Effective Campaign Ads

I agree with Susan, Julia, and Kayla saying the most effective campaign ad is the emotion ad. Even though all of the rest of the ads: Persuasion, Truth, and Style are also important, the Emotion ad creates a bond between the candidate and viewer that is the most important. The most important criteria in judging an emotional campaign ad is the ad must have a clear argument, tone and message. The advertisement must be interpreted correctly in order for it to be used by the viewer to create an opinion. If there is no clear message or information, the viewer will become confused and not know how to respond to the ad or use its information in order to select candidate to vote for. Also, the ad must make the viewer feel the way it was intended. For example in Reagan's "prouder, Stronger, Better" ad in 1984, the goal was to make the reader feel comforted and proud of the job that Reagan was doing as President so he would be re-elected by the people. The ad was so effective because it worked. The viewers felt inspired by the ad which was intended. The reason why viewers respond best to the emotion ads is because they portray what is in their best interest. Emotion ads show extreme sides of either positive or negative outcomes of voting for a specific candidate. For example, in "Peace Little Girl" the ad shows an innocent little girl picking flowers, about to be killed by a bomb. The point of the ad was to show if a person votes for Goldwater this would be the outcome, even though in reality it would most likely not. The emotion ads engage the viewer through ideas important to them. Like in the Little girl ad no person would ever want a little girl to be hurt, so this is an important idea to them and caused them to favor Johnson more. Even though persuasion, truth, and style ads are also effective, they do not create that bond with the viewer that is necessary in order to be elected. The viewer is more interested in their needs emotionally, rather than facts portrayed in these other forms of ads.



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