Sales and the bad campaign ad

Doctors, hospital staff, nurses and so on, deal with death every day, they have to emotionally disengage. That’s what I want you to do.

Watch this campaign ad, forget about candidate preference and stick to the technicals, let’s begin its autopsy.

“Mamas for DeSantis” commercial

Sales. Post-mortem of the campaign commercial

The first thing we notice is that there is an irregularity. In such an early stage always begin with a visual of what you are ‘selling’.

It only takes about 1 to 2 seconds but it creates intimacy and a quickly acquired familiarity. If I only know a candidate through a medium, those few seconds should purchase an emotional tether.

Time. Mind on the meter

The mind decides within about three seconds whether it wants to ‘permit entry’ to something or to shut it out, so we need to optimize that window.

The blank movie screen

The viewer isn’t watching every image, instead they are responding to the feel of its empathetic properties, images, colors, motion, smiles and so on. And the viewer isn’t listening to every word spoken, but rather to the voice, its sound, its authority. It’s a melody.

From this composite the viewer creates their own mental image of who the candidate ‘is’. Think of Reagan’s “Morning in America” or Obama’s “Hope and Change”,  these prompted a viewer to take a blank movie screen and cast their own optimism upon it, like a projector. Likewise, if an ad is framed with negativity from inception, the viewer will cast their fears and pessimism onto that blank movie screen.

In this commercial, the first 20 or so seconds are dreadful imagery, the mind then either accepts the ad as a bleak reminder and tolerates an overwhelming sensory experience, or the mind tunes it out and seeks a cognitive exit.

Cognitive A/B switches

In the first part of the commercial, 20 or so seconds, there are two switches that the mind must operate to achieve any outcome:

A. “They did this to save people & the children survived.”
B. “They destroyed our children with this hideous pharma crime.”

Neither is good for the candidate.

• In A the ads are exploitative, cruel and intrusive. “I didn’t do this to my kids, fuck off.”
• In B the ad creates rage for something that has already happened. This is not to say that it wasn’t horrible and so on, but if the viewer is reliving the political and pharma intrigues, causes and effects, how does that improve the perception of the candidate? I don’t need aspirin for the headache I had last year.

In the second part of the commercial there are two switches:

A “Florida doesn’t scale and I would rather go to him than have him come to me.”
B “I don’t care about yesterday, I barely remember it, I care about ___”

Please see this poll from Quinnipiac. Do you notice that ‘Covid response’ isn’t on the list?

Republican: Economy (44%) Preserving US democracy (25%) Immigration (14%)

Democrat: Preserving US democracy (32%) Abortion (13%) Economy (13%) Gun violence (12%)

Independent: Economy (35%) Preserving US democracy (27%) Abortion (8%)

Covid is not an issue that people care about ‘now’, instead what the ad “Mamas for Desantis” does is exhaust the viewers emotional reserves. This is a reservoir that depletes quickly and is difficult to replenish.

Emotional Reserves

Viewers are careful to use the minimum amount of that emotional energy and to get the optimal yield on their investment. “If it’s not something that I care about right ‘now’, go away. Get off my TV, don’t knock on my door.”

Sales and Time

The “Mamas for DeSantis” commercial pushes the time envelope – but what is its objective? What is the viewer being activated to do?

The presidential elections aren’t even close to the voting stage. The ad should be exciting viewers to financially contribute or to host house parties for the candidate or to volunteer.. Whatever it is, the commercial should be giving the supporters moral authority and inculcating in them the language to express their support to themselves and to others.

In the end, the “Mamas for DeSantis” commercial activates despair and depression. For many people the cure for that is pharmacological.

This is the best pharma ad, the worst campaign ad.