by WonkoKevin

Does our 9-11 narrative include a another path through New York in 2008?  Will the First Lady before 9-11 face-off with one of the strongest from 9-11?  If so, then perhaps we saw the first direct blow of the bout, with Rudy taking the opportunity to throw the first jab.  Rudy Guiliani’s full-page ad attacking Hillary Clinton’s defense of MoveOn.org’s own ad was the talk of Wonkosphere yesterday. 

Here at Wonko we are pretty hyper about being non-partisan, so I won’t comment on the political aspects of either MoveOn or Giuliani’s ads.  But I would like to compare and contrast the effectiveness of them.

The context of all of this is MoveOn.org’s ad entitled General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the books for the White House.   The ad played to the base well and certainly generated a lot of buzz.  From MoveOn.org’s perspective, the ad did what it intended to do.  However, MoveOn.org’s goals are not necessarily one and the same with the Democratic party’s goals, and in this case their ad has caused (and will continue to cause) some headaches for Dems, especially Hillary Clinton.

I personally think the ad that Giuliani’s team came up with is a great piece of work, from a communication standpoint.  Let’s deconstruct it.

The first thing our eye is drawn to is Petraeus’s picture.  Why did MoveOn choose this picture?  It does not make him look “untrustworthy”; in fact the uniform and angle give him an air of authority.  Next we see these strong anchors at the top and bottom, “suspension of disbelief” and “spewing political venom”.  Combined with the 9/11 framing, this evokes an emotional response from the reader.  There’s a nice simple summary of Petraeus’s record, establishing his experience and commitment, and then the whole thing is framed in a simple question.  Both 9-11 and defense images are invoked, which are considered Giuliani’s strengths.

What jumps out re design?  Note how the page is broken evenly into a top and bottom half, both of which contain about an equal amount of information.  The type face is big enough so that you can easily read it should the image be reproduced, and the whole thing can be read quickly. 

In summary, the ad doesn’t make you guess what its messages are.

Comparatively, the MoveOn ad uses up a tremendous amount of space showing a picture of Petraeus which does not convey an image of mistrust.  MoveOn’s text is all the same size so it makes you judge which sentence contains the important punch-line.  It takes too long to read.

This is exactly the same pattern that WonkoSteve and I saw during the 2004 presidential campaign.  Bush’s messages were simple and focused and Kerry’s messages were complex and intertwined.  Marketing 101 tells you which is more effective.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 8:18 am and is filed under Giuliani, Clinton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.