Political Ads- good or nah

Political advertising, like everything else in our lives, have evolved with time.  The style, the content and most importantly the medium for Political ads have changed. The one thing however, that has not changed is that they are reflections of their time.

Being an election year, we are again being bombarded with political Ads through every considerable medium.  And it only gets worse. Political advertising continues to grow with every election circle.  In the 2012 election, an estimated $4 billion was spent on political ads, one can only imagine that spending this election year will top that.  

Strange as it now sounds, it hasn’t always been like this.  Campaigning in the early days were about getting out and about, holding political rallies, and town-hall debates.  Harry Truman, in the 1948 presidential election, was said to have traveled 31,000 miles on ground across the nation, shaking hands with approximately 500,000 people along the way.  Dwight Eisenhower introduced political campaigns to television when he created 40 twenty-seconds TV spots. 

Subsequent campaigns after this realized the power of television as a medium of communication, and thus took advantage. A whole advertising industry was built just to plan and promote candidates through the media; but it was the traditional media. It was Radio, Television, Print and outdoor.

This was basically the pattern. Election circles stood out by whether they were civil or negative.  People measured election circles by the degree of their civility or by the negativity of their ads. This remained the case, until a certain junior senator from Illinois declared his candidacy for the presidency.    

Then Senator Obama, took political campaigning to a different plain. He, to his credit, quickly embraced new media and used them in ways no other politician had thought to.  His campaign used appropriate media for appropriate demography.

While not discounting the use of traditional media, he used data in ways no one before him had. He used the internet and guerilla advertising to push his message. Blogs and messaging boards carried his message of hope.  His campaign of 2012 is said to be the first to cross the billion-dollar mark in campaign spending.

Reference

Feeney, L. (2012). A History of Campaign Advertising. Moyers & company. Retrieved from http://billmoyers.com/2012/05/11/a-history-of-campaign-advertising/

Suggett, P. (2016). A brief History of Political Advertising in the USA. The balance. Retrieved https://www.thebalance.com/a-brief-history-of-political-advertising-in-the-usa-38925  

Wikipedia (n.d). Campaign advertising. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_advertising