A couple of weeks ago, Advertising Age magazine had an item that received a lot of attention online. The point of the article was simple: Bush’s and Kerry’s campaign ads aren’t having much of an effect in changing people’s minds.
More than half the consumers queried in a new Advertising Age poll conducted by Lightspeed International Research said the blitz of presidential campaign ads had not influenced them and in total, 92% said the ads had not swayed them to change their prospective votes.
Moreover, nearly one in four respondents found President George Bush’s ads to date are not at all persuasive; 29% found Sen. John Kerry’s ads not at all persuasive.
The one thing that seemed odd to me about the conclusion was the way in which respondents were asked for their opinion. Voters were asked if they found the ads “persuasive,” the degree of their opinion, and how they were likely to act as a result of having seen them. Overwhelmingly, people claimed that the ads were not effective.
I was skeptical of the result because people aren’t always willing to admit to having been persuaded by a campaign commercial. In other words, when asked if the ads had any effect, people said no, discounting the possibility that they were influenced without their knowledge. No one likes the idea of being manipulated by advertising, so it wasn’t surprising that people answered the poll this way.
It turns out a study was released by the National Annenberg Election Survey last week that helped prove this point.
Among the survey’s findings, outlined for reporters Friday: “Despite their stated lack of interest in political news on television, these key voters were at least as likely as others in their states to believe dubious claims made in attack ads widely shown in their states, from the claim that Bush favors sending American jobs overseas to contentions that Kerry favors raising gasoline taxes by 50 cents a gallon.”
I bet if you asked these same people if they found the ads “persuasive,” they’d say no. But that’s the funny thing about advertising — the message sticks with you, whether you want it to or not.