Madison Ave vs. K Street

A few days ago I wrote a post focusing on the interesting (to me, at least) fact that visitors to DailyKos were ten times as likely to be using a Mac as visitors to conservative sites.  I think I can accurately summarize the responses as running from "that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen on the front page" to "F**k you."  Oh, and kudos on the hate mail, people.  I'm still pulling out the stingers.  

So let's just get this out of the way first: yes, I am that big of an idiot. But in this case, my idiocy has a purpose.

The overlap between people who view themselves as liberal and those who use Macintoshes (Macinti?) is not a coincidence, but it's certainly not there because Apple is an innately liberal company pushing a 100% progressive agenda.  They've had their issues with onerous DRM, an association with right-friendly Disney/ABC that's so close there's been speculation of a merger, and charges of using sweatshops in China to produce their popular goods.  However, Apple also produces slick, well-designed products, and does an unmatched job marketing to an audience -- marketing that has included images of Gandhi and Ceasar Chavez.  This works well for Apple, as several surveys have found that Americans who are both young and interested in technology also tend to be more liberal.  If you are young (or still want to think of yourself that way), tech-savvy, and lean to the left, Apple has your number.

This is not intended as a slam against Apple any more than my previous post (written, as usual, on my bargain basement beige box PC-clone) was a tribute to Apple.  Like most companies, Apple does some things that progressives are likely to find admirable, along with others that are more questionable.  In fact, my point isn't about Apple at all.  It's this: in our consumer society, marketing firms have learned how to attach emotional resonance to products that goes far beyond what's included in the box.  

I grew up in a family of "yellow dog" Democrats who would as soon chop their own hands off as pull the lever for a Republican.  But we were also Ford men.  Part of this, just as with Mac users today, was certainly an affection for the products out of Dearborn (that white T-bird was still pretty sweet, even if it had picked up a lot of rust on its journey down the social strata to reach our gravel drive).  A good part of that was also the image that Ford was moving at the time.  If you'd have told us we had to vote Republican or switch to Chevy... let's just say it would have been a close thing.  The folks who made those ads knew they weren't just selling us a product, they were inducting us into a tribe.  

Compared to the best of Madison Avenue, political ads are impossibly amateurish.  Most are so painfully bland and inoffensive that they couldn't effectively move life preservers on the Titanic.  When they chose to get pushy, they come off as crude.  

Good commercials are edgy.  They don't even try to win over every viewer, and they don't care if some of their message flies over your head.  Heck, they don't care if many people are flat out offended.  Why was the Michael J. Fox Ad on stem cell research so talked about?  Because it was a good ad.  Not everyone who saw it liked it, but if you saw it, you didn't forget it.  It had narrative.  It had nerve.  It had guts.  People are still talking about LBJ's "Daisy" ad after forty years.  How many political commercials do you remember between those two?

The typical candidate ad, complete with slow cross-fades, a faint echo of trumpets, and innocuous talk designed toward the least common denominator is just plain awful.  Worse, it's forgettable.  The words -- country, flag, service, honor -- are designed to appeal to everyone, so they end up being remembered by no one.  Even terms like "liberal" and "conservatives" are blunt objects; ponderous, amorphous language that describes huge numbers of people with highly disparate goals and viewpoints.  Good marketers wouldn't touch those terms with a thousand person phone poll.  Speaking of which, when is the last time you got a phone call from Toyota asking what you wanted to see in a car?  From front to back, we treat our political message-making with all the skill of community theater.

As we head into the first billion dollar campaign, candidates are going to have to understand that we're done with traditional campaign ads.  Seventeen candidates all showing their smiling kids, their adoring spouse, their tree-lined home town main street, and every other trope of political advertising, and it will all blend together like flakes in a snowstorm.

To win this season, a candidate needs put his or herself  forward as strongly as Fox did and needs to find a way to stir as much interest as the iPhone.  If that sounds like a tall order, it is -- and it's an order that's not going to be filled by calling in the same people who've delivered one season of milquetoast after another.  Right now, some smart campaign is out there hiring the artists who put those lite-bright sculptures around Boston.  Some campaign is preparing to take chances.

And the rest of them are getting ready to lose.