TELEVISED CAMPAIGN ADVERTISING

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TELEVISED CAMPAIGN ADVERTISING

• Trends and Introduction

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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".

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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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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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

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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Percent of Negative Televised Presidential
Advertisements, 1960-1992
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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.

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Spots are Truncated messages

• 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.

• 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, "insists on an unprecedented brevity
  of expression. One may even say, instancy"
  (p.130).

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• 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"

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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"

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• 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.?

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