450: Politics and Media

POLITICAL ADVERTISING: 

Dr. Janet McMullen

Reading Assignment: Powell and Cowart: Chapter 7, but should have completed the book by this time.  Additional reading,  Carvelle and Begalla (optional for 2002)  Be sure you can compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of various media, as discussed in Chapter 7 and 8 of Powell. We will not have time to discuss that thoroughly in class, but you will be responsible for it.

This page was updated 11/04/2002 .

Political communication....

Usually when we think of political communication, we think of political ads -- usually television commercials.  But political communication covers a lot more than just political advertising...

It includes:

The campaign consultant works with the candidate on each of these levels.  They also look at the candidate from a presentational perspective....What does the candidate "say" with his or her

All of those non-speech content elements which can have a tremendous impact on the image of the candidate and perceptions of the voters.  

In addition, the campaign has to communicate not only with voters, but with supporters (who may be financial supporters), with influential benefactors within the community or party, and certainly (and maybe most importantly) with the campaign leadership and staff.    All of the messages to the voters have to be effectively communicated to them, or the campaign doesn't have a prayer.....

All of these elements have to present a unified message and so it  probably merits visiting the second half of Carvelle and Begalla's rules for political campaigns.  These deal primarily with modes of communication and attitudes toward that communication.

Rules for Political Communication according Carvelle and Begala

First : Messages have to be

FIVE RULES OF GREAT COMMUNICATING:

1.    Tell a Story:  "Facts tell, but stories sell."  As, humans we process thing better in narrative style. This is especially true for men. That's why Jesus taught with parables.  Why the prophet Nathan, when he confronted David about his affair with Bathsheeba, told a story and asked David what he would do if.... Throughout the world our various cultures are full of myths, fables and fairy tales.  They have been our tools of socialization.

Certain things have to be in the story:

When you have conflict, you usually generate drama and with that the audience becomes emotionally involved, identifying with the hero or the individuals the hero is trying to save. Involvement means recognition and a higher probability of motivation which leads to action (voting).

Reagan was a great story teller.

2.   Be Brief:  Soundbites are essential.  Average length was 42.3 seconds in 1968.  For the election of 2000, they were 7.8 seconds.  The average candidate is on the air in any news story no more than 9 seconds.

It is a myth that sophistication and brevity are mutually exclusive.  Carvelle wrote, "One person's sound bite is another person's Golden Rule." (p. 113)

Carvelle and Begalla put together a list of guidelines for constructing a good sound bite:

3.  Be Emotional:   We all know that emotions lie.  We've all said or done things because we were emotional and wondered what in the world we were thinking.  But emotions are effective persuaders and they're effective in helping us remember ideas, events or people.  

Clinton's greatest strength was his ability to empathize with ordinary people and communicate that empathy in his words, his demeanor and his activities.  Playing the sax on Arsenio Hall's program was an example.  "Just like you, but may be a little cooler" was the effect of that event for him.  Always in his state of the union addresses were people in the balcony who illustrated the human and emotional side of the issue he was discussing. 

4.  Be Different:  Develop differences that force audiences to make the choice only one way.  Carvelle's mother, known as Miz Zippy, sold encyclopedias to put her many children through school.  She looked for a family with toys and a bass boat in the yard.  Those of you who have read the book or who were in class will remember the significance of that illustration. Essentially, she forced a choice.

5.   Be Relevant:  Use the "so what" test.  That test should direct what you talk about and how you talk about it.  Ross Perot made the budget relevant with phrases like "clean out the barn," "job losses," "foreign competition," and one of the  most famous of his phrases, "that giant sucking sound of jobs going to Mexico." (p. 121)   When Perot got off track and saw conspiracies against himself and even his daughter's wedding, his relevance was lost because he appeared to be, as Carvelle wrote "half-a-bubble off plumb." (p. 122)

Bush made a similar mistake.  While his poll numbers were going down, and Clinton was talking about the economy and the recession, the Bush camp came up with a new slogan. It was "Annoy the media, reelect Bush."  Now while that might have been clever, cute and made them feel better, somebody worrying about how he's going make his house payment is not going to have a lot of motivation to care about annoying the media.  It just wasn't relevant to anyone outside of the political circles in which the Bush supporters existed.

6.   Repetition is Vital:   That means repeat your main ideas over and over and over and over...... Stay focused on your key points.  Begalla and Carvelle compliment George W. Bush on his high degree of focus.  He had four issues and he kept repeating them: education reform, welfare reform, criminal justice reform and tort reform. "Al Gore often seemed to flop around like a fish or a duck in search of a core rational for his candidacy." (p. 123)

The authors drive this key point home with a great example from the sports world as they describe Evander Hollyfield testifying for God and his faith after his title win.  (See page 123)  They say, "think of it as a game..."  The reporters are trying to get you off your message, and you're trying to stay on it.  To win, you must be focused and flexible.

 

Pyramid of Awareness:                                                                                                            

--1%--

 Key Decision-makers

----5%----

 Key Influencers : staffers, lobbyists

 

--------15%--------

 

 

 Highly Informed Folks: those who read the news, watch CNN, etc.

-----------79%-----------

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Everybody Else

 

Now while this diagram isn't exactly to scale, you get the idea.  Carvelle and Begalla wrote, "Your future and your fortunes are in the hands of the 79% " -- who aren't very well informed. But they emphasize that it is also important to remember that "ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing." (p. 130)

The rest of their rules:

Rule 8:  Work your A... off:  The harder you work the better luck you'll have.

Rule 9:  Turn weakness into strength.  James Carvelle has ADHD.  Jefferson was a poor speaker but became a great writer. Lincoln has bouts of depression, but it gave him an understanding of the pain the nation was enduring.  T. Roosevelt was sick as child and determined to be a vigorous adult (Rough Riders). LBJ was insecure about his rural background and so supported education in every way he could.

Remember that different people learn in different ways.  "My way or the highway is dead-end leadership." p. 15

Rule 10:   Be able to adjust rapidly.  The Carvelle-Begalla motto was "speed kills" and they responded quickly to any ad or statement.  They were able to get new spots on the air within 24hours to respond to any event or attack.  But all of this has to be in the context of STANDING for something.  If you're perceived as "wishy-washy" or willing to say anything to get elected, that's bad news.

Rule 11:  How to Recover

Everybody messes up.  Admit it. Take responsibility -- hopefully before the opposition can accuse you. Then do the best you can to set things right.  Then, if the attack persists, fight back.  Sometimes it is appropriate to counter-attack, particularly if the fault is not totally your own and other are legitimately liable, as Firestone believed Ford was when the tire controversy came up.

Carvelle and Begalla fault Clinton for not always doing that well, but "With practice, he got real good at apologizing."

Rule 12: Know what to do when you win...

Have a plan. Be prepared for more than the election. Otherwise win may turn into "splat" when the winner is knocked off the pedestal.  Paul Begalla wrote about  a call he got from his mentor, Mack Shields, " You are about to have a terrible thing happen to you...You're about to know success at a young age...."  and "Don't believe you're own B.S..." (p. 196)  Begalla writes that he didn't win the election, Mr. Clinton did.  Keep it all in perspective, and remember that humility is much more attractive than arrogance.

Some strategies they recommend for after the win and preparing for it before the election (paraphrased):

 

Political advertising is now the MAJOR means candidates use to get their ideas to the voter.  The television spot is most used form of advertising. They draw more audience that print or radio.  It is expected that $665,000,000 was expected to spent on political advertising in the 2000 elections (according to the Television Bureau of Advertising) 

According to Powell and Coward, the literature shows some very specific attributes of campaign commercials:

Before we discuss political advertising per se, it is important that you understand some basics about broadcast advertising. You should remember this information from Com 240 and Com 316.

Broadcast advertising operates on a MICRO LEVEL:( individual commercials) and on the MACRO LEVEL (the entire campaign). Campaigns have specific goals and the individual spots are designed to contribute to the attainment of the goals in a specific way.

Each campaign and each commercials should have the basic compositional characteristics necessary for good communication.

Be able to discuss how each of these can be illustrated in a specific campaign. Unity is illustrated by the fact that the logo for every commercial for a specific candidate will be identical.

Certain lines or phrases will be repeated, as when the Democrats said the Republicans were "obsessed" with impeachment prior to the 1998 elections.

Emphasis can be achieved through repetition, cultural references, or the "responsive chord" discussed by Tony Schwartz.

Most commercials follow five basic steps of persuasion:

In order to accomplish that, appeals are used. Appeals fall into two primary categories.

There are also some standard commercial formats with which you should be familiar:

Now, back to POLITICAL SPOTS...... 

Two Main Schools of Thought concerning advertising approaches in politics:

1.    INFORMATIONAL APPROACH:  Here the goal is to provide information about the candidate

2.    EMOTIONAL APPROACH:  This approach focuses on image of the candidate.  

As long as I've been in media, the basic rule is that informational appeals don't work.  Logical appeals don't work. At least they don't work by them selves.  Emotional appeals are the power-house persuaders.  That's why you see more emotionally based commercials on television.  (What does say about our society?  About our sense of responsibility?)

Powell and Coward lay out three key elements in a political ads:

Because time and money are always limited, the goal is to pack as much "bang for buck" as possible.   Raymond Strother, campaign consultant, put it like this: "A good political campaign is almost like poetry. It has to be stacked with layers and layers of meaning." (Powell and Coward,  p. 114)

 

Budgets....

It was predicted that political advertising may exceed $450 Million in the 1998 election season. Issue advocacy spots could account for another $135-150 Million. In one race, Al D'Amato and Church Schumer in New York spent about $1 Million per WEEK in this election. (Tedesco, 1998)

Early estimates by Television Bureau of Advertising predicted $665,000,000 for campaign advertising in 2000, but a late October estimate by Paine Webber figured the number at a full $1 billion.  That's $335,000 more than the same firm predicted just a few months ago.  Only auto and retail commercials are more numerous than political ads this year! (Wayne, 2000)

Who puts all these commercials on the air?  Political consultants are responsible for most of them, and they're making lots of money too.  In addition to candidates and political parties, interest groups are hiring consultants.  These professionals get flat fee and sometimes a hefty bonus if the candidate wins. And it's not just major office candidates that are hiring consultants.  They're being hired for state and local races and even to market ballot issues .   Campaign contributions are up, and when campaign costs for a Congressional race run $1 million plus another million from public interest groups, candidates and their supporters want to be sure the funds are spent in the most effective way.  That justifies the hiring of a professional.  New technologies, easy availability of computer analysis, and sophisticated statistical analysis, make this all possible.

So what kinds of budgets are available to Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore?  Each has $67.56 million in matching funds as well as $298 million in soft dollars from their respective political parties.  In the primaries alone, they spent $466.4 million.   We'll discuss funding more in our campaign finance lecture next week. (Wayne, 2000) 

In 1952, the half-hour speech the was the norm for political candidates. By 1980, it had been replaced by the 60 second spot.  Now, the thirty-second spot is the norm.

Television political spots have been increasing with each election, as has spending.  In swing states in the close election of 2000, television inventories have been bought out by political advertisers.  A story in the Washington Post  10 days before the election reported that in Philadelphia, there were no fewer than 31 separate political commercials aired on three stations in a SINGLE hour.  Philadelphia's leading station, WPVI-TV is sold out through the election.  Some of the spots are selling for as much as $9,,600 a minute!

Stations are learning that lots of money can be made in an election year and are budgeting for it.  Some observers say they're making a killing!  Ads in some states have jumped from $70 per rating point to over $250.  Seattle station rates which were $420 in August, soared to $800 in October.  There are some restrictions about what stations can charge (we'll discuss lowest unit charge later), but if you want to lock in a specific time slot --which you may want to do if you're going after particular voter groups-- the candidate may need to pay top dollar. Even at that, a Florida candidate's consultant complained that all the good spots on the schedules are long gone, and TV executives where happy that political buyers were taking spots at 2 or 3:00 in the morning.  With a race so close, they were willing to get anything they could get. (Connoly and Milbank, 2000)

Media Strategy:

While budgets are more restricted in the off-year elections, spending money well is always a must.  Given that each add needs to reach a voter three times before it can begin to have an effect, that means a lot of repetitions.  How do you buy ads to make sure that voters get the message you need them to get.  In order to understand how this works, you need to have some basic understanding of media buying: 

First you have to determine which types of media you will be using, but there are lots of options and lots of reasons for selecting each of them.  Some of the options are:

Those have to be selected in terms of the following questions:

Then you have to consider that different media offer different advantages and disadvantages.  A sign in a yard may help with name recognition, but it won't explain what the candidate cares about.  It may offer a slogan, but that's about it.  Same is true for billboards.  They can be very important in the first part of the campaign where name recognition is developed, but they're not going to help people have a reason to vote for the candidate.   Radio is cheaper, but TV has more impact with both aural and visual communication.  Broadcast is temporal, but print ads can be cut out and referred to at a later date.  But not everyone reads the paper, and most people watch TV.  But TV ads are terribly expensive, but they reach more people than any other medium.  Still, they are so limited in time and scope, they're not very good at dealing with complex issues.....You get the idea.

As Stephen Black said when he visited class in October, 2002, no matter how many people he could meet during the campaign that would be a drop in the bucket.  If wanted to get elected, he HAD to use TV.

So how do you approach the TV buy?

Gross Rating Points:  These are the estimate of the total people who saw the spot on all the stations on which it ran. It's based on the ratings of all the programs in which the spots ran.

Frequency:  This is the number of times an individual voter sees a specific spot.  It is usually calculated by dividing the GRP by 100, so a frequency of 100 points would mean the voter had seen the spot one time.  The basic assumption is that any commercial has to be seen three to five times in order to have an effect at all.  So you must buy 300 to 500 points for the campaign to have impact.

Reach: How many people does a show attract.  So to get 100 points, you have to have a 5 spots in a show that gets a 20 rating or 10 spots in shows which have a 10 rating. 

So what are the guideline:

So as a consultant and candidate builds a campaign strategy, they list the messages they need to get across, and plan how they will order those in order to build a case for their candidate.  (You will note that both Riley and Seigelman are using phrases from earlier ads in their later campaign commercials.)  

Powell and Coward provide some guidelines for types of campaigns (p. 115):

Proliferation of multiple media channels makes this even harder, because people are no longer watching one of three channels and the message has to be spread around to cover all the options.

Strategies:

WHAT DO CAMPAIGN ADS DO FOR CANDIDATES?

WHAT DO ADS DO FOR VOTERS?

Some scholars argue that ads offer more information about candidates policies than network news: Why? (discuss) [Because of horse-race coverage of elections.]

Ads argue the relevance of issues to our lives:

(See if students can find an example of a current ad which illustrates that.)


Ads define the nature of the presidency by stipulating the attributes a president should have and in the process certain occupations are legitimized:

Advertising offers a window through which the leadership qualities of the candidate can be examined:

When nomination acceptance speeches or election eve speeches are used as a framing device for political advertising, it can reveal the degree of focus in the campaign:

Looking at primary advertising and a candidate's response to it, can indicate how effective a candidate may be in the general election.

News coverage of campaigns prevents candidates from presenting themselves in a totally untrue light, and opposing candidates also provide a check and balance on that problem.

What methods are used to make ads effective?

Political Argument by Visual association :

These types of ads stopped after Watergate because the scandal forced politicians to examine what was fair and unfair. Nobody wanted to appear unethical after THAT!.

Replacing the visual association attack ad were THREE new forms:

Jamieson says that by lead to reemphasizing the verbal elements over the visual, Watergate actually had a very positive effect on campaigning. Brought it back to more traditional roots.

She also emphasizes that speeches are still important. Advertising is usually a distillation of the positions made in speeches.


How do we evaluate ads?

The Center for Media Literacy has put a list of criteria on the Internet: http://www.pbs.org/pov/totk/dissect.html

The following questions are provided:

Structural Features of  a Campaign Ad:

Another page on the site offers additional information on the anatomy of a political commercial.  Ten structural features of a campaign ad are examined in "Dissect an Ad" :

The PBS site has some excellent resources for this election. There are tips for viewing ads and other great resources, including how an ad is put together, a history of political advertising.

Check out PBS Democracy Project:   http://www.pbs.org/democracy/index.html 

At the site, don't miss the "30 Second Candidate"  page, especially "from idea to ad." You should really spend time at each of those sites.

A great part of the PBS site is a subsection which deals with the "Tricks of the Trade" -- how do you make a candidate look good and how do you make one look bad?

See: http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/tricks_of_the_trade/   

 

TRUTH in advertising....or half truths..?

A USA Today article in 2000 listed  some of the techniques used by national candidates in that election:

This article by Martha T. Moore offers the techniques and the ads. You can view them on the site. I checked to see if the url is still operational, and it is: http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/e3057.htm  The article reported that "52% of ads in the 1996 general election contained at least one misleading statement."  

While it is important to have the fact straight, it's the details that can make all the difference in perception of the audience of those facts.  Details can be twisted or omitted and the truth be hard to find in those facts....

TYPES OF CAMPAIGN ADVERTISING:

Issue Ads

Another excellent site is found at the Annenberg School of Communication's Issue Ads @ APPC --  http://www.appcpenn.org/issueads/index.html  

The project is run by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and contains excellent information on issue ads:

http://www.appcpenn.org/issueads/typology.htm regarding what an issue ad is and what types there are

http://www.appcpenn.org/issueads/iindex.htm for a list of issues and organizations funding those ads

http://www.appcpenn.org/issueads/glossary.htm is a site which offers a Glossary of Key Terms in Issue Advocacy.

Issue ads are those which promote particular policy, ideas or opinion.  They are sponsored by organizations and do not advocate the election or defeat of a particular candidate.  Because they don't specify candidates, these commercials don't fall under the rules of the F.E.C. and there are no limits on the amounts of money which could be spent on them.

Express advocacy is communication which promotes the election of a particular candidate and may use the words "vote for," "elect," "defeat," etc.  These ads can be sponsored by political action committees, parties, or even individuals. These commercials do fall under the rules of the F.E.C.

The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974 created a distinction between two types of funds sponsoring campaign commercials.  These two classifications do not include money spent by non-profit organizations.  

There are several distinct types of issue ads:

Express Advocacy Ads fall into two categories:

According to a study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, issue ads were used more heavily by March, 2000, that they had been at the same place in previous election cycles.  Somewhere near 40% of the issue ads aired by that time were of the "attack" variety and the issues most included were health care, patient's bill of rights and the environment. (Aday, 2000)

 Attack Advertising:

As campaigns draw near the close, especially in an election as close at the 2000 presidential race, candidates tend to pull out the "big guns."  No longer are punches pulled, and the attacks start flying, particularly from the candidate who may be behind in the polls.  At the beginning of the 2000 presidential race, each candidate claimed an unwillingness to "go negative."  Still the question emerged, when does dealing with facts and issues become an attack or a negative campaign tactic?  Sometimes the attack or negative ads are not funded by the party or the campaign, but are still associated with the candidate.  

Two controversial ads appeared in the 2000 campaign:

The Project on Campaign Conduct offers a detailed site with some good information about attack advertising ( http://www.campaignconduct.org  ) , and you should be sure to check your text books for related assigned chapters.

Attack Advertising is defined as that, unlike legitimate discussion of issues, consists of focus on rumor, innuendo, stereotyping, or other unflattering or demeaning representations of candidates.  The appeals which are used are usually fear and sometimes prejudice.  

We should make some distinctions here. Positive ads are those which basically focus on the candidate's attributes.  A negative ad   Not all negative advertising is attack advertising.  Some negative ads do carry valuable information to voters about a candidate's  voting record or stand on various policy issues.  Those, especially those which offer comparative information about a candidate and the candidate's opponent, can be very valuable.  Comparative ads can serve useful purposes for voters. 

Why use negative advertising? 

It may be a simple desire to get "more bang for the buck."  Regular commercials have usually only one or two goals in mind: remember the name and move the product.  Political commercials may have a number of goals in mind:

Research has shown that voters agree on some clearly shared values.  These include compassion, honesty, responsibility, fairness and respect for others.  Voters dislike ads which do not exemplify these values.  For example:

Attack ads may not have all of these characteristics, but may include only one.  The worst ones will have all of them at some level. 

There are some standard methods of getting the attack message across:

(Project on Campaign Conduct,  http://www.campaignconduct.org/research/attac-campaigning.html )

But candidates confuse the issue.  Not every negative thing articulated by an opponent is negative, but may be characterized that way by a candidate.  In addition, sometime negative ads are produced to respond to an attack ad by an opponent. (Tirado, 2000).  This happened whenever the "character" issue came up in the Bush-Gore debates.  Questions about campaign finances under investigation were characterized as "going negative."

So what should be done about negative advertising?  Some states and organizations have developed codes of ethics or conduct which could be used as guidelines for candidates and consultants in political campaigns. (Smith and Kidder, 1996 )  But this may not solve the problem since an APPC study found that 40% of Issue Ads are attack ads, and these are not funded by candidates or their parties. (APPC, 2000).

Election experts insist turnout will be a key factor in determining the outcome of the election, and as a consequence, possibly even the presidency. Yet voters seem to be very turned off .....

It may very well be that negative advertising has a key role to play in that lack of enthusiasm for the political process. John Ellis of the Boston Globe (11/1/98 ), may have summed it up fairly well....

"Imagine that every Budweiser advertisement that ran in 1998 denigrate beer. Imagine that every IBN advertisement this year said computers were useless and a waste of money. Then add another $90 million of poorly produced, badly written attack ads excoriating mid-sized sedans as lemons and you have some idea of how destructive political advertising has become."

It has been reported that $500 million was  spent on negative ads, a greater amount than the entire ad budget of AT&T in 1997 ($475 Million), or the combined ad budgets of Budweiser and IBM ( $207 Million, $202.5 Million) (Ellis, 1998)

Research has also shown that voters do NOT like attack ads. They particularly dislike those which are inflammatory and believe that some are worse than others. Voters prefer two-sided ads and see them as more useful than the single sided attack ads. (APPC , 10/8/98) Research has demonstrated that negativism in media coverage also breeds cynicism and that leads to a perception of voter ineffectiveness, which leads to voter apathy and inaction. (Pinkleton, 1998) 

So do attack ads work?  You bet!  Richard Lau and Lee Sigelman presented a paper at a conference at the National Press Club in Washington by the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies which looked at previous research on negative ads and revealed some key results from their research on negative advertising in political campaigns.

(Project on Campaign Conduct: http://www.campaignconduct.org/reserach/White-Paper.html )

Cheron Brylski, a media consultant who specializes in political campaigns, had this to say about negative advertising, "The public always says that they hate negative ads, but the truth is, they are what seem to get the public's attention in the final days of the campaign.  It definitely works at stalling a campaign, at depressing votes and at confusing voters."  (Tirado, 2000). 

Thomas Mann, Senior Fellow, Governmental Studies, offered a bit of a different perspective on negative ads in an editorial in Newsday  in June, 2000.  He wrote that focus on negativity often hides more than it reveals and misses the point entirely.  Not always are ads which are negative unfair.  Sometimes advocacy ads can mislead the voter and be "utterly bereft of useful content."  Whereas attack ads "often provide more useful issue information and are less deceptive than those that advocate." He warns that candidate charges the an opponent is "going negative" may not be a justifiable criticism, but rather it may be a unproductive and contribute to cynicism on the part of the voting public. (Mann, 2000) 

Never the less, when campaigns are close and the election is running down to the wire, attack ads become a key to campaign strategy.  Stories in major news media the in the two weeks prior to the election focused on exactly that strategy: "Gore to Attack Bush in Ads on Social Security"  describes a "bombardment of television ads attacking Texas Gov. George W. Bush on social security..." is just one example. (Balz, 2000) 

On the other hand, all those spots can turn voters off.  One irritated viewer in Wisconsin was quoted on CNN, "We've heard them 20 to 30 times. It's over done."  Wisconsin, one of those crucial battle ground states in the 2000 presidential election, has been saturated with political advertising, not all of it efficiently placed.  Since June, candidates in the presidential race spent $1.7 million on Green Bay stations alone with one week remaining in the campaign.  Some local executives, while happy with the business, worry that the commercials are turning off viewers who are turning off the stations.  Voters are "sick and tired of hearing the same thing over and over." (Franken, 2000)

You can be sure when the campaign is over, there will be lots of analysis about how much money was spent and how well it was used.   

Important Links on Political Advertising:    

Dr. Mc's Political Commercial Evaluation Form:

In addition to the links listed above, there are several others which offer some good information about the subject of campaign advertising.  Most of the major news sites offer campaign ads on line which you can view.

RESOURCES:

Copyright, 2000

Janet McMullen

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