- Errol Morris, the documentary filmmaker who produced
Apple Computer's well-known series of ads about discontented PC users who
switched to Macs, had a similar idea on how to reach undecided voters.
His new advertising campaign features Republicans who voted for President
Bush in 2000 explaining why they now intend to vote for Sen. John Kerry.
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- Scheduled to run during the Republican National Convention
later this month, MoveOn.org's political action committee, MoveOnPAC, will
air Morris' aesthetically stark 30-second interviews with ordinary citizens
about why they won't vote for Bush again in November.
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- "There's a principle of advertising that if you
want to talk to a certain group, it's best to pick someone from that group,"
said Morris, whose documentary on former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara,
The Fog of War, won a 2003 Oscar. "If you want to talk to Republicans
on the fence, then it's best to talk to Republicans who are on the fence.
These are real people who are expressing themselves in their own words."
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- Morris' "Real People" ads may rely on traditional
Madison Avenue dogma, but they are also a rare example of how the internet
can play an integral role in producing a political ad campaign. With a
tight schedule and limited funds, Morris said it would have been difficult
to locate appropriate voters without MoveOn's extensive e-mail list. (Morris
isn't charging MoveOn for his work.)
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- "It would have been very hard for me to find such
a group of people without having the internet," he said. "It
has been a very, very strong partner in all of this."
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- Morris didn't expect to work with MoveOn. In the spring,
he pitched his idea to interview disgruntled Bush voters to the Democratic
National Committee, Kerry's campaign and the Media Fund. No one took him
up on his offer. Months went by.
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- Afraid he wouldn't get his project off the ground in
time for the election, Morris e-mailed Wes Boyd, MoveOn's co-founder, in
June. Boyd was intrigued with Morris' out-of-the-Beltway approach.
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- "One of my pet peeves is the disregard that political
folks have for the broad American public," Boyd said. "They use
intermediaries to communicate with them. They design TV ads after using
pollsters and models that are in their own heads, like NASCAR dads."
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- On July 1, with the Republican convention less than two
months away, MoveOn sent an online casting call for a Kerry commercial
to its 2.6 million members. Within a week, roughly 16,000 replied. Sorting
through the database, Morris found 500 who had voted for Bush in 2000,
but planned to vote for Kerry.
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- Morris and his crew in his office in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
zeroed in on the 500, reviewing their questionnaires and conducting follow-up
telephone interviews. Ideally, they wanted the group to include men and
women who reflected diverse views, geographic regions, ages and ethnicities.
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- Morris also contacted Diplomats & Military Commanders
for Change, a group seeking to prevent Bush from being re-elected. Of this
group, William C. Harrop, former ambassador to Israel, and George E. Moose,
former assistant secretary of state for African affairs, participated in
the commercials.
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- On July 17, Morris started gathering 40 Kerry supporters
from 23 states in Canton, Massachusetts, where he had set up a studio.
For the next eight days, he interviewed each person for about an hour.
Once completed, Morris parceled out raw interview segments to four editors
in Michigan, Los Angeles and New York.
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- Less than six weeks after MoveOn e-mailed to its members
about Morris' commercials, he had completed preliminary edits on 17 30-second
spots. On Aug. 10, MoveOn asked its members to choose their favorites in
an online poll. Two days later, after about 100,000 voted, the winners
were announced.
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- The top choice featured Lee Buttrill, a former Marine,
explaining why he's angry WMDs weren't found in Iraq.
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- "We were given these ideas that there were weapons
of mass destruction," Buttrill says in the ad. "It was just a
lie. That wasn't a proper use of American troops. It wasn't a proper use
of my life, or my friends' lives, or the Marines who I've seen die around
me."
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- Morris borrowed techniques from his documentaries. Without
scripted questions, Morris drew out voters' personal concerns. A home builder
from Boulder, Colorado, for example, was worried Bush's economic policies
were driving up the cost of lumber, and an ex-Marine colonel from North
Carolina was disgusted with the administration's environmental policies.
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- "The important thing is that it is investigative,"
Morris said. "I use that word seriously in the fact that you don't
know what you're going to hear. You're not looking for evidence just to
justify a foregone conclusion."
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- Morris also used his signature multi-lensed Interretron.
The device makes it seem as though the subject is talking directly to the
viewer, not to an unseen third person off camera. The voters were shot
against a white background.
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- The documentary-style "Real People" ads may
mark a new approach to political advertising, just as Tony Schwartz's "daisy"
ad did for Lyndon Johnson's re-election campaign 40 years ago, said Stephen
Ansolabehere, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, who is an expert on American politics and the mass media.
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- That ad, which showed an image of a girl cutting to one
of a mushroom cloud, changed political advertising, said Ansolabehere.
Up to then, TV spots basically plugged the candidate. After the "daisy"
commercial, they tackled issues.
-
- By the early 1970s, political consultants relied on focus
groups to shape ad campaigns. Morris, in contrast, based his ad campaign
on the voters' personal issues.
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- "It's a lot less the Madison Avenue, standard advertising
model," said Ansolabehere. "What's more unique is that he's using
people speaking in their own words. He's really capturing their concerns.
He's producing the ads as though they were part of a documentary where
he's going out and documenting what people are saying."
-
- Other campaign ads in this election cycle feature real
people, but they appear more staged, said Ansolabehere. In the controversial
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad, several Vietnam veterans' comments are
interspersed with images.
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- "Errol Morris' ads show people why they may want
to defect from Bush," Ansolabehere said. "The Swift Boat ads
show that the band of brothers may not be so unified. The Swift Boat ad
is more focused on a single question. I'm not sure which one is more effective."
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- Late last year, MoveOn sponsored a contest for an ad
opposing Bush's re-election. After posting contenders on its website, MoveOn's
members chose "Child's Play" as the winner. The ad, criticizing
Bush's budget deficit, stirred up controversy when CBS refused to air it
during the Super Bowl, but wasn't especially successful swaying swing voters,
Ansolabehere said.
-
- However, Boyd said another MoveOn ad, which aired last
year and bashed Bush's spending on the Iraq war, influenced voters' opinions.
-
- Boyd said political pollster Stan Greenberg is market
testing the "Real People" ads with a general population on the
web and then in specific TV markets. The results will determine how many
commercials will air in battleground states. MoveOnPAC is raising money
to buy time on cable TV, local broadcast stations and possibly some network
channels.
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