let’s look at how the Democratic presidential candidates spent money in just the first quarter of 2019. From a great article in the Washington Post, here is how some of the spending shakes out.
Two biggies, as you might imagine, are digital, and Facebook (I know, Facebook seems like it should fall under digital, but hear me out).
Political Digital Ads Everywhere and Beyond
For any brand (and yes, every candidate is a brand) traditional advertising venues, such as TV, newspaper and radio ads don’t cut it anymore. Consumers (and voters) are everywhere and so like Coke and Pepsi, political advertising has to be everywhere – on Google, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, on phones, laptops, computers, TVs, radios, and streaming services.
But going beyond the definition of “digital” for our purposes, let’s include email lists, direct e-mail campaigns, social media followers and web content.
Average costs look like this according to webfx.com:
TV advertising – $63 thousand to $8 million for design and production setup costs per ad with the average cost of a 30 second buy around $392 thousand and the cost to continue equalling the cost of the media + an agency hourly rate.
National Pay Per Click marketing – $4 thousand to $10 thousand in setup costs, $0.05 to $3.00 per qualified visitor with the cost to continue equalling the cost of clicks + ~$1200/month to internet marketer
National Email marketing – $4 thousand to $50 thousand in setup costs, $0.05 to $3.00 per qualified visitor with the cost to continue equalling ~$500/month to internet marketer
Web Content marketing campaigns – $6 thousand to $12 thousand in setup costs, but the cost to maintain is free (if the content is “evergreen” and not subject to going stale)
So with messages coming out almost daily from and about each campaign, do the math, it adds up quickly.
Find Me (and all the Politicians) on Facebook
Even with all the controversy surrounding Facebook and influence by bad guys on voters in 2016 and beyond, candidates and campaigns are still spending on Facebook ads specifically in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In just the 1st quarter of 2019, Senator Warren tops the list with ~$617,000 spent on Facebook ads, followed by Senators Klobuchar at roughly $547,000, Harris circling $522,000 and Sanders close behind at $521,000. Though not running in the mid-terms, President Trump was among the biggest spenders on Facebook in 2018 after Beto O’Rourke and has dominated the Facebook ad spend in 2019 at around $3.8 million. (An interesting side note, the Washington Post also tracks who has been the most frugal, with Pete Buttigieg leading the pack in low burn-rate. Although a newcomer to the national stage in politics, his campaign’s media strategy has been to “get him out there everywhere” in media interviews – thus leveraging free media and social media buzz to raise his profile, despite having the 5th largest haul in donations in the first quarter out of 16 candidates).
Appraising the Audio Messenger, Your Voice Over
Content creation for campaigns is clearly a high-price tag item. Commercials, promotions, radio campaigns, social media stories, website videos and more can truly add up, and doing them well can be the difference in gaining market share and eyeballs/eardrums in a crowded political field.
Back to voice over. It’s used in TV and radio ads, web, mobile, social media and phone campaigns. For radio ads and phone campaigns, voiceover takes up to 20% of the budget. In television (like film) a general rule of thumb is that 5% goes toward audio.
A reliable, experienced, capable voiceover actor is going to deliver a campaign missive that will capture the tone of the campaign, embody the brand, communicate the positions and win hearts, minds and votes, and should not be overlooked when building content. Spending to get the very best voice artist – one who is skilled in making the message standout, persuasively hitting the important notes and garnering trust – is one of the best investments a campaign can make.