There are a number of reasons why people are motivated to speak up and take action, many of which could be chalked up to feelings, not facts. Those in the business of proselytizing – such as lawyers, preachers and, yes, politicians – know that much, if not more, about the human nature of their target audience. And so do the more experienced direct marketers and advertisers among us. Play to people’s greatest fears and desires, and chances are they will respond accordingly. You can either place doubt in their minds or provide them with hope on the horizon, depending on the emotions – and response – you want to trigger.
This is all easier said than done, of course. It’s not a stratagem to be taken lightly. After all, whether you’re raising funds, promoting sales or lobbying for votes, if your appeal is perceived as manipulative, your honesty could be called into question. And your integrity, lost. It is indeed a fine line to tread. Just ask George Bush and John Kerry. With the national elections less than two weeks away, both presidential candidates are using scare tactics as a ploy in most, if not all, of their advertising campaigns.
“In the final days before the election,” writes Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times recently (October 17, 2004), “the campaigns and the outside groups supporting them are taking an already unusually intense and confrontational advertising war into grim new territory, with some of the most vivid and evocative images and messages seen in presidential commercials in a generation, political analysts and historians say.”
And to what emotion do you think they’re playing?
According to Rutenberg, “At work, they say, are direct appeals to fear, with Mr. Bush’s campaign and supportive groups making the case that a vote for Mr. Kerry is a vote for insecurity at home, and liberal groups and Mr. Kerry using commercials to make the case that Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy has caused needless deaths that will continue if he stays in office.”
Yikes. I suppose whether or not such blatant, “direct appeals to fear” will lead to a referendum on character (whichever candidate comes across more truthful, wins?) come November 2 depends on the height of the American public’s moral ground. On the one hand, you can scare people into submission. But such tactics can also work against you, frightening away those whom you covet.
At the end of the day, however, I have to believe that one set of negative messaging (e.g., “Are John Kerry and his liberal allies a risk we can afford to take today?”) will have simply offset the other (e.g., “President Bush has failed to see the reality of the situation in Iraq…”), resulting in a stalemate of sorts in the theater of advertising war. The outcome of the election will likely be more a reflection of how Americans judge the incumbent’s performance and his opponent’s potential, not their respective advertising campaigns. The scare tactics will have gotten them only so far. The rest will be history.
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