Anti-Trump ad is circulating, produced by disgruntled anti-Trump Republicans.
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| Click: YouTube |
It associates Trump with despair.
I think it is a mistake.
First things first: watch the 60 second ad.
The words, pace, and music all set a tone. This is funeral.
It blames the sorry state of America on Trump. This is Trump's America, the opposite of the sunshiny Reagan "Morning in America." That was the clever pun imbedded in the ad approach and title. Mourning, not morning.
I think the ad backfires. It attempts to re-brand Trump by associating him with a mood that is opposite of what we know about him.
Better to do the opposite: take we know about Trump, and show that is a bad thing. Trump opponents cannot change what Americans already believe Trump to be. Instead, they need to use that branding inertia and turn it against Trump.
Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are reluctant to attribute any positive characteristics to Trump, which blindness keeps them from recognizing why he is so successful, despite himself. His personality has appeal to many. Trump-haters do not see it, but his rally performances and more generally his TV performances are interesting to watch. He is unguarded. Spontaneous. Informal. Often funny. He is like any standup comic with a popular schtick. Part of the schtick is his frank self centeredness, his self congratulation, his self love, all amid loser enemies who want to bring him down, despite him being so great.
(It's a little like Jack Benny being thrifty or Roger Dangerfield getting no respect. A brand. A long form gag.)
(It's a little like Jack Benny being thrifty or Roger Dangerfield getting no respect. A brand. A long form gag.)
Democrats and Trump-haters resent the fact that TV stations broadcast him at length, and they attribute it to a corporate conspiracy. It is actually quite simple: Trump is interesting, so people watch. Democrats don't need a political revolution to change TV. They need candidates as watchable as Trump.
An element of Trump's self-congratulation schtick is optimism. After all, he inherited carnage and almost immediately things were extraordinarily great, the best ever. Why wouldn't so talented a president be optimistic about America, including the present and future for the virus. Trump--clearly against the advice of his virus team--wants to reopen the economy now, sooner than the killjoy scientists and Democrats. Trump is known for that. He earned that brand by getting criticized for it and being steadfast. Every anti-Trump headline that says that Trump is endangering America by opening too fast is making that point against Trump, but also for him.
Trump owns the end-the-depression brand, the go back to work brand. This ad tries to blame the depression on him. It looks dishonest because it tries to associate Trump with mourning. It won't work, except to make people think that Democrats will say anything to stop Trump.
The correct ad would be to take what Americans already know and believe about Trump, and show the problem this causes. We know that Trump is a slick salesman. We know he is perfectly willing to lie and exaggerate and hide unpleasant truths. We know he cares more about himself and his family than he does about others. We know he is a haphazard manager. We know he values loyalty over professionalism.
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The better message is one that uses message judo and turns what we know into a negative: Dishonest salesmen lie. Trump lied, he played us for suckers, and it destroyed our economy and made virus deaths way, way worse than they needed to be. One sends this message not by trying to associate Trump with despair, but by showing Trump's optimism and cheerleading, and making that a bad thing. It was a self-serving con job.
That is an idea Americans already have in mind, that slick, dishonest salespeople lie. That makes it a more persuadable idea. American voters cannot be persuaded to believe Trump is Mr. Depression. We can easily be shown that Trump is guilty of fake dishonest optimism.
Here is a much different, better ad. It shows Trump as distracted, playing golf packing people into rallies, and writing self serving tweets, while he denied there was a problem. The ad--titled "Distracted"--says that in fact he wasn't distracted. "He just didn't care. He still doesn't."
That is a message people will believe, because they already believe it. Even his supporters understand him to be self-centered. The better ad shows this self-centeredness doesn't serve America; it damages us.
6 comments:
Two different audiences.
The "mourning' ad is satire. The "distracted" ad is accusatory.
The mourning/morning wordplay highlights the difference between the "happy warrior"(Reagan) message and the generally dark messaging coming from Trump, except for his bragging and self-promotion. This is aimed directly at older Republicans, who have carried that theme forward since the 80s, to change their minds, while 'distracted" is aimed at anyone who may be confused or unsure about the facts.
Both are good.
I think the fundamental issue politically is whether or not voters will hold Trump accountable. Presidents can avoid direct responsibility in complex situations, and blame can be shifted and diffused as we are seeing. There are unknowns that can be exploited, for instance, would a Clinton administration have done any better? "Distracted" can be countered in this way, and Trump will only suffer if it's shown that he was willfully negligent, and the ad just makes him look as clueless as everyone else was.
There is a powerful cognitive dissonance in giving Trump credit for being a "stable genius" and at the same time giving him a pass for ignoring the early warnings.
Is he in charge or not?
Great article. We know demonizing Trump just gets his supporters to dig in their heels. Better to point to his deranged optimism as lies that are killing folks.
Neither ad moves me very much. I think that by November, the virus may or may not be an issue, and that the focus should be on the broader issue of the damage trump can do during the next four years.
The second ad is jumpy and uses that quick editing style that will only annoy older people. Things that flash and flip are for the newer generations, who are already plenty annoyed with trump as it is. I hope. And convincing them to vote democratic at all will be the problem, especially if someone like Jesse Ventura jumps in as a third party candidate.
"Things That Flash and Flip"
I think Diane hits it exactly right, and begs the issue that Rick identifies as "two different audiences". In three weeks, the "Distracted" ad only got about 700,000 views. This means that few people like it and forwarded it. The "Mourning in America" ad on the other hand got over 1.5 millions views in just two days, meaning people like and forward it to others more than twice as much. People don't like political ads exceeding 24 seconds, and definitely not a flash and flip job that goes almost a minute and a half. It will never have much if any viewing on tv because it would be absurdly expensive. The Mourning ad goes exactly 1 minutes, which still makes it too expensive for tv. Additionally, tv providers don't like any ad that exceeds 30 seconds because the audience will change channels and not come back, leading to a net advertising revenue loss for the time slot.
So the real question is who is the intended audience? The answer is people who will open emails or read blogs and click on the link. Both are directed only to the internet and not tv. Together they have less than 3 million views, yet each ad on the Hannity or Maddow shows in a single night will get more than either of these ads will in weeks on the internet. Because of their length, these ads are not intended for mass consumption. They were created for fundraising and membership solicitation, as well as political blogs and podcasts.
But the "Mourning" ad has actually backfired. Trump hijacked it. It got the much higher viewership than "Distracted" because Trump Twitter trashed it and NBC replayed it in a piece about-- Trump trashing it, not about the ad's message that Trump owns Covid-19 death and misery. Yes, Trump actually used the Mourning ad to generate yet more airtime about himself. He makes viewers ask "is the media unfair to the President in this time of crisis"? Like this blog, others blogs, articles and the podcasts all talk about whether the ads are fair or effective, but not whether Trump is killing us with inattention to Covid-19. It's all a Trump show.
Too much Drama
The mistake of the ad is creating a drama with effects, grunge, selected despair shots, a voice over with a hint of Reagan. It is a parody of what is actually happening. It doesn’t work. It also blames visually Trump of unpainted dilapidated houses. The Obama administration etc could have been blamed for these neighborhoods. Should have been a movie of someone dying of coronavirus taken with a cell phone and response of the relatives, or a man and wife with hungry children at the kitchen table talking about bills and home schooling without internet connection. All a reality show without slick editing and dramatic music. If fact you don't even need to mention or see Donald Trump. He is absent because he is absent. The ghost of Donald Trump...a shadow on the wall.
Great and insightful post, Peter. The Mourning In America ad is a brilliant parody, starting with the clever pun in its title. But any fair observer sees it for the unfair propaganda that it is, however enjoyable to watch. As an effective political ad, it misses the mark, which you correctly pointed out. Better to simply illustrate the dissonance between what Trump says (It's under control; I knew it was a pandemic) to what is true. The ad is illustrative of how to manipulate video to tell untruths; don't need more of that.
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