• ISCRIVITI ALLA NEWSLETTER

Some advertising campaigns concern all of us. Just take U.S. presidential campaigns – always balanced between denigrating the rival and dreaming of the future. Starting from this issue, Andrea Salvadore will be monitoring 2012 race for the White House. To figure out who will win, but, above all, how.

1964. In a meadow, a four years old girl plucks a daisy, counting its petals one by one. At ninth petal,a voice-off countdown starts. Then we see a nuclear mushroom cloud and we hear President Johnson voice saying: “These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die”.

2008. Newly declared winner of White House elections Barack Obama speaks to a moved and jubilant crowd. Obama, at his best, mentions a 106 years/old woman who queued to vote for him in Atlanta. He tells that Ann Nixon Cooper was born a generation after the abolition of slavery, when women and black people were not allowed to vote.

Our first story, the 1964 Daisy Ad – as chance would have it, a Bill Berbanch campaign – is commonly considered the origin of negative campaigns on television. The ad was only aired once and was hurriedly withdrawn after protests from Goldwater, Johnson’s rival. The nuclear bomb treat (on Vietnam) was a clear reference to Republican candidate Goldwater.

From then on, American presidential campaigns had been marked by an increase of “attack” ads, while positive advertising – focusing on the election program, on “hope and change promise” (quoting Obama 2008 iconic campaign) – decreased.

In order to promote transparency in political campaigns, in 1971 a Federal law came into force to regulate political contribution policies, through the creation of PACs (Political Action Committees). However, PACs are often supported and financed by big corporations managers and shareholders, which makes them easier to eludethe law. PAC’s contributors are the new masters of politics. They influence millions of voters because they don’t need to play fair: they use market penetration strategies, applying them to political campaigns. The line between Mad Men linear description of a product and Lost-like non-linear plot strategy is really thin. Time jumps, loose associations, out of context statements areused to manipulate rival candidate reliability. The Republicans rank first in this business, and not only because of their bigger funds. They beat even the Unions, that have thrown themselves in the business of negative advertising too. PAC’s campaigns against Gore and Kerry turned out to be successful. When it came to Obama, they tried to portray him as a Muslim, but they failed. Why? Maybe good old Frank Capra optimism is prevailing over American Horror Stories?Voters seemed to appreciate cruel attacking strategies, but then they asked for a vision of the future. And then Obama came. But crisis has undermined Obamavisions for a newly hopeful America. The most “user-friendly” president of American history now must face disappointment from the blogosphere.

In 1972 only 15% of campaign funds went to radio and television. In 2000 radio and TV campaigns reached their peak, but now they are losing significant market share in favor of the Web. In 1988 Democratic candidate Dukakis said that election campaigns were going to be based not on ideology but on competence. Two years later, commenting on his defeat, he said that TV 10 seconds sound bites had been decisive. Today, sound bite market is becoming more and more complex, and it’s being used on a variety of medias.

Fund raising for election campaigns will set a record this season, filling the empty space created by smartphones, which 50% of Americans owns. PACs can buy space on smartphones weekly to reach people within a 1-to-2 miles radius. There will be an increasing number of YouTube in-stream ads. But this campaign will be, above all, a Twitter Campaign (the first candidate to subscribe was the Republican Romney). We won’t hear statements such as “Obama supporters are like Facebook” as we heard in 2008 from Mark Penn, chief strategist of Hillary Clinton campaign.

It\’s all about occupying people minds and hearts. Four years ago, psychologists and neuroscientists (seeDrew Westen’s “The political brain” and George Lakoff’s “The Political Mind”) taught us that “narratives are brain structures” and Republicans are better at creating them, they choose the right words (just think of Reagan using “Confiscation” instead of “Taxation”). The Democrats are only left with the network of emotions, with their positive and strategic vision of reality. Thesame vision that made Obama win in 2008.

What happened so far in this campaign? The Republicans, despite their poor candidates, followed the “offensive” trend launched by PACs (their claim being “The worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression”). Romney will be Obama’s rival. Romney has already launched his first challenge to the current President: a commercial where Obama quotes a McCain ad that sounded like “If we keep talking about the economy,we’re going to lose.” The video is edited removing any reference to McCain and to the specific context in which Obama quoted the sentence. So this campaign begins with a fake. Obama’s team reacted through the Democratic Party, with a (negative) commercial that denounced Romney many turnarounds. But you do not win elections with stuff like that.

Now let’s get back to theorigins of “negative thinking” in political propaganda, to the girl who plucked daisies in 1964. In June 2008, right before the election of Obama, Tony Schwartz, co-worker in the Daisy Ad production, died. A master of advertising (Coca-Cola, Kodak, Chrysler), Tony Schwartz was the author of more than 20 thousand commercials. Although there was no mention of Goldwater in the ad, everybody associated the idea of the bomb with his name, because Goldwater mentioned it in its election campaign. Recalling something which lies in our subconscious is enough to revive our deepest fears. Schwartz often employed children because they are the mirror our fears, hopes, and emotions. Obama is doing so bad in polls he can save himself only by speaking again to thesubconscious of his voters, as he did in 2008. A president who has been elected for his positive thought can’t go negative. The Obama brand must sell its accomplishments and vision for the future. Or, better, he must sell emotions.We will see what happens in the coming months.

Andrea Salvadore is blogger and journalist for Italian TV channels La7 and RAI3. He lives in New York City.