It's safe to say advertising strategy was heavily used throughout this campaign. Both parties used attack ads vigorously to highlight the negatives of their opponent. A lot can be said about them being out of context, but in my opinion, they did the job. These advertisements range anywhere from humorous to serious, but in total, these strategies aided in the turnout of the election.
SOMEPLACE TV AD
This is clearly an attack ad because it shows Donald Trump’s clothing line and he doesn’t seem to know where they’re made. This was footage from him on Letterman. He is shown saying "It's good. We employ people in Bangladesh. They have to work, too." This is contradicting his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” which he has stood by American made everything since taking office. He portrays to be unaware where some of these products are made, which as a business owner, it's not secret that you know where everything comes from. I think that ads to humor in this ad. This ran in the battleground states, which was wise to show some of his true colors to the people.
This is clearly an attack ad because it shows Donald Trump’s clothing line and he doesn’t seem to know where they’re made. This was footage from him on Letterman. He is shown saying "It's good. We employ people in Bangladesh. They have to work, too." This is contradicting his slogan, “Make America Great Again,” which he has stood by American made everything since taking office. He portrays to be unaware where some of these products are made, which as a business owner, it's not secret that you know where everything comes from. I think that ads to humor in this ad. This ran in the battleground states, which was wise to show some of his true colors to the people.
LOW OPINION TV AD
This is undoubtedly an attack ad towards Trump. The Clinton campaign took parts of Trumps speeches where he offered a low opinion of people. At the end and beginning the same clip is used where he says “you can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion for it's citizens." He downgrades
MIRRORS TV AD
This ad is all about how Donald views women physically. Women are shown looking at themselves in a mirror while you hear Trump's various insults about physical appearances of women. Just two quotes of many that stood out to me were him saying, " I'd look her right in that fat ugly face of hers" and "a person who is flat-chested is very hard to be a 10."These aren't words we want women, young girls, or anyone to hear. Having the superior figure of our country say these disgusting words is very concerning. I think Clinton constructed this ad well to show how gender is viewed by this man and how it can quickly affect those listening or watching. He is known for publicly downgrading females and clearly has no respect for them.
Overall, it seemed pretty clear that the Clinton campaign and Trump campaign launched a variety of attack ads, pointing out issues or comments made by the other to hurt their image. Image is a big part of advertising strategy because you want to ruin or dent the opponents, but in an effective way. These we gender based attacks Clinton used to show what Trump thinks and how it affects those listening. We rarely see ads by the campaign paying for them about their candidate, it's a war itself that is starting to become old and tiring to watch in my opinion.
Sources:
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2016
I agree that although almost all of the ads on both sides were attack ads and they still go the job done. However I also agree that this king of strategy is getting old. I would much rather see an ad focusing and being clear on a candidate and what they are going to do to improve the country.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that most of these ads were attack ads isn't too surprising i mean look at the two candidates they were like children bickering back and forth. I agree that this is getting very tiring to watch over and over again with each campaign.
ReplyDeleteI like that you talked about the impact the attack ads had on the opposing candidates image. Political advertisements do a lot in shaping the public's perception of who a candidate is and with an inordinate amount negative ads coming at us from both sides, it is easy to see why both Hillary and Trump ranked lower in likability than many candidates years before them.
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