• by Kathleen Stockham , February 11, 2014

As demographic and political leanings of the country change seemingly every two years, so does the notion of a one-party household. At one point, a single address in a database was strongly identified by one party by head of household. Now, thanks to non-nuclear families, grown children moving back home and even extended family members under one roof, the marketing challenge of The Motley Household is born.

Before the 2000 presidential election, the database master files for campaign and PAC contributions was largely sectioned off to a simple definition of “blue” and “red” addresses. The blue guys got their files and the red guys had their own, and they marketed accordingly. However, in the 14 partisan years since then, coupled with a challenged economy and rapid rises in unemployment, the one-party household has now become a rather mixed bag or rainbow of political preferences.

“Head of household” can no longer be defined by the eldest male or paternal in the home. So as the de facto “leader” of the house is in flux, the ideology in the home now resembles a potpourri of shades of red and blue. 

Republican and Democrat tags in database fields now look more like “Very Conservative,” “Very Liberal,” “Moderate,” “Independent,” “Undecided” and “Unknown.” In essence, you can have a “Conservative” head of household but also at the same address you can have an “Independent” spouse and a “Liberal” female who is under 30. Likewise, you can have an over-65 “Moderate” unmarried female in the same house with a “Republican” under 45  year old female and her 18-year-old “Undecided” male child and an added 20-year-old non-relative male “Liberal” who is far more politically active than the other three members of the household.

So how is a shrewd political marketer able to navigate the Motley household? Standard database practices and segmentation are out the window as the political marketer must make three distinct budget buckets (and gambles) per household:

• The “Core” Target
• The “Undecided”
• The “Possible To Convert”

In this mash-up, a target list of known contributors, faithful and “cores” are in one bucket of spend but then the political marketer must decide if it’s worth it to also send direct mail and dialers to any possible “Undecided” in the same household. Lastly, is it worth the spend to also target any potential “Possible to Converts,” which are likely sitting on the other guy’s list but could still be a target since they are in close proximity with a “Core” under the same roof? If so, do you send an alternately themed direct mail, email or dialer to a “Possible?”

You can’t message all three groups the same way, so do you create three times the spend for three varied messages to the same household? 

Are you three times as smart doing this or three times as dumb?

That remains to be seen but if the demographic tectonic plates continue to shift and move with current family structures, you could very well likely be marketing two or three different ways to the same address and still not hit the target!

The smart move would be to modify to a more moderate, middle message (read: water it down) to your target and hope that it gets shared or discussed amongst a Motley household. Not many guarantees it will land where you need it but for recoverable marketing spend, you likely have no other choice.

In this election year, your database is more Chex Mix than Cheerios and for the household themselves it is likely more awkward around the dinner table as talk turns to politics.

However, using some middle ground as the baseline, you can prevent the efforts from making your direct mail canvassing The Motley Fool.

(Sorry – #HadTo)