Stick a fork in political marketeering.
The entire political marketeering industry, which molds and controls candidate images, just got thrown off the party bus. Their role as gatekeepers and public relations gurus doesn’t work in the age of tweets and selfies.
They are expensive, of dubious value and increasingly irrelevant.
From Kennedy until now, TV was the dominant opinion maker. Like movies, it created a common, shared memory that evoked emotion rather than rational thought. The universality of shared emotional experience of TV began to shred with cable and ended with Hulu, smartphones and Instagrams. Seeing an actual broadcast is less likely than viewing shared information in a post, complete with comments. TVs power was its ability to be the universal voice and the common emotional memory. Hard to retain authority in the wild web world of memes and snark.
TV’s influence was assumed to be so great and singular, that a candidate’s success and intent are assumed to be predicated on their purchase of TV advertisements. The bigger the buys, the stronger the candidate. We built citizens United on that supposition.
This of course, is pure hogwash.
Both presidential candidates have put a stake through the bloated carcass of the authority of the TV broadcast. Trump, through media star status, got his campaign ads given to him for free, Clinton is establishing a web platform presence that allows her to downplay TV and address voters directly . Taken together, they spell the end of the big money for ads scam that has burdened American politics for so long.
TV is no longer an unchallenged high priest of information. It has sold its value as a trusted political source. Thanks, Fox! It’s viewers are no longer the passive receptors of curated information, nor rapt participants. The emotional communal experience of one-way media like radio, TV and movies has been tempered by familiarity. Universal narratives presented by TV news are critiqued and challenged, which nullifies their authority. SNL on a global yet intimate scale. Ironically, the frequent ads and interruptions that cable TV has devolved into has helped break their emotional engagement with audiences by interrupting their own narratives. They have trained us to ignore them at will. I digress...
The unchallenged message does not exist in today’s Web world. As the online interconnectivity grows, TVs ability to influence public opinion shrinks as it is mocked, critiqued and desacrialized. Chances are, a TV political ad or interview broadcast will be seen in an online post, complete with posts and commentary, rather than as a one way communication.
However, the business of marketeers is to sell candidates a manufactured image which they claim will produce successful sale of their clients. Media influence. A tightly focused, controlled stream of information which uses audience reaction to steer the candidate to winning the most votes. American Idol.
However, the campaign marketeer can’t control memes, posts and snark or their candidates, anymore. The sound bite is dead and memed. Context reappears. Not good for an attenuated and decadent system. Their ‘special powers’ are no longer election magic. Just as we no longer wait for the 6 o’clock news hour, marketeers cannot stop the candidate from presenting unvetted messages, or the public from editorializing. Although they retain an institutional pride of place, their lack of influence, except in their own closed world, is becoming screamingly apparent. So they are a campaign expense that can be eliminated. A yuuuuge campaign expense. Gone.
With them goes the imperative to ‘sell’ a candidate using cable TV along with the henchmen of pollsters and pundits. Instead of a cycle of ad/response, the common reference becomes the candidates web site, rather than the media generated image. It is the beginning of the ability to campaign without massive amounts of money.
The solution to ending the influence of money in politics is to make it unnecessary to raise money to run successfully. Currently, the money is ‘required ‘ to place huge media buys on one-way corporate media, where the message is tightly controlled. Which is no longer possible. So if TV ad buys cannot achieve their stated objective, why bother? Marketeers and TV are not flexible or responsive enough to retain authority. They have become chroniclers of history, not heralds. We all know being an historian doesn’t pay well.
The future is personalized interactive campaigns where candidates are expected to issue blogs on their positions and plans. Direct contact. Web sites and blogs provide detailed information about a candidate and create a shortcut to direct people to explicit information. The person behind the image. Which opens the door to a truly participatory government, where people are forced to state and standby their published positions. No ‘staff error’ allowed. Accountability.
A more perfect Union.
Extra credit….TV ad rates are generally valued by number of eyeballs on screen, i.e., how big an audience the TV station offers to the advertiser. Superbowls ads are the high end market.
How do they determine how many eyes are on their ads? Number of TVs tuned to that channel is the basic rule. The info gathering is interactive. Tune to a cable channel, the cable company tracks your time spent on that channel, and assigns an ad price based on that and other factors. Magic spells.
(The thumb on the scale is operation of TVs in public places like bars and restaurants. Each TV is counted in calculating ad rates. So that wall o’ TVs in your local pub and eatery make you a captive audience to inflate ad rates. ) Pet peeve…. 425
