Image Is Everything

It was 1952, and America was falling head over heels in love with television. A Madison Avenue ad man named Rosser Reeves, mindful of the dramatic surge in the number of sets in living rooms across the country, saw an opportunity. His pitch: buying 20-second spots on popular programs like "I Love Lucy" would be the best way yet to reach a mass audience of potential voters. War hero Dwight Eisenhower bit, using Reeves's ads to help propel his run for the White House. And the art of campaign advertising was forever changed.

During that election cycle, a national political ad cost about $1,000. Today it'll run a candidate about $400,000. But despite the 39,900-percent price leap, and a proliferation of new means of getting ads in front of eyeballs, the basic operating principle has remained remarkably constant since Reeves's day: keep the message simple and play up the personality. David Schwartz, chief curator of the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, which is hosting an online exhibit of 250 ads spanning 14 presidential campaigns, spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Ramirez about the history of campaign advertising and what to expect in the months ahead. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: In 2004 candidates and advocacy groups spent about $673 million on broadcast commercials. That figure is expected to hit $1 billion this cycle. Why the surge?
David Schwartz: The media landscape is much more crowded than it used to be. As a result you have to run an ad more in order to make an impression. A viewer needs to see an ad about 18 times before it sinks in. Plus, it used to be just national advertising, but the spending has gotten more and more targeted. In the last few elections we've seen a big percentage of the money being poured into swing states, and in the last election some of those ads were around-the-clock.

If you look at some of the first campaign ads and some of the ads that have run in this election, how do they compare?
One of the more effective ads I've seen was a [Rudy] Giuliani ad that was an attack against Hillary Clinton. It came out after The New York Times ran that ad regarding [Gen. David] Petraeus. Giuliani used footage of Clinton first supporting the resolution in 2002 for the war. Then they have footage later where she's against it. They're sort of posing her as a flip-flopper and not being a strong commander in chief. Nixon also had effective ads against [George] McGovern, saying he'd be a weak commander in chief. So the idea that you take footage of someone and use it against them—that's an old technique. The famous ad of Michael Dukakis in the tank from 1988—that was a photo opportunity staged by the Dukakis campaign. They were trying to show how impressive he would be as a commander in chief, but he looked kind of ridiculous in this big helmet riding around in a tank. The [George H. W.] Bush camp used the footage to question his ability. That ad was similar to the Giuliani ad against Hillary.

What do you think the ads that have run in this cycle so far tell us about the time we live in?
They tell us it's a scary time. Mitt Romney just released an ad where he's seen in this pleasant backyard setting in, I think, Iowa, and he's talking about jihad. That tells you a lot. Interestingly, Republicans have tended to do well in these types of national elections. There was the Korean War, Vietnam and then the Cold War. So there's been a long history where there's a threat from outside the country and the Republicans were the ones you could trust to deal with it. For example, Reagan had that famous evocative ad of a bear in the woods representing the Soviet threat. It sent this idea out that we better understand what this danger is all about.

What role do you think TV ads will play in 2008?
We're going to see major attempts to use viral video and Web ads. Just look at the way the "macaca" moment played out. That had nothing to do with an ad, but everyone was looking at it. I think we'll see a lot of that.