Unit 2: Targeted Advertising and The Political Arena
Key Topics
- Analysis of political and election advertising
- Evaluation of guidelines for political advertising
- Evaluation of regulatory bodies for specifcally election advertising media regulations applicable during national elections
- Social media role in targeted advertising
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, educators and learners will be able to:
- Assess political and election advertising
- Analyse emotional appeals in political and election advertising
- Recommend strategies to maintain an informed citizenship, given the use of emotional appeals in political advertising
- Assess targeted advertising by social networks
- Assess marketing impact on consumers decisions and values such as gender equality and anti-racial discrimination
Level of Competencies Targeted in this Unit:
- Basic
Issues in Political Ads
Political advertisements are public announcements created by political parties, candidates and organizations and individuals interested in the outcome of elections. These announcements typically rely on marketing principles to appeal more to emotions and less on the intellect or critical thinking of the electorate. They strive to get some voters to support a position, as well as to discourage participation by rivals – which is known as “voter suppression†tactics.
According to Wikipedia (2020) “" is a form of advertising, including online, that is directed towards audiences with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic which are focused on race, gender economic status, sex, age, generation, the level of education, income level, and employment or they can be psychographic focused which are based on the consumer’s values, personality, attitudes, opinions, lifestyles and interests. They can also be behavioural variables, such as browser history, purchase history, and other recent activity. Targeted advertising is focused on certain traits and the consumers who are likely to have a strong preference will receive the message instead of those who have no interest and whose preferences do not match a product’s attribute. This eliminates waste.
Targeted political advertising allows parties to send different, even inconsistent messages to individuals, and to pinpoint single issues (rather than holistic decision-making) that can sway the voters.
Social networks are leading enterprises generating targeted advertising, using attributes such as geo-location, behaviour, socio-psychographic data and information that users provide on digital communications companies. Each user activity leaves digital footprints that are collected to view his/her history of interests reflected, for example in "likes" or information searches. This profile is then used to target marketing ads by vendors. Users of Facebook, Twitter, Sina Weibo, Instagram, and others, for instance, will receive ads based on the page likes and will be directed to the location, allowing advertisers/vendors to target consumers according to their interests. Consumers or users need to be aware how the targeted ads impact on their decisions, either for consumerism or political decisions.
Pedagogical Approaches and Activities
In summary: as discussed earlier in this Curriculum (Part 1), various pedagogical approaches are possible. Please review the list in Part 1 and decide which approach to apply to the suggested activities below and others that you may formulate.
- Collect examples of political advertising from your country or region. If necessary, conduct research at your local library. Analyse these ads using the guidelines from Unit 3 below. Assess the effectiveness of each ad, considering the purpose, the information and message conveyed, and the target audience. Explain how the design/ form of the ads is used to reinforce content.
- Examine several ads from the same political campaign. Evaluate the effectiveness of the campaign as a whole in its use of unified graphics, images, slogans and messages.
- Using the Internet and/or library resources, investigate the regulatory bodies put in place to monitor political advertising. Examine the guidelines established to monitor the advertising used by political candidates during elections. Assess to what extent the ads selected adhere to these guidelines.
- Investigate whether content providers keep a public database of all political adverts, including micro-targeted ads, so that these can be compared.
- Investigate how these regulatory bodies represent the interests of citizens. Examine the role that citizens can play in ensuring that political advertising is truthful, fair and accurate. Outline any suggestions you would make to a regulatory body regarding political advertising.
- Debate if political advertising should be a free-for-all in the interests of robust debate, or if only fact-checked ads should be carried.
- List the media regulations (established by the national election commission) on reporting elections. See whether there are guidelines for reporting opinion polls, allocating airtime by the national broadcasters to different political parties, broadcasting election results, etc. Do these impact political ads?
- Political consultant Frank Luntz tells his political clients that ‘80 per cent of our life is emotion and only 20 per cent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think.’ Examine political advertising in light of this comment. Explain to what extent political ads are based on emotional appeal. Examine the language used to ‘sell’ a candidate and his or her ideas or policies. Assess whether or not the language used is accurate or misleading.
- Divide learners into groups and guide them to do basic research on social marketing techniques undertaken by national, regional, and international development organizations to promote social and sustainable development. Consider United Nations agencies and other multilateral partners, international development corporation agencies, etc. Consider also issues such as gender equality, tolerance, the fight against misinformation and disinformation on COVlD-19 related, climate issues, and enabling youth engagement in national and international development. Think about other topics of interest. Guide learners to assess the reach, impact, pros and cons about these social marketing efforts. The groups should document what they think these development organizations could do differently to reach more people with relevant development messages.
- Given the use of emotional appeal especially in political advertising, recommend strategies for maintaining an informed and gender-sensitive citizenship.
- Ask learners to search for something specific in a search engine, if possible, something that they will not buy, and analyse how the engine uses such digital tracking to promote products and services.
- Assess how the most popular social media markets different products and services.
- Are these ads based on their behaviour, geo-location, gender, age, etc.?
- Guide learners to evaluate how social networks may be reinforcing their tastes, values and preferences.
- Ask learners to assess three different ads in their social networks to identify what targeting options the vendor is using: age, gender, relationship status, location, ethnicity, occupation, and education. How is their privacy affected? How can they counteract social media marketing? How many data points does the advertiser have access to in order to micro-target each user?
Assessment & Recommendations
- Essay
- Poster competition to counter certain stereotypes detected in media and digital platforms
- Creation of various storyboards for ads that are gender sensitive
Topics for Further Consideration
- Corporate and community sponsorship (including sponsorship and advertising in learning spaces)
- Celebrity endorsements in advertising
- Caring capitalism – connected to celebrity endorsements, although the focus is on promoting the marketing and strategic altruism of various corporations
- Psychographics and audience research