Banner
Is the Media Destroying Politics?
Thursday, March 24, 2011
I Guess Bad is the New Good
On my blog, there appeared an ad for a media group, McCleskey Media, who I guess produce political ads. On the main page, there are slides of the different advertising awards they won for different political ads. I figured, if these ads are so good maybe I should check them out. I clicked on the "Our Work" tab on the top of the page, and of the first seven ads I picked to watch six, were negative ads. I'm guessing I didn't pick the only six negative ads on the page. If these are the ads which are winning awards and elections, I guess going negative is the way to go. Do I think negative ads are better or worse than "content-free" ads, I'm honestly not sure, which by itself says something. It should be obvious that negative ads are worse than anything positive but, they the "content-free" ads are so useless that it may actually be a tossup between the two.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In a utopian world there would be no negative advertising. However it has been proven again and again that negative ads mobilize voters. So on the one hand it is very painful to sit through many of these ads, but on the other hand they really get people involved and running to the ballots...
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sarit. What's disappointing to me though, is not that people respond more to negative advertisements, because negative campaigning enrages and excites people to go out and vote. Rather, the fact that the majority of citizens respond more to content-free ads than they do to content-full ads. It's not enough for people to be swayed by facts and data; they need an emotional drive in order to act. To me, it reflects a level our people are on, and for that I'm not proud.
ReplyDelete