Pretty much every time a Framing diary comes up, some Kossack complains, somewhere in the comments, that framing is manipulative.
True. But so what?
ANY communication between two people is an attempt by one to influence the behavior of the other. Babies are cute--because cuteness influences their parents to care for them.
Coercion, deception, contempt...those are immoral, not the attempt to influence. If our ads 1) are always truthful and 2) show respect for our intended audience, they can become even more effective than those from the opposition--because we can use them to help build a reputation for trustworthiness.
The purpose of this diary is to start a discussion about how Democrats can create effective advertising--at all levels of government, and for all kinds of campaigns. Sharing effective ads is a way to teach other campaigns how to create more of them. And each effective ad becomes another way to showcase progressive moral values and attract more voters to our candidates. I've some examples below the fold, and I'm hoping for many more in the comments.
Done:
Unless you lived in Minnesota, most of you have probably wondered why we elected Jesse Ventura as governor 12 years ago. Quite frankly, I believe there were two reasons: Coleman and Humphrey had been bashing each other for months--and then Jesse ran an extremely effective positive ad....
Transcript adapted from MPR's Ad Watch
...two boys play with a Jesse Ventura "action figure".
Voiceover: You can make Jesse battle special interest groups!
Child: I don't want your stupid money!
Voiceover: ...and party politics!
Child: We politicians have powers the average man can't comprehend!
Voiceover: You can also make Jesse lower taxes, improve public education, and fight for the things Minnesotans really care about!
Links to ad at MPR, youtube, or elsewhere.
You can read more about the campaign at PBS.
More recently, I've been inspired by (and resentful of) the Tarryl Clark ads...
They're good ads, but Bachman isn't my Rep. My Rep is John Kline(MN-02), who, along with Erik Paulsen(MN-03) votes lockstep with the Republican agenda. Kline and Paulsen don't get the press Bachmann does--and that fact yields low-information voters like the one I talked with last weekend--who definitely would vote against Bachmann, but who LIKED John Kline!
If ONLY those ads would devote one or two seconds connecting Kline and Eriksen to Bachmann!
Dream1:
I keep imagining a 50's style variety act, with Bachmann in the lead, and Kline/Paulsen as her supportive dancers....
Dream2:
Alternately, I imagine all three of them as marionettes, dancing (and singing) under the fingers of say...British Petroleum? (Not Karl Rove--we want even low-information voters to recognize the evil puppetmaster.)
That Republican uniformity can be used to our advantage--virtually the same ad could be run nationwide, but with different faces on the dancers/marionettes.
Jib/Jab type cartoons online might also be extremely powerful. We could end something like that with a localized downloadable political cartoon that people could print and share with neighbors.
I have no idea how to do the details/production/costs. But the IMAGE of such a campaign could do wonders.
Doing:
My son is running for the MN House in District 35A. The incumbent is a RepubliClone, and our budget is tiny.
We're looking at creating a bookmark--4 to a standard sheet. We're planning to put the campaign logo at the top of the front, and his website url at the front bottom, but we've also worked out the following text for the back:
I support
Matt
Christensen
for 35A
because
we deserve
• Local Jobs
• Smart Spending
• Strong Schools
• Fair Taxes
• Better State
Government
(plus required campaign info, disclaimers, etc. at the bottom)
Like Jesse's ad, it doesn't TELL us anything about the candidate.
And that is true. But we don't WANT it to say a great deal. What we want are five points of agreement--and with every nod, the voter also starts to convince himself that supporting Matt is a way to reach these goals.
(If he's elected, next time it might read: "working hard to bring us" instead of "because we deserve".)
The fact that the ad says so little is actually a strong positive--there's that little tug on the voter to keep the bookmark just so he/she has the website address handy and can look up more about the candidate later. (A nice change from the usual temptation to just throw the ad into the recycling bin.) The ad being a bookmark means that the voter probably already has a place to file the ad.
Lets use the comments section to elaborate on the above ideas--Please use "Dream", "Done", or Doing as the first word of the comment header to identify ads you'd like to share.