Scott Bruun: To Boldly Go Where No Ad Has Gone Before

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Scott Bruun, GoLocalPDX MINDSETTER™

Senator Jeff Merkley's 2014 TV ad, "Hands"

Nothing brings out the worst of politics more than political ads. Made to excite the most volatile of human emotions in the least amount of time, political ads are designed to promote fear, anger, disgust or contempt.

Most ads these days are just the modern variant of the one Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater fifty years ago. You know, the child in the meadow seen gently plucking daisy pedals while the ominous background voice counts down to the nuclear mushroom cloud. 4,..3,..2,..1. Visceral, emotional and reactionary. And over those fifty years since the daisy girl, these ads have worked.

In full disclosure, I have been on both sides of political ads. I have bought and paid for some, and been on the blunt receiving-end of others. I have no authority or standing to be self-righteous on the subject. Living in glass houses, and all that. Instead here, I simply want to pose the question: do they still work?

To answer that, let me first introduce you to my youngest daughter. She’s twelve and in seventh-grade at a suburban middle-school. She likes reading, volleyball, Grimm, and is very involved at church. She has an iPhone and uses it to actively communicate with her friends in just about every way, except in actual phone conversations.

And she is a hard-core Trekkie.

I mean she loves old school Star Trek. Kirk, Spock, Uhura, the Enterprise, phasers, tricorders tribbles, it’s all good. She’s been a Trekkie since she was six, half her life now. Her path to becoming a Trekkie?

Political ads.

No TV During Election Season

You see back in the fall of 2008, we turned the TV off. Or rather, I went to Costco on a whim and purchased all three seasons of the original Star Trek on DVD. I did this because almost every time the TV was on that fall, there would be political ads running and explaining to my two young daughters (among others) just exactly how their dad was evil incarnate. Call me old fashioned, but I chose to limit my kids’ exposure to the narrator’s ominous voice and the grainy black & whites of their old man.

That year inaugurated a new family tradition, one that we have carried forward. During campaign seasons, every other year, we largely stop watching TV. There are exceptions of course, like Monday Night Football. But for the most part, if we have to have evening “screen time,” we pop-in an episode of Star Trek. My guess is that over the last six years, Star Trek has saved us from seeing at least 500-or-so political ads.

It means fewer grainy images of Monica Wehby. Fewer occasions to hear how Merkley is “fighting” for the middle class, or how Kitzhaber has “reduced” health care costs for Oregonians. Fewer occasions listening to the Pro-91 side tell me how safe marijuana will be once it’s legal and regulated.

For my family, traditional political ads don’t work. More to the point, my family is likely a microcosm of a larger phenomenon. After all, TV viewers today certainly don’t need DVDs to avoid political ads. Just download or stream shows and view on your schedule, sans commercials. My guess is that there are very few Oregonians 35 or younger who watch TV on a network’s schedule, and even fewer who watch commercials.

Are TV Ads Effective Anymore?

Same with network news. How many Millennials regularly sit down to watch the 6 O’clock news? Any? Instead, “news” is mutually selected based on online habits and preferences.

This foretells radical change in how political messages will be delivered over the next decade. And because consumers will increasingly choose their own timing and content, might this also foretell radical change in the type of messaging? Who knows, perhaps fewer disingenuous missives? Perhaps greater incentive for campaigns to boldly go where no ad has gone before, like actual policy and genuine debate?

But that’s the future, so for now I’ll stick with Star Trek. You see, unlike my daughter whose favorite episodes have to do with tribbles and such, my favorite episode has always been “Arena”. The one where Kirk is paired in a brutal fight to the death with the hideous, reptilian Gorn.

I guess I never could leave politics.

Scott Bruun is a fifth-generation Oregonian and recovering politician. He lives with his family in the 'burbs, yet dutifully commutes to Portland every day where he earns his living on the fifth floor of Big Pink.