politics

TIL - Advertising jargon has a phrase also used in prisons. The general population is “gen pop”.

Inside the Secretive $700 Million Ad-Testing Factory for Kamala Harris

Future Forward has ascended to the top of the Democratic political universe, but it has also drawn suspicion and second-guessing.

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Future Forward’s advertising strategy can be summed up in four words: Reserve early, spend late. The group began booking fall ads in January to secure the best prices. The most intense spending is occurring now, guided by an unswerving belief that the persuasive effect of ads decays quickly.

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The group is, in some ways, an ad-making laboratory masquerading as a super PAC, testing thousands of messages, social media posts and ads in the 2024 race, ranking them in order of effectiveness and approving only those that resonate with voters. Ad makers produce roughly 20 potential commercials for every spot that ever airs.

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Future Forward’s belief in designing digital and television advertising to appeal to the general population — “gen pop” ads, in industry shorthand — has also worried strategists who want more messages tailored to people of color.

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The most intense friction between Democratic groups and Future Forward has concerned issues of race. Future Forward opened October spending $35 million to broadcast a single advertisement that juxtaposes Mr. Trump telling his “rich as hell” supporters that he will cut their taxes with a Black voter supporting Ms. Harris because he is “not rich as hell.”

The idea is to target everyone at once, and Future Forward found in testing that the spot was in the 95th percentile for effectiveness with white, Black, Asian and Hispanic voters — as well as the electorate overall. But the approach has skeptics among party strategists who believe Ms. Harris needs to specifically mobilize key Democratic constituencies in other ways.

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Founded by a group of wonkish Obama campaign veterans, Future Forward is animated by the idea that a blend of data science, political science and testing can usher in a new era of rigor in advertising. The group’s ads were widely praised in 2020, and Future Forward earned the coveted designation as the official super PAC first for President Biden and then for Ms. Harris.

But throughout the year, some top party strategists have worried about the consolidation of so much money and decision-making in a single group. They warn of succumbing to what some describe as a tyranny of testing and about what they see as an almost dogmatic belief by Future Forward in the power of late advertising — to the detriment of other methods of reaching voters.

In September, the Harris campaign made an unusual public statement suggesting donors back other groups devoted to get-out-the-vote operations.

Soon after, Billy Wimsatt, who runs a donor group called the Movement Voter Project, warned in a memo to Democratic donors, Future Forward and the Harris campaign last month that get-out-the-vote operations were “dangerously underfunded” — to the tune of $165 million, mostly affecting groups that turn out Black, Latino, Asian and young voters.

“It seems like a ton of money is going to paid media and not enough to the ground game,” Mr. Wimsatt warned. More recently, the Harris headquarters has been frustrated by a lack of mailers being sent by allies.