Trump ads demonstrate clarity and strength
Trump has produced some ads, some for TV where he paid to have them up and others where they show on Facebook and YouTube for free. He comes across strong and decisive. Part of their power is their format: Trump talking to the camera, period.
Hillary's strength is that she is experienced and battle tested. The weakness imbedded in that position is that her scars and warts are known, she is shop worn, and many people are tired of her. Her goal will be to accentuate her positives while showing Trump to be a risky choice, flamboyant and unreliable and therefore a dangerous choice. Voters better go with the devil they know.
Trump's ads attempt to counter what Hillary must do. They embrace the notion of danger and show Trump as the strong protector. As if: "You're afraid? You should be because it's a dangerous world. But I am strong and good." The ads take Trump's unsettling bluster and show it to be a fearsome weapon against others, not us.
I am indebted to a college classmate, Sanford Borins, who teaches management strategy at the University of Toronto. He pointed me to these ads, which are the basis of a study he is doing on narratives in election campaigns. Check out his website and subscribe: http://www.sandfordborins.com
He observed something about these ads which I noted generally about Trump's speeches and which I use in presentations to groups about observations in my travels. Trump's speeches are incoherent when expressed as transcript. I get reliable laughs when I show on the screen verbatim a random and typical bit of a Trump speech, this from a rally I witnessed in Nevada, where he was talking about error of our going to war with Iraq:
“We
lost lives, thousands and thousands of lives—you could say on both sides in all
fairness, OK—thousands and thousands, we lost thousands more—they don’t
even know—wounded warriors, they are the greatest—thousands, thousands of lives
lost. We have nothing. What, what do we have? Nothing.”
I get a laugh when I ask the audience to diagram those sentences. But as spoken speech with pauses and emphasis where intended it is authentic, understandable, and apparently from the heart.
The format of the ads are simple: Trump in his standard power-clothes, dark suit, white shirt and red tie, an executive type chair, credenza with photographs behind him. Trump the executive. And he speaks to the camera, in one take.
The one on the Second Amendment starts with a black screen like this, then after four seconds moves to Trump at his desk:
He
“So important is our Second Amendment, the politicians are chipping away at it day by day night by night, it gets weaker and weaker. We’re not going to let it happen. We are going to protect our Second Amendment. If I’m President you can count on it one hundred percent.”
As Borins noted, the transcript is near gibberish, but spoken it makes perfect sense. Watch it yourself: 30 seconds.
Click here for Trump ad on 2nd Amendment
Click here for Trump ad on 2nd Amendment
Some 4,100,000 people have seen the ad so far.
Competent Leadership Ad. Here is another ad in the same format, shot at the same desk, undoubtedly within minutes of each other. This one Competent Leadership
"Our country needs competency. We need a smart president. We need a great leader. We don’t need what we have now. And many of the people I’m running against are just what we have now. If i’m elected president I’ll do a truly great job. I’ll make America great again. Everyone’s going to be very very happy. Even our greatest critics are going to love the job we do together."
Trump's ads are presenting a strong, capable, safe leader. The last sentence is more powerful when heard than read. It is meant to be reassuring. He is not vengeful. When he wins he will treat the vanquished honorably. A Trump presidency will not usher in a reign of terror. He is safe to be entrusted with power, the ads say.
Is this a plausible re-assurance? Note Trump's actual behavior following destroying GOP opponents. The very evening after defeating "Lyin' Ted" Trump refers to him as "Senator Cruz" a great competitor and opponent; after likening Ben Carson to a child molester, Trump in victory makes Carson an ally.
Notice what the ads are not: They are not a collage of cute gauzy images: children playing, dad mowing lawn, Washington Monument, veteran, nurse, mom in grocery store, campaign sign, candidate, soldier, flag, then freezing on candidate, the visuals underscored with swelling music, an ad format that is so ubiquitous that every candidate could use the same ad substituting only the name on the sign and the candidate. Trump's ads are no-nonsense. Trump's ads use short sentences and short words. No euphemisms. No complications.
The meta communication intent of the ads is clear: Trump is the alpha male who commands, defends, and can be trusted with power.
1 comment:
Such a concatenation of images, aggressive posturing and the evoking of so many social sciences plus the classics deserves some attention. In reply to comparing Trump and Putin to each other and to one of the great primates I give you the Bowerbird. Quoting here from Wikipedia:
They are renowned for their unique courtship behaviour, where males build a structure and decorate it with sticks and brightly coloured objects in an attempt to attract a mate.
One clade[there are two] of bowerbirds build so-called maypole bowers, which are constructed by placing sticks around a sapling; in some species, these bowers have a hut-like roof. [Trump Tower?]
there is an inverse relationship between bower complexity and the brightness of plumage [physical appeal to female]. Gilliard suggests that there is an evolutionary "transfer" of ornamentation in some species, from their plumage to their bowers, [Mar al Lago]
Bowerbirds have also been observed creating optical illusions in their bowers to appeal to mates. They arrange objects in the bower's court area from smallest to largest, creating a forced perspective which holds the attention of the female for longer. [pehaps the "tiny hands" dispute?]
The catbird, one of the family, is well known for laying its eggs in other birds' nests, evicting the natural children of the builder/owner of the nest and leaving them to be hatched and reared by foster parents (hostile takeovers, etc.)
I could go on but really I just wanted to direct you to some interesting reading in anthropology as it might actually deal with politics or political science, at least in the form of policy:
The Exchequer's Guide to Revenue in the Agrarian State, Winterhalder and Puleston http://www.broomcenter.ucsb.edu/sites/www.broomcenter.ucsb.edu/files/broom_docs/Winterhalder%26Puleston_Exchequer_DRAFT%5B1%5D.pdf
and to some high quality research on guerrillas:
Gorilla Society: Conflict, compromise and cooperation between the sexes, Alexander H. Harcourt and Kelly Stewart http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10329-008-0084-3#/page-1
In anthropological primatological circles (and perhaps in many others) silverbacks are the elder males who actually run things, keep an eye out for trouble and of course invoke their authority if actually challenged. The primate office tends to be one of looking out for the females and children with a noticeable lack of bluster, bravado, chest beating and roaring. In academic circles the office of silverback is performed by elder males who use their superior knowledge of how things actually work to get stuff done, again rarely calling attention to themselves. I hope we can agree that the King Kong version of silverbacks is not ubiquitous.
You are really turning these out!
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