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Campaigns try light approach to reach young voters |
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Written by Jane Porter, The Hartford Courant
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Tuesday, 08 August 2006 |
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 The message is simple: Your next senator could be as nondescript as a side of hash browns, a ceramic rooster, a yappy dog or even a battered relish packet. You won’t know unless you pay attention.
One of the 30-second political TV ads begins with soft piano music in the background and then the testimonials.
“I believe in Old Relish Packet,” a young man in flannel says in a Southern drawl.
“Old Relish Packet and I were trapped 50 miles behind enemy lines,” says an older man with a thick gray beard. “He saved my life.”
Narrated with the grave voice-of-God tone common in campaign ads, the Pay Attention public service advertisements began airing nationally on television last month. Each ends with a young woman asking: “If you’re not voting, then who are you electing?”
The agencies behind the ads hope humor will sell the message.
Such humor-based advertising is on the rise, according to Darrell West, professor of political science at Brown University and author of the book “Air Wars: Television Advertising in Election Campaigns.”
“There has been so much fear-mongering in recent years that I think voters appreciate a softer touch,” West said. “We have all been beaten over the head, and people are sick of that.”
Politicians are catching on to the humor approach. In Connecticut, Democratic Senate hopeful Ned Lamont’s campaign advertisements include a commercial making fun of the attack ads by his opponent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman. The sarcastic commercials berate Lamont for being a bad karaoke singer and someone who makes bad coffee. In another Lamont ad, Lieberman’s face morphs into that of President Bush.
“Satire is a great way to reach young people because it’s entertaining and engaging. It’s a way to get people involved in the political process who typically have not been very active,” West said. “Politicians will rely on humor and satire to make political points.”
The Pay Attention campaign developers agree. “We are saturated with the harsh reality of the news, especially when it comes to our own political choices that we make here in America,” said Dave Damman, senior vice president and executive creative director of WestWayne, the pro-bono advertising agency based in Atlanta that developed and produced the Pay Attention ads, which also include billboards, print, radio and Web advertising.
“Many people are scrambling; not only political candidates . . . but marketers are scrambling to find what appeals to young people,” said Kenneth Dautrich, associate professor of public policy at the University of Connecticut. “There’s probably more focus ... to try and appeal to young people than any other age group, and a lot of it is still unknown.”
Young voters in particular are cynical about politics, West said, and so experimental methods are being tried to reach them.
“Over the last few years, there’s been a major effort to engage young people. There is generally about a 30 percent differential point between (voter turnout of) young people and senior citizens,” West said. “In an area of close elections, people think, ’If we could just mobilize young people, it would make a big difference.’ ”
And then there’s the problem of media overload experienced by many people from multiple mediums -- TV, radio, Internet, newspapers, magazines, blogs and more.
In the Pay Attention campaign, the missing piece is the real candidates. “The overall purpose of using these (fake) candidates is to just break though the clutter,” said Will Thomason, executive vice president of WestWayne.
The campaign, like Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” teams entertainment with information, said Ad Council campaign director Michelle Hillman. The use of inanimate objects as candidates has a tone similar to the “Daily Show,” which the advertising developers were well aware of as they brainstormed for the project.
“For young people who think ’What’s the point?’ if they were going to see a typical ad that said ’Go Vote,’ they might . . . think of a way to counter it in their heads,” said Dannagal Young, assistant professor of communication at the University of Delaware, regarding campaign advertising in general. “If their attention is grabbed by a joke, that might at least get through the first wall (of resistance).”
Jody Baumgartner, assistant professor of political science at East Carolina University and author of the forthcoming book, “Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age,” uses a similar approach.
In a political science course he teaches, Baumgartner includes Jon Stewart’s “America (The Book)” as one of the principal readings, with the hope that Stewart’s humorous approach might make the material compelling enough for students to want to learn more from the real textbook.
A study conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in 2004 found that people who watched the “Daily Show” were more politically informed, even when factors like initial interest in politics and exposure to traditional news programming were taken into account. | Only registered users can write comments.
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