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Battle of the mayoral political ads

With less than two weeks before the city’s April 7 runoff election, Mayor Emanuel and his opponent, Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, are clobbering each other with campaign ads aired on TV and videos shared on social media.

Through their political spots–most are attack ads–the mayoral candidates are trying to give voters a clear choice of which man is the best person to lead the city for the next four years. The effort to convince voters can cost candidates roughly $600,000 a week to air an ad campaign in Chicago – one of the most expensive media markets in the country. That may not be a big hurdle for Emanuel and his deep reservoir of campaign funds, but it could prove to be tougher for Garcia, whose resources are more limited. To leave a lasting impression, the candidates must come off as sincere – and a little emotion doesn’t hurt, ad experts say.

The candidates should tell people not what they stand for or what positions they have, but why they stand for those things and what motivates them to them to take the positions, said Ken Snyder, a political consultant at Snyder and Pickerill Media Group, which worked on the campaigns of Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. He is not working with either mayoral campaign.

A week after getting forced into a runoff, the first to strike with a TV ad was Emanuel, talking directly to the camera, wearing a casual V-neck sweater and admitting he can rub people the wrong way. That 30-second spot indicates Emanuel’s awareness of the criticism some might have about his reputation, an advertising industry insider said. Since then, Emanuel’s campaign has hammered Garcia as the candidate without any concrete plans to solve the city’s fiscal mess. Meanwhile, Garcia’s first TV ad jumped on the hot-button issue of school closings and threw his support behind an elected school board. While the ad might have a strong message, it wasn’t produced as well as it could have been, one ad exec said.

Both campaigns pushed negative ads, with Emanuel’s campaign using the signature sign off of “uh-oh” in videos attacking Garcia. However, attack ads run the risk of backfiring. If they are too negative, it could discourage people from listening to the message and even from going to the polls, experts said.

But while viewers may not like negative ads, they can be much more substantive, said John Geer, political science professor at Vanderbilt University and author of “In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns.”

“Negative ads can be nasty, but you can begin to sort out differences,” Geer said, adding such ads force the candidates to be specific.

Strategists look at polls before and after an ad is launched to get an indication of whether the TV spot, among other factors, is helping or hurting a candidate.

Negative ads can be influential, said Joan Phillips, chair and marketing professor of the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago, based on her study of presidential election ads published in 2008 in the Journal of Consumer Research.

After watching a negative ad that attacked their preferred candidate, 14 percent of young voters said their support was weakened and 14 percent said they strengthened their support for their favored candidate who was attacked in the ad.

It’s possible for a voter leaning toward a candidate to become undecided after watching a strong attack ad, she said. For example, a negative ad, she said, might cause a voter to re-evaluate that candidate based on the ad’s content.

“The benefit of a negative ad is people process negative information more fully. They remember it longer. They pay attention to it,” Phillips said.

While the campaigns may have fine-tuned the message they want the ads to convey, the ads still can fail to connect with people on a personal level, said John Maxham, chief creative officer at DDB Chicago, an advertising agency in Chicago with Super Bowl ad cred.

Emotion grabs the attention of viewers through personal stories or visual shots that evoke emotion, said Maxham, who is not involved in either mayoral campaign. Observers say that during this runoff season the candidates have stuck to talking points and have shown little emotion on screen.

People are used to seeing politicians speak as they look directly at the camera and that’s easy to tune out, he said. There are more interesting, gripping ways of opening a political ad than having the candidate address the viewer, he said.

“The best political ads, as well as the best ads in general, tap into shared desires or frustrations,” Maxham said.

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