Is selling a presidential candidate to the electorate the same as selling a car to consumers? Maybe not, but according to one marketing consultant, in both cases Americans are going to be buying for the same basic reasons. Clotaire Rapaille has helped dozens of Fortune 500 companies market their wares to the most primitive "reptilian" level of the human brain, and recently met with a John Kerry adviser to discuss an image makeover for the candidate. He shares some of his advice with Brooke.
Days after the Bush re-election campaign released its first round of TV ads, three anti-Bush ad campaigns hit the airwaves in 17 battleground states. Democratic challenger John Kerry's advisers are welcoming the ads, but are not involved with their production. And according to Bush-backers, that makes the ads illegal. Brooke talks to Democratic media consultant Karl Struble about what recent campaign-finance legislation means for election-oriented ads.
The bunting from Super Tuesday was hardly torn down when the President unleashed his first round of re-election ads this week. Critics are already lashing out at the Bush-Cheney campaign for exploiting 9/11 imagery, but at least one advertising critic thinks the spots are surprisingly tasteful, and restrained. Just so happens that critic is Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield. He joins Brooke to deconstruct the ads.
When it comes to policy platforms, the two frontrunners for the Democratic presidential nomination are more similar to each other than they are to any other candidate. But when it comes to style, the gulf between the two Johns opens wide. Voters are still deciding whether to buy into the popular notion of Edwards as "Mr. Likeable" and Kerry as "Mr. Electable," but many reporters have already made up their minds. Brooke speaks with Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, who has been covering Senator Kerry for decades.
Political reporters have been busy this week writing obituaries for the Howard Dean campaign, and trying to explain what on earth happened to the candidate who a few weeks ago was the undisputed frontrunner. Some blame Dean for not keeping his cool, and some blame his staffers for squandering the campaign's nest-egg. Many blame the media. But Clay Shirky, a theorist on the sociology of the Internet, tells Bob that we should instead be trying to explain why we ever thought Dean's lead existed at all.
We're often told that John Kerry has won 15 out of 17 states in his quest to be the Democratic nomination. But might the common parlance of the campaign horse race be a bit misleading? In November's presidential election, candidates win states. But in the primaries, they win delegates. NPR's Mike Pesca joins Brooke from the campaign trail to vent about this and other media misunderstandings.
It has become almost trite to observe that TV coverage of election campaigns obsesses on the horserace, to the exclusion of the underlying issues. But a new study by mediachannel.org quantifies the substance gap. MediaChannel concluded that in January, the big three news networks devoted less than 5% of their campaign coverage to the five issues voters say matter most. MediaChannel Executive Director Timothy Karr joins Bob to discuss the study.
The presidential election is still nine months away, but the Bush re-election campaign is already on the offensive. Or is it defensive? This week, the campaign posted on its web site an advertisement-style video that isn't about George W. Bush at all. Instead, the spot focuses entirely on the Democratic frontrunner, John Kerry. It occurred to Bob that this could be a first.
