Campaign Tool: Tracking Ads -- Bush, Kerry Run 'Pre-Buttals' Ahead of Each Other's Appearances

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 12, 2004 | SHAILAGH MURRAY

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...The 2004 presidential campaign is being fought as aggressively over the airwaves as it is on the hustings. With many states up for grabs, candidates and their allies are using tailored broadcast ads, like the DNC's Pittsburgh spot, which are also called "tracking" or "pre-buttal" ads. These spots, an advertising innovation this election, are prepared for specific markets and run around the time the opposing candidate makes a campaign appearance. Tracking ads are cheaper and easier to produce than national ads, but can be just as effective....

President Bush's campaign cut the first tracking ad, which coincided with a visit by John Kerry to West Virginia in March. The spot criticized the Democratic senator's vote against a bill to provide $87 billion in Iraq war funding.

During a veterans' forum in Huntington, an audience member asked Mr. Kerry about the vote. He responded with the now-infamous line, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." The Bush campaign promptly cut a new ad featuring Mr. Kerry's gaffe and ran it on national cable stations.

The Kerry campaign, meanwhile, ...

One of the DNC's biggest successes was a spot that ran in Las Vegas last month, criticizing President Bush for not adequately supporting the National Guard. The ad ran while Mr. Bush was in town to speak to a Guard convention. Two national cable channels -- Cable News Network and Fox News -- mentioned the spot; local newspapers and television stations also included it in reports about the Bush speech.

Reed Dickens, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said of the Democrats' local ad effort, "we don't see any evidence that it's working." He blames Mr. Kerry's muddled message, rather than the concept or "the size of the buy."

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