It is only in politics that people have decided negative ads are a good way to gain 'customers'. You are not going to find negative campaigns when people are trying to make money from advertising.
Why is Pepsi not running negative ads about Coke? This a is a very clear 'two party' race and one would think that if negative campaigning worked, it would work here. Pepsi could easily run ads pointing out how bad drinking Coke is for you, everyone out there knows drinking Coke is not something you should be doing regularly. You can see the problem here, if Coke is bad, so to is Pepsi. Th e impact of running this sort of an ad campaign would be destroying the market for both products, people would quit drinking as much pop.
OK, how about if dairy ran adds about how bad Coke is for you? You would think it would be a very easy sell. So why do they not do it? Because it does not work.
In politics all negative campaigning does is turn people off of being active in politics. Parties do not gain voters from another party by crapping all over them. All they do is turn off the public from voting.
To be even more clear about this, there is no research showing negative campaigning will gain you votes. All it does is reduce the size of the electorate and thereby you might win because you lost fewer supporters than the party you crapped on. I know of no example in any election where a negative campaign increased the total vote a party achieved. Prove me wrong if you can think of any.
The classic example is the 1979 "Labour is not working" campaign UK, but there is nothing to indicate in that election that this ad changed the election. The campaign was only a reflection of the zeitgeist and did not create it. Even then, the total vote for the Labour party did not fall. The big losers in that election were the Liberals and the Scottish Nationalist Party, who were not the targets of the ads.
At the moment there are about 700,00 people in BC from the mild centre left to the centre right that are not voting. They are not voting for a number of reasons, but the single biggest one is because they have been told over and over again that the BC NDP and the BC Liberals are awful parties and should not be supported. These people represent more or less the same amount of the vote the BC NDP and BC Liberals managed to get in 2009. Tapping into half of those people with a positive reason to vote for a party would be more than enough to win a huge landslide election.
At some point someone is going to figure out that positive ads and messages actually do work and that these companies spending billions of dollars on positively marketing their products actually know what they are doing.
4 comments:
Hear, hear
McDonald's, and every other private sector company that advertises, does not use negative campaigning because it's not allowed by the Advertising Standards of Canada. The Canadian Code of Advertising Stndards has 14 clauses, including:
6. Comparative Advertising
Advertisements must not, unfairly, discredit, disparage or attack other products, services, advertisements or companies, or exaggerate the nature or importance of competitive differences.
11. Superstitions and Fears
Advertisements must not exploit superstitions or play upon fears to mislead the consumer.
14. Unacceptable Depictions and Portrayals
It is recognized that advertisements may be distasteful without necessarily conflicting with the provisions of this clause 14; and the fact that a particular product or service may be offensive to some people is not sufficient grounds for objecting to an advertisement for that product or service.
Advertisements shall not:
(a) condone any form of personal discrimination, including that based upon race, national origin, religion, sex or age;
(b) appear in a realistic manner to exploit, condone or incite violence; nor appear to condone, or directly encourage, bullying; nor directly encourage, or exhibit obvious indifference to, unlawful behaviour;
(c) demean, denigrate or disparage any identifiable person, group of persons, firm, organization, industrial or commercial activity, profession, product or service or attempt to bring it or them into public contempt or ridicule;
(d) undermine human dignity; or display obvious indifference to, or encourage, gratuitously and without merit, conduct or attitudes that offend the standards of public decency prevailing among a significant segment of the population.
The Code specifically does not control political or election advertising, and it shows.
First off, the standards are not enforceable. I can think of many ads that breach many of the clauses.
Secondly, there is nothing within the code of conduct that stops negative ads. As an example, if one were to run ads pointing out when a restaurant chain locations were closed due to health violations, this would not be a problem. Pointing out that drinking pop is a bad idea is a fair comment and could easily be used in a campaign against various pop manufacturers.
Taking that all into account it still does not take away from the fact that negative campaigning does not work when you are trying to sell a product.
The goal of Mitt Romney is to be the guy with the most votes. To that end, it doesn't matter a whit to him if we wins with 95% turnout or 45% turnout, only that he wins. So a tactic like negative advertising that turns people off politics in general, but turns them off of his opponents in particular, is acceptable.
The goal of McDonalds is to sell the maximum quantity of burgers possible. Beating Burger King might be nice, but it's not the goal, and a tactic that drove down burger use in aggregate would not aid McDonalds in their goal, no matter how successfully it suppressed Burger King sales.
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