Negative advertisement when it works - Essay Example

Negative advertisement when it works The essay explores the impact of negative advertisement based on such propaganda in areaof American and world politics since it is the simplest and most convenient way of showing that it exists and works. All the money politicians spend on their campaigns goes to negative advertisement, therefore it seems important and this paper investigates on how it works with special reference to Dazy advertisement case. This investigation includes Willie Horton case, analyzing why these ad was so successful and have changed the results of election. Order#: 199974 Deadline: 2008-01-06 16:30 Style: MLA Language Style: English UK Pages: 10 Sources: 10 Writer ID: 6746 INTRODUCTION: THE ACME OF POLITICAL MARKETING Money does magical wonder, so does politics with monetary power. Keeping aside honesty and ethics rich politicians invest huge amount of money to launch election campaign to win the favor of the public. Empirical evidences suggest that this strategy quite often works but by no means can we ignore the negative impact of such campaign. In general, propaganda concerns set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of people. Instead of impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience. The most effective propaganda is often completely truthful, but some propaganda presents facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the cognitive narrative of the subject in the target audience. Here we examine propaganda in the light of public information campaigns by governments, which are intended to encourage or discourage certain forms of behavior. Propagandist politician use advertisement as their means of communication as their prime tool with leaflets, posters, TV and radio broadcasts and all other medium. In the case of the United States, there is also an important legal distinction between advertising and what the Government Accountability Office. Hence, it connotes deliberately false or misleading information that supports or furthers a political cause or the interests of those with power. Propaganda, in this sense, serves as a corollary to censorship in which the same purpose is achieved, not by filling people's minds with approved information, but by preventing people from being confronted with opposing points of view. What sets propaganda apart from other forms of advocacy is the willingness of the propagandist to change people's understanding through deception and confusion rather than persuasion and understanding. The leaders of an organization know the information to be one sided or untrue, but this may not be true for the regular members who help to disseminate the propaganda. Importantly propaganda is a powerful weapon in war; it is used to dehumanize and create hatred toward a supposed enemy, either internal or external, by creating a false image in the mind. This can be done by using derogatory or racist terms, avoiding some words or by making allegations of enemy atrocities. Most propaganda wars require the home population to feel the enemy has inflicted an injustice, which may be fictitious. The home population must also decide that the cause of their nation is just. Politicians take the advantage of such policy through political advertisement to grab power. EVIDENCES ON HOW PROPAGANDA WORKS AROUND THE GLOBE According to Naom Chomsky, the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. Privatization being one of such corporate tactics, propaganda politics began to flourish amongst the democratic nations. In the early 2000s, the United States government developed and freely distributed a video game known as America's Army with an intention to encourage players to become interested in joining the U.S. Army. Research proved that 30% of young people who had a positive view of the military said that they had developed that view by playing the game. Politically Soviet propaganda meant dissemination of revolutionary ideas, teachings of Marxism, and theoretical and practical knowledge of Marxist economics, while agitation meant forming favorable public opinion and stirring up political unrest. The Nazis believed in propaganda as a vital tool in achieving their goals. Adolph Hitler, Germany's Fuehrer, was impressed by the power of Allied propaganda during World War I and believed that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and revolts in the German home front and Navy in 1918. Broadcasters and journalists required prior approval before their works were disseminated. Along with posters, the Nazis produced a number of films and books to spread their beliefs. In the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, psychological operations tactics were employed to demoralize the Taliban and to win the sympathies of the Afghan population. At least six EC-130E Commando Solo aircraft were used to jam local radio transmissions and transmit replacement propaganda messages. Leaflets were also dropped throughout Afghanistan, offering rewards for Osama bin Laden and other individuals, portraying Americans as friends of Afghanistan and emphasizing various negative aspects of the Taliban. Further, during the invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf repeatedly claimed Iraqi forces were decisively winning every battle. The Iraqis who were misled by his propaganda were shocked when Iraq was defeated. Nevertheless, behind both militant Islamist propaganda products lies the conviction of a global conspiracy against Islam. Ideas, which simplify and universalize are always problematic but they have the attraction of creating sharp coherence out of a complex, contradictory and nuanced world: the universal class struggle, or the Jewish-Bolshevik world conspiracy, represent earlier forms of the coherent integrating perspective (Ellul, 1973; O'Shaughnessy 2004). Experts scrutinize effective political marketing to tackle specific marketing problems facing today's public sector organizations. The consensus reflects the relationship between voters and government, and the degree to which political communication is able to influence in the context of a sophisticated and media-aware society. It helps to gather knowledge and understanding as a means of scales successful candidates will be able to demonstrate by understanding of the external influences shaping the political and public service environment. POLITICAL MARKETING: A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW The Daisy Case Daisy Girl or Peace Little Girl is an infamous campaign television advertisement. Though it was shown only once during a September 7, 1964, it was a factor in Lyndon B. Johnson's defeat of Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election and an important turning point in political and advertising history as one of the most controversial political advertisements. The advertisement begins with a little girl standing in a meadow with chirping birds, picking the petals of a daisy while counting each petal slowly. When she reaches "9", an ominous-sounding male voice spoke out counting down a missile launch, and as the girl's eyes turned toward something, she saw in the sky, the camera zooms in until her pupil filled the screen, blacking it out. on the countdown reaching zero, the blackness replaced with the flash and mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion. As the firestorm rages, a voiceover from Johnson states, "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." Another voiceover then says, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home." As soon as the ad aired, Johnson's campaign was widely criticized for using the prospect of nuclear war as well as the implication that Goldwater would start one, to frighten voters. The fear aroused in Daisy was for the future of entire human race: the tender image of the small girl with her symbolism of our future is contrasted with the robot male voice in nuclear countdown, and then Lyndon Johnson's voice lends an epic note of high authority. The explosion is a harbinger of Armageddon, a signifier of the extinction of the human race, the covert message being that Barry Coldwater would actually lead America into nuclear holocaust; thus, in 1964, the positioning concept of President Lyndon Johnson was as peace candidate. The Willie Horton Case The first person to mention the Massachusetts furlough program in the 1988 presidential campaign was Al Gore. During a debate at the Felt Forum Gore took issue with the furlough program. However, he did not mention Horton by name. He asked it in the form of a rhetorical question, asking Dukakis whether he would extend Massachusetts-style furloughs to the federal level. Dukakis' retort was, "The difference between you and me is that I have run a criminal justice system. You haven't." Nevertheless, Dukakis also quickly noted that the furlough program had been changed. Republicans would pick up the Horton issue after Dukakis clinched the nomination. In June of 1988, Republican candidate George H.W. Bush seized on the Horton case, bringing it up repeatedly in campaign speeches. Although commercials about Willie Horton were not run until the fall campaign, Vice President Bush first mentioned Horton at the Texas Republican convention on June 9, 1988. The following week at the Illinois Republican convention in Springfield, Bush began to press the argument against Dukakis by declaring that Dukakis had let Horton loose to 'terrorize innocent people' and continued support of the furlough program until the Massachusetts legislature changed the law. Bush again mentioned Horton at the National Sheriffs Association in Louisville, Kentucky and declared himself in favor of 'life without parole' for convicted murderers. Over the Fourth of July weekend in 1988, Lee Atwater attended a motorcyclists' convention in Luray, Virginia. Two couples were talking about the Horton story as featured in Reader's Digest the previous fall. Atwater joined them and never once mentioned who he was. Later that night, a focus group in Alabama had turned completely against Dukakis when presented the information about Horton's furlough. Atwater used this occurrence to argue the necessity of pounding Dukakis about the furlough issue. the Bush campaign ran its own ad, "Revolving Door" which also attacked Dukakis over the weekend furlough program. While the advertisement did not mention Horton or feature his photograph, it depicted a variety of intimidating-looking men walking in and out of prison through a revolving door. The commercial was filmed at an actual state prison in Draper, Utah, but the persons depicted - thirty in all, including three African-Americans and two Hispanics - were all paid actors. Attempting to counter-attack, Dukakis's campaign ran an ad about a murderer named Angel Medrano who raped and killed a pregnant mother of two after escaping from a federal correctional halfway house. Unlike Horton, Medrano was not already serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Dukakis's ad ignored this fact, displayed Medrano's name, and showed his photograph. According to Elizabeth Drew of "The New Yorker," several Hispanic congressmen in the Southwest asked Dukakis to delete Medrano's name, which was done. The most famous negative propaganda event was the Willie Horton commercial, about a convinced killer who raped having been given weekend parole in Massachusetts. Horton, who was black, was 'run' as a kind of anti-candidate by the Republicans. Moreover, in other commercial legions of eerily silent prisoners were shown walking through a revolving door. These images hit American liberalism at its most vulnerable point. since Democrats had always been more believable on 'quality of life' issues, film of noxious Boston harbor was repeatedly shown.. Thus, the Bush Senior campaign was run on symbolism - the Flag, Horton, Boston harbor. In that election there was real ambiguity about the future performance and policies of the candidates with one-third votes undecided even late on. CONCLUSION: POLITICAL MARKETING AILS JUDICIOUS PLANNING The operational phases of political and business resources are separate ecologies, and the aim of this piece has been to challenge notions of political marketing as universal panacea. There is no one simple, easy transport from a business context, where social values are one of a number of considerations, to the political one, where values are the core of the process. Important conceptual similarities do of course exist and the same techniques criss-cross the two domains, but this makes them related, not identical. Political marketing is not exactly like commodity marketing. When we use the term "political marketing" as a convenient shorthand, we see as a result some things in political exchange relationships with great clarity, but perhaps miss other significant features in the complex environment of political communication. Democratic Theory would attribute success and failure in elections primarily to non- marketing factors and see the function of marketing strategies as lending some heightened definition to existing sets of political realities; but in no sense might it create those realities. The kinds of over-determining non- marketing factor commonly cited by democratic theorists for example might include dysfunctional policy, changing values, class, economy, impact of demographic change etc. One cannot argue with the influence of these factors. It is the strength of political science to focus on these as the core of politics. It is its weakness to limit politics to these. Nevertheless, the impact of Blair, Bush, Clinton, and Reagan surely derives in part from a heightened awareness of the political value of rhetoric and imagery: within this broader communication orientation, specifically marketing fact factors played a distinctive role. From superior advertising to superior strategy, better slogans etc, a new politics of imagery has emerged characterized by the sophisticated use of political marketing by a small coterie in the US and UK to achieve and sustain power. It does not however seem that democratic theory has taken on board this transformative role of marketing in politics. The political marketing campaign was heavily weighted towards Bush; his managers also exhibited a deft conceptual understanding and pragmatic applied management of the concept of the perpetual political marketing campaign. Subsequently, the use of political marketing deteriorated on occasions into ruthless pursuit of enemies. Via smart use of these marketing instruments and the 'art of the advocate', George Bush overcame critical flaws in his record. This 2005 US Presidential election illustrated how a politician can still win office in spite of the disasters he is persuasively accused, at least by some, of presiding over: Bush survived a vitriolic and global propaganda campaign against him that was external to the election. REFERENCES 1. Propaganda and Politics: Weapons of Mass Seduction (O'Shaughnessy 2004, University of Manchester Press). 2. The Idea of Political Marketing (O'Shaughnessy and Henneberg, Praeger 2002); 3. A Handbook of Political Marketing (Newman, Howarth 1999); 4. The Phenomenon of Political Marketing (O'Shaughnessy, Macmillan); 5. Journal of Public Affairs, Journal of Political Marketing, Special issues of the European Journal of Marketing 6. Altheide, David L. & Johnson, John M. Bureaucratic Propaganda. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc. (1980) 7. J. A. C. Brown Techniques of Persuasion: From Propaganda to Brainwashing Harmondsworth: Pelican (1963) 8. Cunningham, Stanley, B. The Idea of Propaganda: A Reconstruction. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. (2002) 9. Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books. (1988) 10. Hindery, Roderick R., Indoctrination and Self-deception or Free and Critical Thought (2001) 11. Rutherford, Paul. Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Marketing the War Against Iraq. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (2004) 12. Nancy Snow. "American Persuasion, Influence and Propaganda" 13. Sproule, J. Michael. Channels of Propaganda. Bloomington, IN: EDINFO Press. (1994) 14. Sniderman, P.M, Brody, R.A and Tetlock, P.E, Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993 15. Whyte, Kenneth, "The Face That Sank A Thousand Tories", Saturday Night February 1994 16. Baird, Jay W. (1992), To Die For Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 17. Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology: San Francisco: Chandler. 18. Bartle, J.; Griffiths, D. (2002) "Social-psychological, economic and marketing models of voting behaviour compared", N. J. O'Shaughnessy, S. C. Henneberg (eds.), The Idea of Political Marketing, Praeger, Westport, pp. 19-37. Read More