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...most of the Republican candidates are in an uproar over it.
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Which candidates in which Districts/precincts? What levels?

How does anyone know *which voters need to be swayed*? The slicing/dicing of the market is one area I know the Trump campaign excels at.

I am 77. I have been politically aware>>active for 66 years. I was in business, self-employed and dealing with both retail and wholesale accounts, for over 55 years.

One thing I observed in all that time is the decline in advertising persuasion. That has accelerated as the cognitive dissonance between what is promulgated via ads versus the received benefit/fulfilled need has increased.

I have spent the required $$ and sucked up to the *must have* endorsers just enough to discover it is often a well-organized cartel aimed at sucking up seller $$ and energy and it is used to increase anxiety. I employed sales reps (aka: sales reptiles) who couldn’t sell their way out of a fire with a tanker of water and a hose. (I did this for another successful line in a totally different media/venue and the results were exactly the same.)

I made a living on a 4-unit product line with absolutely no advertising for 22 out of 35 years that included the 2008-2017 zer0 Recession. My distributors did little advertising. I did not do trade shows for 20 years of that time.

What sold my product (and the other product line I worked with) was the product and everyone who bought one came back to buy more as gifts. The product carried a brand and a contact line. That direct sales interaction sold hundreds of thousands of a small item in a sub-niche market that never even had a long-lasting competitor because it was simply the best of its kind.

I had national corporate sales managers threaten to take my idea and have it made in China. Didn’t work. I had econuts spontaneously target my product for not being eco-PC. Didn’t work. I had *colleagues* jealously announce that because it wasn’t a consumable,it would be a flash in the pan. I had competitors masquerading as accounts steal employees to pump them for production/sourcing details. Failed.

It was _my customers_ who informed me of some of these attempts and they were always amused. It lasted over 35 years until I retired. I could revive it today and instantly reclaim every single distributor and retail customer. No one has because they did not ever think beyond what they already believe they know.

Question received wisdom, always. Realize it can change on a dime.

I sort of agree with any decision to back off TV advertising while the weather is still good.

People have been locked down.

Because of that, internet is their chief interaction.

Sitting still to watch TV is no way to pass time. Radio can be listened to while doing other things and mobile devices are always available.

I do not have ROI for various forms of advertising. Do you? I do know the click-thru rates on search results for online content (which I assume would include political ads)depends on volume and is low on a per capita basis.

I am amused, to be honest, that even local campaign workers with no access to the raw numbers and the documented returns are 2nd guessing the people whose careers depend on getting things right and who are responsible for millions & millions of dollars. We could all learn a lot from their spreadsheets.

So, I get you are worried and frustrated. What are you doing? Door knocking? Making sure signs are out and prominent? (I believe the signs sway opinion IF there are virtual seas of them of for one candidate, like there are, most places, for Trump) Are you organizing rallies, cruises, floatillas, flag-wavings in areas with undecided, swayable voters? Volunteering to drive elderly and infirm to the polls?

Those actions count. I was a county chair for an R campaign back in the day and a street organizer 30 years prior to that. Get people to commit and put skin in the game and you have swayed their vote and opinion because we are hardwired to justify our actions to ourselves.

Organize sub-groups of supporters and sub-sub groups of those. That targets the smallest demos, of which the individual is the smallest. Have watch parties for Trump and other R candidate rallies. People will convince each other. Do it online, via chat groups in this era of lock downs. Recruit influencers (every locale has them) and let them work their peer-pressure magic on their followers and friends.

None of us know the real reasons the campaign director was replaced. Trump works on a time line known only to himself and relies on his famous gut. He is admittedly a master of timing after a lifetime of negotiations at the stratospheric level and 14 years of reality TV with top ratings. He himself is accessible online daily and if you watch on a platform with enabled chat, you can learn a lot about those rooting for him. Every one of those supporters goes on to influence others.

Have you and those who agree with you run any surveys to see what public reactions to negative campaigning is? It has changed. I can tell just from the comments on various sites I trawl for opinion, not all of them pro-Trump.

In short, you are having a tantrum in a teaspoon and if you replace it with proactivity, you will not only feel better, you will actually accomplish something.