Jamie Bennett puts St. Petersburg mayor's race on billboards

ST. PETERSBURG - City Council member Jamie Bennett has become the first mayoral candidate to erect a campaign billboard.

"Jamie Bennett for mayor," reads the billboard at 53 Avenue and Fourth Street N, "The experience we need for the change we want."

The plain maroon and white billboard is adorned with his campaign logo and the date of the Sept. 1 primary. It does not include a picture of Bennett.

"I like the slogan," he said. "As people are driving by around the city, they get reminded."

Bennett said he paid for three billboards. Another one is on U.S. 19 and the third is near Tyrone Square Mall, he said.

"I can't think of a better time," he said. "We saw this as a way of getting out there early."

Asked how much they cost, he said only, "They are not cheap."

Cristina Silva, Times staff writer

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Comments

[dumb]

dumb dumb

[True Blue]

Should read, "The crook we need for the tickets we want."

[Campaign Manager]

The purpose of billboards is to increase name recognition.

In a small turnout election (when you see a poll that shows the “leader” with 10% and 61% undecided, you can just bet that turnout will be low), you would think that Bennett would already be reasonably well known (for good or for ill) among the likely voters.

As he indicated, billboards are not cheap and I wonder whether they are a better investment than putting that money into additional, targeted mail or a cable buy in some of the St. Pete’s most densely populated zip codes.

[Buwahaha]

Billboards=Waste of Money!

Cable Buy? This guy won't be able to afford in house mailers. What a joke.

[saintpetersblog]

The billboards were one of the last things I got started, they were suppose to be up by Memorial Day, along with all the sign locations we had (at one point we had ninety 4 x 4 locations), but, you know what, things fall apart...

The billboards coast about $2,700. They would have worked better if they were in conjunction with a larger campaign, and you know, if Jamie hadn't handed me two dozen baseball tickets.

[erin]

billboards = throwing money in trash

[Campaign Manager]

Well, Peter, if this was your idea, I have to disagree with your reasoning - I don't think that $2700 is better spent on billboards than on an additional mail piece to absentee ballots or even contracting out for some live ID calls.

[saintpetersblog]

At the time, it was not a matter of either/or. It was going to be done in conjunction with all those things you said.

Im almost starting to think that most of it is just throwing money in trash. Clark's mailing out 50K ABs for the primary. Just to send one mailer to them will be 20, 25K. And that would just be for one touch.

Campaigns used to just blindingly track AB requestors. That can't happen anymore.

[Campaign Manager]

Permanent or automatic absentee voters do change everything. I have worked in states with permanent absentee voters and roughly 1/3 of votes are in one week before the election, but you'll be surprised how many folks will still vote on Election Day.

We are a long way from being Washington state, where ALL voting by mail and Election Day doesn't mean a darn thing.

Also, you can still use the voterfile to determine a universe of likely voters to narrow it down. Yes, the new absentee ballot program in Florida changes things, but it hasn't suddenly turned folks who only come out every four years into regular voters - there will be a lot of still unmailed, ignored absentee ballots sitting on folks' kitchen counters come Election Day. Targeting is still effective and more necessary than ever.

And to return to the original issue, I still think that billboards are primarily useful for generating name recognition and that name recognition was never Bennett's major concern.

[saintpetersblog]

Campaign Manager -- good points. But our polling data said otherwise. Look at where we put the billboards. NE, and in the West. Bennett's name ID is weakest in those areas.

[Billboards]

There is no justification for billboards. Sorry guys.

[Dapper Dan's a joke]

"Asked how much they cost, he said only,..." I don't know, ask Lil' Pete, I think a couple of Rays tickets maybe!

[Sean]

Litter on a stick as to billboards. Granted, the voters are largely sheep, but at least above basing their decisions on the number of signs.

[Where's my ticket?]

It's so amusing to watch Jamie's former campaign manager and current campaign manager arguing the fine points of how to ruin a campaign...

[waste of money]

Wow, what a tremendous waste of resources. Pay some canvassers to chase AB instead. You need some help in the field.

[saintpetersblog]

Ill take billboards over ads on the New York Times any day of the week. We only used billboards in Jim King and Dennis Jones races and those guys, you know, never won anything.

[HAHAHA]

Yes, Peter, Dennis Jones and Jim King's billboards won them their races. Not their decades previous of service.

[Campaign Manager]

"Where's my ticket" - I am not Bennett's campaign manager nor otherwise associated with his campaign.

[Incredulous]

Really, Peter? You have accurate polling data down to the neighborhood level?

This leads me to suggest a few possibilities.

1) You misunderstand how polling works and didn’t realize that the margin of error at the neighborhood level was +/- 20 points, making it useless at that micro level.
2) You spent $15,000-$20,000 to put a poll into the field (or between half and two thirds of every dime you raised in the first quarter), big enough to be accurate at the level of even council districts, when you could have done a cheaper poll just to fine tune your message and targeting and spend the rest of the money on actually contacting voters.
3) There is no such poll and you are making this all up to cover up that you spent a lot of time and energy and money on glorified yard signs.

[saintpetersblog]

I have it down to the City Council District level. The margin of error is about 6.9% and I know which districts Bennett, Wagman, etc., are strong and not strong.

[shuturyap]

The margin of error on giving baseball tickets to someone who won't endorse your bid- 3%. The margin of error that your campaign manager will screw it up-100%.

[Incredulous]

In other words - option #2, wherein you blow money approximately one quarter of your total likely budget on a poll. Luckily, you still had plenty leftover for glorified yard signs.

Awesome job!

[Credulous]

That’s unfair!

Yard signs and billboards vote in very high numbers and are brilliant investment. Did you know that your average 4x4 political sign, the ones Peter so assiduously lined for Bennett, vote at twice the rate of the human beings.

[Please]

The SP Times poll had a 4% margin of error. That means the range of the error was 8%, 4% on each side of the mean. The poll of 600, with sampling skewed heavily to men over women, was thereby useless at best.

Name recognition is the game, people will vote for a familiar name even if they know nothing about the candidate. The more they see the name, the more likely they will be to not just flip a coin.

Billboards? I'm not so quick to knock them. Paul Matton, who spent way less than Brickfield, spent most of his money on billboards. Coming from near total obscurity, Paul garnered 48.46% percent of the vote.

Absentees? We have never had anywhere near this high a percentage of registered voters, in a St. Pete municipal election, receive absentee ballots. It will be interesting to see how many of the voters who normally skip a Sept. election actually vote by mail.

[TV]

It will be won and lost with local TV. Expensive but works. Those that can get commercial production done and pay for the time...will win. Very expensive though - but effective. That is why the big money will, in the end, prevail.