If Bloomberg Converts His Operation To A Trump-Beating Machine, He’s Still Gotta Fire Anybody Who Worked On His Campaign
His ads and social media efforts were hella dismal and annoying
You’ve probably heard by now: Michael Bloomberg is dropping out of the Presidential race, just one day after first appearing on the ballot. Says Bloomberg today in announcing his withdrawal:
“Three months ago, I entered the race for president to defeat Donald Trump. Today, I am leaving the race for the same reason: to defeat Donald Trump.”
So, OK. Looks like he’s keeping to his promise to mobilize millions of dollars to beat Trump. Part of that involves keeping his campaign staff on through November regardless.
We suggest he doesn’t.
In fact, anybody who worked on his campaign staff should be fired. If Bloomberg truly intends to maintain an organization and continue spending to beat Donald Trump even now that he won’t be the Democrats’ nominee, he’s got to clean house and bring in a bunch of folks who will actually get that job done.
Bloomberg’s ad barrage didn’t work because they were boring, and annoying. Yeah, it’s possible to be both at the same time: the ads themselves were boring; their ubiquitousness was annoying. And if he continues along this path in against Trump, or in support of some Democratic candidate, he could very well do more harm than good.
A towering figure in the business world who’s built a reputation for spending wisely, Bloomberg blew about a quarter of a billion dollars on Super Tuesday races, none of which he won, save for American Samoa, which doesn’t even get counted in the general election. He picked up a smattering of delegates, who will now probably accrue to Biden. Overall, Bloomberg’s spent more than half a billion, and there’s plenty more where that came from.
Sure, some of Bloomberg’s ineffectiveness is self-inflicted. Candidate Bloomberg’s dismal performance in his first debate in Las Vegas certainly played a big part in doing him in. And while you probably wouldn’t have scripted it this way, it also may have been what initially lit the match on Joe Biden’s resurgence.
But Bloomberg’s generally very good at messaging when he wants to be: his gun control group “Everytown for Gun Safety” is one of the finest messaging operations out there.
The Bloomberg campaign ads, however, smacked of amateurism and desperation from the outset. Like he was listening to far less experienced people than himself who told him he had to listen to them to win. Many of those ads were just dull. Many were dumb. All — and a lot of his digital strategy as well — seemed to be a lot of not well planned or produced spots flying unbridled out into the universe on the backs of money that needed to be spent. Never a good combo except for the media companies that pocketed the cash.
The quality of the ads never came close to catching up to the ferocity and probably recklessness of the ad buys. This also plays into it: at some point seeing too many ads for something—even if it’s something (or someone) you like—makes you start resenting them.
Come to think of it, maybe there were one or two that got their message across and were inspiring. So maybe everybody shouldn’t be fired. But it is time to do some Marie Kondo style late winter/spring cleaning to ensure keeping only the higher quality, higher impact product, before putting anything more out there again.