The 1980 Presidential Elections, Research Paper Example

David Ogilvy, popularly known as, the father of advertising provides comprehensive way of boosting sales or popularity of a particular product, talent, or idea. He outlines the various concepts of getting clients or supporters, maintaining them, and building good campaigns. He also describes how to illustrate advertisements on posters, TV stations, and billboards. Politics is also a process that is almost similar to business. In politics, an individual or a contestant is charged with the task of letting his or her qualities known to the public to earn votes. This process requires a kind of advertisement that displays the qualities and qualifications of a particular candidate. This is important in luring voters and several supporters. This study analyzes the TV ads of the presidential elections in 1980 (Reagan vs. Carter vs. Anderson) taking into considerations Ogilvy’s laws of marketing.

The first spot of the 1980 presidential elections is on Reagan addressing the issue of the 53 Americans who were held hostages by Iranian in American embassy in Tehran (The Living Room). The then US president was Jimmy Carter who was seeking re-election on a Democrat ticket. Reagan, the republican candidate, saw this as a loophole in the government, which was once headed by his competitor. Funnily, the hostages were not released until the inauguration of Jimmy Carter after he won the election. Relating this to Ogilvy’s literature, it is evidenced that most of the 22 advertising laws are satisfied by Reagan’s decision and tactic of handling a competitor. First, the law of leadership that instructs readers to be better now than being fast. The presidential election had three candidates; other than the already mentioned two, the other one was Anderson. Only Reagan identified the fault in Carter’s leadership. With this, he was far much better than Anderson who never saw this. In addition, politics is about strengthening your candidature by weakening the opponents. In this case, Reagan lowered the strength of Carter to a level that most citizens saw carter as a weak leader who could not find a way to solve the problems directly involving American citizens. This is discussed by Ogilvy in his 22 laws of advertising. Ogilvy talks of the law of the law of the ladder (Ogilvy 43). The ladder is like a beam balance; when one person is on the top, the other must be on a different step below or above him or her. In politics, the fight is based on who is to stay on top. In order to displace a person on top, one has to use some tactics or energy. In this spot, Reagan provided a masterpiece revealing how weak Carter was in leading Americans.

The spot entitled ‘journey’ is about the editing that was done on Bill Clinton’s biographical film, “The Man from Hope.” The film shows that Clinton attending the Boys of Nation leadership event held at the White House in 1963 (The Living Room). The video showed Clinton shaking hands with the then US president, John F. Kennedy. The journey is actually the edited version of the video, and it portrays Reagan as person who struggled to in his early life and successfully became the president. Besides, the video excludes the information on the Ivy League University, Yale that Clinton attended. In essence, the video was made specifically to portray Clinton as someone who underwent several life tribulations in a middle class American society, contrary to the truth. The video was produced to counter the belief of the focus group that Clinton was an elitist politician. This would have spoilt many votes for her, especially in the middle class and poor families, especially from the southern parts of the US. This strategy helped Clinton win the 1992 US presidential election. This is in accordance to Ogilvy’s law of perception. In marketing, perception matters more than facts. What the voters perceive of an individual candidate is more important than the facts about the candidate (Ogilvy 43).

The other spot is on the effects of spouses on the successes and campaigns of presidential candidates. Nancy Reagan, the wife, to the then presidential candidate Nancy Reagan played an exceptional role in tuning the minds of several Americans to vote for his husband. In a TV ad, Nancy boldly refutes the charges that President Carter made against Reagan. She states that Reagan was not a warmonger and asks Carter to explain to him the reason for the vacillating or rather weak foreign policies (The Living Room). As known with other previous republican presidential aspirants, Ronald Reagan had conservative mentality and his campaign team felt that this was supposed to be removed from the public mindsets. This was achieved and many TV viewers saw the advert as a spousal defense, at the same time, a way of revealing the non-conservative nature of Ronald Reagan. The law of Candor advises readers to admit challenges and they will definitely turn to be stepping-stones. In this spot, Nancy Reagan literary accepts the fact that Reagan is a conservative by trying to defend him and attacking the opponent Jimmy Carter. Through her, much attention is diverted to Carter’s failures rather than Reagan’s conservativeness. This was mainly aimed at the democrats who had constantly argued that Republicans were conservatives

The other spot from the Living Room Candidate website is a video showing Iranian citizens warning Americans not to make a mistake voting for Ronald Reagan in the presidential elections. This had initially appeared on the New York Times and the narrator illustrating on the story commented that Iranians wanted ‘America managed by weaker leaders.’ This is kind of ironical political mind game. Confirming the truth of this idea is not easy and no one knows whether the whole thing was stage-managed or not. Finally, the fact that the narrator comments that Iran wanted a weaker America shows that the whole process was managed by Reagan’s campaign team. The video portrayed Reagan as a strong leader feared by American enemies such as Iran. This eventually earned him several votes from the many Americans who viewed Iran as a security threat to the US. Another video that was managed by Jimmy Carter’s campaign team discourages voters from voting in Ronald Reagan as the US president. One narrator states that if Reagan was the president, America would be at war contrary to what his preferred candidate, Jimmy Carter has done. To others, it was Jimmy Crater’s four-year-reign, which ended the Egypt-Israel war. The law of hype states that when things are doing well, one need not to publicize or try corrections, when things look opposite, one must exaggerate things to fix the situation (Ries & Jack 47). The idea that Carter stopped the Egypt-Israeli war looks flawless to some, but to historians, it is a simple publication. The Egypt-Israel war started way back several centuries ago. As stated earlier, Jimmy Carter had a bad record of failed foreign policies that left 53 Americans hostages in Iran for a whole year. In order to protect himself, his campaign team came up with videos depicting his efforts to counter wars and terrorism not only in the US but in other countries as well. Ogilvy advices that while advertising, one must ensure that the reputation of the opponent or competitor lowered as much as possible to gain superiority in the market (Ries & Jack 47). The same concept applies in this case. The advert showed Reagan’s strength while destroying Carter’s.

From the analysis of the above adverts, a successful presidential campaign adverts must contain certain elements. For instance, the advert should reduce the strength of other candidates, particularly the seemingly stronger candidate(s). Secondly, it should tell the public that the campaign team is aware of the ills they know about the aspirant and correct it in away. Finally, a presidential campaign commercial must be accompanied by non-verified truths to convince a given section of the public about a particular idea (Newman 101). Politics is not about facts but perception of the voters. The ads viewed were effective. For instance, Reagan won the 1980 elections mainly because of weak foreign policy portrayed by his strongest competitor, Jimmy Carter.

Works Cited

Newman, Bruce I. The Marketing of the President: Political Marketing As Campaign Strategy. Thousand Oaks u.a: Sage Publ, 1994. Print.

Ogilvy, David. Confession of an Advertising man. New York: Harper & Collins, 2013. Print.

Ries, Al, and Jack Trout. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. London: Profile Books, 1993. Print.

The Living Room Candidate. Presidential election since 1952-2012. From http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1980 and http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1992