Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

rapid response

There have been a number of stories over the course of this election season about each campaign’s “rapid response team,” charged with keeping tabs on everything going on in the opposition’s campaign and in the media and quickly mobilzing a campaign response to it — from “debunker” blog entries to public statements to letters to the editor to campaign advertising.

Surely, much of this has to do with posturing and keeping up appearances. And in this 24 / 7 world, political “attacks” are coming — and responses are expected — more rapidly than ever.

An article in today’s Washington Post suggests that the Kerry campaign produced ad spots that were never aired on television, but rather were created for the sole purpose of generating news stories about them. (“Some Kerry Spots Never Make the Air” - 10/20/04)

This accomplishes a few things: One, the campaign goes on record as having offered a “tough” response to charges made by the opposition. Two, the campaign saves a considerable amount of money and creates far more buzz by creating an ad that the media will report on, rather than purchasing time to actually air the ads.

The notion of “free media” vs. “paid media” is nothing new. But the examples I’ve heard about in the past usually involved paid campaign ads (both on television and online) that, once aired, generated enough outrage or buzz (or both) that they were soon enough reported on (and continuously re-aired for free) by the news media, doing a more powerful job of attracting viewers’ attention to the assertions (true, false or exaggerated) made in the ad than the ad’s mere airing in ordinary “commercial time” likely could have done. (For example, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad.)

Creating advertisements for the media’s benefit seems to be a pretty cynical — but apparently effective — means of generating buzz on the cheap.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, said that Kerry aides “shouldn’t imply they’re going to air something if they’re not.” But she called the coverage “a failure of journalism to ask the question we ought to ask about every single ad: how much and where.”

This also begs the question of what’s more effective: political advertisements promoted only through the media, or political advertisements aired repeatedly and then reinforced by occasional media coverage?