The Similarities Between 2012 Presidential Campaign And Mainstream Advertising

Our intelligence is in direct correlation to authority. That is, the more ignorant we are, the more likely we are to be willing to believe and submit to a certain power or form of thought. Clearly, or maybe not so clearly, companies regularly use and abuse this interrelationship to work in their own favor. Chuck Blore, a partner in radio broadcast advertizing, even asserts that, “advertising is the art of arresting human intelligence just long enough to get money from it.” Not only do advertisers prey on our naïveté of their products, but they also manipulate our psychological standpoints to view products from a specific perspective. Moreover, the advertising media feeds off of already present opinions in the mass public, such as stereotyping,

Again, this is not dissimilar to the strategies used by lackluster advertisers, such as Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Cereal. In 2010, the iconic cereal brand found itself in the middle of a false advertising scandal. Rice Krispies claimed that the cereal would boost a child’s immunity, with “25 percent Daily Value of Antioxidants and Nutrients -- Vitamins A, B, C and E," when there was no evidence to support the idea that children’s immunity was noticeably or even at all improved from eating the cereal (business insider). While this misleading type of advertising is illegal, and will potentially and eventually backfire, presidential nominees trying to portray a certain image still frequently use it. So frequently, in fact, that about one dollar out of every five spent on campaign advertising funded an ambiguous, disingenuous, or completely wrong claim (Winneg). In 2012, Mitt Romney’s SuperPAC campaign ran the “Restore Our Future” advertisement, which claimed that as governor, Mitt Romney had elected to not raise taxes. On a subconscious level, this commercial is appealing to the audience’s need for guidance, by portraying Romney as a parent figure who can make fiscally responsible decisions for the nation (Fowles 558). However, what this advertisement neglected to mention is that Romney had in fact

Ultimately, Twitter was one of the most decisive factors of the race, with Obama posting 282 tweets, with 34 of them containing images, and Romney tweeting 163 messages, only 3 of them contained images (Combs 179). The pictures from each candidate focused on appealing to women, and the gender’s need for acknowledgment, or attention, to their unequal rights. How the tweets differed, however, is the type of women depicted in the candidate’s posts. While Mitt Romney’s three pictures did predominantly feature women, the tweets only appeal to a specific type of woman: A white, middle class, 30-something, married woman. Moreover, the tweets never mentioned the main issues related to women, and instead stuck to Romney’s vague slogan, “We can change it #RomneyRyan2012” (180). In contrast, Obama targeted and tackled women’s rights head on through tweets directly addressing abortion, equal pay, and photos highlighting women of every age, race, and class. As a result of this straightforward appeal to the target audience’s need for attention, Obama ultimately received 55% of women’s votes, as opposed to the 42% who voted for Romney (181,