Should Media Consultants Really Jump For Joy?

The knee-jerk reaction among media consultants to January’s Citizens United ruling: Jackpot!

The most immediate way for corporate and labor interests to make their money heard in 2010 will be with more TV ads and they’re likely to keep media consultants busy creating them. But if a big uptick in television advertising results from the ruling—which is at least one thing most consultants agree is sure to happen—it may not be the most welcome of developments, even among those who stand to rake in the cash.

“I’d like to be able to say that it’s great, and that there’s going to be so much more advertising so therefore its good for the ad makers,” says Democratic media consultant Tad Devine. “But if you work for candidates, like we do, there’s a tremendous risk of being undermined.”

Devine says an increase in eleventh-hour independent expenditures creates a major strategic problem for candidate campaigns. As anyone who has ever dealt with an untimely IE knows, even outside groups with the best intentions for your candidate can cause havoc by injecting an unwanted issue into the race or shifting the message or tone.

A senior adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, Devine says it happened consistently in that race and forced the Kerry campaign off message. “Now in a presidential race you have a lot more noise obviously so it’s a bigger deal,” he says. “But this reaches all the way down to House races and even local races.”

Of course, more third-party players means more clutter on the airways in the final weeks of a race. That’s another challenge for media consultants who will need to ensure that their ads break through that clutter. Depending on the state it could even mean a scramble for airtime. “Let’s say you have a state with a hot Senate race, some tough House races and a big governors race.

Your choices could be limited,” says broadcast industry analyst Mark Fratrik. While campaigns will ultimately be able to get the amount of airtime they want, they could have a tough time actually getting their most desired placement. “Broadcasters will be happy, but you might have some frustrated campaigns,” he says.

To top it all off, what if political media consultants don’t turn out to be the real winners businesswise in all of this? Republican Vinny Minchillo, creative director at the media firm Scott Howell and Associates, says if corporations do decide to dive into the IE game, it isn’t certain that means new business for the entrenched political firms.

“If I’m a big corporation, do I go to a political media consulting firm or do I go to my regular ad agency?” asks Minchillo. “I think a major question is whether this opens the door for traditional ad agencies to come in and play politics, because that’s something they’ve wanted to do for years.”

Shane D’Aprile is the senior editor at Politics magazine.