The Ad Campaign
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new york times. I'm Michael borrow. This is the daily.

By the time it's over, this year's race for president will cost at least three point five billion dollars of that. The single biggest expense will be campaign ads today. Shame gold marker on the story that both campaigns have been telling thirty seconds at a time through those ads.

It's monday, november forth.

shame. Hello, hello. It's really nice to have you in a room unclosed red by others, by others.

Fantastic from the round table. Glad to be here. Yes, of course, on these in the round tables were great. This episode just F, Y, I is running on the day before the election.

And for a very long time, we have wanted to tell the story of this campaign through advertisements that both campaigns have relied on to try to win over voters. And IT feels kind of fitting that we're going to do that in the last forty eight hours of the race when everyone who has A T. V, especially in a swing state, is being flooded with TV ads. In your mind, what has been the story of advertising in this race?

I think the story of advertising has chiefly been about television advertising still, still. So you might think in the social media era of instagram and tiktok and facebook and all of these other platforms that, that would be the dominant way that the campaign spending the money. But it's not it's still on those thirty second television as and if you look here in the last days, the campaign actually had a milestone according to add impact whose data we use to track the television spending, which is there's been a billion dollars of television ads just since como Harris enter this .

race july wow. A billion dollars since I just on old antiquated television advertising yeah and so if you .

want to tell the story of the tony, tony four race between these two campaigns, I really think there's nowhere Better to look than the stories they've been telling on television.

Well, I wonder if you can just explain why television, I mean, not to sound like I don't appreciate the media, but we do tend to think of IT as something that increasingly obsolete in an error of cord cutting. Why is television still the preferred medium for these two campaigns, given all the theoretical options?

The first answer is that IT works, right, that there's an a master amount of testing on both sides. And what can you do to move people emotionally? And is this combination of images and words and sounds and feelings that you can evoke in just a short time presented to people where they often can't look away? right?

You have to watch IT is are watching football, right? This is live television to become especially important. That's one reason.

The other is this is an opportunity for the campaign to present their vision to voters in a real distilled version. There's no interference from the media. There's no interference for even the influence of that. You're trying to have your message framed by no pec fact checking, no pesky fact checking. You can put something that's not quite exactly true on the screen, and you are still able to deliver that message to people at volume.

Shame, with all that in mind, tell us the story of how these two candidates don't trump. Coheres have been, and no doubt still are, in these final hours, using this precious, powerful resource of TV advertising to try to move the elector.

I think it's important to tell that story the same way the two campaigns are, which is over time. So trump, from the beginning to the end, has mostly been attacking como Harris. But her campaign has a tRicky task, which has been to introducer and then also to pay IT into attack Donald trump.

And the urgency when he first became a candidate was so intense, right? Her allies and her campaign, they needed to get up on the airwaves to tell her story. And the first one I think we should talk about begins in early August and runs basically for most of the month through the democratic convention.

SHE grew up in a middle class home, so the ad begins with grainy photos of como Harris, middle class up bringing. SHE was the daughter of a working mom, and SHE worked at mcDonald while he got her degree. And then SHE appears as an adult in another middle sine with construction workers.

Donald d. Trump has no plan to help the middle. Just more tax cuts for billion's.

And that's just opposed with images of Donald trumps surround by wealth. Being president is about who you fight for. And she's fighting for people like you.

I'm commonly Harris and I approved this message.

describe what this ad is fundamentally up to for the voters watching IT.

This ad is trying to begin one of the big contrast of the entire hair rs campaign, which to say that he is from the middle class, and therefore for the middle class. Donald trump is from from the billionaire class, and therefore for the billion aire class. And this is trying to just a lot of things for her.

It's trying to introduce her story, but it's also trying to address one of the chief vulnerabilities that he entered this race with, which is, which is the economy. Voters are unhappy about the state of the economy, and even if this ad is not technically about the economy, IT is very much about the economy, saying that he understands the economic pinch that you're in. And eventually the story they will tell through advertising is that he has plans to help you. There's actually a second introduction, tory ad that I think we should include, which is addressing the other big vulnerability that he entered this race with, which is immigration. And in short, it's an add all about how tough she's going to be on the border.

Kala haris has spent decades fighting violent crime.

As the ad begins with the images of her early roots as a prosecutor and over and over to standing next to other members of law enforcement, IT shows the guns that they have confided, the drugs that .

they have confident hire thousand ages and crack down on final and human trafficking.

And then IT pits to what he says he will do as president, which is all .

about tough, tough, tough 的。 So was commonly Harris .

commoner Harris and I approved this message.

this ad, as a companion to the ad we just talk about, sort of says, yeah, yeah, yes, she's from the middle class. But if you care about the border, comella Harris is a law and order border person, which of course, is no doubt designed to address what happened with calmo Harris and twenty twenty to the end of present. We talk about this a lot of show when SHE was on stage and said that he would support decriminalizing the border. SHE got a complicated history with the subject.

I think the words that use the ata important SHE was the attorney general of california. But the way they described that is not that he was a consumer advocate for forty million californians or that SHE flow enforcement officer, even SHE was a border state prosecutor, and SHE took on drug cartels. Is that accurate?

I mean, that really what her focus was.

he was definitely part of her job, is why they have the images in this ad. IT wasn't the only job he had. It's the part of the job they're choosing to highlight in this important medium of a television.

And okay, so that's how Harris has used tvs to introduce herself at the beginning of this race when SHE subs in for joe biden. How do her ads change once she's well into the campaign?

The next is actually from a group that supporting her and IT does something that they did in a lot of television ads, which is that uses regular people to attack Donald trump, usually former trump supporters, raising questions about why they would consider supporting him again and eventually ending on .

supporting como Harris s so face two of the advertising on behalf of como Harris is to move off of mere introduction into frontal assaults on trump, frontal .

assaults on trump, driving a contrast and using regular people to tell that story. The ad begins with a White woman watching Donald trump and shaking her head and discussed, as trump speaks to a bunch of rich donors and tells them how much she's gna cut their taxes.

I am not rich as well. I work hard. I scribed to get by.

IT didn't shows that same woman grocery shopping.

but commoner's has plans to help us. She's gonna crack down on Price gouging and cut taxes for working people like me. I voted for Donald trump before, but this time i'm voting for commuter.

F, F. Fact is responsible for the content of this ad.

What's interesting to me about this ad chain is that it's using trumps own words against him, right? He's telling rich people are going to give you tax cuts, which I think most people generally find a little off putting. And IT employs this device of the disillusion trump voter as a standard for the viewer.

is a permission structure for the small sliver of undecided voters who might have voted for trump before to say, it's okay. There are other people, just like you, other people who don't think that Donald trump is good anymore and that mohairs has an actual plan to help you. If you talk about that first that that showed her in this middle class scenery.

This ad started ring in october. The first ads were in August. You have policies that have emerged. You have a story you're telling that he adds specifics to solve the problems in your life.

okay. So that stage two for here is I think that brings us to right now with Harry's advertising, what adds in your mind capture common here is closing argument to voters.

To be clear, I don't think there's anyone add that can capture her closing argument, but we're telling the story of como hero's ad campaign. You couldn't tell that story without including abortion. This was the central issue in the twenty twenty two mid terms for democrats over performed in state after state. And it's very much a part of the closing argument she's making now, both on the campaign trail and in paid television ads. And this ad begins with a close up of the face of woman telling a painful story.

When I was five, I began getting generally be used by my stepfather, and he got me pregnant when I was twelve.

Three lines of White text show up in a row. Donal trump killed robi weed. Girls and women all over the country lost the right to choose even for rape or incest.

Sixty four thousand pg nancie from I have occurred in states with total award, shiny in trunk. Did this, women and girls needs to have choices with coheirs.

We do color the message from .

the woman on screen. Very stark, very simple, is in trm america, I would have had to give birth to that baby, that product of rape and incest. And in combo harses, I wouldn't have had to.

That's exactly right. This is the kind of the democrats think can help turn out voters they need in women in particular, in droves. And it's not the only ad on abortion. There's a whole series of them, but IT is one of the important closing message. The campaign is making .

change to the degree that you can say based on your reporting, how effective have these ads from commoner Harris? Then you mentioned that he begins the race with vulnerability on the economy, and SHE addresses that in an ad on immigration. SHE addresses that in an ad. And then he sees an opportunity when IT comes to abortion. So to the degree that anything here is measurable, what do we know?

The ads are designed to do two things, both strengthen your strengths and address your weaknesses. And we can see in polling that como harses pulled Better after hundreds of millions of dollars of ads in these battlegrounds on the economy against Donald trump on some of those key questions that they are tracking inside the haris campaign.

Like not just who do you trust more on economy, but who do you think cares more about people like me, which is what those middle class ads are so much about? SHE has improved in, in some cases, is ahead of him. Fascinating on these economic measures.

The power advertise, the power of versing. Immigration has been less to focus in recent weeks, and SHE hasn't closed the gap on immigration the same way he has on the convey and on abortion. Democrats are already ahead. It's a matter of getting people to think about that issue when they go into .

the voting booth.

To answer your larger question, yes, absolutely. These ads are making a difference, and we know that not just from polling about the economy, but these focus groups the campaigns hold and where voters are repeating back verb to the same stories that the ads have been telling. Of course, the Harris campaigners, only half the ads the people are seeing. The other side is trump. They're telling an entirely different story.

Okay, let's do this. Second, have.

can I use the restroom? No, where we take a an ad break to speak.

but I 帮 我。 对。

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Okay, paying. Let's now turn two, Donald trumps as and the story that he has been telling who does ads?

Well, I think it's worth noting that he's not reintroducing himself to the country after .

nine years old, Young, developing way through york of that.

the area of that. Instead, IT was all about common Harris. And the candidate you replaced, joe biden, in the first dead that I think we should look at isn't one that came out right after he entered the race, but I think is one of the more revealing ones about their attempt to tie her to joe biden. And the economy.

their nics LED to the highest inflation in forty years.

IT begins with an image of common hair on stage with joe biden as he turns looking almost lost .

in comes down, unemployment rising, and recession now ended our way.

Images of economic struggles at the gas pump, warnings about a potential .

recession. A commoner, Harris, is clues.

We are very proud of bytes ics, bionic ics is working.

And IT ends with a clip of como harsher self declaring that dynamics is working, right?

This that is very clearly designed to say at the precise moment the commonly Harris is taking over for biden and saying to the world, you got a new nominee, democratic party and amErica this ad from trump says, no, you don't. You have another job, iden.

yeah, I think one of the main battle grounds of this campaign is about who can Better represent change. And this ad is very much about saying como Harris cannot represent change because SHE represents joe biden.

And this ad would seem to exploit the reality that even though commonly, Harris, when he takes over for job, an ni is trying to say, i'm my own person, put some distance between your self and by an inevitably, you can't really distance yourself from the person. You've been vice president too.

It's one of the trick est parts of this entire campaign for her.

How do you run your own distinctive campaign for president with a new agenda when you have been in charge for the last three years? I mean, I think it's worth lingering for a second on why commonly Harris is a candidate in the first place, which is that joe biden became so distrusted mostly over his asian acuity, but also over his policies, that he was pushed out largely by the democratic party. And so attaching her to him is a tough thing for her.

Where does the from advertising tragedy go next in the race?

If stage wanted saying more of the same, stage two saying, you actually will be different in one important way, which is that she's worse, that she's too liberal. They bring a series of ads on immigration, but eventually they pivoted to a .

surprising issue, will give criminal illegal aliens, taxpayer funded.

change gender surging, which is .

change gender rights. Every change gender would cess.

They ve run tens of millions of dollars of our heads, features an old clip of commute. Haris, when he was running for president and running to the left in a democratic primary, talking about her work to expand access to surgery for inmates who say they need that as gender affirming care. The trumpy is used this clip in numerous ads, and I think the one that we should talk about is actually almost a meter ad. It's a discussion of the impact of trumps ads on a person who's been mostly supportive of common hairs, who is showing the god, the host of the breakfast club.

just to set this up, showing in the god himself has been watching T, V during the campaign, watching sporting events and seeing the original trump ads criticizing Harris for supporting gender firming care for prisoners. And when he seeing these ads, he's disappointed by the position that he sees he is taking.

Sex changes .

for surge. He's not just disappointed. He says that these ads are breaking through to him. Because of not just what it's saying, the unbelievably of IT from his perspective but when he's watching the ads .

there during a football is for day .

the president .

trump is for you message in that .

sense tion. This ad is a kind of inversion of what the Harris campaign was doing with that former trump voter who watches him on video and is disillusions by what he sees when he says he's gone to give tax breaks to rich people. Here is a Harris supporting celebrity saying he is disillusioned with what SHE Harris has said.

It's the same permission structure for Harris. You have a White lady saying, you know what, maybe I can actually vote for commons. And here you have a black man, a prominent black man, questioning if common Harris is too far left for you.

And just to say, if your goal is to portray comm Harris as overly attuned to liberal values, which is trump school, this seems like a pretty effective ad and issue to perhaps zero in on what trumps .

advisers and allies say is that this issue of trains gender rights works across a wth of demographic groups that they want to win this year. That you see from the use of Charlotte, that IT has some resonance with black men, that IT codes across the elevate her as too far left, but that IT also has a specific appeal to suburban women, to moms whose daughters are playing in sports. They think this is the kind of thing that could also blunt the abortion message that Harris been using, a counter message for those same suburban women who have swing toward democrats and he's hoping don't swing even further.

Got IT. And and in how is trump closing out his campaign in ads? What are his closing argument ads over the past week or so?

Trump is closing this campaign the same way he began, which is talking about come Harris, in the add that I think is most revealing and most representative, uses both some of her words in some real images of the last four years to tell a story, a flood of illegal skyrocketing Prices. Bal, the ad begins with a very dark, grainy set of images, and then IT shows.

would you have done something .

differently than president?

And in a clip of commuters, is self on the view when he was asked what SHE would do differently than joe biden.

There is not a thing that comes to .

mind nothing, and that's when the narrow jumping and says nothing will change with calmo and IT talks about weakness and war and more illegal immigration and even more taxes .

in this ad is a total full circle for trumps advertising not just because he's focused on Harris, as he said, but because he's once again putting her right back in league with biden.

He started with biden. He's ending with biden and at the core of his campaign is this really old fashion question in politics, which is, are you Better off today than you were four years ago? That's at the center of this. And it's saying you can't be Better and she's not gonna be Better because he is the same. 嗯。

given that so much of the trump advertising has been focused on here, as i'm curious how you measure the effectiveness of IT. I mean, what he's been up to quite clearly is saying Harris is basically biden. Harris is not change on any of these key issues, whether it's the economy or immigration. And Harris is left of left.

The left of left is the one that I would start with, which is that if you look in polls, on average, voters think that Donald trump is not too far out of the mainstream ideologically. Rather, a larger share of voters think that SHE is out of the mainstream, didn't think that he is out of the mainstream. Now some of that is where voters might have begun in this race, but he is pushed to exacerbate that with these advertisements.

And so these late stage ads are also about, what are you gonna think about when you go into the voting booth? SHE wants you to think about trump. He wants you to think about abortion. SHE wants you to think that she's gona think about you if she's president. He wants you to think about what you don't like of the last two years, that you are unhappy with the direction of the country that SHE can't even articulate how he would be different than joe biden.

This on how much time you spent with always ad, do you have either a gut or analytical sense of whose ads have been Better? And of course, by Better, I mean more effective.

I'm going to give you a cop out, which is I definitely don't know the answer as to whose ads have been more effective. IT is true that the democrats have air more television ads.

That's important to that.

In these last weeks, you're seeing record shattering amounts of money going to televisions, and there is more overall spending for Harris than for trump. And we keep talking about television ads, but these are also digital ads that are running on devices and on that medium. Her campaign has been far outstripping the trump Operation on spending on youtube and some of those platforms you can see online. SHE has run meaningfully more, but I think he had more to do in her advertising him, and he's really just focused on her. And in that regard, he definitely had an advantage that he's hoping one he's not going overall.

SHE knew, and I don't live in a swing's state. We live in the non swing district of broken new york. I see you in my neighbor. Od, and so R, T, V, viewing experience is not representative of what it's like to feel these ads on your T V screen all day long. If you live in michigan and sovan, ana, arizona, georgia, if you're in one of those states and you watch T V, how many ads are you gonna subjected to today?

endless. I mean, IT is back to back to back political advertisements. There are some stations that are running out of space to sell the campaigns.

It's so bad in those states that some campaign, the Harris campaign, has been buying national television ads and the trump team, too. In order to buy spots, they're unavailable to buy just locally. If you want to get on that big broadcast, you can't just buy IT in the filling market or the lana market.

You have to buy the entire country. So people have seen some of these ads because the economic inefficiencies that you know that is worth that we want to squeak one more support into that show. So those say .

you're going everywhere. And then just like that, right? I mean, this is the worst part of campaign asia. The election happens and all that advertizing goes away and it's back to ads for c Alice and mcDonald and forgoes and IT happens just like that.

Yeah, it's over just like that.

Jan, thank you for watching all these ads. So we didn't have to .

we present. Thank you.

沽 又 沽。

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Here's what else you need to another day on sunday, the final times cna poll found that the president jill race remains stubbornly deadlocked across the seven swing states likely to determine its outcome. But IT showed that late deciding voters are favoring common Harris over Donald trump by nearly ten percentage points. The poll showed that Harris is gaining ground in key sunder states, including north CarOlina, the water, but the club has erased her small lead in critical rust belt states like pennsylvania. Meanwhile.

and we got a phony press. We got a lot of crooked people out there. We're fighting like a son of a gun.

We are fighting. They, they won. They are fighting so hard to steal this dam thing.

In their final hours of camping, ning trump doubled down on his false claims of election fraud, warning his supporters without evidence that democrats would seek to steal tuesday's election and claiming that he should have never left the White house after his first term.

I shall have left. I been honestly, because we did so. We did so well.

Harris, for her part, asked americans to ignore problems, growing claims of fraud.

And I would ask, in particular, people who have not yet voted to not fall for his tactic, which I think includes suggesting to people that if they vote, their vote won't matter, suggesting to people that somehow the integrity of our voting system is not intact so that they don't vote.

During the news conference on sunday, the vice president said that trump was cynically seeking to discourage americans from voting.

Everyone must know that their vote is their power to determine the outcome of the election, and their vote will count. IT does matter.

Tod's episode was produced by luke founder luke mary Wilson and will read IT was edited by lexi deal, contains original music by marian lizana and roll eyes to, and was engineered by a litho xy artha music is by jm running red and venelas fork of wondering. That's IT for the daily i'm michabo see tomorrow.

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