Radio advertising that delivers
measurable results and profitable new customers

« Previous | Main | Next »

July 30, 2008

Is Political Advertising Strategy: "May the Best Liar Win"?

I was reading an article during lunch today about the ad strategy of one of the candidates for President.

I'm generally drawn to any article on advertising strategy and I was excited to hear how the best and brightest in the political arena are maneuvering for the top prize of Mr. President.

The article talks about the claims made in two recent political ads and how effective these ads have been for one candidate's campaign due both to the claims and to how many free airings of these ads have occurred.

Then I came to a line in the article that said

"Both claims were nonsense, as plenty of objective observers have noted."

Suddenly I realized what, exactly, these "best and brightest" are the best and brightest at... It's not exactly the sort of advertising strategy I had in mind. From the article:

The New York Times called this"a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year--one widely panned as misleading--to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery."

You'll note I'm leaving out references to candidate names here because the point of this post isn't to say one candidate is better than the other. While the examples cited here pertain to one candidate, the reality is that neither candidate - nor any politician for that matter - would, under scrutiny, be found free of misleading statements in their advertising.

Since this can't be good for our political system, and therefore for our country as a whole, we might ask why it is allowed to continue. One look at factcheck.org, which claims to be an independent source, appears to show that nearly every ad is misleading, including ads by both political candidates.

By way of reminder, it's against the federal (and state) law for businesses to make false or misleading claims in advertising. To put it bluntly, you aren't allowed to lie in order to sell your product or service. You have to tell the truth. If you don't, the Federal Trade Commission has a division called the Bureau of Consumer Protection that will come after you and make you pay a lot of money - in both defense of yourself as well as in punishment and restitution to the consumers adversely affected by the lies or misleading statements in your advertising.

"The Bureau of Consumer Protection works to protect consumers against unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices in the marketplace."

Unless these unfair, deceptive, or fraudulent practices committed against consumers (citizens) are undertaken by someone who wants to be President of the United States.

As we are all aware, laws are put in place by the government, specifically the members of the Senate and the President. Isn't it interesting that the same people who make the laws against false and misleading advertising are the same people who are exempt from the laws against false and misleading advertising.

So, politicians running for office aren't held to the same standard as us regular people who run businesses - also known as citizens. Yes, you are allowed to lie in advertising in order to get people to elect you President of the United States, but you aren't allowed to lie to sell more Coca-Cola, Tide detergent, or Subway sandwiches.

Now, you may ask: is this a big deal? Don't businesses spend far more money and therefore do far more damage than politicians when they lie in advertising?

That depends, on perhaps two things. One, do you think the decision about who will be President of the United States is more important or less important than the decision to go to Subway for lunch? Second, in just seven months of 2008, total spending on political and issue ads stands today at $655 Million. Johnson & Johnson, by contrast, spent about $700 million world-wide across all of its global brands during the first six months of 2007. In short: these are pretty big advertising numbers and if they are spent behind deceptive ads, they will have a significant impact. There is a reason why the government outlaws false and deceptive advertisements... they are very influential. People believe what they hear and see in advertisements.

Let's hope, as unlikely as it is, that for the sake of our country people apply some scrutiny to what they see in political advertisements and make the effort to check the claims made in them this season. Otherwise the race for President will be largely determined by which candidate's advertising strategists can come up with the most influentially misleading ads. Probably not the best criteria for electing someone President of the United States.

And, frankly, can't the United States of America do better than this?

Posted by Brett Astor at 04:58 PM | Permalink