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Posted on 08/28/2004 12:53:46 PM PDT by UB355
A new study shows just how much bang for their buck a group of Vietnam veterans got when it launched its hotly disputed TV ad attacking John Kerry's combat record.
The early August ad that touched off a furor and consumed the presidential race for much of the month aired a mere 739 times in just seven TV markets in only three states, according to a new study by Nielsen Monitor-Plus and the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Almost half of those airings were in Wisconsin.
Put another way, the now famous "Swift Boat" spot accounted for roughly one-thousandth of ad traffic in the campaign so far.
But thanks to the attention it attracted from an evolving mix of media outlets - Internet, talk radio, cable TV and finally the mass media - it came to dominate the contest and preoccupy the campaigns.
"Have you ever seen anything in a presidential campaign just take control for 10 days?" said Ken Goldstein, the University of Wisconsin professor who directs the Wisconsin Advertising Project.
"Whether you think it's fair or unfair, this was a very powerful message," said Goldstein, who also contended that the ad has had until now "a direct negative effect on Kerry."
But a separate study of public opinion suggests a shifting fallout from the ad as its central claims - that Kerry lied about the incidents that led to his combat medals - were challenged in the news media.
The belief that Kerry did not earn all his medals peaked in mid-August at 30% of Americans but then began to drop later in the month, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey from the University of Pennsylvania.
Overall, about 24% of those polled between Aug. 23 and Aug. 26 said Kerry did not earn all his medals. The figure was much higher among Republicans (43%) and much lower among Democrats (7%).
At the same time, 46% of those polled agreed with a claim made by Kerry that the Bush campaign was connected to the ads, compared with 37% who said there was no connection. Voters divided on partisan lines over that question.
The Bush campaign has denied any involvement in the ads, aired by a group calling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Bush has rejected calls to condemn the ad but says he disagrees with the charge that Kerry lied about his combat experiences.
Ad effects blunted
The Annenberg polling suggests that while the ad gained traction from its early coverage on cable TV and talk radio, some of its effects were blunted when newspapers and other outlets began to report critically on the charges in the ad, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the survey.
But Jamieson said surveys can't measure all the effects of an ad, whether it "can be seeding doubts that play out in other ways," or what the impact is when a controversy like this drowns out the daily messages of both campaigns.
"Either side could have been blindsided by this," said Jamieson, who has written about political communication.
The first swift boat ad ran for only one week, at an estimated cost of close to $500,000. It aired 739 times. To put that in perspective, 501,259 spots have been aired nationally in 100 media markets by the two campaigns and the major groups that have spent money on TV, according to the data compiled by Nielsen and UW.
The anti-Kerry ad was broadcast in Green Bay, Wausau/ Rhinelander and La Crosse/ Eau Claire in Wisconsin; Toledo, Dayton and Youngstown in Ohio; and Charleston/ Wheeling in West Virginia. Those markets represent about 2% of the nation's population.
The Wisconsin airings accounted for almost half the ad's traffic in those three states, according to the ad study. It aired 139 times in Green Bay, 106 times in La Crosse/ Eau Claire and 86 times in Wausau/ Rhinelander. The Kerry campaign responded with a rebuttal ad in those same seven markets where the first swift boat ad ran. The anti-Kerry group has since followed with a second ad in different states.
As a student of political advertising, Goldstein said the phenomenon of the swift boat ad underscored several things: that the impact of ads isn't always a product of how many times they are broadcast; that negative ads "can shine through the clutter;" and that news coverage can have enormous impact relative to paid advertising.
Jamieson said there have been other cases of independent ads that had outsize impact on campaigns. She pointed to the "Willie Horton" ad attacking Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988 over prison furloughs that he granted as governor of Massachusetts.
"The difference between this and Willie Horton in 1988 is cable. There was CNN in 1988 but very limited penetration," Jamieson said. "The second change is political talk radio. It was just starting in the late '80s. The media environment has changed dramatically."
Goldstein's study also looked at where both sides have been targeting their ad buys in August, measured by the number of spots aired.
The top 10 targets for Bush include Wausau/ Rhinelander in Wisconsin, three markets in Ohio, two in Florida, two in Nevada and one market serving New Hampshire.
The top 10 targets on the Democratic side (combining Kerry, the Democratic Party and groups trying to defeat Bush) comprise six in Ohio, two in Nevada, one in Florida and one in Pennsylvania.
Power of the Internet.....
Probably 75+ percent of those who have seen it have done so via a weblink.
Seen the THRID ad yet?
I hear it is a doozy.
Scrambling around to view it on the web.
The last link is not the Swiftvets- but view it, with caution.
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I saw the second Swift ad (the one w/ Kerry's Senate testimony and the POWs) running on FoxNews today. As a commerical, not as a snip during a show.
Check out their third ad:
http://www.humanevents.org
LOVE it! Basically calling him a liar in no uncertain terms by someone ON Kerry's boat.
Here's the text from their third and newest TV ad:
Pictured is Steve Gardner, a foregunner on PCF-44, John Kerry's Boat:
"I spent more time on John Kerry's boat than any other crewmember ...
"John Kerry hasn't been honest, he's been deceitful.
"John Kerry claims he spent Christmas of 1968 in Cambodia, and that is
categorically a lie.
"Not in December, not in January; we were never in Cambodia on a secret
mission, ever."
That's right - no secret mission.
Kerry's phony claim about his Cambodia "secret
James Warner POW in North Vietnam
Windows Media Player Broadband http://www.videopa.com/kerry/warner.asx
Windows Media Player Dial-up http://www.videopa.com/kerry/warner_low.asx
The Swiftboat Vets' second ad, released at the beginning of this week to play in Ohio, West Virginia and Wisconsin, features former POWs charging Kerry with betrayal for accusing them of war atrocities during his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971. http://humaneventsonline.com.edgesuite.net/unfit_video2.html
I guess the ads from MoveOn.org, Media Fund, America Coming Together, Michael Moore's film, and the books written by Clarke and Wilson doesn't exist in the minds of Jamieson and Goldstein.
WOW!
I especially like James Warner. He hits the nail on the head.
GOOD FIND!
I will spread this around.
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