Political Communication

The Manship School Guide

Robert Mann, David D. Perlmutter

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780807139554
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

A new era of political power has arrived, one in which the social media forces of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter indisputably play a larger role in the political process. In this revised and expanded edition of Political Communication: The Manship School Guide, edited by Robert Mann and David D. Perlmutter, contributors discuss technological changes in the context of studies and techniques that remain unchallenged, resulting in a truly comprehensive manual of the world of political communication.
This shift in communication began with Howard Dean's social media interaction between voters and candidates. Later, Barack Obama redefined these techniques during his march to the White House. This intriguing development in political campaigns focuses the impact of social media on political consultation and communication, and this volume provides an up-to-date and peerless guide to the events, methods, technologies, venues, theories, and applications of political dialogues.
More than just a how-to primer, this new edition also expertly explains the process behind the political engine. Political Communication: The Manship School Guide includes individual essays that tackle the growing myths revolving around politics, such as the political money-monster and the "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"--candidate fantasy.
Twenty-seven chapters from a variety of contributors -- including academics, journalists, and political professionals -- provide insightful, astute, and critical essays for a deeper understanding of political communication and the many roles the public has played in twenty-first-century politics.
With this second edition, Political Communication: The Manship School Guide offers readers a valuable resource that clarifies the confusing world of politics.

Techniques and Types

7
Television Ads and Video

DANE STROTHER

I’m to write about TV commercials. But what is TV? We have Apple video boxes that allow us to buy what we want when we want it, Web TV shows, pay per view, podcasts, and s0on wireless spots available on our cell phones. It’s impossible to write about TV commercials in 2011 without a discussion of the many platforms available for political commercials. Writing about broadcast commercials alone is like explaining cell phones features with no mention of texting or discussing the Internet without mentioning e-mail.

Video communication has changed more in the past four years than at any time since the advent of cable television. When I make television commercials today, they are for YouTube.com, cable, broadcast, and e-mails. More people saw an attack ad targeting Hillary Clinton on YouTube in the 2008 presidential race then ever saw a Hillary Clinton ad.

We are creating ads for YouTube that can be as long necessary; the 30-second confines of broadcast are irrelevant to the Internet. We create ads for e-mail distribution that we fire off simultaneously with the broadcast version.

As recently as the 2004 presidential election, there was no YouTube and TV spots were never e-mailed. We don’t know how exactly we will communicate with voters four years from now. But we do know that if we operate off today’s playbook, we will not be effective.

The names, techniques, and approaches will most certainly be different the next time there is an open presidential seat. The stars of tomorrow are tinkering with an offbeat idea today.

Indeed, NBC’s new star political commentator and White House correspondent, Chuck Todd, began his improbable climb to the top of the network tree with a lowly web TV show for a very D.C.-insider publication called the Political Hotline.

This is not a Nietzschean statement—TV is not dead. But it’s different.

Broadcast TV

Broadcast TV is still the largest piece of the campaign communication’s puzzle. A television spot is usually created to solve a problem for a campaign or to create a problem for the opposing campaign. Even seemingly innocuous spots lay groundwork for a future attack or response. Every spot is different, and each campaign requires a unique approach. Consultants who use cookie-cutter ads and simply plug one candidate into another candidate’s spots will eventually fail.

Candidates should be wary if a consultant assures him or her that “this script always works.” For whom, where, how? During the 2008 election cycle, a firm insisted on making a “Veterans” spot in a California race even though the economy was melting down. That firm already had the Veterans spot written and much of the b-roll shot. It was a convenient short-cut, and it failed.

Television still matters disproportionably because as much as people claim they aren’t affected by television ads, they’re wrong. Video can make a hero look like a villain, stir anger, seize hearts, capture minds, affect change, and leave a lasting impression.

Costs

Professional television is expensive to create, deploy, and maintain. There was a time when only major political races had the luxury of TV ads, but the Internet and YouTube have evened the playing field a bit. There is so much money in politics today that even state senate candidates manage to get on TV, while candidates who can’t afford to place broadcast spots can make video for websites and the Internet. Technological advances in cameras and production gear have made it possible to create a broadcast-quality video for a fraction of what it once cost. Today, cameras are thousands instead of tens of thousands of dollars. But television technology is advancing as well. The newest product is high-definition television, and the cameras for it are vastly more expensive. So while someone with a business card and $5,000 can make a political TV spot, only those with resources, know-how, and the proper lenses can make a high-end spot using HDTV.

Once the spot is created, a long-time concern of political consulting becomes paramount: buying air time. In many parts of the country, it costs an enormous amount to air a spot in the major metropolitan areas. The ability to buy broadcast is most problematic in the biggest media markets, such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Moreover, the cost of placement in any media market is volatile. Radio and television rates reflect the number of people who see or hear the spots, so it’s much less expensive to buy television in Des Moines than in New York. One buys television not by the number of spots but by the gross rating point (GRP). Arbitron, a rating service, determines how many people watch a certain show in a certain market. For example, we know that a major prime-time show can have a rating of 32. That means that 32 percent of viewers who are camped in front of their TVs are watching that specific show. It should be noted that no cable show has a rating of even a 2.

So buying an ad in prime time will cost considerably more than buying a show during late-night, which may have a rating of 6 or so. Television-placement purchase rates are set at a cost per point. A purchase of 100 points means that everyone in the market ideally will see a spot once. A purchase of 1,000 points means that the average viewer will see a spot an average of 10 times. The cost per point is set for each of the 211 markets in America, and every market has a slightly different cost. For example, the cost per point in Baton Rouge is roughly $40, while the cost in Atlanta is $350.

Politicians, as always, have taken care of themselves and, by law, they have guaranteed they get lowest unit rate. This means that a political campaign can pay less than commercial advertisers if the spots run within 90 days of Election Day, which is called the political window. But political rates are still expensive.

Buying television time is a science. It’s not enough simply to produce a spot and throw it on the air. The key is determining what TV shows a campaign’s targets are watching and ensuring that the spots run during those shows. Saturday morning cartoons are out because children can’t vote. But if the target audience for a campaign is working-class women over the age of fifty who have little formal education, then soap operas are prime buys.

Regardless of when it runs, no ad stands alone. The office seekers of October have to compete not just with AT&T, Coors, and the local Buick dealer, but also with hundreds of other candidates for all sorts of races. The explosion of advertising clutter means that a spot must be hammered home over and over before the message is retained. Whereas a campaign might have once run a spot for 600 points, today 1,200 or 1,300 points are necessary. While we who make political ads try to distinguish ours from the pack, in the end it’s understandable that voters might disconnect from so many similar messages, staging, and plotlines. The result is ever-increasing expense to distribute less information, and with diminishing returns.

Accordingly, the goal for a political producer is to make a spot that has the production values and quality to stand up to the national ads that often bookend it, all without costing a fortune. Political producers are exceedingly adroit at making television spots quickly and inexpensively.

A well-run campaign spends 80 percent of its war chest communicating with voters. The idea is to keep overhead—salaries, candidate travel, and research costs—low so that the bulk of the money can be directed at the voter. In essence, a campaign is nothing more than a vehicle to deliver a message to voters; that message is a candidate’s sales pitch. Giving voters a reason to support a candidacy is the only way to win a political campaign. And the more times voters hear a candidate’s message—assuming it’s a message they are open to hearing and that it’s well-delivered—the more likely those voters are going to remember it.

Included in the 80 percent of campaign expenditures earmarked for communication is the cost of production. Television production costs roughly 10 percent of the actual time buy. This varies according to the producers’ ego and ability to keep costs down. Political advertising differs greatly from commercial advertising in the directness and cost of the production. Political producers are always looking for ways to keep production costs to a minimum. It is unusual for a political television commercial to cost more than $10,000, which is about a tenth or less of what a consumer ad costs to make.

Positive, Contrastive, and Negative Ads

There are basically three different types of political television commercials: positive, contrastive, and negative. The mix and use of these three genres seems to change virtually every election cycle: no lessons are permanent.

All three ad types are essentially used to define both the candidates in a race. The idea is to paint a beautiful picture of one’s client and a less-than-flattering view of the opponent. Polls are used to determine what aspects of a candidate’s life or views are best received by voters. For example, if the fact that a candidate is a self-made success moves undecided voters to him, then the television ad shows and tells that story. “John Doe is an up-by-the-bootstraps American success story. He’s turned his life from challenge to fortune by believing he could, working hard, being honest, and standing up through tough times that would knock down most people.”

Positive ads seldom, if ever, mention the opponent. Rather, they offer an introduction to a candidate and his family, testimonials from people he has helped, or an explanation of what he hopes to do if elected. Each political-consulting firm has a different philosophy about positive ads, but increasingly we are using them, packed with more information, than we once did because they are more compelling and because we need to provide a lot of information in a short time. Yet the directly opposite approach worked in the 2008 election cycle, when a congressman named Charlie Dent from Allentown, Pennsylvania, ran a great deal of TV and not a single positive ad. He hit his opponent, never made his case for himself, and won by a large margin. Incumbents are better able to run a larger mix of negative ads because they are known in the community and don’t have the burden of introducing themselves on TV. Challengers, however, must introduce themselves and make the case for firing the incumbent.

But generally, positive ads are the backbone of a good political campaign. A good positive ad begins to set up a contrast with the opponent without being obvious about it. In that sense, a positive ad can contain implied critiques of the opposition. This is because, ultimately, campaigns are about differences. Voters have to reach for one lever or another in the voting booth, and they usually know little more than they have gleaned from television ads, the Internet, or from neighbors or friends, who also got their information from the public domain. A campaign must give voters a reason to support a certain candidate while at the same time providing a reason not to support the opponent.

Nevertheless, the rules on negativity are changing. We are increasingly seeing that harsh negative ads are backfiring. For two decades, the pundits and national press corps have complained that campaigns were little more than intellectual mud wrestling. Year after year, however, political professionals would use negative information about their opponent and see a positive effect. It seemed a textbook truism that “attacks work.”

But a funny thing happened on the way to victory. Voters finally decided that they had had enough of the malicious tactics; they seemed to be genuinely tiring of slashing, demeaning ads, and they reacted by tuning out the message and turning against the messenger. Today a smart political professional uses a scalpel—not a chainsaw—to dismember an opponent’s campaign. For example, spots we produced for Louisiana senator Mary Landrieu in her initial race for Congress in 1996 were slash-and-burn attacks, with ominous music, dark pictures, and a sneering announcer. Those spots worked then but would be the cause of shaking heads today. When we once tossed up unsubstantiated attacks and let the opponents respond as best they could, today we must have third-party validation. And we know that when we go too far, the blogosphere and the press will team up to harm the campaign. This new oversight and accountability is good for the political process.

There will always be several roads to the truth in television ads. People vote for and against bills for a bevy of reasons, and sometimes a good idea is killed because it abuts a bad idea in a bill. Political pros will always be looking for the twist and the turn as a way to spin, but that’s what we’re paid to do. And quite honestly, a candidate’s true leanings and beliefs can be ferreted out by the bills he or she supports or opposes over a number of years. The truth is that some Republicans do believe the Department of Education should be abolished, but they would never say so publicly. It’s up to their opponents to give voters a true sense of their views.

The switch from harsh negatives began just over a decade ago, in Georgia. In the 1998 governor’s race, Guy Millner spent hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking his Democratic opponent, Roy Barnes, even before Barnes became the official nominee. Millner tried to demonize dozens of votes that Barnes had cast as a member of the state legislature. For four months, Milner aired one negative ad after another. According to the old manual, this was good politics: define your opponent before he gets a chance to define himself.

For the most part, the attacks were factual, but they were out of context. Barnes had cast more than fifty thousand votes in the legislature and each of them for a good reason. To the voters’ credit, they understood that. Millner’s tactless campaign was defeated by 10 percentage points. Millner was done in because he did not notice that the electorate was changing.

More recently, we saw the same problem in Arizona senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. McCain’s people tried to tie then-Senator Obama to a washed-up former “terrorist,” and voters were simply not going to accept such a stretch. A negative ad today must pass not just a truth test but a “smell” test: Does it feel right to voters? Again, there are no absolutes in political advertising, but there are general truths. Watching the electorate closely and gauging what does or does not move voters is the key to staying relevant and successful.

There will never be an end to negative ads by any means. But the question now is: What is a negative ad? Is it negative to point out that an opponent truly wants to abolish Head Start? Or to explain to voters that school vouchers could mean less money for public schools? Is it negative to explain that a candidate’s plans to “redistribute the wealth” could mean less money for your family?

Today’s voter is increasingly more responsive to what are called comparative ads. Eschewing screaming or name-calling, the best of the comparative ads simply put both candidates side by side and measure their records. Since today’s wily voter refuses to believe any unsubstantiated charge, it’s imperative that media consultants support all statements with documentation on the screen. Focus groups have taught us that using a headline from a newspaper makes an ad more believable, and using the banner from the newspaper makes it more believable yet. Interestingly, the federal requirement forcing candidates verbally to approve an ad at its beginning or end has made political advertising even more believable. The more information, the better.

It’s worth noting that one venue where disclaimers and accountability are not legally required is the Internet. We can put any video online and not be forced to state who paid to produce it. That’s a loophole Congress may want to close, as the Internet and television are quickly merging into the same box.

A final thought on negative ads is about how the issue of gender has changed. Not too long ago, it was believed that a male candidate had to be exceedingly careful in attacking a female opponent. Those days are over. Today voters view men and women as equals on the campaign battlefield, and the discussions about whether to go “softer” or not are over. Nancy Pelosi, Sarah Palin, and Hillary Clinton are prime examples of women leveling the playing field in terms of gender. The Obama campaign attacked Hillary Clinton in many states. In South Carolina, Obama’s team questioned her commitment to African Americans. All candidates, regardless of gender, are becoming fair game.

The Research Imperative

Once upon a time, consultants created television ads with little more direction than a gut feeling or an idea from a friend or campaign employee. The lore of spots being written on the back of cocktail napkins is widespread. Single-malt whiskey often served as a muse, and a campaign’s strategy could change with the moon. Those days are done.

If a modern consultant tells a candidate he or she has a “hunch,” the candidate should start looking for a new consultant. Creating television commercials has become as much science as art. Tens of thousands of dollars are spent on research before writing the first draft of a script, much less the permanent stump speech.

First, there is an extensive interview of a candidate by a consultant. Who is he or she? What makes her tick? What is he truly passionate about? Often this interview is videotaped and held for future reference. Indeed, a solid answer eventually could be cut for a video segment of a website. Once personality questions are exhausted, then issues are hashed out. Some candidates are willing to switch from unpopular positions, such as partial birth abortion. Others are resolute in their core beliefs and intransigent despit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Understanding the Industry
• Laws and Regulations
• Techniques and Types
• Constituencies
• Contributors
• Index