The Shift of Political Ads

Before I talk about political advertisements, I made my own adlib campaign on the PBS tool: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/adlibs/. Go ahead and try making your own by following this link and experience the way advertisers go about building a political campaign.

In today’s culture, many people are driven to succeed because of the things they want to purchase in the future. In other words, material goods dictate our career paths, and they ultimately dictate our decision making. The question for this blog is simple, does our consumeristic culture play a role in the way we view, approve, appreciate, and interact with political campaigns?

Yes. Advertisements today are all about the “you” attitude. What can a product do for YOU? That’s the question that every advertiser asks themselves when creating a campaign for a product. I’m sure that before the iPhone came out, we were all okay with the way we communicated with other people. Now that we have new technology, and new products coming out every day, brands are trying to get noticed amongst the rest. The common idea is that if YOU buy my product, YOU will be better off than before. Every campaign, political or not, runs on this concept. If you think of the politician running for office as the product, then advertising would be simple. The question would become what can this candidate do for YOU? Do you see the resemblance? So to answer my original question asking if consumerism plays a role in the way we accept political ads, I can confidently say that it does. The way we are bombarded with new products every single day, the amount of advertising we see daily, it’d be crazy to think that this wouldn’t affect us when it comes to politics. Trump is in the lead currently, and he has no political experience. One thing he understands is how to get people talking about him. He self-advertises by stepping out of the political boundaries, and entering into social media with a bang. The American political system is going through some heavy changes at the moment since social media has taken off. Our consumerism has trickled down into our political system, which is one of the only reasons Trump is able to have a successful campaign. I’m sure that if Kanye West wanted to run for president, he would be extremely successful as well, simply because he knows how to self-advertise. He knows how to appeal to the consumerist in all of us, which Trump is currently doing a great job of. Regardless of your political affiliation, you can’t help but sit back and admire the way Trump has handled his campaign. After years of the same, boring, bland, average political ads on TV, it’s about time someone took to social media and ran a campaign tailored to the young, impulsive, consumeristic culture of our youth.