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Fri. Apr 09, 2004

Advertising To The Choir

I guess it’s not exactly news that political ads often distort reality. But the latest ads from MoveOn.org step over a couple of lines. Or rather, stomp all over them. I’ve seen it a couple of times on CNN, and can’t find a script of the ad on their site, so I’ll be paraphrasing a bit.

The ad starts off with a picture of Bush, and some Texas twangin’ voice reading a script, as if he were George Bush. Eventually, across the bottom of the screen is a disclaimer that says something like, “George Bush’s voice is being imitated.”

It’s not even a good imitation.

To me, this technique says, “George hasn’t given us enough actual misstatements we can use, so we’ll have to make some up.” Or, “it’s too hard to use his own words and twist them to say what we want, so we’ll have to make some up.”

Can you recall, in the history of political advertising, anyone employing weak voice mimicking of a candidate as a way to mock them and make a point? I can’t, because most of the time, savvy political operatives are able to find plenty of bonafide sound bytes from their opponent that are well worth deconstructing. They don’t have to make stuff up.

Then we have the second line crossed. I think this ad is the result of a previous MoveOn.org commercial, which used an actual recording of Richard Clarke’s voice (I don’t know if it was Commission testimony, or his appearance on 60 Minutes). Clarke objected strongly, and demanded that his voice be removed, as he did not give permission for it to be used in a political ad.

The ad continued running for several more days.

Now in this new ad, the bad Bush imitator is followed by what I’d like to believe is a Clarke imitator (after all, he’d told them not to use his voice already). Except when he’s speaking, there’s no disclaimer placed at the bottom of the screen saying, “Richard Clarke’s voice is being imitated.” There’s nothing at all. Except at the very end of the commercial, mixed in with the fine print that’s on-screen for about two seconds, it says “This ad is not endorsed by Richard Clarke.”

Gee, could you possibly be more insulting to a guy who seems to be criticizing your opponent far more effectively than a thousand MoveOn.org ads?

In both cases, the same effect could have been accomplished by narration of on screen quotes, mixed with a news photo of the person quoted. It would have been a measured approach, that had the tone of “making a case,” not “mocking a President.”

This is just more preaching to the choir. Expensive preaching, and therefore, a waste of resources. MoveOn.org seems to greatly enjoy what they’re doing, but they don’t seem to grasp, this isn’t about “fun.” This isn’t about rallying your own troops with gleefully mocking ads. This is about converting people, changing minds, and swaying those in the center.

I think this is another in a decade of examples where hatred of a political opponent has completely blindered someone to “the better path.” They are so caught up in making their attacks as vicious as possible, they don’t see how their obvious frenzy negates their underlying message. Their tactics void their strategy.

To me, this ad came across as a mocking cartoon, a bad one, with the added insult to Richard Clarke. If MoveOn.org wants to continue to be a courtside jester and entertain those on the left sideline, that’s their right, I guess.

But I thought they wanted to influence the election. Ads like this show that they don’t have a clue how to do it.