Is Roxas wasting ad spending?

Last week, media discussions centered on who has spent the most on television advertising among the presidential aspirants in the 2016 elections. 

Our view is that the real issue is not so much who spent more, but whether or not the massive advertising expenditure by a candidate has produced the desired results.

Based on data released by Nielsen Philippines Advertising Information Services, at the top of the ad spending spot is Vice President Jejomar Binay followed by Sen. Grace Poe. At third spot is former Local Governments Secretary and Palace bet Mar Roxas.

All have spent more or less half-a-billion pesos each on television commercials.

If the Nielsen data are to be believed, then Binay’s campaign team should be commended for wise advertising spending. The strategy appears to have worked. Reason: the Vice President’s trust and approval ratings have recently zoomed upwards, just about 2 percentage points behind that of the President.

According to Pulse Asia, Binay’s approval rating went up by 9 percentage points while his trust rating climbed 10 percentage points.

The Vice President’s approval rating’s highest surge was in the Visayas region—that part of the country where Roxas traces his roots.

This should further compound the woes now hounding the Roxas campaign team. If the mentioned reports are true, then Binay could be on a major rebound. Worse, the reports may have confirmed speculations that the long-running demolition campaign against the Vice President could be a dud.

Roxas’s campaign team may also have to examine its own advertising spending strategy. Despite spending close to half-a-billion pesos, it has not achieved what Roxas probably wants most – to overtake his two rivals in the surveys.

There are two things his team must now examine. First is the very message of his commercials. The other one is the kind of medium he is using.

There are two memorable messages in the commercials aired by the Roxas team.

The first is the “Daang Matuwid” theme. The other one is the funny, awkward side of Roxas, making high 5’s and chest bumping with basketball superstar James Yap and mingling with male Filipino-American television celebrities.

These are what his team spent half-a-billion pesos for. The way things look, the greater number of Filipino voters are not about to buy the promise and the proposition of those ads.

Logically, it would be foolish to keep spending money conveying messages that no longer convert voters into the candidate’s cause.

If the advertising campaign were being done for a corporation, the advertising agency would have already been fired. Such agencies live and die on the basis of results. Roxas might wish to adopt that mode, even if that half-a-billion pesos in advertising expenditure may not have come from his own pocket.

Recently, advertising circles were abuzz with talk that Roxas’s campaign team has commissioned a big name in the advertising world to work on the next round of expensive commercials.

The move was hailed as a good one. We share the view. If there is one thing the Roxas campaign team needs, it is a person with brilliant advertising sense, vast experience and the guts to tell the Roxas campaign team what works and what does not.

There’s one more issue here. Where do those huge advertising funds come from?

Conventional wisdom tells us that candidates – with the exception of a very few—never spend their own money.

For example, Palace vice presidential bet Leni Robredo, who has spent more than P90 million in television ads, said the money came from her relatives.

The public would be interested to know who her very rich relatives are.

The reason is that these are not cost-free money. Contributors do not dip from their pockets out of sheer human goodwill.

They would want to obtain value for their money after the elections.

Part of that “value” would be projects, concessions and favors from government.

We know that each time government doles out projects and concessions to favored parties, additional burden is imposed on taxpayers. At the end of the day, these huge advertising expenses will be charged to the Filipino people.

We wish well Roxas’s recently commissioned advertising handler.

We hope he handles Roxas’s advertising better. After all, this advertising guy just might have the magic touch that could make Roxas win the presidency.