Campaign Ads: Don’t Do It Rudy, and Sen. Thompson, Do You Really Want to be Called Fred0? Analyzing Political Ads and Symbols
Sep 15th, 2007 | 5 responses
It looks like we’re in for another season of campaign ads that accidentally entertain, and some that rise to fine and memorable art… and some that are the equivalent of ongoing intravenous poison that causes deafness.
I’m hoping some and even most of the ads we’re about to see will actually tell the story of each candidate’s serious heroic quest not as Sisyphus rolling the same old rock up the impossible hill, not their Charlie McCarthy tired limp old litmus test blather, and not the wilted archetype of god-mom-apple-pie… but as a surprising visionary.
The strongest, toughest, most precise and enduring points any candidate in this election can portray personally, are true lack of plasticized, predictable persona… and instead put square on the table daring and grounded thought about what we want/ need, not just now, (that would be a waste of brain power for our needs are obvious)… but far more so imagine a candidate speaking about what we can build, care for, help, heal, bridge, inaugurate, unleash by mid-century. The 40 year plan.
Trained in analytic psychology and growing up in an old world ethnic tradition steeped in storytelling, I was hired a decade and then some ago, to analyze a season’s worth of campaign ads and then to speak to designers, art directors and candidates-to-be about authentic symbolism in putting out their messages in graphics, writing, film and audio… as opposed to contrived symbolism. I’ve consulted in one direction or another or all, ever since.
The most central element I gleaned from those early years of watching some great ads and also seeming eternities of brain-eating formulaic ads, is that ads that rest on portraying a candidate’s strengths as they actually are… are the most effective ads… rather than gerry-rigging the candidate to look like something he/she isn’t, or is uncomfortable with doing or acting-as-if….
In terms of one recent campaign ad I looked at closely this week, and a film clip of one of the candidates speaking before a large group, I wished I could just call up these two well known candidates and head them off from what maybe looks like a mild current to them, but might actually become a political drop off. For instance, I’d say to Mayor Giuliani…
Don’t go after Hillary Clinton for her saying or not saying whatever about the MoveOn ad referencing General Petraeus; don’t define your campaign by using the “so when did you stop beating your wife?” ploy. And especially, why burn even more into the public memory synapses that some jingo poet rhymed the General’s name with a word that means ‘to abandon.’
And especially Mayor, don’t put a big stone in the middle of your whatever nourishing ideas you have by declaiming negatives you perceive, or think others perceive, about potential political opponents: that’s what our President often does nowadays, and many of his former supporters cant seem to leave his Ship of State fast enough.
You’re at your best, Mayor, when you are serious and funny, both. Gravitas and seeing ahead are your gifts. Knowing how to realistically make disparate elements work together is one of your highest skills. ‘Realistically,’ is the operative word in your life’s view.
Your signature humor as garnish where appropriate is refreshing to many. Don’t weaken yourself by attacking some media-induced outrage. You’ve earned a lot of stripes for gravitas that carries a dignity, a dignity that finger-pointing and shaming others never can.
And now, to you Senator Thompson… I see someone designed a graphic for your campaign that’s used as wallpaper behind you when you speak. The graphic means to say: Fred 08
But the letters and numbers are all run together so at a distance it reads Fred08. Fred0 8. I kind of like the idea of Fred0, it’s Hobbitlike, and Hobbits are very natural beings, and you seem to have a far less plasticized persona than many. That’s quite a talent in your world, holding onto your own shape instead of being a fake someone else.
This quality is one of your greatest strengths; to not be dragged around by what others want said or touted… Fred or Fred0, to remain your own man. Be careful though, relaxed casual can lead to imprecise, careless words and off-hand, un-thought-out stances.
In general, there are many other valuable pointers about how best to conduct a campaign that is memorable not for gaffes, but for fitness. Now having worked with quite a few winning candidates for various offices, and some who were in the end, more swayed by time-reckoned snake oil persona instead of coming back to their own genuine strengths over and over…
…the best advice and good wishes I have for any current candidate running for their party’s nomination for President, is to hire dynamite graphics artists who don’t take their cues from 1985 books called ‘Type, Layout and Logo Compendium’ stamped ‘library discard’ on the spine… and, to hire wildly inventive and prescient film makers who don’t take their cues from industrial hygiene films of the 1950s
…and most especially during the campaign, to every day, every moment, speak your own bold words, well-grounded plans, initiatives, judgments, as though you’ve already won the Presidency… and as if today is the very first day at work at your desk in the Oval Office…
5 Responses to “Campaign Ads: Don’t Do It Rudy, and Sen. Thompson, Do You Really Want to be Called Fred0? Analyzing Political Ads and Symbols”
Very nice sentiments, Dr E,, and I hope the candidates heed your advice.
From the look of thisgs, though, I think we’re in for more of smear and destroy season. I wish they would give a warning before a political ad comes on, so I can turn the TV/radio off in time.
Yes, Dr. E., yes.
I am all for the candidates taking responsibility for the maturation of the campaign process, and for those who seek to lead our nation to be their real selves, rather than being the ostensibly artificial candidates whom their consultants are telling them to be.
But I wonder, in what seems to me to be a chicken/egg question: Aren’t the politicians merely doing what the electorate is guiding them to do? It seems to me that when the voters take their own steps to insist on the maturation of the process, by consistently rejecting negativism, and by being devoted to the notion of rewarding honesty, confidence, and the real measure of the candidate, then perhaps we will see even a greater chance for candidates such as Rudy, Fredo, and even their likely opponents, to be their true selves, and not the manufactured, and fragmented, bits and pieces of who they really are.
Still, I have to say that It would be quite remarkable to see any one of the current candidates choose to lead by example in the style you propose. Maybe were they to do so, the electorate would be able to respond in kind.
Here’s to hoping.
domajot, you’re very funny; I agree… warning like on the pharmacceutical commericals, except beforehand, ‘might give you stomach trouble, cause nausea, or make your socks turn blue/red, etc.’
Stolios, that’s a good insight… pols ‘doing what electorate is guiding them to do.’ There’s a concept of the collective unconscious that I think might make an interesting article regarding pol demeanor and thought processes.
Too, I think that like other ‘institutions’ sometimes, people keep replicating ‘the same ‘ol, same ‘ol,’ not because they want to, but because their imaginations have been atomized long long ago; univision takes over then.
dr.e
“campaign ads that accidentally entertain without meaning to”
You work at the Department of Redundancy Department, right?
pcarroll; you’re right, although yours is funnier on
purpose. I fixed it. Thanks.