4 Ways Democrats Can Capitalize on Their $160M Fundraising Surge, According to Neuroscience

More than at any time in history, democratic candidates are swimming in money.

Following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg death on September 18 and Mitch McConnell's immediate vow to confirm a new nominee before the election, Democratic candidates received a fundraising surge unlike anything else in history.

By Monday, ActBlue—the primary site for Democratic online fundraising—saw $160 million in donations. Vote Save America's Get Mitch or Die Trying raised $22 million over the next week—after raising only $3 million in the previous 15 months. Even forgotten Alaska Senate challenger Al Gross raised $3 million, equaling the cash on hand he had at the end of July. The momentum doesn't seem to be stopping—Joe Biden's biggest fundraising hour ever came during the debate Tuesday night.

The question now is: How the hell do democratic candidates get the most out of this grassroots generosity?

Most of the funding will be spent on advertising, and unlike in past elections, neuroscience can give us some answers into what ads will work best.

Last December, Contently cofounder Shane Snow and I conducted a neuroscience study with Neuro-Insight, using their brain-tracking technology see which advertising and storytelling techniques did the best job of (literally) changing people's minds. (Methodology here.)

Here are four powerful keys from our research and a few complementary neuromarketing studies, and how democratic candidates can capitalize on those findings.

1. Lead with your personal narrative

Dozens of political studies have reinforced an intuitive idea: emotion plays a huge role in voting. That includes whether people decide to vote at all. (With relatively few voters up for grabs, inspiring turnout is arguably the more important objective).

Neuro-Insight has tested over 25,000 ads over the past decade, consistently finding that a compelling narrative is one of the biggest drivers of engagement. A good story increases emotional intensity, approach/withdrawal (how positively or negatively someone experiences an emotion), and memory encoding, which strongly correlates with decision-making.

Our research showed this as well. For instance, we tested "Scranton Values"—a Biden campaign ad run across national sports broadcasts. As you'll see below, the ad opens with Biden's life growing up in Scranton, highlighting the patriotic, middle-class values it instilled in him.

Notice the strong memory encoding as Biden tells this personal story, triggering a strong positive emotional response in the first five seconds—key to capturing voters' attention. That emotional intensity continues later on when people see images of Biden bonding with voters.

Biden's personal history is also tragic. He lost his wife and daughter to a car accident in 1972 shortly after joining Congress, and he rode the train 4 hours every day from Delaware to D.C. so he could have breakfast with his two sons and tuck them in at night. He's persevered through tragedy—something that's relatable to many Americans right now—and speaks about it in a heartfelt way.

Biden's campaign had $466 million in cash on hand at the end of August and should have a lot more rolling in after the September surge. To increase enthusiasm and turnout in key swing states, the campaign would be smart to blitz airways and social feeds with ads that introduce him to voters through his personal story and middle-class values.

Other democratic challengers with strong personal stories—from Jamie Harrison to Amy McGrath—should follow suit.

2. Optimize ads for in-feed social video

Candidates will likely pump a ton of money into TV and radio ads—though digital advertising spend has increased over 2016, both candidates still over-index on old-school mediums. But digital and social ad spend is on the rise increasing, and candidates should be thinking about how to optimize their spots for social. 

Some of the best targeting and value comes from in-feed social ads on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Facebook's terrifying advertising empire, in particular, makes it easy to target key voter groups—and while their policy of allowing lies in political ads makes me want to tear my hair out and go live in the woods, it's too powerful of a tool to not run (truthful) ads on it.

In a study of in-feed social video ads, Neuro-Insight found that social ads with an early story arc were 58 percent more likely to be viewed past three seconds, and text or subtitles led to 28 percent higher completion rates.

The presence of people in the ad increased emotional intensity by 133 percent, which leads us to the third key...

3. Ditch stock footage for images of real voters

Stock footage is having a moment. Since live shoots are more challenging due to the pandemic, damn near every new brand ad seems to be a mash-up of stock footage and overlay text.

While this tactic makes it easier to produce ads quickly, it kills emotional engagement. In the ads tested, stock footage of people working, driving, talking, etc. caused engagement, emotional intensity, and memory encoding to drop.

On the flip side, footage of real voters experiencing real emotion while listening to or interacting with a candidate drove high levels of engagement. We see this impact in the Scranton Values ad above—emotional intensity peaks from between 15 and 25 seconds, as the ad shows a montage of Biden interacting with voters.

We saw this trend in ads we tested for Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as well. When choosing between showing real people and stock footage, always go for the real people, even if the images are lower quality.

4. Stick the tagline and branding for memory encoding

One of the biggest revelations from Neuro-Insight's research is the importance of "branding moments." These are moments when a respondent's brain activity indicates that they're encoding memories as the candidate (or brand's) name or image appears on screen.

If you want people to remember to vote—and who to vote for—you need to ensure there are strong branding moments in your ads. This ad from Elizabeth Warren has three "peak branding moments" that do this well, scoring in the top 90th percentile of all ads Neuro-Insight tested.

Warren gets the first peak branding moment when she takes the usual boring disclosure (“I'm Elizabeth Warren and I approve this message") that comes at the end of the ad and puts it at the beginning instead, opening with her name in large text over a powerful photo of herself.

Next, she hits a key branding moment with her key catchphrase in large text on screen: “I've got a plan for that." Finally, the ad closes with a powerful image of Warren in the spotlight in front of adoring fans—a peak branding moment that scored in the 98th percentile. These end cards that show the candidate in front of a giant crowd work super well, scoring in the top 65th-98th percentile across the ads we tested.

If I were in charge of creative for a campaign, I'd end every ad this way. And with an election this close and this important, I'd leverage every insight neuroscience can give us.