Transcript poladvert

TELEVISED CAMPAIGN
ADVERTISING
Trends and Introduction
CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL SPOTS
• Democratic theory and rationality have long colored evaluations
of the electoral process
• "Image" is often thought of pejoratively and placed in opposition
to "issues," thereby establishing "issue-talk" as the preferred
political message
• Democratic theory holds that citizens legitimately consent to the
rule of government only when good reasons are provided for their
commitment. Voting signifies this commitment, but many contend
that conviction based on "good reasons" is short-circuited when
"parties and candidates are `sold' to the electorate like
commodities".
Importance of Spot Advertising
• Spots are a primary vehicle candidates utilize.
• Paul Taylor (1985), a Washington Post analyst,
wrote "ads are, for better or worse, the very
dialogue of modern campaigns. They are the
places where the issues are joined, where images
are shaped and reshaped, where appeals are
boiled down to their essence".
• Increased reliance by campaigns, at every level of
the electoral process.
• Spots are ubiquitous. Measured in terms of total
campaign budgets, spots now account for 50 to 90
percent of campaigns' spending, and the trend is
increasing.
• 4600 hours in this election cycle, 1 Billion spent.
• Television spots are the political "information of
choice" with upwards of 70 percent of what Americans
hear and see in a political campaign coming their way
via 30 and 60 second paid political announcements
• There is mounting evidence that paid advertising
campaigns are effective
• e.g., In a major panel study of the 1972 presidential
race, McClure and Patterson (1974) found that 23
percent of those who changed their votes during the
general election reported political ads as the reason.
• Individual races illustrate that "the right ads, at the
right time" can materially impact an election.
Limitations on Effectiveness
• Often advertising campaigns are powerful in awakening and even
occasionally leading public perception
• Ads operate within strict parameters, the most important being the
meanings imposed by the audience.
• Spots, however powerful, are bounded by voters' beliefs about
the candidates' attributes and the existing political situation.
Jamieson contends that "advertising, whether brilliant or banal, is
powerless to dislodge deeply held convictions anchored in an
ample amount of credible information.”
• Advertising must resonate or ring true with beliefs the public
already holds about candidates and the world they describe.
• What Resonates with voters? Is a narrative form is most
effective
Trends in Spot Advertising
• Ambiguous or Concrete?
• "straightforward ambiguity," is where policy positions
are addressed with vigor yet the candidate reveals
little more about specific policy position than a
"genuine" concern
• Diamond maintains that the rule which is typically
invoked by those who construct political advertising is
"the candidate's spots typically say nothing as
forcefully as possible" (p.178).
• Ads are increasingly specific.
• Can frame interpretations within a particular domain,
keeping the content familiar with the audience's personal
experience.
• Additionally, campaign consultants are motivated to
frame their positive messages in terms of specific issues
in order to influence the campaign agenda and position
their candidates.
• increased use of negative or attack commercials, where
the ad's focus is on the opponent.
• In many current campaigns, negative commercials
constitute a majority of the advertising time.
• A philosophy among consultants that: "Negative campaigns
work. They are easier to mount, often cheaper to produce,
and they can undo more expensive positive campaigns").
• Negative appeals are believed to be more effective in shifting
perceptions of the target than positive appeals and seem
especially effective with the highly involved undecided voters
• Negative ads are more likely than positive to discuss issues
and to do so in a concrete way. WHY?
 Negative ads tend to make "retrospective" attacks on the opponent's
"record"
 Specific "failures" are more difficult for an opponent to deny,
especially when they are concretely documented.
 Directly attacking the character of the opponent without grounding the
spot in observable proof risks backlash
Percent of Negative Televised
Presidential Advertisements,
1960-1992
45
% Negative
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
The Uniqueness of Spot Advertising
• It is difficult, if not impossible, for the viewer to avoid
spots.
• 1. Political ads are embedded within programming, absent any
pre-warning, and their singular directed messages are easy to
remember (particularity if distractions within the ad are reduced,
Wright, 1981).
• 2. Viewers' selective exposure, noted in other mediums (e.g.,
newspapers), may be less apparent with televised spots since only a
non-listening or non-viewing citizen would achieve avoidance
(Chaffee & Miyo, 1983).
• 3. Research consensus that "television is used relatively nonselectively and in mass doses" (Gerber, Gross, Morgan, &
Signorielli, 1984, p.284), candidate's messages can be expected to
reach the vast majority of voters, interested or uninterested.
•
• 4. Research verifies the non-selectivity and penetration of
political spots. Recall measures indicate viewers make no
attempt to avoid the advertising of candidates of whom they
disapprove.
Spots are Truncated messages
• 1. Nearly all political spots are of the 60 and 30-second
variety with an accelerating trend toward shorter and
shorter formats; ten second spots are now common.
• The commercial format, as Postman (1986) observes,
"insist[s] on an unprecedented brevity of expression. One
may even say, instancy" (p.130).
• 2. The result of abbreviated presentations is that messages are simple,
usually focusing on a single theme. The "narrow-focus" of advertisements
draws or deflects attention from the candidate
• 3. Brevity is often blamed for the demise of informed voting decisions, or as
the dean of political consultants, Charles Guggenheim (1986), put it: "thirty and
sixty second spots encourage `the hit and run,' `the innuendo,' and the `half
truth'" (p. 52).
• 4. The non-transmission of substantive information is more a function of the
campaigns design than one of ad length (Diamond & Bates, 1984).
• Short messages, like some commercial and public service messages, can be
informative, unequivocal, and concrete.
• 5.Ads may not contain the information critics want or think essential, but in
comparison with the normal fare of political reporting on television voters learn
useful information about candidates.
• Devlin (1985), perhaps optimistically, reports "a sixty-second ad has, on
average, five times as much information about the candidate's position on
issues than a sixty-second snippet on the evening news"
Allows campaigns to limit
advertising themes
• 1. Candidates or their operatives are relatively uninhibited in
promoting a selected agenda through spots, be it what they want to
say or what they think the voters want to hear.
• 2. Unlike messages mediated by others (news reports) or given to
small, already sympathetic audiences (speeches), ads allow the
candidate to bypass the newsbrokers and party structure, going
directly to voters with a specific message. As consultant Michael
Murphy put it, "there's a precinct worker in every American home
and it's called a television" (1986).
• 3. While televised advertising is constrained by the medium (i.e.,
brevity, visuality), the spot's message is not subject to the
conventions of news gathering and reporting which often reduce
campaign information to a series of visually powerful "media
events" framing a "horse race"
• 4. Not only are they often substantive messages, the
information communicated by ads is always greater than
the overt content. When viewed within the context of the
general campaign, and taken together, spots can portray a
comprehensive story of the campaign.
• 5. Paid advertising provides an index to the campaign's
thinking. Joslyn (1986) observes that "the appeals used
provide an excellent insight into the predispositions and
assumptions of candidates and their staff" (p.44).
• Are spots are a window into the character of the
campaign and the candidate they represent.?