The Realities of Advertising

I had to sigh when I read William Kristol’s litany of complaints regarding the new “Alex” advertisement opposing John McCain’s candidacy. It’s not that Kristol doesn’t comprehend the realities of military enlistment, family choices or the tides of war. He grasps and explains those things perfectly. What Mr. Kristol doesn’t understand, however, is advertising.

For a bit of disclosure, I work in marketing and am responsible for the development and deployment of various marketing tools in a completely non-political field. Worse, and more embarassing, is that I’m addicted to advertising. I’m addicted to adcritic dot com. My wife and some of my colleagues sit around evaluating the advertisements on television more than the actual shows we’re supposedly watching. And from that background, I feel a need to explain a few things about the Alex ad and political advertising in general.

The intersection of politics and marketing is a strange, convoluted landscape. We in the political punditry party have some bedrock assumptions about what’s important in our nation’s political discussion. Truth and facts are paramount. The issues are what matter! What plans do the candidates have for the country? Integrity, experience and strength of character are the hallmarks of our debate! Each and every one of these points are absolutely, 100% true. And in advertising, my friends, they are about as interesting as watching paint dry.

Advertising does not rely on facts, statistics or logic. In fact, it often seeks to actively avoid them. Successful ads don’t want to speak to the frontal lobe of your brain where facts are juggled and logical decisions reached – it wants to leap right past there and down to the lizard hind-brain where things are much more simple. They seek to pluck the strings of our emotions (often the most base and dangerous of them) and elicit a response. As advertisers, we don’t want you thinking about the fact that the latest widget is going to bust your checkbook and max out your Mastercard. We want you to remember that Bob Next Door already has the new widget and YOU look like a Damned Fool because you don’t have one!

Kristol strives mightly to point out the following “problems” with the Alex advertisement:

- John McCain won’t even be president when Alex is old enough to serve.
- McCain couldn’t make Alex serve anyway because we have an all volunteer army.
- The “mom” is a narcissist because she wants other people’s children to serve while hers remain safely at home.
- McCain doesn’t want a 100 year war in Iraq, but a peaceful post war presence

All valid points of debate and discussion, but again… in the advertising world, totally uninteresting. First of all, we don’t care about Alex and his pre-school playmates. They won’t be eligible to vote for nearly two decades and, as such, are persona non grata in the rules of target demographics warfare. We’re talking to the mothers here, and facts or logic can be damned. Here’s what we’re really saying:

You may be sitting there evaluating the relative experience of the candidates. You might be considering who will handle this economy the best or fuming over the high cost of gas at the pumps. But you’d better remember this: The Iraq war is still going on out there somewhere. And when your baby graduates high school, he or she may just decide to enlist and wind up in some far off desert. The next time you see them, do you want to risk having it be inside of a flag draped coffin?

And that, my friends, is a Louisville Slugger straight to the hindbrain. The ad, in terms of effective production, is a thing of beauty. It takes a rocket launcher to the emotional core of the target audience. The actress pulls off her role incredibly, wavering just on the point of tears, but not quite crying. The baby, (we don’t even know if it’s really her kid and, frankly, we don’t care) is in just the right mood – giggling but oh so vulnerable and adorable. The lighting is soft and casts the setting in non-threatening shades of white and beige. And as much as I may enrage our Right wing, war supporting friends to say this, everything about it hits a home run straight out of the park.

The factual premise may be wrong in the Alex ad. But for the advertising community, if cold, logical analysis is wrong we don’t wanna be right, baby. This ad works where it needs to and does so in a brutal fashion. Laugh at it if you like, but you do so at your own peril.