At the end of last week,
Mitt Romney's campaign put up the ad on the top right on a bunch of web sites. Dave Weigel quickly
noticed that it appeared to be an homage to the ad below it, from the 1979 campaign of conservative hero
Margaret Thatcher ("homage" might be too generous a word; it looks as if they just lifted the image of the unemployment line, which is probably a copyright violation, technically speaking). I don't know if Dave was the first to spot it, but if he hadn't, someone else would have. Then lots of other reporters would chime in about it, and bingo -- you've translated "paid media" into "earned media" (the latter used to be called "free media," until an energetic renaming campaign by PR professionals of all ideological stripes, to ensure that everyone knows that what looks "free" actually happens because of their hard work).
There are lots of bright lights campaigns can wave in front of reporters' faces to get coverage for themselves, but few work better than a subtle (or sort-of-subtle) reference to an old campaign. But not too old -- it has to be something the reporters either remember, or learned about as part of their political education. You can't make an oblique reference to Martin Van Buren's 1848 Free Soil campaign, because reporters won't spot it. But it has to be just subtle enough that they can sound informed by telling their audiences what it's all about. Perhaps the most commonly employed referent is Lyndon Johnson's legendary 1964 "Daisy" ad (
here's the original;
here's an ad referring to it), in which a young girl plucks petals off a daisy and then is vaporized in a nuclear explosion (we presume; CGI capabilities at the time were modest). Another popular one is "Bear in the Woods" from Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign (
here's the original;
here's a Bush '04 ad that referred to it, using wolves instead of bears). At this stage of the presidential race, reporters don't have all that much to talk about. There isn't much in the way of actual events to report on; candidates are mostly wandering around chatting with voters, which isn't particularly interesting. So if you serve the reporters an ad that gives them something they can discuss, while allowing themselves to look historically knowledgeable, they are going to take it every time. Don't get me wrong -- this isn't a knock on anyone who wrote about this ad. I also write plenty about the advertising candidates use, which gives them at least a bit of extra earned media, because I think their efforts to persuade voters in 30-second chunks are often interesting and meaningful, so the ads are worth unpacking. But it's worth noting that the prior-campaign-ad-reference doesn't happen by accident or by someone's unique flash of creative insight. It's a technique campaigns use frequently to get free media, one that is reliably effective.
At the end of last week, Mitt Romney's campaign put up the ad on the top right on a bunch of web sites. Dave Weigel quickly noticed that it appeared to be an homage to the ad below it, from the 1979 campaign of conservative hero Margaret Thatcher ("homage" might be too generous a word; it looks as if they just lifted the image of the unemployment line, which is probably a copyright violation, technically speaking). I don't know if Dave was the first to spot it, but if he hadn't, someone else would have. Then lots of other reporters would chime in about it, and bingo -- you've translated "paid media" into "earned media" (the latter used to be called "free media," until an energetic renaming campaign by PR professionals of all ideological stripes, to ensure that everyone knows that what looks "free" actually happens because of their hard work).
There are lots of bright lights campaigns can wave in front of reporters' faces to get coverage for themselves, but few work better than a subtle (or sort-of-subtle) reference to an old campaign. But not too old -- it has to be something the reporters either remember, or learned about as part of their political education. You can't make an oblique reference to Martin Van Buren's 1848 Free Soil campaign, because reporters won't spot it. But it has to be just subtle enough that they can sound informed by telling their audiences what it's all about. Perhaps the most commonly employed referent is Lyndon Johnson's legendary 1964 "Daisy" ad (here's the original; here's an ad referring to it), in which a young girl plucks petals off a daisy and then is vaporized in a nuclear explosion (we presume; CGI capabilities at the time were modest). Another popular one is "Bear in the Woods" from Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign (here's the original; here's a Bush '04 ad that referred to it, using wolves instead of bears). At this stage of the presidential race, reporters don't have all that much to talk about. There isn't much in the way of actual events to report on; candidates are mostly wandering around chatting with voters, which isn't particularly interesting. So if you serve the reporters an ad that gives them something they can discuss, while allowing themselves to look historically knowledgeable, they are going to take it every time. Don't get me wrong -- this isn't a knock on anyone who wrote about this ad. I also write plenty about the advertising candidates use, which gives them at least a bit of extra earned media, because I think their efforts to persuade voters in 30-second chunks are often interesting and meaningful, so the ads are worth unpacking. But it's worth noting that the prior-campaign-ad-reference doesn't happen by accident or by someone's unique flash of creative insight. It's a technique campaigns use frequently to get free media, one that is reliably effective. 
