Political Advertising
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To win an election a candidate must do two things: Develop a message that resonates
with voters; and deliver that message. Today, using sophisticated polling and focus group
testing, politicians can carefully shape the messages they put out to voters to maximize
public acceptance. And detailed knowledge of when certain kinds of voters will be
watching TV lets the politician target particular constituents.
I. ID Spots
Who is this candidate? Images:
Athlete, astronaut, Cowboy, businessman, soldier, family man
II. Argument Spots
Setting up the problems/issues:
Non Specific (the problems in DC; New Ideas, Family Values)
Emotive
Issue (anger) Points
Endorsements/Humor/Symbols
III. Attack
FlipFlop
How’s that again General?
IV. “I see an America….”
Just folks
Symbols: Plains, Mountains, Oceans, Mt. Rushmore, Parades, picnics, flags,
monuments
Consultants
In 1952, Rosser Reeves did not commission any special poll to create "Eisenhower
Answers America." He simply asked pollster George Gallup for Americans' chief
concern. Gallup responded that Washington corruption, the cost of living, and the conflict
in Korea topped the list, and Reeves went about shaping ads on those themes.
While today, thirty second ads for candidates are taken as a given, in 1952 the
Eisenhower campaign needed convincing to use television advertising. Reeves had a
colleague prepare a report spelling out the advantages. In the early days of television,
companies who wanted to advertise often paid for an entire program. That show would
carry the company's name and would only carry the company's ads. Shows like "Camel
News Caravan" and "Texaco Star Theater" are famous examples. But Rosser Reeves
figured out that if you place your ads between programs you reach the audience built by
popular shows at a fraction of the cost. These short advertisements came to be known as
"spots" and to be effective had to be brief and memorable.
Reeves was a master of the form. Up to this point, most campaigning on television was
limited to buying airtime to broadcast speeches. In fact, Democratic opponent Adlai
Stevenson's television spending was already committed to speeches. Reeves had spoken
to people who'd listened to Eisenhower's speeches and found they retained little of what
he'd said.
The research report argued that spot advertising should be adapted to the Eisenhower
campaign and called for an intensive airing of the spots in the three weeks prior to the
election.
Script
While a few political ads adopt a documentary approach, most start with a script. The
script is the initial effort to distill political concepts into an understandable, even
dramatic, presentation. Rosser Reeves, through his work on spot advertising, was well
prepared for this distillation process. His secret was strict adherence to what he called the
"Unique Selling Proposition." USP, as it was called, was a single quality of a product that
let it stand out against competition. M&M's were unlike all those messy candies that
would melt in your hands, for example. Through repetition, the particular identified
quality would stay in consumers' heads when it was time to buy. Reeves took this singlemindedness to the Eisenhower campaign. While he would have preferred just one theme
to build the ads around, Reeves took the three concerns identified by Gallup (Korea,
corruption, and cost of living) and wrote a series of scripts. None of the short spots would
deal with more than one topic, each of them consisting of a single question asked of
Eisenhower by a "typical" voter. The candidate's responses were culled carefully by
Reeve's reading Eisenhower's many campaign speeches. So, in essence, the message of
the candidate matches the rest of the campaign, but the spot presents that message in a
simplified, memorable form.
Shooting
Shooting a political ad starts the transformation of ideas into images. To keep viewers
engaged, television advertising needs to communicate visually. Slogans and scripted
words work only on one level of perception. Think of how often you see a flag in
political ads. Here the candidate wants to build associations between him or herself and
the patriotic feelings brought on by waving the flag. But this is only the most obvious
example. For "Eisenhower Answers America," Rosser Reeves filmed Eisenhower in an
empty studio. Visually there is very little to distract viewers, no flags or symbols of
power. But Eisenhower is filmed from a slightly low angle, meaning we look up at him.
The voters asking questions are filmed looking up as though addressing someone of
enormous stature. Eisenhower is always seen alone, he doesn't share the frame with his
questioners. In fact, the questioners never actually spoke with Ike, they were filmed later.
Reeves recruited tourists at Radio City Music Hall and had them ask scripted questions in
the studio a few days after Eisenhower was filmed. While some Republican leaders
worried that appearing in a commercial would diminish Eisenhower's stature, in the ad
his stature is visually enhanced. At the same time the candidate is seen relating to
everyday people, and offering memorable solutions to their problems. At times, however,
Eisenhower seems a little wide-eyed and unfocused, probably because Reeves didn't want
him to wear his glasses and he is struggling to make out large cue cards. Ike is said to
have moaned, "To think an old soldier should come to this..."
How Effective?
No clear definition of how effective. Perhaps most effective in raising overall discussion.
Good ads get news/opinion people talking. Free Replay
I. Testing Testing Testing
Many ads shelved because focus groups misunderstood/didn’t understand/didn’t
like the ad.
Negative Ads NEVER test well
II. ID ads work well to get candidate known/raise money/raise positives
III. Negative ads Risky
Memorable
Hardens positions
Must be seen as Fair
More dangerous of incumbent
Sometimes meant to provoke (Kerry vote for/against)
IV. Can polish a candidate’s image
Framing/priming
The man from Hope
V. Advertising can’t raise the dead or substitute for actual campaign
195In 1952, Rosser The Paradox
Reform Depends on Voter Savvy
of Political Ads
By Kathleen Jamieson
In 1988 I studied the information absorbed by 100 people during a season of presidential
campaign news and advertising.
I conducted focus groups, talked to individuals about their recollections of the campaign and
observed their reactions throughout. About halfway through the process I realized that what these
typical voters were learning from the news and political advertising they saw was everything they
needed to know not to be voters, but to be campaign consultants.
TV viewers understood, for example, that George Bush's ad about prison furloughs was designed
to make Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis look "soft on crime."
But they didn't know what either candidate planned to do about crime, homelessness, economic
policy, the environment or other major issues of the day. A major crisis such as the savings and
loan bailout--one of the most expensive giveaways in U.S. history--was ongoing at the time but
never seriously debated.
Instead of a discussion of issues, voters were treated to analyses of polls and polling, gaffes and
media gurus, media buying requirements and inside information on campaign staffing shake-ups.
Still worse, broadcast news and much print journalism focused on the strategic intent of
misleading ads but not their accuracy, fairness or relevance to governance.
The most analyzed and talked about image of the campaign completely sidestepped the question
of what either major candidate would do if elected president. Known as the "furlough ad," it
depended on innuendo and visual images to link Michael Dukakis with the supposed dangers of a
prison furlough program and therefore with a dangerous breed of liberalism.
When the announcer's voice intoned "many first-degree murderers escaped" as the words "268
escaped" appeared on the screen, the human need for closure caused viewers to associate the
number 268 with the word "many," encouraging them to assume that many prisoners committed
crimes while on furlough. Furloughed prisoner William Horton's name was never mentioned. It
didn't have to be. Reporters mentioned it often as did Bush in network soundbites. With those
soundbites came Horton's menacing mug shot.
Campaign managers could also depend on political reporters to find and publicize the story of the
one prisoner who assualted and raped while on furlough. And they could expect audiences to
draw desired false inferences from an ad that was not technically incorrect: First-degree
murderers did, in fact, escape. Four did. And of those four, only one--Horton--committed a violent
crime. In a 10-year period, 268 prisoners escaped, which meant that Massachusetts had the best
record of the industrial states. Other facts about the program--its purpose, its duration, the
number of prisoners released, the screening process--were also obscured.
Most obscure of all was the basic unfairness of judging Michael Dukakis' fitness to be president
on the basis of the "facts" presented in this ad. The president, after all, cannot change the
furlough programs in the states. And it is the states and localities, not the federal government,
that are responsible for crime prevention anyway.
This brand of unfair editing can be traced straight back to the '30s, but it gained
prominence in a campaign ad from the Kennedy-Nixon race of 1960. In a
Kennedy effort, pictures of Nixon nodding his head from the campaign's
televised debates were used to make it appear that Nixon agreed with the
Kennedy program.
But inevitably, suspect claim-making didn't work. In 1964, the Goldwater
campaign created its own backlash with a 30-minute campaign film that
contrasted such images as cleancut, smiling children saying the pledge of allegiance
(representing the Republicans) with scenes of supposed Democratic immorality and decadence.
Because the juxtaposition was too obvious, the film became a cause celebre, and the Johnson
campaign ended up using it as one of its own campaign documents.
Nevertheless, the lesson was learned: Rapid intercutting of visuals can short-circuit the normal
logic of viewer's thought processes. Viewers are also slow to recognize that most ads feature
actors and are highly sophisticated marketing tools using professional directors and the latest
high-tech editing techniques. As viewers, we react mainly to their emotional content.
Although viewers are often knowledgeable about why campaign advertising and marketing stress
particular themes, this form of media sophistication is very different from the kind of media
awareness or media literacy that defuses the impact of emotionally manipulative ads. Partly this
gap arises because most criticism of advertising is verbal, while the ads themselves are visual.
When the visuals disagree with the narration, people tend to base their assumptions on the
visuals. But in correcting ads, reporters focus their attention on what is said, not what is shown.
Some other 1988 campaign ads demonstrate this seeming paradox:


An anti-Bush Dukakis commercial associated the Republican candidate with cuts in the
social security system. As a senator, George Bush did actually vote for a freeze in social
security cost of living adjustments (not actual cuts). A visual showing a social security
card being torn up associated him with massive cuts.
Scenes of a polluted harbor linked Dukakis with Boston harbor problems. Such visuals
are absorbed by viewers who can't tell where the pollution shown originated. In fact, the
Boston Harbor ad was effective in creating doubts about how the mildly pro-environment
Dukakis would stack up against the arguably less environmentally aware record of his
opponent.
Which brings us to the question: How effective is political advertising?
Studies of political ads show that they can make a difference in close elections. But their
influence is complex and can operate in peculiar ways. One often-ignored factor is political
advertising's importance as a source of political information. For people who don't seek out other
forms of political information--the very voters whose response to ads is greatest--the effect of
political advertising is magnified. It may be even more important in state and local races where
other forms of political information are less available.
Almost no piece of communication has what is called a "direct effect," a measurable change in
behavior based on one exposure. But the effectiveness of political advertising is based not on
one viewing but on many. Much research has shown that repetition can predispose a viewer or
listener toward an ad's assumptions.
In 1988, one out of four voters told pollsters that their voting decisions had been influenced by
advertising. When you combine these reactions with many voters' lack of exposure to other
political information and the manipulative nature of many ads, the consequences are disturbing.
If we take it as a given--as I do--that an electorate possessing accurate information about the
things its members value is necessary for democratic functioning, we have to be concerned when
political advertising is misleading and when it drives out other forms of communication.
What's the remedy? A number of other democracies restrict the campaign process in various
ways to minimize the impact of manipulative ads or promote substantive debate on the issues.
But such regulations would represent a revolution in our free speech traditions and the system of
commercial access for political ads.
Advertising-savvy journalists can help by following a "news grammar" that avoids media
manipulation by campaign managers. Correcting the claims of unfair ads, and hard questions
about advertising's relevance to how candidates propose to govern, can help. But some ads are
so insidious that their impact defies journalistic caution.
Ultimately the true remedy must come from the voters themselves. TV viewers need to take a
hard look at political advertising, the ordinary as well as the blatant. If campaign managers
recognize that substance is what sells, they will be forced to provide it. Voters must demand that
candidates answer real questions about themselves and their lives. Only then will they cease to
be political campaign managers and become instead informed determiners of their country's
future.
Author:
Kathleen Jamieson is dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of
Pennsylvania/Philadelphia. She is a widely recognized authority on political advertising and the
author of several books on political ads and their effects.Reeves did not commission any
special poll to create "