INTERVIEW WITH JEFF
GREENFIELD
(part 2)
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Q & A
Q:
On that same point, what do you think of the Paul Taylor campaign for Alliance
for Better Campaigns, and those various efforts,whether it's free time, or
Stand By Your Ad or all of those things?
GREENFIELD: I was involved in the Alliance
for Better Campaigns first Washington forum by moderating the panel. And I
wish him well. I told him quite bluntly when he started that I thought it
was largely an exercise in futility. Mostly because I think the indifference
to campaigns is generally located where the conventional wisdom thinks it
is, in a general sense not only that things are going well, but that we don't
need politics to change our lives.
One of the big shifts that nobody talks about much is this sort of despair.
You know, sixty years ago if you wanted to keep your job and wanted a union
that represented you, there was a reason to get involved in politics, cause
somebody had to pass the Wagner Act. Or social security to protect your retirement.
Well most people, not all, but most people now and probably to their good
fortune believe that they're in control of their own destiny. You know, they'll
make their financial decisions, they'll figure out what they want to do. They'll
take matters into their own hands. Even planning, maybe, their own health
care coverage.
So, part of the reason people are divorced from politics is they don't see
in politics a mechanism to make things better. And it's why the issues that
really do kick up political interest are things where people can feel that
way. Whether it's on the right, trying to stop abortion or on the liberal
left side of things, the environment. You can't fix the environment by yourself
so you need political action. You can't stop abortion by yourself, so you
need political action. But on the more basic economic issues, What do you
need the government for? Who's planning to retire on social security as opposed
to their own retirement fund? I think you have just tons of people who sort
of said, "That's not about me."
Q: So while government may be okay this
year, it may be okay to be a politician--that doesn't mean that it's important.
GREENFIELD: Look, the things that government
can do to you that really tick you off--draft your kids into a mindless war,
inflate the currency and thus render your wages less valuable, create the
economic conditions that create a recession or even depression in whole sectors
of the economy as with the industrial recession in the late seventies or early
eighties--then you get ticked off at government.
Now if it's not doing any of that stuff, and you don't have an unrequited
sense of passion for the government--"Why isn't the government...what? Finish
the sentence. Why isn't the government...I don't know what, you know?
Q: So would an effective ad be, I'm experienced,
I know what I'm doing, and I won't do very much.
GREENFIELD: I don't think you can say
it quite that bluntly, and in fact, in fairness,there are things that people
do want to hear about. I'm not a cynic about this. I think if you had a sensible
thing to say about HMOs, people would probably want to hear about that. I
say a sensible thing to say. I think if you had a passion or an interest in
education and could actually bring to bear, in the context of the commercials,
something that resonated, people would probably like to hear about that. Whether
it was, if you wanted to take this third rail on how education is financed--in
a lot of states now the local property tax is coming under heavy fire--If
you had some kind of an opinion about charter schools, I think there are things
you can talk about. But I don't can do an ad which promises: "Send me to Washington,
I will change your life." That doesn't really resonate a whole lot, I would
suggest. Nor are people in the mood to here you say "I want to go to Washington
and drive the money-changers from the temple." Or whatever, whatever the correct
phrase that is. "Throw the bums, throw the rascals out" is not playing out
because I don't think people think that's it, even if they think that Washington
is filled with rascals.
The anger comes when the rascals are doing something to them. So yeah, I think
people think probably Washington is a place of institutional corruption, political
survival, not much courage, but not much baleful impact of that.
Q: You mentioned two issues that are popping
up a fair amount in political commercials, HMOs and schools. Do ads also,
because they are a reflection of polling, tell us what's on people's minds?
GREENFIELD: To some extent, sure. The
real ads that, I think, tell you what are on people's minds are the ads for
major products. Because they spend so much money on advertising that they
really go into enormous detail, to find out the emotional cues that are weighing
on people.
I remember some years ago, an ad where the punchline, the surprise was a woman--a
hospital, babies--and all along you assume that this woman was the mother
of the new child and it turns out she was the obstetrician. It was the old
switcheroo as they say. And that told you that this car company, was really
recognizing the fact that women were making a whole lot of decisions about
cars.
When you see, or when you hear rather the increased number of women announcers,
that tells you something. The old rule was that women didn't have enough authority.
No matter what the product was, you had to have a guy talking about it. That's
dead and gone. One of the things that would be interesting to see this fall,
I don't know what the answer would be, is how many political ads are going
to have women narrating. You know, if I were a Republican, facing the gender
gap, realizing that my party wasn't seen as particularly friendly to women,
maybe I would use a lot of women in my ads.
That would be the kind of indication that they thought something was up. If
the politicians, the smarter political consultants do this in a fairly subtle
way. But you have a lot of mediocre folks out there who will pick up a headline
and say let's do an ad calling for the death penalty for twelve year-olds
who bring rifles to school and kill their school masters. Now you know, that's
not a really tricky issue. Let's see, am I in favor of young kids bringing
rifles to school and killing their classmates or am I not? So you have to
sort of also decide, you have to go even beyond quantity and say 'What are
the more interesting, intriguing ads that show somebody's thought this through?'
Q: Are ads, though, in essence, more a
reflection of polling than they are the candidates?
GREENFIELD: Most of the time, these days,
ads are reflections of intensive polling. This is something that I find just
a measure of how long in the tooth I am. Because I worked for David Garth,
the fairly well known media guy in the early seventies for six or seven years.
We were seen often as the dark power. We never polled on slogans or ads. We
never did focus groups. We never tested them. We did it by the seat of the
pants, because we thought, "Well, we're smart guys, you know, we'll figure
this out."
Today, the idea that you would put an ad out and not just poll but also, what?
"Let's run this ad in one of those focus groups and see what people think."
"Do we want to build a bridge to the 21st century, do we want to fly to the
21st century, do we want to march to the 21st century, do we want a pontoon
bridge, perhaps a suspension bridge, maybe we don't want to go the 21st century."
I mean, these are quite literally, with perhaps a small attempt at humor,
what they do. And I think it also accounts for the fact that so many people
look at these ads and go, "Uh." It's not that they're repulsed by them. They're
formulaic.
It's like politics. This is one way that ads are like politics. Politicians
today don't know how to use the English language by and large. They are creatures,
they are fearful of television. They speak in robotized sound bites. Al Gore
being perhaps the most egregious offender. You turn the camera off, Al Gore's
a funny, interesting guy. You turn that camera on, it's the pod people. It's
invasion of the body snatchers. You know, and if he says it once, he'll say
it twelve times because these are the words.
So my feeling is ads reflect politics in this sense, which is, that they are,
by and large, unimaginative. They are cliche. They are witless. And they don't
reflect a sense that a human being is talking to them.
Q: So when people watch ads should they
think, "I'm not so much watching a message about this candidate as I am watching
a message about what the candidate thinks I think."
GREENFIELD: That's a wonderful way to
put it. And whether any of us have that kind of energy and that media literacy
to sit at home after a long day, after the family. Most of us watch television
the way I do, I suspect, which is basically, it's a refreshing bath in electrons,
even when I'm watching C-SPAN.
Ads depend on the fact that people don't watch them that well. People misunderstand
ads, I think. People say "Well, I'm not affected by ads because I watch an
ad for soda and I don't go out to the store and buy the soda." No, you don't
exactly, but five days later if you've had four hundred impressions of a refreshing
drink, it might weigh on your mind.
Political ads are something of the same thing. They don't expect you to leap
from your chair and write out a check to Schmendrick for Senator campaign.
They want to create a series of impressions. And, sure, the way to be media
literate, if you have the energy, is to sit back and watch that and say "What
is he trying to tell me?" "What does he think? Where does he think I am that
I'm going to be responding to this?" It's hard.
There is a Wall Street Journal article about who this year the political consultants
are going for. They're going for the true believers. The assumption is that
this apathy is going to bring election turnout to a historic low. That, generally,
means that the middle of the road vote, the less ideologically-inclined, drop
out.
It's the true believers that cause the impassioned, or if you don't like that
side, the zealots who will vote. That's another thing to really watch about
these ads when we ask who are they talking to. Because if you are a voter
who is basically middle of the road, not engaged passionately on one side
or the other of this, whatever it is we're having this debate, you might find
these ads puzzling. Because, traditionally, ads try to split the difference.
But this year the ads may be trying to energize the base, even in the fall.
And that's probably one of the more interesting things to watch.
Q: And why there are maybe more ads that
say, literally, "I'm a business man, I'm a Christian."
GREENFIELD: Oh yeah, yeah. Now, we'll
see how those ads play in the fall. I mean, remember, all we're talking about
so far are primary campaigns. Which are a very different kettles of fish.
But let's see what happens in the fall. I'm not sure that they would go to
that level, because there you clearly are trying to energize the religious
right. But you may see ads which, instead of trying to fudge a position, on
say abortion or gay rights,or whatever, the person might, the candidate might
state it very clearly hoping that that base will turn out.
One of the things that will be most fascinating this fall is to see who the
ads are trying to talk to at a time when we expect a record low turnout. The
Wall Street Journal has a piece that suggested that politicians have given
up on the middle because they are the least likely to vote. And that they're
targeting the edges of their bases. On the other hand, if you're an ad guy,
you're used to going to the middle, you may have some problems with an ad
campaign in the general election that tries to energize the base. One technique
that we might see, even in a political climate where the operatives are going
for the most committed voters, is what's called cross-pressuring. Where what
you're trying to say to the other side is not vote for me, but I'm safe enough
that you don't have to vote. Here's an example, in Florida, Jeb Bush, the
Republican candidate for governor, is spending a lot of time campaigning in
black communities. Groups that probably cost him the governorship three years
ago. Now I don't know whether he's expecting to increase the black vote for
a Republican but what may be at work there is the notion that well at least
you can see that I'm not some sort of demonic figure that you have to race
to the polls to vote against. So blacks being the most reliably Democratic
voters, might be encouraged to take a pass if they don't otherwise feel engaged.
Now that, ads are going to tell us a lot about how that strategy plays out
in '98.
Q: On the role of consultants, some people
argue that you have to have, if you're running as a challenger, a name consultant
or a name pollster to be taken seriously, to raise money. Is that valid? Do
think consultants are overrated?
GREENFIELD: Well, beyond a doubt there
are candidates who are saying you must take me seriously because I have hired
pollster X and consultant Y. That's just a fact. Do I think that is necessarily
wise? No. In two different campaigns Bob Dole hired almost every name consultant
you could find. He did it in '88, and ran out of money by the first primary.
And he did it in '96 and he almost ran out of money by the time the campaign
was about three weeks old. So you can make a real mistake there.
In addition, consultants are like generals and the cliche being they're always
fighting the last war. I think people who are really good in one era, with
a certain style of message, may not be the person to hire if the country's
changed. If you're used to running a campaign where your candidate is seen
as this bashed of all things political, in which you constantly rail against
the evil fortress that is Washington, and now you run as a Republican hoping
to be a member of the class that keeps control of Congress, how's it going
to work? And does your guy, does your ad guy know what's really going on now?
Or is he just recapitulating slogans and an approach that worked ten and twenty
years ago? That can happen.
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(Greenfield interview part 1)
continue (Greenfield interview part 3)