My Quill Pen

One day after the 1994 midterm elections, Ketchum Advertising, one of the leading members of the advertising agency community, ran a full-page ad in the New York Times decrying the slew of negative political ads in that contentious election, imploring “Don’t Call It Advertising.”

Citing just a few sterling examples of that era’s negative ads, the authors said, “This is filth. Political filth that is not advertising and shouldn’t be dignified by being called advertising.” Noting that the majority of those negative ads had been created by “political consultants,” Ketchum urged the media industry “to hold political advertising to the same standards you hold consumer advertising.” I still have a now-yellowing copy of that original ad, since its sentiments so closely paralleled mine.

Sadly, that principled call made 16 years ago has gone unheeded. This midterm election, mercifully concluded a few days ago, featured an all-time high in negative political advertising assisted by the unregulated, largely donor-hidden groups unleashed on the electoral process for the first time by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision earlier this year. Both parties are guilty.

With spending approaching (if not topping) $4 billion, there was plenty of money to fund the filth – and the volume is increasing. A study quoted in the New York Times found that during this election “attack ads — those solely about a candidate’s opponent — increased to half or more of all commercials.” Half? If you watched TV for more than 15 minutes during this election cycle – an exquisite torture for sure – you’d swear it was more like 90%.

Why does it continue? One reason is that it’s quite lucrative for local television stations to host these sling-fests since the onslaught only thickens as one candidate responds to another’s negative thrusts with negative parries of his or her own. The New York Times pointed out that a commercial in the local news at a Waco, TX television station that normally runs for $350 commanded $500 during the latest election – a premium of over 40% . With broadcast stations nationwide suffering from drastic revenue declines, the opportunity to fatten the bottom line is irresistible.

As an advertising media buyer years ago, I usually advised consumer-products clients to avoid television during the last stage of campaigns, lest they be engulfed by the tide of negativity that was inuring viewers to all commercials, political or not. My advice was: “Wait until the HQ isn’t so high.” (The HQ was the “Horses**t Quotient,” a term I used to describe the veracity of political ads.)

Do negative ads work? There’s no universal agreement, but certainly they can be memorable. In the 1986 Pennsylvania gubernatorial race, the Bob Casey campaign ran a last-minute television ad entitled “Guru,” implying that his opponent, William W. Scranton III, who had studied and practiced transcendental meditation, would bring the views of the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi to the governor’s mansion. It’s generally acknowledged as one of the dirtiest political ads of all time – and it helped Casey secure the governorship while boosting political consultant James Carville’s career into the big leagues.

I believe these ads hurt the political process by depressing voter turnout. (But then, perhaps that’s part of the strategy.) If you continually see Candidate Jones rail against Candidate Smith as a crook while Candidate Smith returns fire by castigating Candidate Jones as a special-interest puppet, you might eventually conclude it isn’t worth voting for either one – and stay home. I’d love to see a “None of the Above” choice on every race.

It’s difficult to boil down complex policy issues into 30-second sound bites – even if you took out the half-truths, distortions and out-of-context remarks. That’s just the nature of television. But what really angers me is the cheap-shot visual distortions of the opposing candidate that inevitably make their way into these ads – products of ever-more-sophisticated photo- and video-editing software and the willingness to use it freely. Between the over-graining, blurring, fake signal-interruption, jerky edits, image-blending and other techniques, these images create a potentially more influential negative message than the words. We first saw the power of negative images in the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960, when television campaigning was still in a nascent stage. While Kennedy looked fresh and promising, Nixon appeared sinister with his sweating and five o’clock shadow. At least it was Nixon who brought this on himself by refusing to wear makeup. The candidates sullied in today’s ads don’t have a choice how they appear in an opponent’s commercials.

The ads themselves are just plain bad – maybe another reason we shouldn’t call them advertising. As Marc Brownstein, writing in the Small Agency Diary of Ad Age, so aptly characterized them, “…most of the ads suck. They are formulaic. Mean spirited. And reactive.” The negativity reached such a point that one candidate I saw took to the air to criticize his opponent for running a misleading ad. I had to laugh. If I may wax biblical, “You reap what you sow.”

In addition to being classless and tasteless, negative political ads are gutless – but that’s probably inevitable, since most of today’s politicians aren’t known for intestinal fortitude. It takes guts to run a “clean” campaign. But among the waves of negativity, there’s at least one beacon of hope. In Colorado, John Hickenlooper, the Democrat candidate for governor, refused to run negative ads; his “Clean Campaign” even featured an ad called “Shower,” where he repeatedly douses himself fully-clothed under a shower to wash off the negativity of other political ads. It’s smart, creative, funny and effective – in other words, it’s advertising. By the way, he won. Congratulations, Governor-Elect Hickenlooper. You’re a rare breed.

I’m Paul Sevensky and I approved this message.

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