MoveOn TV Spot Attacks Schwarzenegger (Ties Terminator promo quote to grope smear)

AdWeek ^ | October 3rd, 2003 | Gregory Solman

[Sabertooth]

LOS ANGELES An ad sponsored by the issue-advocacy group MoveOn.org attacking Arnold Schwarzenegger's character breaks in California's four largest media markets Sunday and Monday.

The 30-second spot, teased on morning news programs today, begins as a paid ad with a $500,000 buy in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and Sacramento, Calif.

The ad, which follows allegations in Thursday's Los Angeles Times that the gubernatorial candidate groped women, was conceived and produced in 12 hours by the independent political ad shop and consultancy Zimmerman & Markman, Santa Monica, Calif. The spot shows disconsolate women and quotes an article from the July 11 Entertainment Weekly about Schwarzenegger's promotion of Terminator 3.

"We use the quote in which Schwarzenegger talks about how much fun it was to grab a woman, turn her upside down and bury her face in a toilet bowl," said Bill Zimmerman, who produced the spot with partner and creative director Pacy Markman. Paul Dektor, son of commercial director Leslie Dektor, directed the spot.

"In this business, there are no [story]boards," Zimmerman said. "It didn't come together until the night before last, but we finished it in time to make the morning news. We couldn't buy time until Sunday and Monday, so we figured we'd get in on the news Friday and Saturday."

Zimmerman said concentrating the media buy in such a short time period will compensate for the small amount of the spend. The press secretary for former candidate Arianna Huffington, Parker Blackman, Fenton Communications, San Francisco, arranged the news placements.

MoveOn.org, which claims a membership of 1.6 million members, did an e-mail fundraiser that it said raised $376,000 in 12 hours. The organization describes itself as committed to "democracy issues." Zimmerman said his shop is "engaged in a long-term campaign with MoveOn to defeat George W. Bush in 2004."<BR

[Sabertooth]

The ad, which follows allegations in Thursday's Los Angeles Times that the gubernatorial candidate groped women, was conceived and produced in 12 hours by the independent political ad shop and consultancy Zimmerman & Markman, Santa Monica, Calif. The spot shows disconsolate women and quotes an article from the July 11 Entertainment Weekly about Schwarzenegger's promotion of Terminator 3.

"We use the quote in which Schwarzenegger talks about how much fun it was to grab a woman, turn her upside down and bury her face in a toilet bowl," said Bill Zimmerman, who produced the spot with partner and creative director Pacy Markman. Paul Dektor, son of commercial director Leslie Dektor, directed the spot.

"In this business, there are no [story]boards," Zimmerman said. "It didn't come together until the night before last, but we finished it in time to make the morning news...."

Wow, it just came together for them.

[Support Free Republic]

Hi mom!

[Sabertooth]

FYI

[Catspaw]

Thank you, Arianna. < /sarcasm>

[jwalsh07]

Joe Wilson is a member in good standing of this austere organization.

[DoctorZIn]

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[Timesink]

I love the smell of burning money in the morning. Effect of ad: zero.

Keep on spreading the hate, MoveOn. It just makes us all the more gleeful when you LOSE.

[Republicus2001]

looks like they MovedOn from their link on the Communist Party USA website! - heh

[11th Earl of Mar]

"We use the quote in which Schwarzenegger talks about how much fun it was to grab a woman, turn her upside down and bury her face in a toilet bowl," said Bill Zimmerman, who produced the spot

This is such shoddy reporting.

The reporter gives us one person's description of the quote, how the quote is being used and what Arnold's distracters think of the quote....

.... But they don't give us the quote. It must not be as bad as they say or they would print it.

[pogo101]

Ah, yes. The group whose very name derives from its founding purpose, namely to urge Congress not to IMPEACH Clinton for his perjury and obstruction-of-justice about sexual affairs, but rather to "Censure and Move On" instead.

Hypocrites. Back then, it was "move on"; sexual dalliances AND perjury and obstruction of justice related thereto were NOT to be grounds for disqualification from high office. NOW, apparently, far lesser sexual conduct, with NO lying under oath or obstruction of justice, it IS grounds for such disqualification.

I am on MoveOn.org's mailing list for the express purpose of getting a slight jump on their forthcoming lies. The ad is just a condensation of the email: half-truths and lies.

For example: they (in the email; dunno about the ad) quote Arnold's comment about how, at first, when one sees a hot-bodied blonde, one may assume she's an idiot, and sometimes that turns out to be the case ... AND THEY STOPPED THERE. The very next thing he says is that, usually it ISN'T true, and that people must beware of following their superficial, appearance-based stereotypes. It's actually a very feminist comment. This partial quote is a lie, for all practical purposes. I wish I had such "testimony" in a court for cross-examination purposes: any jury that saw how they've selectively quoted him would never trust them again.

The toilet bowl comment, in context (or, frankly, even out), is obviously a lighthearted joke. It needn't even have been about a woman. Plus, MoveOn left out another part of the quote, in which Arnold says what is obvious to anyone who's seen the movie: It's not a woman. It's a machine made to look like a woman to fool its victims. Sorta like Arianna.

Lies, lies, lies.

[The_Republican]

[daviddennis]

How many ads does that $500k buy give you, anyway?

I know they're local, but those are horribly expensive markets. Aren't we talking about the $50-$100k per ad and therefore only one or two views per market?

Don't they remember the advertising research that says you have to see an ad 7 times before it will actually affect your decisionmaking?

What a waste of money.

D

[Wolfstar]

Thanks for the ping. I honestly believe Arnold is going to win this thing handily. I don't have the sense that the smears are working. If anything, I think a lot of people are more angry at the Dems because of them. Only a few days to go, so we shall soon see.

[proud American in Canada]

"independent political ad shop and consultancy Zimmerman & Markman, "

"independent...." yeah, right.

[CFC__VRWC]

What a waste of money.

Don't forget to factor in the free airings it will get from every broadcast journalism outlet in the state, as they concoct any old excuse to use the ad as part of a "news" story. I expect the networks and CNN will also give it national play in every news segment they run over the weekend.

[thoughtomator]

Yeah, and the independent political ad shop Clinton & Clinton & MacAuliffe...

[Tacis]

It is good to see that the neocommie traitors and lying, sleazy democrats have finally learned the it is disgraceful for a high political official to engage in the filth and corruption that leads him to believe that he can molest and rape women just because of his office.

Of course, had they learned this lesson earlier, PanderAl Gore would have replaced Willie in 1998 and would probably still be president today. So, it can be argued, Bush is preisdent today because these jerks took so long to learn this lesson. Oh, wait, Arnold wasn't a politician.

[BurbankKarl]

yes, Ashleigh Bandfield has been pushing this piece all day....I went by KNBC4 in Burbank and told her to go back to Canada with her Pot Smoking Prime Minister.

She literally has played it on MessonNBC all day.....free publicity.

[Zack Nguyen]

Hypocrites. Back then, it was "move on"; sexual dalliances AND perjury and obstruction of justice related thereto were NOT to be grounds for disqualification from high office. NOW, apparently, far lesser sexual conduct, with NO lying under oath or obstruction of justice, it IS grounds for such disqualification.

That's a very good point. I still can't summon up much sympathy for Arnold, though. At least he apologized, and that is something.

[OldFriend]

Just heard the ad on WABC radio and the announcer conveniently did NOT mention the name of the organization paying for the ad.