All forms of advertising share a commonality: a call to action. When it comes to presidential campaign advertisements, the call is to decide on who will lead the country and set an example for nations around the world. It’s not a secret that political advertising relies on influences beyond logic; research has shown that playing with the viewer’s emotions is what really proves effective.
I Approve This Message: Decoding Political Ads is a non-partisan exhibit opening at the Toledo Museum of Art on July 14 that will run right up to election day on November 8. “The purpose is to unpack how these ads cause you to feel an emotion,” says Adam Levine, TMA’s assistant director and co-curator of this exhibit.
Tracing the Origins
The first nationally televised presidential campaign, Dwight Eisenhower’s infamous “I like Ike,” aired in 1952, the first campaign season where enough Americans owned a television set to effect the electorate with television advertising, making running a presidential campaign ad a smart strategy. “The most recent one (in this exhibit) is from the 2012 cycle. We’re avoiding any ads from the current election, in order to stay completely non-partisan,” says Levine, adding that the TMA has taken the extra step to “create a non-partisan advisory committee to advise us on the overall nature of the design of the exhibit, in order for us to verify that it truly is a non-partisan exhibit.”
Navigating politics
This is not a show about political parties or the issues they raise, but rather “it’s about how the ads work— they use imagery, but they also use sound to stir emotion,” explains Levine. The big takeaway with this exhibit is based on the TMA’s champion cause: increasing visual literacy— the ability to understand the meaning of both the images and the sounds, and the role that they play in forming an emotional response.
“The success of national presidential TV ads has to do with the ability of the ad to cause the viewer to feel a certain way,” Levine says. “Visitors will see that some of the scenes— the iconography, the soundscapes— are similar regardless of political party.”
Gathering data
Research used in curating this exhibit comes from American National Election studies, a partnership between Stanford University and the University of Michigan (electionstudies.org). Their research suggests, as Levine points out: “People vote a particular way based on their emotions, and not on logic and reasoning.”
The hope is that people will walk away with the ability to make a more informed decision as we head into the current election cycle.
Going viral
One of the most stunning examples of presidential campaign ads causing a stir of emotions is Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy Girl,” which aired once in 1964 and was subsequently pulled because it was so controversial. Levine explains that, “In this ad, a little girl is counting the petals on a daisy as she picks them off. The shot zooms in on her eye, and as she counts down, a mushroom cloud appears. It went viral before viral was even a thing and it only ran once.”
Visit TMA’s microsite approve.toledomuseum.org
to vote for the emotion that sways you the most.
For more information about the exhibit, visit toledomuseum.org