Campaign Ads Don't Sell

President Bush's campaign has broadcast about a dozen television ads since early March, and Kerry's campaign another 10. The LA Times reports that advertising experts doubt the ads are effective despite polls suggesting some of the President Bush's ads are influencing targeted voters:

Bush launched the first ads of the general election campaign March 4, two days after Kerry effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nod. The experts recently interviewed by The Times lauded two of Bush's initial commercials.

In the 60-second "Lead," a relaxed Bush sat with his wife, Laura, and expounded on the "entrepreneurial spirit of America." He also declared: "I know exactly where I want to lead this country."

Slow-dissolve shots of the president in the Oval Office were interspersed with pictures of other Americans at work, such as a waitress opening a diner near dawn.

[. . .]

Linda Kaplan Thaler, a New York ad executive who worked for Democrat Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992, applauded the 30-second Bush commercial "Tested."

The ad showed faces of ordinary but determined Americans and a flag flying at the wreckage of the World Trade Center. It then showed people carrying on with their lives, shifting from black and white images to color as someone hoists a flag up a pole. A narrator talks about "freedom, faith, families and sacrifice."

[. . .]

One of Bush's attack spots struck the experts as refreshingly humorous — and therefore effective. The 30-second "Wacky" took a carnival tone as it played newsreel-like footage of the Keystone Kops and antique gas pumps to accuse Kerry of supporting higher gasoline taxes.

[. . .]

The experts said Kerry's early efforts were forgettable, suffering from mixed messages, bland themes and boring campaign-event footage.

"As a couch potato, as soon as I see canned videotape from the campaign trail on the tube, I hit either mute or change the channel," Sullivan said.

Kaplan Thaler said: "Kerry never, ever, ever smiles."

In recent weeks, Kerry has intensified his advertising. But the experts found fault with the editing of two recent ads. As the Democrat is explaining his views on Iraq and domestic issues, the ads interrupt close-up footage of Kerry to pitch his website. They then switch back to the candidate finishing his thoughts.

"Inept," Bond said.

The Boston Globe reports that these early campaign ads are competing to create a definitive public portrait of the challenger:

"President Bush is known to almost every American, and his image and record is well established," said Terry Holt, a Bush campaign spokesman. "John Kerry is the new unknown quantity."

William Benoit, professor of communications at the University of Missouri, said the ad wars reflect "a Bush rush to define Kerry early . . . before he gets a chance to define himself."

The fate of these dueling strategies could hinge on what proves more persuasive: Kerry's effort to sell himself to the electorate, or Bush's efforts to tarnish Kerry's image among voters.

"Voters learn more from negative spots, especially when the other guy [Bush] goes first," said Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin.

John Franzn, a political media consultant who works for Democrats and liberal groups, said: "The conventional wisdom in this business is that it is easier to make a negative ad stick in the public's mind than a positive ad. . . . And if you're essentially dealing with a blank slate, they work all the more."

[. . .]

A poll by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey indicated that in the 18 battleground states where the television ad campaign is being waged, unfavorable ratings for Kerry have been driven up from 28 percent to 36 percent while his favorability numbers dropped from 41 percent to 35 percent since the beginning of March.

Goldstein said one way to tell whether Bush's ads are working is to "look at what [Jay] Leno's saying. . . . Six weeks ago, Kerry was not a flip-flopper; now he largely is." A survey of talk-show comics by the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs, conducted for the first four months of 2004, found that Bush is the butt of more jokes than Kerry, with Bush's intelligence being the primary target.

But Tuesday, "Tonight Show" host Leno joked about Kerry's recent bicycle accident, noting that "when the police arrived, Kerry was well enough to give conflicting reports to the officers about what happened."