Political Campaigning in the Pre-Social Media Era

I think it was Boo Chanco (who was then the vice president of the news division of ABS-CBN in the 90’s) who said to Serge that if you really want help with your campaign, you should get this guy because he’s good. I don’t know if he was just pulling my leg, but that’s what he said to Serge, while pointing at me. “You should get this man,” he said. 

That was how I met Sergio “Serge” Osmeña III, grandson of President Osmeña, experienced legislator, and public servant. Unknown maybe to the general public, Serge was also a seasoned political campaigner. And I am fortunate to have worked with him throughout most of his career – including the 2010 campaign of ex-president Noynoy Aquino.

Balancing Biases, and Data-driven Campaigning

During the first time he ran as senator, I was the head of research and business analysis for ABS-CBN. He asked Mr. Geny Lopez, Jr. for his leave to allow me to help him in his campaign. They were cellmates in the 70’s during the Marcos era – I’ll never forget Mr. Lopez, telling me that “if there’s one person I have slept with more than the nights I slept with my wife, it was with this guy”. He gave his leave and told me, let’s help my friend. So I did. 

During my tenure in ABS-CBN, every election season, one of my tasks was to monitor the elections and report on the standings of the candidates. I reported on who was most likely to win, who was most likely not to win, as well as my own thoughts on how each of their campaigns were running. 

One particular thing we were monitoring is media bias – particularly, to check whether there was a certain bias in the way the network was reporting on candidates. If your eyes and ears are trained, you can spot the biases a particular piece of news has towards a certain party or candidate. So that was part of the game. There had to be balance. 

Up to now, this is something I train my people to do. There’s a certain way of spotting these biases – and using them to your advantage. 

Traditional Media was the Name of the Game

I’ve had a very long experience of running political campaigns with Serge, starting with the first time he ran in the 90’s. He sought me out for all of his campaigns since then – both his personal campaigns when he ran twice as senator, and for his campaigns with other candidates. 

You know that he was really into political campaigning because he would give me books on the topic. He would return from trips abroad and give me tons of books on it – this became a valuable trove of resources in the pre-internet era. 

In 2009, he invited me to work with him in the Noynoy campaign, focusing on media planning and strategy – my bread and butter. He was the commander-in-chief and I was there with him all the way. 

The focus of political campaigns in that pre-social media era was really media planning for traditional media – TV, print, and radio.

At the time, social media was new – Facebook was just in its infancy. The name of the game was who got the most Likes on their page. The concept of engagement wasn’t even a thing back then. Facebook Likes really didn’t do much, so we pretty much ignored that and focused on trad media.

You had to have a well-thought-out plan to ensure that you get the message and platform of your candidate out there without violating COMELEC rules. So on one hand, you had to negotiate with networks for slots to air your ads. On the other hand, you had to negotiate for money to fund the campaign based on the media strategy that you crafted. 

There was a delicate balance of making sure that the minutes you aired were well-spent. At that time, it was very restrictive – the rule was, you can only air a total of 120 minutes of ads across all stations. 120 was the magic number back then. 

In the 2016 elections, the rules were way more relaxed – it was 120 minutes per station, which was a far cry from the rules in 2009. But we knew that this time, the game had shifted already – as social media was starting to become king. 

Benevolent Dictatorship

One thing I learned from Serge and working with him all these years is that in order to run a political campaign, you had to have a dictator. A benevolent dictator that everyone followed – if you didn’t have that, the campaign would be all over the place. 

That was the key to the 2009 Noynoy campaign. Everyone followed Serge’s instructions, including the candidate. This was his condition for accepting any campaign – if you want to work with me, you have to follow what I say. 

When he says to the candidate, drop everything because I scheduled a shoot for you today, they just did it. Sometimes he would say, don’t go to that rally, let’s shoot a commercial, let’s not use the money for that because we should focus on our media strategy. 

When Serge entered the Noynoy campaign, he brought a semblance of order. He brought unity of command. And I think the results spoke for itself. 

Coming into the Duterte campaign, I knew there had to be a Serge-like person or team to the campaign. The lessons from that campaign were different though, and the subject of another blog entry.