Fire Your Media Planner

I understand that the process of buying online advertising is not as simple as dialing up BuzzFeed or the Huffington Post and asking for a rate card. As far as I can gather, advertisers go through middlemen, utilizing third-party vendors that distribute ads over a range of sites. Call it buying in bulk. But even if an advertiser is more specific in its request than just “high traffic sites” or “entertainment media,” it might be wise to narrow the field a little further than “political websites.” Precise targeting is obviously possible; National Review is lousy with ads for books by its contributors, like Mark Steyn’s “After America.” (Two guesses which Muslim socialist will be ushering in the apocalypse.) Left-wing magazine Mother Jones features an interactive spot from Change.org that cycles through petitions about abortion rights and saving the wolves. Newsmax, a sort of poor man’s Fox News, caters to its low-information voters by spotlighting links like “A 30-second daily trick that SHRINKS your belly” and “Eat this and the fat pours out of you!” (See this hilarious Baffler article about the marriage of convenience between conservative websites and snake oil salesmen like gold-bullion scammers and fake Viagra peddlers.)

You get what you pay for, though, and low-budget outfits unwilling to pay for specificity end up paying in another way: wasted ad dollars. Case in point:

Note the dramatic call to “Stop the Islamist Witch Hunt against Rep. Bachmann” from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative foundation that runs illustrious programs like “Jihad Watch” and generally spreads Islamophobic, shariah-law-is-nigh vitriol. It’s an ad that would fit right in at National Review, but what is it doing on the home page of the liberal Washington Monthly, a magazine that splashes photos of a smiling President Obama on its cover beneath the headline “Barack the Builder”? Much has been written about the “digital divide” between Republicans and Democrats; last November’s failure of the Romney campaign’s “ORCA” get-out-the-vote technology was only the latest evidence that the GOP is outmatched in Internet know-how. But now it seems conservative groups in general could use a primer on online advertising. If the Obama campaign can use its massive e-mail list to send alerts about legitimate-rape craziness to 25-year-old female Facebookers in Iowa and Amazon.com can serve a Travelocity ad to someone who just searched for suitcases and bug spray, the media-savvy world of folks like Eric Erickson and Matt Drudge can surely learn to pick better platforms for its ads.

Newsmax: Targeting done right, if crazily.

The mismatch is not as bad as the recurrent print-media gaffe of running inappropriate ads alongside serious articles, like the recent gun show promotion that a Connecticut paper paired with a story on the Newtown shooting. It is, however, perhaps an even bigger waste of money. (Hey, even gun owners need their morning news.) The only clicks the Bachmann ad is likely to garner are from bemused liberals cackling in amazement. The Washington Monthly is a pretty low-profile publication, and its readers are ideologically homogeneous. It doesn’t attract the conservative trolls who lurk at places like The Nation and Mother Jones solely to post inflammatory remarks in the comments threads. (Grammatically challenged sample from The Nation: “The USS Progressive will start taking on water and slowly sink and the free riders will abandon ship and the progressive movement will again find itself as the permanent minority they have always been and will be.”)

For the record, this is what Ed Kilgore, the Monthly’s prolific blogger-in-residence, and his predecessor, Steve Benen, have to say about the woman (a.k.a. “the unhinged Minnesotan” or “that uber-wingnut congresswoman”) the Freedom Center wants us to support:

Even as the Republican Party leaps off a right-wing cliff, Bachmann stands out for her unique brand of madness.

Bachmann’s principal problem is that she combines the worst of two important traits: she’s strikingly ignorant about public policy and she’s paranoid to the point of delusion.

The problem isn’t that she’s a liar. The problem is Bachmann combines two very serious flaws: she’s mad as a hatter and conspicuously unintelligent.

Bachmann’s ignorance knows no bounds. The enduring question about Republicans’ unhinged rhetoric is whether the speaker is lying or crazy. With Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), it’s especially challenging, but I tend to go with the latter — she strikes me as entirely sincere and stark raving mad. Her accusations are truly idiotic, but I don’t doubt that Bachmann actually believes them.

To top it off, under the headline “Bachmann: Too Crazy for the GOP?” Kilgore knocks both the congresswoman and the anti-Muslim rhetoric that organizations like the David Horowitz Freedom Center employ:

Bachmann has been “out there” for years, making outrageous statements almost daily and embodying a brand of Christian Nationalism that is never more than a few steps away from hate-group ravings.

Are you feeling the love yet?

Apparently, the media buyer for over-the-top right-wing outfits is working overtime, because the latest ad to pop up on the Monthly’s website is an even worse fit:

Click the link and you’re taken to the website of the Public Advocate of the United States, an obscure group which “lobbies to fight the radical agenda of the Homosexual Lobby.” It calls for signatures on a “Protect Our Children’s Innocence Petition” that warns of a wave of mandated homosexual indoctrination in our public schools: “This bill is the brainchild of radical liberals who want to force their political view-points on to our children and to eradicate the values you and I cherish.” (Is the English language really so difficult? Beware “legislation working it’s way through the United States Congress.”)

Yeah, that’s going to get a lot of buy-in from WaMo readers.

And the icing on the cake? Three minutes ago, as I scrolled through the search results for “Michele Bachmann” on the magazine’s website, this graced my screen:

Sign up today? Toss in an AdBlock plug-in for Firefox and you’ve got yourself a deal.

Forward, Comrades!

Further evidence that the Internet is a place where people go when they have too much time on their hands . . . .

The Obama campaign rolled out its new slogan, “Forward,” on Monday, and the great hyperspace peanut gallery took it upon itself to weigh in on the sourcing. Personally, I just hope Davids Axelrod and Plouffe didn’t spend too much of my latest (meager) donation on this one, because it’s about as revolutionary as promising A Brighter Tomorrow. Everyone, from the local dentist to General Electric to — and I’m just guessing here — Mussolini probably guaranteed a brighter tomorrow. And “Forward” works as well for Toyota or a high school marching band as it does for Obama. It’s so general, in fact, that you’d think it would be hard to criticize on specific, nitpicky grounds. But God bless the Internet, because it excels at nothing better than dredging up nitpicky criticism. To wit:

•   The “Morning Joe” crew at MSNBC cried copyright infringement, claiming the campaign had stolen the slogan from the network’s “Lean Forward” ad campaign.

•   Dan Amira at New York Magazine joked that “Lean Forward” is hardly the best corporate jingle out there, and suggested a handful of others, including “It’s not TV, it’s BHO” and “Got health insurance?”

•   The American Spectator thinks that the best-known use of the word was in Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” and snarks that “We know President Obama has lamented that he’s not president of China, because it’s so much easier to run things there. Is there a little sublimated wishful thinking in his choice of his new campaign slogan?” It suggests “Cultural Revolution” as the slogan for a second term.

•   National Review, which occasionally lets a below-the-belt, Birther-esque remark slip through its facade of party-elder respectability, directed readers to a Wikipedia entry that notes “Vorwärts (“Forward”) was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933.” The journal dabbled in Marxist economics and published pieces by Friedrich Engels and Leon Trotsky. The National Review writer remarks that “And if you don’t think David Axelrod doesn’t know this, you really ought to think again,” then links to a sketchy site describing itself as “A Guide to the Political Left” that attempts to link Axelrod, via his mother and an early journalistic mentor, to organizations “alleged to have ties to the Communist party.”

•   The Washington Times, which counts Ted Nugent among its columnists, ran with the headline “Obama slogan has long ties to socialism, Marxism” and attempted to spin this “analysis” as a straight news story:

Conservative critics of the Obama administration have noted numerous ties to radicalism and socialists throughout Mr. Obama’s history, from his first political campaign being launched from the living room of two former Weather Underground members, to appointing as green jobs czar Van Jones, a self-described communist.

Yeah, conservative critics . . . . like the Washington Times. Way to stand behind your politics, guys.

•   The always-amusing Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly rolls his eyes at the Times and responds with the observation that the chant of “forward!” has “a long-standing association with the sports of basketball, soccer, and ice hockey.” He continues, tongue in cheek:

Indeed, people playing the Forward position often score goals, making it attractive to impressionable young people. Is it possible that Obama—long known for his ties to the game of basketball in particular—has chosen a slogan that will encourage youth to transfer their affections from sports to politics—from all-American competition to European-style class struggle?

Legitimate concerns about this question may haunt the Obama campaign until its crushing defeat next November.

Well, at least until tomorrow, when the latest canine-ingestion scandal breaks, or perhaps Thursday, when a hot mic catches Obama promising China he’ll sign away our free economy if he wins a second term. So it goes.

This Post Brought To You By Bravo TV!

The Times’ Stuart Elliot reports on the second coming of “branded entertainment,” the 21^st century version of Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom and soap operas by Procter & Gamble. In May, cable channel Bravo will debut the latest addition to its stable of culinary competition shows, “Around the World in 80 Plates Presented by Chase Sapphire Preferred.” The name is a mouthful, to be sure, but even harder to swallow is the assertion by Susan Joseph Smith, senior VP of the media agency that negotiated the Bravo-Chase deal, that the inclusion of the credit card will be done with “a very light hand.” She says that the series “taps into card members’ passions, food and travel,” but cautions that, “when a product placement is too overt, it has a negative effect.” As Elliot writes,

Those cardholders would probably be unhappy, she acknowledged, if the show were to be filled with shots of “card swiping” and similarly obtrusive plugs.

Work of Art's Fiat challenge

The Fiat 500 is a lousy muse

Are we talking about the same Bravo network here? The network responsible for the Top Chef franchise, which positions its chef-testants against pantry shelves laden with Glad plasticware? The television home of “Work of Art,” which presents its artists with a warehouse full of disassembled Fiat 500s and enlists actual art critics to critique smiley faces with hubcap eyes and sculptures made from flayed leather seats? Prize money is supplied “courtesy of the Buitoni family of products” (it’s always a product family, never a line) and contestants are coached to narrate their experiences with plenty of brand input: “Then we jumped in our Toyota Siennas and headed to Whole Foods!” When one challenge features the cookbook “Modernist Cuisine” (priced to sell at $450) the chefs turn into enthusiastic endorsers, gushing over “the most elite cookbook that’s ever been written” and confessing that “it’s coveted by every chef across America.” You can practically see the 2438-page tome’s Amazon.com ranking creep upward.

Is that a Whole Foods shopping bag?

After all, why would cardholders be any more “unhappy” with card-swiping shots than customers of kitchen appliances are with lingering pans of the GE Monogram nameplate? Bravo apparently doesn’t consider it offensive to dishwashers when the camera slides away from the cutting board action and delivers a literal “money shot” of the sinkside bottle of Dawn. Or when contestants perform an entire challenge inside a Target store . . . using the fresh produce now available at a Target store near you!

Obvious product placements tend to get panned: The plug for Subway sandwiches by the plus-size character on “Hawaii 5-0” inspired ridicule (sample comment: “It’s not Hawaii 5-0, it’s it’s the Microsoft & Chevy hour!”), as did an episode of “The Middle” that NPR summed up as “Passat Passat Passat Passat Passat.” The show “didn’t even bother attempting to be subtle,” with each family member reveling in a different aspect — the smooth handling! the quiet interior! — of their borrowed Volkswagen. Top Chef is a little like American Idol; the advertising is so pervasive and blatant that it’s almost hard to complain about a specific instance of product placement. I can hardly object to the new deal with Chase when the Buitoni/Healthy Choice/Swanson’s bonanza wasn’t enough to change my viewing habits.

Will I watch “Around the World in 80 Plates”? Probably not. But I can’t say it’s because I’m outrageously offended at the product placement.

Taking the “Grand” out of “Grand Old Party”

Ah, Republicans . . . sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Two of today’s eye-rollers:

1. Amid all the manufactured controversy over Clint Eastwood’s ad for Chrysler (does anyone really believe that Karl Rove, the king of gutter politics, is “frankly, offended”?), another political Super Bowl ad has flown under the radar. Peter Hoekstra, the former Republican representative running for the Senate in Michigan, ran an attack ad against Sen. Debbie Stabenow that featured an Asian woman speaking, in broken English, about the American economy. In addition to playing to fears about the evil red Chinese threat, the ad tapped into conservative xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. The woman says: “Debbie spend so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs.”

Watch Hoekstra’s ad on YouTube here

Ugly? Yes. Of course, Hoekstra denied that there was anything offensive about the ad, which the Times reports was produced by the same geniuses who came up with Carly Fiorina’s “demon sheep” spot in 2010. “There’s nothing racist in this ad,” he told the Detroit Free Press.

Racist undertones have defined this year’s campaign, from Newt Gingrich’s branding of Obama as a “food stamp president” to Rick Santorum’s opposition to giving black people “somebody else’s money,” but what’s interesting about the Hoekstra debacle is that some people saw more in the ad than run of the mill China-bashing. James Fallows at The Atlantic has an interesting take that I haven’t seen anywhere else:

The ad’s words are about trade, budgets, and jobs, but its images are about — ‘Nam!!  Of course some parts of southern China look the way this ad does, with rice paddies, palm trees, no big buildings, people wearing conical straw hats and bicycling along dike tops. But this is nothing like how the typical big-factory zone looks in China, or the huge cities that would exemplify Chinese wealth and the country’s rise — ie, the subjects of this ad. So why this rural setting? I think it’s because it offers a kind of visual dog-whistle, for those Americans who, either through experience or through Apocalypse Now-style imagery, associate smiling-but-deceptive Asians in a rice-paddy setting with previous American sorrow.

I’m not sure how completely I buy this interpretation; it seems to be a bit of a stretch. Hoekstra’s ad is chock-full of offensive material without tossing in the Vietnam references, and somehow I doubt the producers were focused on anything but vilifying China. Crediting them with the nuance needed to add a Vietnam subtext may be too generous. Still, Fallows makes an interesting point, and follows up with another revelation. He takes a look at the HTML code of the video and offers the following screenshot:

Fallows halfheartedly notes that the girl is wearing an orangey-yellow shirt, but adds, “I suppose it’s as if you were using a picture of Colin Powell or President Obama wearing a black shirt. If you were producing one of these ads, by the same logic you could just label it ‘black boy,’ right? I mean, why not?”

Either way, the whole episode leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

2. Given that Hollywood types generally lean left of center, the Republican party has historically had little luck attracting star power to its events. The GOP has to settle for low-wattage celebs like Ted Nugent, Patricia Heaton, and Jon Voight. (To be fair, Adam Sandler did stump for Rudy Giuliani in 2008). The Times reported this weekend that Newt Gingrich was forced to stop using “Eye of the Tiger” at campaign rallies after the band Survivor complained. Michele Bachmann cued up “American Girl” at events until Tom Petty sent a cease-and-desist letter, and Jackson Browne actually sued John McCain in 2008 after “Running on Empty” was used in an ad attacking Obama’s energy proposals. (Mitt Romney just can’t win. After playing a song by the reliably right-wing Toby Keith, a “big-time” donor complained about the vulgarity of the lyrics “hot damn.”)

Now, proving once again that conservatives don’t understand pop culture, the Wall Street Journal claims that President Obama’s designer campaign swag is “raising a ruckus.” (As far as I can tell, said ruckus is being raised primarily by WSJ reporters.) The tote bags, T-shirts and jewelry by designers like Vera Wang, Diane von Furstenberg and Marc Jacobs have been featured on Obama’s website for weeks, but they go on sale tomorrow. The Republican National Committee accuses Obama of violating campaign-finance rules (rules which, as Mitt Romney will tell you, Republicans would like to eliminate) because the designers’ wares usually sell for many times the $75 price of a Derek Lam Obama-themed tote bag. The WSJ writes that:

Republicans say that suggests they relied on corporate resources to keep costs low, which could amount to illegal campaign contributions. On Mr. Lam’s website, handbags range in price from $340 to $1,890. The three scarves offered on Mr. Thakoon’s website go for $325 apiece.

Aren’t right-wingers cute when they pretend to understand fashion? As fans of Michele Bachmann’s primary-colored skirt suits, they may not realize that Thakoon Panichgul also designed a line of floral-print dresses and sheer tank-tops for Target in 2008. The most expensive item? A steep $44.99.

Of course, this could all be sour grapes. What designer is going to offer his services to a party that bashes gays, thinks a woman’s place is at home with the kids, and blames skimpy clothes for the erosion of “traditional” values?

Thakoon for Target dress, $40

Thakoon's "Runway to Win" scarf, $95

“I’m Rick Perry, and I Approve This Ad”

A commercial break in Iowa can tell you a lot about the state of the Republican primary race. Political ads can drive changes in the polls, tarring a onetime frontrunner with allegations of malfeasance and impropriety, but they also serve as important gauges of the health of the campaigns. A confident candidate may not spend much money on an ad buy at all; Mitt Romney, whose nomination has seemed all but inevitable since he lost to John McCain in 2008, didn’t run his first ad until early December. Candidates at the bottom of the pack don’t purchase much television time either, though their silence is less a function of strength than a sign of financial weakness. Rick Santorum brags constantly about visiting all 99 counties in Iowa, yet he had little choice about his extensive road-tripping. He simply didn’t have a more efficient way to get his message out. The Times reports that Santorum “has only recently started advertising on television and his commercials are significantly less frequent than those of Mr. Romney or Mr. Perry,” though a new Super PAC has stepped in to argue on his behalf. For Jon Huntsman, even a last-minute infusion of cash from his multi-millionaire father wasn’t enough to tempt him into competing in Iowa: his close-to-broke campaign is putting all its eggs in the New Hampshire basket, hoping a decent result there will turn the contest in his favor.

Even more instructive than who does the advertising is whom is being advertised against. The candidate sitting at the top of the polls naturally draws the most fire. The Times observes that, while Michele Bachmann goes out of her way to discredit her fellow candidates, “they all but ignored her, a sign of what many Republicans here see as her fading fortunes after winning the Iowa straw poll this summer.” The more grenades lobbed Newt Gingrich’s way, the more convinced the former speaker becomes that he is the man to beat. Heavy spending by supportive Super PACs has allowed Mitt Romney to keep his own advertising mostly positive; Restore Our Future is running endless spots reminding voters of Gingrich’s $1.6 million Freddie Mac payday and his tete-a-tete with Nancy Pelosi. The obvious takeaway: Gingrich makes the Romney camp nervous in a way that vaccine-conspiracy theorist Michele Bachmann or Israel-denouncing Ron Paul do not. Tellingly, however, a Restore Our Future spot slated to run in South Carolina criticizes not only Gingrich but Rick Perry as well. Linguistically challenged as he may be, Perry’s appeal to southern conservatives, especially evangelicals, is undeniable. There’s little chance that Perry will win in South Carolina, but like Santorum and Bachmann in Iowa, he could play spoiler, sapping enough votes from Romney to put Gingrich over the top. Perry’s own advertising, which paints the Texas governor as the lone outsider among a crowd of Washington operatives, speaks to the shakiness of his candidacy. The candidate whose prospects were once bright enough to merit the coveted spot at Mitt Romney’s elbow in the Sept. 7 debate has been reduced to tossing bombs at the most small-time of competitors:

“If Washington’s the problem, why trust a congressman to fix it?,” an announcer asks as the ad shows pictures of Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann. “Among them, they’ve spent 63 years in Congress, leaving us with debt, earmarks and bailouts.”

Rick Perry trying to match the poll numbers of Rick Santorum — who would’ve thunk it? In fact, Perry is one of several candidates aggressively courting Iowa’s evangelical community. The Times notes the dramatic change in atmosphere since 2008, when Mike Huckabee stoked controversy with an ad that appeared to feature a cross in the corner of the screen. This year’s religious references are anything but subliminal; in addition to Perry holding forth on how “there is something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school,” Gingrich offers Christmas greetings and nativity scenes, and even Ron Paul affirms his Christian faith. The Times writes that “the new, more pointed religious references reflect how campaigns are scrambling for support among evangelicals who are still divided over whom to support as the caucuses near,” and provides this priceless quotation from a Republican media strategist: “At this point in the game, the candidates in the GOP primary don’t have the time or the money for subtlety . . . . They will light a fire and stand by a burning bush in order to send a signal to evangelicals, ‘I’m one of you, vote for me.’ ”

Newt Gingrich’s advertising has largely tracked the roller-coaster of his poll numbers. Initially absent from the airwaves as his campaign — dogged by cruises to the Greek Isles and $1 million in revolving credit at Tiffany’s — limped into fall, Gingrich’s silence took on new meaning with his vow to “stay positive.” But positivity is a luxury afforded only to the frontrunner. Now that Gingrich’s popularity is seemingly on the wane, a nominally independent super PAC is making a million-dollar ad buy in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. While Gingrich adheres to the letter of his commitment by refraining from attack ads, he shows no such compunction about the words from his own mouth, telling CNN that Romney is “a moderate Massachusetts Republican who in fact is very timid about job creation.”

As the Jan. 3 Iowa caucus date nears, the advertising will undoubtedly intensify. The Washington Post reports that the chairman of the Polk County Republican Party called Tuesday for a moratorium on negative ads, saying that “they create deep rifts at the base of the party, which make it harder to pull the party together by the general election.” Really? After the Swift-Boat smearing of John Kerry and thinly-disguised racial attacks on Barack Obama, the 2012 race has thus far produced comparatively genteel criticism. Iowa voters are supposedly turned off by negative advertising, but Iowans are no more fragile or easily offended than the rest of our desensitized nation. Republicans lived through the first coming of Newt Gingrich, and I suspect the party is tough enough to make it through the second.

The Geico Gecko Thinks You’re Boring

The “After Deadline” feature at the Times often preaches against using “since” to mean “because.” It may be technically correct, but the word’s double meaning is enough to throw the casual reader, if only for a moment. The sentence “Since Mary went on vacation, Sarah fed the cat” generally suggests that Sarah is pet-sitting for a Hawaii-bound friend, but if the word “since” is interpreted as an indication of time, the reader can be left wondering how long Mary has been on the beach. The reader expects a different conclusion, something to the effect of “Since Mary went on vacation, she’d drank six mai tais.” A second glance clears up any confusion, but a writer shouldn’t force her audience to read a sentence twice.

Similar fuzzy meanings trip up readers all the time. This line, from an advertising column by Stuart Elliot, is a prime “After Deadline” target:

The idea behind multiple, simultaneous campaigns is to break through the proverbial clutter by attracting attention as well as avoiding the risk of wear-out — that is, boring or annoying potential customers who may get tired of seeing and hearing the same pitches again and again.

Just how boring or annoying are those potential customers, anyway? Even Geico isn’t betting that insulting customers will increase market share.