McCain’s Media Strategy: Genius and Disingenuous

Let’s give credit where it’s due. The creative folks behind the McCain ads are fantastic. The ads are well produced in that they include a clever use of visuals, audio, and various hooks to draw the viewer’s attention. The message is concise and clear. All of these make for a technically good ad, even though the content of the ads is often misleading and sometimes despicable.

There is a method to the madness, though.

The first stroke of brilliance is in sending out ads to media sources as though they were intended for actual air-time. The idea is that the media will discuss the ads and spread the word about the new ad, which will actually never run on TV. So, for the relatively measly cost of producing the ad, the media will air it for free.

“The ad, which the campaign says will air in key states, which like many in this campaign was made available on the web, had more than 90,000 hits on YouTube about six hours after its release. The additional value of the web advertisements is that they attract free news media coverage even if they never air anywhere at all on a paid basis.”

-- CQ Politics on McCain’s latest ad

Marc Ambinder suggests that these not-for-broadcast ads are simply video press releases and he refuses to link to them.

New rule: if I'm not entirely confident that an advertising buy is real, I'm not going to link to it. Yes, you can easily find it elsewhere. But consider it a tiny moral protest against video press releases.

But he still discusses them, and there are others (including me) who will show the ad, or link to it, or discuss it ad (pun intended) nauseam. Not a bad return on relatively minimal investment, is it?

The second strategy is to use sensationalism to attract attention, facts be damned.

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters' opinions of the candidates.

"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

– Alan Greenblatt citing an article in The Washington Post

Factual distortions, the McCain camp hopes, will be inconsequential and the misleading message will be perceived as the truth if it is repeated enough times. Palin’s late conversion on the Bridge to Nowhere is a perfect example. The accuracy of McCain’s claim that Palin has (always) opposed the Bridge to Nowhere has been called questionable by multiple sources. Yet, Think Progress’ running counter has found 23 instances where this claim has been repeated recently by McCain and/or Palin.

And if factual distortions are not a concern, why should insignificant bits like copyrights matter? Think Progress documents six instances where McCain camp has been the subject of copyright complaints.

McCain has made much of the fact that he accepted public financing while Obama didn’t. Poor John McCain, he is restricted to spending only $84 million! Well, there’s a loophole here as well.

Most of the campaign ads that Sen. John McCain began airing Sept. 1 are taking a glancing shot at Democrats in Congress -- often just a two-second jab at the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid.

This is not because the McCain campaign has suddenly decided the best strategy to defeat Sen. Barack Obama is to run against other top Democrats in Congress. It's because of a loophole in the public financing laws that allows McCain to evenly split the cost of his ads with the Republican Party so long as the ads make at least a passing reference to the rest of the party's ticket.

-- Matthew Mosk, Washington Post

(I had remarked in an earlier post that it seemed odd that McCain would feature obscure Democratic Senators in his ad. Now we know why McCain’s ad featured Byron Dorgan (D-ND)!)

Will McCain’s media strategy work? Alan Greenblatt seems to think that the press is starting to sour on McCain. I'll believe it when I see it. After all yesterday’s top (non-)story was Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” comment.