QandO
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July 09, 2004 Debating Oliver Willis.... A couple posts by Oliver Willis deserve a bit of discussion, I think. First, this one.... Bush must be getting desperate. He launched yet another attack ad today, the same day John Kerry and John Edwards launched 7 new ads that are all positive and forward looking.Well, that's certainly one way of looking at it. I doubt "desperation" is really a strategy, though. "Branding", on the other hand, is an important strategic issue in advertising. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, branding is defined as "the messaging work a company does to encourage consumers to feel a certain way about their product". Brand-creation advertising is not only important when creating your own image, but when attempting to create an image for your competition, as well. Over the past 20-30 years, the most common brands the GOP has attempted to create for Democrats is "Northeastern and/or out-of-touch liberal". It's often worked. When it hasn't, the GOP has been beat. The DNC, on the other hand, have generally attempted to brand Republicans as "dumb"--Reagan, Bush 43--or "heartless"--Dole, Bush 41, Reagan. So, why is Bush running negative ads, while Kerry runs positive ads? Very simply, Bush has already--for better or worse--established his "Brand" with the voters. Issue ads may be forthcoming--and worthwhile--from Kerry, but Bush is already a known quantity to the voters. Kerry, on the other hand, is not. And he's just added a new dimension--Edwards--to his ticket. While people in the blogosphere may be quite familiar with him, most Americans are not. The majority of voters are still blank slates, which makes them very receptive to new impressions. (i.e., Kerry is: "ultra-liberal", "working for the common man", "soft on terror", "a hero", etc) To take advantage of that, both Bush and Kerry are running Brand-creation advertising for Kerry. Kerry, to establish the image (read: spin) he wants the public to have of him....Bush, to do (read: spin) the same. I suspect, if Oliver looked at this from a strategic advertising view, he'd agree that this has more to do with the current paradigm in which the candidates find themselves than with the character of either candidate. If their positions were reversed....their ads would be, as well. __________________________________________________________________ This post requires less work, since various people in his comment thread inspired most of my response... Blacks? Don't Need 'EmOliver's readers point out:
Mostly, though, this comes down to the non-story that the Bush campaign decided it wasn't worth their time to go campaign in front of an uber-liberal organ of the DNC. Hardly shocking, and certainly not racist. It's a shame that the left side of the 'sphere has chosen to portray it like that. |