The Air War versus The Ground Game: An Analysis of Multi- Channel Marketing in U.S. Presidential Elections

Firms increasingly use both mass-media advertising and targeted personal selling to successfully promote products and brands in the marketplace. In this study, we jointly examine the e ect of mass-media advertising and personal selling in the context of U.S. presidential elections, where the former is referred to as the air war and the latter the ground game. Speci cally, we look at how di erent types of advertising=candidate own ads vs. outside ads=and personal selling=in the form of utilizing eld o ces=a ect voter preferences. Further, we ask how these various campaign activities a ect the outcome of elections through their diverse e ects on various types of people. We nd that personal selling has a stronger e ect among partisan voters, while candidate's own advertising is better received by non-partisans. We also nd that personal selling accounted for the Democratic victories in the 2008 and 2012 elections, and that advertising was critical only in a close election, such as the one in 2004. Interestingly, had the Democrats received more outside advertising in 2004, the election would have ended up in a 269-269 tie. Our ndings generate insights on how to allocate resources across and within channels. keywords: multi-channel marketing, personal selling, advertising, political campaigns, discretechoice model, instrumental variables.