According to the left-leaning Sunlight Foundation, “Thanks in part to outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, gun control groups could match or outspend gun rights forces in 2013 electoral contests, and are heading into 2014 with formidable campaign war chests.”
It was Bloomberg, via his “Mayors against Illegal Guns,” who has injected millions of dollars into electing anti-Second Amendment candidates.
But while Bloomberg’s spending has netted some wins (Cory Booker and Jesse Jackson Jr.’s replacement, to name two), Advertising Age has a front-page piece today detailing the dismal return-on-investment for the largely Bloomberg-funded anti-Second Amendment advertising spend over the past year.
Here’s one of their ads running this week on cable:
Advertising Age references Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, self-described as “the exclusive source of buy, spend, and content analysis for political, public affairs and issue advocacy advertising,” which predicted that anti-Second Amendment groups ought to hold a 7:1 advantage over advocates for their opponents.
That’s because over the past year, these groups have spend $14.1 million on TV advertising vs. $1.9 million spent by other groups to defend the Second Amendment via the same medium:
White House efforts to strengthen gun-control laws went nowhere. Watered-down legislation to broaden FBI background checks of gun buyers failed in the Senate. And the GOP-controlled House did not even consider addressing gun-control legislation.”The return on the investment has been very weak,” said Elizabeth Wilner of Kantar Media. “When you are doing advocacy advertising you are looking for Congress to pass something.”And things weren’t that much better on the state level. The New York Times reported that about 1,500 gun-related bills had been introduced in state legislatures since the Newtown tragedy and 109 of them became law. Nearly two-thirds of the new laws actually ease restrictions and expand the rights of gun owners, according to the Times. Most of those bills were approved in states controlled by Republicans.
AdAge notes that the National Rifle Association pursued a different tactic — spending $6.2 million on lobbying.
A somewhat sobering lesson, though it benefits in the short-term our right to possess arms — spend your $$ in the Capitol City, not on influencing the masses via advertising.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY