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

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

1960 1964 1968 1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992

% Negative

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 non-selectively 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.?