As a membership non-profit organization, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has to be very mindful of making its money make the most impact possible. Jon Coupal, who’s President of HJTA, has used Radio as a major tactical component for years in his on-going battle to protect and preserve 1978’s Proposition 13 and Taxpayers rights. The HJTA’s recent win in the May 19, 2009 special election, which resulted in the defeat of Propositions 1A – F, was a good example. HJTA prevailed even though they were outspent 30 to 1. Radio comprised well over 50% of their voter contact budget, according to Coupal, who modestly noted “I think our strategy – of which radio was a key component – proved very successful.” To best understand Radio’s ability to help HJTA, you have to know a little of its background. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is a non-profit, membership taxpayers organization. After years of work by tax revolt leaders Howard and Estelle Jarvis, Proposition 13 was overwhelmingly approved by voters on June 6, 1978. But Howard and Estelle knew that taxpayers’ gains would be temporary without a permanent citizens organization to protect Proposition 13 and to continue the movement against higher taxes. To meet this need, they founded a grassroots organization, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Although Howard Jarvis passed away in 1986 and his wife Estelle passed away in 2006, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association continues their important work informing the public about potential tax issues and Jon Coupal leads the charge as President of the Association. Understand that all the money – all of it – has to come from its membership. HJTA must use its funds to promote its general interests to the public, communicate with its membership, but also to generate membership and financial support. According to Jon, Radio is “triple purpose” and accomplishes all three goals with each message. Why Radio? Well, Jon cites lots of reasons. - Production time – “My voice is on many of the ads. It’s beneficial to have ads spoken directly by the president of the organization. I don’t have a lot of time for the production time for TV ads, but it’s easy to do the radio spots. Some of the ads can be produced right in my office.”
- Production Costs – “The production costs of radio are substantially less than with TV.”
- Quick Turnaround – “The timeliness in being able to get the ad produced and up relatively quickly is another advantage. A pretty sophisticated radio commercial can be produced in as little as 24 to 48 hours.”
- Targeting – “Another advantage of radio is you’re able to micro-target more effectively both in terms of demographics and reach. TV certainly isn’t as fine-tuned as Radio.”
- Website Traffic – “Radio has turned out to be such a good avenue for us in political campaigns as well as in issue advocacy. We have relied very much on radio and put in call-to-action to our website and are able to measure the impact our radio ads are having by the uptick in our website traffic.”
“We created a specific website for the May 19 ballot campaign. The response was measurable and specific to the website we created for the campaign. Without the radio campaign, few people would have gone to the campaign-specific website. I think virtually all the traffic we saw there was attributable to the radio ads.”
- Added Reach – “The advent of the web; while some people may say it may constitute a threat to radio, I would think intuitively that it actually provides more opportunities than any detraction. We put the radio ad on the website so when the radio drives people to the website, it works both ways.”
- Bang for the Buck – “We have to make sure we get a lot of communication bang for the buck and radio has proven to be very good in terms of cost effectiveness. Radio is particularly useful in CA where people spend a large amount of their time in the car.”
Jon said the HJTA began using Radio from the outset, and has continued to gravitate more toward it. While each campaign calls for different strategies and tactics, he concludes: “Certainly there should be a serious consideration of radio as a medium to effectively communicate a political message or a public education message to a broad audience or a specific audience as a means to advance the organizational objectives. Certainly people should at least consider making radio a part of their mix. I think most organizations would conclude, as we have found, that it’s a very effective way to get the message out.” For more information visit the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association’s website at http://www.hjta.org/.
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