Opponent Advertising

Last week in class we continued our discussion of political advertisements. I decided to look at the two presidential campaign websites and see the different types of advertisements that they offered about one another. If you go to either candidates website you can see they have pages of videos, blog posts, twitter posts, etc. I chose to pick out one opponent advertisement from each candidates website.

Mitt Romney has an advertisement on called “President Obama’s measure of progress” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFIlYt3NO3Y&feature=youtu.be). This video shows President Obama making statements during his 2008 campaign about what he planned to do in office or in better words what progress he planned to make.  The comments made during the advertisement were all about jobs and how President Obama did not meet his promise of progress like he said during 2008. This really resonates when you are given the numerical figures. The unemployment rate is 9.9% and in Charleston, NC its 10%. When you see how many jobs have been lost it puts into perspective the question, has there been progression? This opponent advertisement uses the attack and the ridicule element. Romney is attacking President Obama on the statements he made about progress. Romney further more ridicules him by forcing others to see that he actually did make any to the statements happen.

President Obama has an advertisement called Mitt Romney “Out of Context” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X3LGAXVd80) is more of a comical advertisement that pokes fun at Romney for saying all the things that President Obama wants to do. Romney making the statements of the President shows that he must want to do the opposite. This is a form of an attack advertisement because it’s attacking his position, which most people know is complete opposite. This advertisement takes Romney’s statements and turns it to their advantage. This advertisement is able to focus on multiple issues at hand which can be negative because it could be too much information to take in.

            When you go to both candidates’ websites you will find many videos that attack the opponent. Mitt Romney even has a section called Obama Isn’t Working or better known as OWI. Seeing the amount of negative advertisements on each candidate’s websites that contain a negative aspect is astounding. It presents the question, how effective can they be? When negative advertising considered to be too much? As we said in class these negative advertisements are overused a lot. Candidates spend more time focusing on why not to choose the other instead of focusing on policies, laws, etc. that they want to initiate. However, there are also a large amount of testimonial advertisements on each candidates website. President Obama has a testimonial advertisement about a woman meeting Mitt Romney and his stance on education and teachers union. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GKhcrxIOP0g). The testimonial advertisements establish credibility and allow making the candidate look better. This advertisement in particular for President Obama does that. Mitt Romney had a good advertisement, dare I say, about students not being successful after college (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIqdyLmeV28). I think this is the perfect example of an opponent advertisement because it shows all the elements testimonial, attacking, and ridicule. The fact that Romney was able to do that without himself being involved was really well done.

            I would encourage everyone to go to the websites and just look at a couple of different videos because it really shows how effective certain advertisements can be. They can play into your emotions whether is be sadness or anger. You can see yourself as a part of some advertisements. The candidates and their team definitely have a way of sending across a certain message in each advertisement.