A number of major political organizations were active in mass media during the recent general elections, including affiliate groups of the major political parties. They all spent significant sums of money across the different newspapers, radio and television stations we monitored over the period November 1 to December 31, 2011. (Please refer to “Monitoring Scope” on page 2 for an outline of the media we monitored during this period.)

Based on our findings, they invested a total of $66.6million which made the category one of the highest spenders during the Christmas season.

To put this in perspective, we examined what different categories invested in the three (3) media and found that the Political Organizations category was ranked among the top four (4) in terms of overall spend for the period.

In newspapers, the Political Organizations were ranked thirteenth (13th) among all the categories which were active during the period. The top two (2) categories each spent more than twice what the political organizations spent in print.

In contrast, the Political Organizations were ranked fourth (4th) on radio and first (1st) in television among all the categories that were active. On television, the Political Organizations spent 60% more than the number two-ranked category.

In terms of relative investment then, it seems that the Political Organizations were more highly represented on television than they were on radio or in print.

Taking a closer look at individual advertisers in the category it becomes apparent that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) spent the most on all three media (television, radio and print).

In print, the People’s National Party (PNP) contributed about 47.5%, while the JLP contributed just over 50% of the category’s spend. There was a similar difference in spend on television, with the JLP having 38.4% to the PNP’s 35.5% of the category spend on that medium. There was a much wider margin on radio, where the PNP’s contribution of 39.7% was almost 15% less than the JLP’s share of 54.6%.

It will be interesting to see advertising levels for the upcoming local government elections!

source  The Advertising Watch Roland Gayle 2012 rolandgayle@gmail.com