Turning on the TV these days causes advertising expert Tobe Berkovitz to groan in frustration.
When pre-Election Day content is especially egregious, Berkovitz admits to lashing out at the screen with critiques that only his wife can hear.
The onslaught of subpar political advertising blaring across the airwaves is what irks him. And it will only get worse between now and Nov. 8, he said.
It’s the cliches. It’s the “rainbow coalition” of people parading across the screen, allowing candidates to suggest that they’re supported by many ethnicities, races, and other “identities.”
“To me, it’s like, ‘Here we go again,’” Berkovitz, now advertising professor emeritus at Boston University, told The Epoch Times. “I was in the business 30 years. Now, my goal is to not watch any of this.
“I start trying to click [away from it] as fast as I can, or I just sit there and moan [about how poorly crafted] all this stuff is.”
But he understands the ad creators’ conundrum.
At this point in election season, there’s no time to craft clever campaigns. With a little more than a month until Election Day, hired consultants scurry to control a candidate’s message.
No More Mr. Nice Guy
In the early days of a campaign, wordsmiths carefully craft compelling messages.“Campaigns that have resources absolutely message-test the content that goes into their advertising,” Jake Neiheisel, an associate political science professor at the University at Buffalo and a specialist in political communication, told The Epoch Times.
If the response is favorable with paid ad-watchers, the message moves forward. When ad-watchers frown, commercials are sent back for more tinkering.
When it’s still early in the campaign season, political consultants roll out “warm and fuzzy” ads, Berkovitz said. Those often include a candidate’s family and, when possible, a pet dog or two.
“You’re telling the voters that you are a family person, and you have a dog or a cat, and you’ve been living the nice family life,” he said.
“The advertising is a little more positive when you’re trying to create a positive image for your candidate.”
Some candidates “take the high road,” focusing on what they’re in favor of rather than mentioning an opponent’s views, according to Berkovitz.
But that’s likely to change in the state governor’s race, as well as in races across the country, as Nov. 8 approaches.
It’s about the time when “the gloves come off, and you just start whaling away at your opponent,” according to Berkovitz. And that’s been the way of politics “since our country became a democracy.”
This time in the cycle, the pace of most campaigns is “really very frantic,” he said.
Candidates tread carefully, hoping to avoid situations that might force them to react.
“The goal of political advertising, and the goal of politics, is to set the agenda,” Berkovitz said. “And if you set the agenda, you can be proactive; you’re on the offensive. But it doesn’t always work out that way.
“It could be your opponent is attacking you. It could be the media is attacking you. It could be that, all of a sudden, there’s a news story that affects the campaign. All of these things have an impact.
Shifting Messages
Astute voters may notice candidates suddenly adopting a more moderate position on issues in the last weeks of the campaign.Some Republican candidates have retooled the way they speak about abortion, backing away from earlier vows to work to outlaw it. Some Democrats have toned down anti-gun rhetoric.
Before the primaries, candidates aimed their message at “hardcore Republicans” and “hardcore Democrats,” according to Berkovitz.
“The real battle now is for the independents, especially the suburban voters,” he said. “[It’s for those] who aren’t as ideological and can be swayed by what’s going on. Whether it’s Mar-a-Lago or whether it’s the border, they get influenced by what’s going on in the news, especially what is affecting them and their family.”
Candidates are scrambling now to win those voters.
“But the challenge is to break through the clutter,” Berkovitz said, noting that it’s nearly impossible now to grab and hold the attention of people being bombarded with campaign messaging. “Remember, most people care more about their shampoo than, ‘Who’s gonna be my next senator?’ That’s the average person.
“Yes, you have a lot of political junkies who’ve been paying attention for the last six months. But most people are more concerned about, ‘Is my kid going to do OK at school? Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage?’
“So what the political people do is try to push that hot button that’s going to affect the voter emotionally. You do that through visuals. You do it through sound effects. You do it with taking content out of context.
Tricks That Sway Us
One way to move voters emotionally is to copy horror movie techniques.“I used to call it slasher advertising,” Berkovitz said. “You know, like the old sort of 1980s, 1990s slasher movies, where you'd have creepy music and visuals.”
By using odd, unappealing colors and eerie camera angles in portraying an opponent, the ad sends a worrisome message: “that they are an evil person.”
“And if they are elected, they are going to do very bad things for you and your family and our society,” he said. “Both sides do this. It’s sort of standard operating procedure.”
During his 1988 campaign for president, then-Vice President George Bush ran “just brutal ads” against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, Berkovitz said.
Some of the ads used “slasher” music when questioning Dukakis’s record on crime.
“He just took Mike Dukakis apart,” he said.
Another old ad trick involves showing headlines from “very biased news media or taken out of context,” according to Berkovitz.
Published headlines or video clips from a media outlet give an ad “alleged credibility,” he said. It sends the message: “‘Look! Here’s what the media has been saying about my opponent.’”
Also common is to use the rival candidate’s words against him or her.
“Your opponent said something that might have been several sentences long, and you grab one part of it and pull it out of context,” Berkovitz said. “But you don’t say the next sentence that your opponent said, which sort of clarifies it.”
Using humor to attack or mock an opponent almost always delivers voter loyalty.
“It’s entertaining, and that’s very effective, if you can do it,” he said.
One candidate who skillfully wielded humor to his advantage was then-President George W. Bush when he was running for reelection in 2004.
Bush’s ad gurus set the footage to music, the iconic classical piece “On the Beautiful Blue Danube, Op. 314.”
As Kerry pilots the board through frequent changes of direction, a narrator points out Kerry’s back-and-forth opinions on issues, switching to match whichever way the wind blows.
“It’s John Kerry being ripped apart by George Bush,” Berkovitz said of the ad. “Just brutal, absolutely taking him apart. But it’s tough to do that. And remember, not everybody has a sense of humor. But if you can pull that off, it gets people.”
Bush won the election.
DeSantis recently released an ad that was a parody of the movie “Top Gun,” portraying himself as “Top Gov.” In it, he used humor to take on the corporate media by pointing out their partisan attacks.
“It worked for him,” Berkovitz said. “He got ripped apart for that, which basically tells you they fear the ad.
“If the media is attacking an ad, either it’s because it’s so vile that it deserves to be attacked” or they perceive that it’s good for the candidate they don’t favor, he said.
‘Hey, Martha!’
Candidates hit the jackpot when they create an ad people love to watch.“I once worked with a political consultant who called them ‘Hey, Martha commercials,’ because someone would be watching TV and go, ‘Hey, Martha, here’s that ad on again!’” Berkovitz said. “If you can have an ad that people actually want to take a look at, that tends to be a pretty big victory.”
This late in election season, “most of this stuff is just nasty video wallpaper that people try to avoid,” he said. “Now that we’re getting toward Election Day, it’s just wall-to-wall political advertising.”
That makes it even harder for candidates to catch the attention of the voters they need—the still-undecided crowd.
“So that’s your challenge: ‘How do I get someone to pay attention to my ad when they’re just sick and tired of all these political ads that they’re being bombarded with?’” Berkovitz said.
A well-timed Hail Mary could come in the form of an uplifting commercial.
“This is consistently called one of the most emotionally effective political ads ever made,” the New York Historical Society said in its description of the commercial.
“Studies show that when it comes to political advertising, we feel first and think later. So the most impactful campaign ads aim for our hearts—fear, anger, hope, and pride.”
It’s the music and the visuals that grab us, Neiheisel said.
“TV is a medium that appeals to the emotions quite well, so emotional content is common in campaign ads,” he said.
With no budget or time constraints, Berkovitz’s ad strategy would be to “show them that I am a reasonable person with views that are moderate and are like theirs.”
“And I am not going to be doctrinaire,” he said. “I’m not going to be pulled by one side or the other.”
That’s the kind of messaging that appeals to moderates. And they’re the 10 percent of voters that “will probably decide the election,” Berkovitz said.
But sounding too moderate can irk a candidate’s loyal base.
“You’ve got to motivate your base with the red meat stuff,” he said. "Both sides have their hot buttons.
“But independents care more about who’s going to make it so that I can afford gas, who’s going to make it so I can feed my family, who’s going to make it so that if I’m lucky enough to get my kid into college, I'll be able to afford it. They tend to be more focused on what’s going to be good for me and my family.”
For now, Berkovitz hopes he won’t spend the remainder of this election cycle channel-surfing in a hapless attempt to avoid deplorable ads.
“I want something that’s sort of clever, something that’s a little bit creative. You know, something that I can actually almost enjoy watching,” he said. “There’s almost none of that.”
