Still Fawning Over Obama

Since my political instincts are hopeless, and since today may turn out to be the last day of the Democratic party's race for the nomination, with any luck this will be my last political post for a while.

Months ago, we commented on how the media was fawning over Obama (see Words and Pictures.) Now even Democratic insiders are noticing it and expressing outrage.

For some good laughs, and an example of the "hands off Obama" prejudice, take a look at David Letterman's Monologues the past few weeks. He's been skewering McCain, Nader, Romney, et al, with a joke whose structure is, "He looks like the guy who..." See if you can find even one reference to Obama.

Hillary's Dilemma

Nothing Hillary is doing or saying is having any traction against Obama. The Clinton campaign must have tried out 5 different strategies in the past month alone, and nothing is working. There is a lesson here for advertisers about the heirarchy of message impact.

Obama is clearly the emotional choice among Democrats. Hillary will never beat him at the emotion game and should stop trying.

Her strategy has been to counter his emotional appeal with a message of "experience" and "ability". These are vague notions that have very little impact. There are only 3 ways to beat an emotional favorite:

Be specific. Be specific. Be specific.

"I will end the war in 90 days."
"I will grant citizenship to all immigrants in 60 days."
"I will introduce legislation to allow all defaulted mortgage holders to stay in their homes for 1 year."

I'm not saying that any of this is good policy, I'm just saying that in order to get back in the game, she needs a specific, concrete message that will appeal to Democrats.

And for us ad people, the lesson is that there is a heirarchy of message impact:

1. A specific, powerful fact
2. Emotion
3. Everything else

Research Knuckleheads

Pollsters were wrong -- some by more than 10% -- in their predictions of the outcome of the Democratic primary in New Hampshire.

You'd think that with all the money these guys make, and the inflated sense of importance they have, at least they could count correctly. Answering the question "how many?" is so much easier than answering the question "why?"

And yet gullible marketers still rely on these "researchers/social scientists" to tell them how to run their businesses. (See Research or Baloney?) These people are unreliable and anyone who listens to them is nuts.

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A Good Laugh

One of the so-called advantages of the web is that you can be more precise in your message. You can move at "internet" speed.

So it gave me a good laugh to find this on my Yahoo home page this morning.

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TAC Maintains Perfect Record

Nothing The Ad Contrarian has ever written or said about politics has been correct. He kept his perfect record intact with the prediction of an Obama win in New Hampshire.

When it comes to politics or driving directions, listen to what TAC says and do the opposite.

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Words And Pictures

Here's how to tell that the media have fallen in love with Barack Obama. It's in the photos.

In the past few days, worshipful pictures of Obama have appeared on the front page of The New York Times and Newsweek. Yesterday a huge, beautiful Norman Rockwell-like picture appeared on the front page of the Times. It was Obama reaching out for the hands of beatific supporters. An American flag is draped in the background. The story was headlined, "Daring To Believe, Blacks Savor Obama Victory." The photo had nothing to do with the story. In fact, there wasn't a black face in the crowd.

Newsweek also has an emotional picture of Obama on its cover.

Meanwhile, photos of Hillary have already started to turn frumpy and grumpy. If she loses in New Hampshire, watch the photos get really ugly.

For the past few years the media have been bombarded with criticism of playing favorites. They have become more circumspect in their cheer leading and rarely do it with words anymore. But it's always been the photo editors who've sent us the signals on who we are supposed to like. They're just as good at it now as ever.

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Change vs Experience

The pundits are reading the polls from Iowa and telling us that Obama beat Clinton because people were more interested in change than experience. Now Hillary is altering her strategy to represent herself as an agent of change.

TAC predicts this strategy will fail in New Hampshire. Like so many marketers -- and candidates -- TAC thinks they are confusing cause and effect.

People didn't prefer Obama because they said they favored change. They said they favored change because they preferred Obama.

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