[applause]. We wish you all the very best because what an extraordinary family you have. And the pleasures of family were hard earned by this young man. So, all right. Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless america. [applause] forty years ago the watergate scandal led to the only resignation of an american president. American history tv revisits 1974 and the final weeks of the nixon administration. This weekend the House Judiciary Committee as it considers impeachment of the president and the charge of the abuse of power. What you have questions about for what the framers had in mind, questions about whether the activities that had been found out by the committee and by the senate, watergate committee, were, indeed, impeachable and, thirdly, can we p prove that Richard Nixon knew about them and even authorized them . Watergate, 40 years later. Sunday night at eight eastern on American History tv on cspan3. Next, political consultants, pollsters and journalists talk about the 2014 and 2016 elections. Part of the conversation looks at the effectiveness of political ads. This 90 minute event was hosted by politico. Ad [applause] good afternoon and welcome, thank you all for coming, and congratulations to steve and mike zapler and the whole team at campaign pro that has startew this Exciting New Service from zero, a testimonial to the work that theyreo doing. When we call people and say, you know, youre getting all of campaign pro, do you maybe just want to see the governors races or just see the senate races, are you getting too much, andr theyre saying, no, i want it all. So its a sign of the great coverage, so i really appreciate it. Welcome to all of you in live stream land. We appreciate your being here as we go along. Ong. If youll send us a question at Hashtag Campaign pro, ill get it here on my twitter machine, and if its a good question, ill ask it. Question, ill ask it. What a treat we have with the people on this stage this morning. I went into jims office, and i said i think we might have the best politico event ever because we have visual aids, and the people who created them. So some of the hottest commercials of this cycle so far were going to see, and were lucky enough to have on stage the people who made them. Start with mark putnam whos worked on four president ial campaigns and right now has three of the hottest senate races, mark getting itch in bell itch in alaska begich in ag, Mary Landrieu and Allison Grimes. Ashley oconnor, Founding Partner at Burning Glass consulting, congratulations. She just won the thad cochran primary. Im here everyone in this room accurately predicted the outcome of that runoff. [laughter] and she now is doing his general, and she also is doing asa hutchinson, republican for governor in arkansas. Arkansas, such a republican such a political hot spot right now. And todd harris who couldnt think of a name for his new firm, so he called it Something Else strategies. Is there ever going to be another name, or is that it . No, thats it. [laughter] we had to pay five grand to buy somethingelse. Com. [laughter] youre stuck with it. Mark does mike owe and is five for five marco rubio and is five for five in statewide republican primaries this year. First of all, ashley oconnor, while we were standing back there, you told us the best thing about the Romney Campaign. She worked at romney hq, what was the best thing about the Romney Campaign . The food. The north end of boston, we had a great location and, of course, our candidate, mitt romney. [laughter] so in just two seconds were going to take a look at an ad called squeal. This is for jodi ernst, the Republican Senate candidate in iowa. Todd harris, who wrote this ad, had the idea for it. Its called squeal, but what is it really called . [laughter] well, we call it squeal. Most people outside the campaign will call it the castration ad. [laughter] so lets take a look. Im joni ernst. I grew up castrating hogs on an iowa farm, so when i get to washington, ill know how to cut pork. Mother, soldier, conservative. My parents taught us to live within our means. Its time to force washington to do the same. To cut wasteful spending, repeal obamacare and balance the budget. Im joni ernst, and i approved this message because washingtons full of big spenders. Lets make em squeal. [laughter] todd, you wrote that, what was the germ of that idea . Well, thats what came about, this was about a year ago i was in iowa meeting with joni and one other consultant, and we were actually working on a stump speech for her, and so i had said so tell me about how you grew up. And she said, well, it was, you know, it was very normal, you know . For in iowa, i grew upping food and canning food, walking beans finish im from california, have no idea what that means wed feed the hogs, castrate the hogs, and she just kept going. Wait, what . [laughter] she said, yeah, wed castrate the hogs. And so i just made a little note of that, and then we came back to it, i think, probably the next day. And we came up with the line about cutting pork, but it was originally an idea to use a sort of a oneliner in a speech. We had a debate coming up, and so we thought, all right, lets use this in the debate and see, see if it works, and it did. And so i just filed it away until it was time to make some tv. Okay. Republican Senate Candidate, mark butt putnam, why is that effective . Because it captures the spirit, the personality of the candidate. And when you ask me what republican ads, you know, really stuck out to me, that was the ad that i mentioned to you because it, i think, first off, i think its the reason why shes the nominee. I think thats such a memorable metaphor, such a she comes off really well in the ad, shes likable. There were a bunch of unknown candidates, right . How many . There were six candidates including so thats why this was including one is a selffunder, and that was not us. We had no money. And, ashley oconnor, what does the effectiveness of this ad tell us right now about whats moving political consumers or whats working this cycle . Well, i think mark touched on a good point. I mean, you really have to capture something real. I think that there are so Many Political ads out there that voters can really sniff out if youre not being authentic. And be i think thats one of the things thats incredibly important right now, is just good, oldfashioned authenticity. Where ashley and i were actually, all three of us were joking before we came out here because weve all had climates who see a spot that weve made maybe for one client, so ive had other clients say, like, how come i dont have a spot like squeal with 600,000 views on youtube . [laughter] you should send a review and i said, fine. If you grew up castrating hogs and doesnt tell me, like [laughter] you know, then well make a spot like that. But the authenticity piece so critical, and i do think it comes through in that spot as real. All right. The second ad that were going to look at is called father son. This was a commercial for a democratic candidate for congress who lost his primary so is no longer in congress, candidate carl shortino in massachusetts, he is go ahead. And hes proud of it. Dads in the tea party. Damn right. [laughter] it was bad enough to take on the big banks and corporations in the legislature. They werent paying their fair share in taxes. And he wrote the buffer zone law. To protect women entering abortion clinics from harassment. Its gone all the way to the Supreme Court. I was kind of proud of that. But heres the one that drives him crazy. He wants to go to congress and take on the nra and the tea party. And i want to take on the gun rights. Equal pay for women and equal rights or, well, everybody. Hes been like this for 35 years. Thats why i approved this message. And i still love you, dad. Me too, son. Okay. This candidate whos a gay man living with aids, the setup was that hes coming out as a liberal democrat. Todd harris, you saw this ad, and you sent an email to the nrcc, and it said what . [laughter] when this spot came out, i emailed several people at the nrcc, and i said who does anyone know who the Media Consultant on this campaign is . And someone wrote back and said, yeah, its mark putnam, and i wrote back, i said i hope i never go up against this guy. [laughter] i love that ad. So here you are a consultant [laughter] mark, this has raised a huge amount of money. Tell us how it came about and the effect of it. What todd was saying about really getting to know your candidate. E spent time with carl, learned that his father was in the tea party, he was a duespaying member wherever you pay due toss the tea party, and was something that carl would occasionally talk about on the stump but not all that often. We in the campaign all just thought this was a great piece of his message, the idea and you missed the beginning of the ad, but he says ill never forget that day when i had to tell my dad, and the father says, wait for this. That is their relationship. Hes a massachusetts liberal. So message wise, you know, which is really the most important thing, you have to capture the candidates personality, but it has to be driven by a strategy. And message wise we needed to prove that carl was the most progressive candidate in the race in a democratic primary in massachusetts. And so we did not shy away from massachusetts liberal. We just wanted to figure out a way i to really make that interesting to people and have them watch the ad. Now, the challenge we faced was we had very, very little money. Carl budget able to, you know wasnt able to reach his fundraising goals for a variety of reasons. There were a lot of other candidates in the race who had larger shares of the district, so i went into this thinking i was going to write by the way, the ed markey district. I should have said that. Waited to make two ads originally for cable. But the idea came into my head of this conversation back and forth, i realized i couldnt do it justice in 30 seconds, so i made an executive decision were going to do a 60second ad and put all of our chips behind that ad. And we went on cable initially, very, very small buy. We got a lot of call on msnbc, and the money started coming in, a lot of money we should have already been raising, and we raised about 200,000 in a week, so i was struck, i remember the very first time i watched it and then just i watched it again yesterday, and i was struck again by the same thing that struck me the first time, theyre both so likable in it. There is so much message in it, and at the very end its clear that they love each other which, you know, so it takes all of this, theres all the political messaging side, but it ends in a really heart warming way, and they pulled it off, you know . A lot of dads wouldnt, couldnt pull that off. Ashley oconnor, these two ads address something that you told me is one of the biggest concerns of consultants right now, and that is the overcrowded airwaves. You have super pacs, ies, all advertising aggressively already. What do campaigns do about that . Well, i think that these are two great examples. You know, creative is incredibly important. You need something thats going to cut through, and both of these examples are crowded primaries. And so you find something that really cuts through. I also think that there are a couple other strategies of using surrogates to cut through or testimonials. Weve seen a lot of testimonials in advertising this cycle so far. Whats a good example of an effective surrogate ad cycle . Well, the chamber did one down in mississippi using brett favre, and i think monica [inaudible] testimonial opened her campaign was fantastic. And i think that thats probably one of the Biggest Challenges right now, is cutting through crowded airwaves. How much of a difference did the brett favre make in the runoff for senator cochran . Made a very big difference, yeah. Is that why you won . I think we won because of his record. I mean, there was a lot of time pointing out just how conservative thad is as a senator. All right. Mark putnam, you got an article in the New York Times. This is a very harsh article, its what we call tough but fair. The headline was political adman finds the personal in democratic hopefuls. It talked about your effective use this cycle of real people. And unless im misreading it, the subtext is that youre a little bit turning on its head the assumption of us and a lot of you and only negative ads work. Candidates hate them, they talk them down, but in the end they work, youre doing something different. Well, again, i think it gets back to capturing whats unique about your candidate. And with all the super pacs and the ie advertising out there, the airwaves are filled with plenty of negative information about your opponent. And thats not to say a candidate still doesnt have a responsibility at times to point out what they disagree with in their opponents record, but we have this unique thing in the race which is we can capture our candidate and why there are positive reasons to to vote for them. And those ads actually in this flurry of negative advertising do stick out. So one of the campaigns that that article talked about was mark begich in alaska. He has a unique story to tell. Starts with his father and his history and legacy of Public Service and also his own sort of doggedness at getting things done for alaska. Those were stories that we could tell using senator begich and having him really tell his own story. No ad maker behind the scenes making things up, its really him. And those types of ads do stick out, you know . Yes, the negative advertising and comparative advertising by other groups does have an influence on the race, you cant argue that it doesnt. But i think it elevates the importance of the positive advertising because thats really the only chance that voters get to hear from their incumbent or a challenger. Mark putnam, one of the high wire acts you pulled off was president obamas election eve 30 be 30 minute commercial. Seven networks, watched by 35 million people. And when i was reading this New York Times article, as is often the case, the most interesting sentence is in the second to the last paragraph. Im going to read it to you, and youre going to tell me what it means. It says democrats who have worked with him say he can be reluctant to give up on his concepts even if they dont test well. Ad testing is not perfect. [laughter] i mean, there have been examples where, you know, ads that, you know, do okay in testing end up catching fire. Testing i respect testing. A lot of uses for it. But what people will tell you is that if i think i have a good idea, im going to push for it. In the end, its always a Team Decision as to what a campaigns going to do or not do. Ing with a consultant, you cant just rule the day. But i am dogged. If i have an idea i think will work, im going to give it a shot. So whats an example of something that tested wadly but worked well badly but worked well . There was some advertising a number of years back that we had done for john kerry in the president ial campaign. We worked on the dnc side of things, and there was some advertising that got a decent response, but then when we actually put it on the air, we saw numbers move. Pull back the camera to talk about a concept or technique, is there something that you found always works better on the air than in the lab . Where your gut maybe is better than the data . Thats the thats a good question. I think sometimes campaigns are a little bit reluctant to have their candidate Talk Straight to camera, you know in i actually think once you figure out i think the main thing is figuring out how a candidate is most successful to television. Sometimes its speaking to camera, sometimes its narrating. There have been times when there are some concepts that candidates are a little bit a good example is governor richardson when he was running for president. There were a lot of people that questioned the series of ads where he was interviewing for the job for president. And they were funny, and he was selfdepracating, and he lived at this unique intersection of really being greatly underestimated as a candidate, amazing resume, and a great sense of humor. And so there were some in the campaign that werent so sure that he should be shown that way. But we put those ads on the air, and they tested okay. But we put them on the air, and in iowa and New Hampshire we jumped up about 12, 14 points in two weeks time. So we were on to something with that. Now, in that race we had john edwards, Hillary Clinton, barack obama at the top, we had to break into the top three. History shows that was going to be very difficult to do. But we put him into the consideration set with a technique that people werent 100 sure about in the campaign, but when we did it, it really worked. If i could just add to that, i know when we do ad testing, the stuff that always seems to underperform in the test is the softer stuff. Its some, maybe its the candidate either straight to camera or interview style, and theyre telling a compelling little story about growing up or their mom or their dad or whatever. And you show that in a focus group, and the people say, well, wheres the substance . I like to hear about policy. I always research everything, you know . And so then the whole group goes on this tangent about how, you know, there need there needs to be more facts and more meat in the spot because thats what focus groups do. But then you put the spot on television, you put it in the context of a crowded environment with a lot of clutter, and thats what cuts through. Now, ashley, you were about to jump in. Yeah, i would just say we had a similar experience in 04 with the wind surfing ad of john kerry. We caught some news tootage of he was footage of he was out wind surfing, and we set it to blue danube and through testing it was like, oh, yeah. It didnt poorly, but it didnt test off the charts. But i think its that point that when youre in a crowded field, to put something up like that, it really caught peoples eye and, you know, they kind of got the message. That ad really was a game changer, and why was it so much more effective than you might have thought in the lab . Than the data might have suggested . I think sometimes taking risks, to marks point, you really have to trust your gut. And in focus be groups that peo