new in Philippine elections – negative / attack ad against Mar Roxas

we saw this TV ad at YouTube as we were looking for Mar Roxas political TV ads. we were surprised, this is the first attack / negative TV ad aired in the Philippines.

 

why is this first? that is because attack / negative ads are not allowed to be aired in the Philippines. and that is probably the reason why this can only be viewed in the internet through YouTube. the TV networks will not allow its airing on their TV stations. so far it has gotten only 13T views since it was posted last November 16, 2015 by a Michael Gierza.

this attack / negative ad against Mar Roxas is a polished ad that can only be written and produced by an ad agency. copy works very well, the production values are not superb but its passable and acceptable. the casting is well done with credible millennials appearing on the TV ad. it is an ad targeted against millennials.

the negative issues being hurled at Mar Roxas are well chosen, these being exactly the problems many of us, not just the millennials have been complaining about  for many months now, these are – heavy traffic, MRT problems and the Yolanda problems that are often blamed on Roxas.  the messages in the ad will resonate among the voters, among all voters who are not living under a rock in the Philippines.

the ad aims to do two (2) things : cast doubt on Mar Roxas and to confirm the negatives that have been talked about to be true. casting doubt on Roxas is potentially powerful and can harm Roxas. once a doubt is cast in the minds of the target audience, they become very easy to completely capture and convert into the opposite side.

the negatives or accusations have been around for many months. the idea is to put them on media so that those seeing the ad will confirm in their minds to be true. personally, i do not think that are true and it is underselling for Roxas to be blamed for those.  and that is how this ad becomes sinister. these are unverified truths, even unexplained in the ads why these are to be blamed on Roxas. but because the ad is out, there will be people who will not question its veracity and just accept them as truth.

the problem with the ad is the question of truth. are these negative issues truthfully attributable to Mar Roxas? i doubt if any one of it will pass the test of truth, there is this thing called “truth in advertising”, right?

Mar Roxas’ marketing and campaign teams should have this removed from the internet / YouTube. this has the potential to hurt Roxas if it gets a lot of views. it has only gotten only 13T views so far, lets see if it gets more after this posting in this blog.

we now wonder how that can be approached and removed from YouTube. YouTube and the internet is NOT governed by the Ad Board, the self-regulating body of the Philippine advertising industry. it has regulatory powers among local media like traditional media – TV, Radio, Print and others but most likely has none on the internet and YouTube.

we have to admit, given the barrier on airing attack / negative ads on Philippine media, putting one on the internet  and YouTube is a smart move.

 

 

 

 

gilbert teodoro’s cheesy moment in his negative tv ad

teodoro's cheesy moment #1

teodoro's cheesy moment # 2

teodoro's cheesy moment # 3

teodoro's cheesy moment # 4

teodoro's cheesy moment # 5, this time with a smirk

i found this end sequence in that ad really funny. first time i have seen somehting like that done in  a political ad. in fact it is the first time i have seen something like that in any tv ad.

what was the director thinking? hahaha. his way of having a dramatic ending? this kind of ending is okay for a movie or some drama queen but for a presidential candidate? it’s so un-presidential.

~wawam~

2010 presidential campaign – are negative campaign tv ads next?

we are approaching the final stretch of the election campaign. that may sound strange to read considering the official campaign period started just weeks ago but that is the official start which none of the presidentiables actually followed. the unofficial campaign period started many months ago, last year. ask manny villar about it and he will certainly confirm it.

being in the last stretch, the election less than four months from now, voters are firming up their choices. the point of no return for candidates is when voters finally make their choices.

to uncork that decision, candidates need to ramp up their efforts – advertising rallies and media exposure or launch negative ads against their opponents.

we have seen negative campaigning already, we hear the candidates comment on their opponent’s skills, qualifications, record or scandals they have been or are involved in. many of them are still on hush-hush tones, the names of the particular presidentiable they are attacking not mentioned in their speeches, although we know who they are. some a little more blatant which we witness during presidential “debates” or forum where presidentiables address other presidentiables on issues or scandals.

richard gordon’s version of negative campaigning, no names mentioned:

The standard-bearer of the Bagumbayan-Volunteers party said, referring to the other presidential aspirants: “There is someone who is very intelligent but who has no experience. There is a very rich man who will just recoup his campaign expenses if he wins. And there is someone who just inherited a good name.”

read in full here: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100222-254620/Gordon-reveals-why-hes-running

that is still the mild form. in the US, negative ads is a regular staple during the election. based on the US experience, negative ads do work although in degrees. negative ads serve to stop the momentum the candidate being attacked is enjoying, it is like a pause button on your opponents.

however, negative ads do not work for the long term and one cannot do just negative ads. doing it exclusively and for a long time tends to backfire on the candidate releasing the negative ads.

looking at the poll results, we see voters firming up on two presidentiables – aquino and gordon with estrada as a distant dark horse. everyone else in the group based on the current results do not seem to have a chance at winning the election. next to the top three presidentiables is administration candidate gilbert teodoro but his rating of 4% to 5% has not moved across all the surveys conducted so far. his ratings not showing any life of upward movement says he is stalled at that level. teodoro is unable to get any more supporters.

on the other hand, the poll results of the top three presidentiables seem to be getting very fluid. we now see aquino, the erstwhile dominant front runner moving down and the 2nd placer, manny villar moving up to a level where in one poll villar has reached a statistical tie with aquino.

estrada’s rating used to be constant at 15%, no matter what happened to the candidates at the top or the bottom. but this is no longer true in the latest polls. while it is not correct to read trends using two different polls, estrada’s 11% showing in the TNS poll seem to indicate estrada supporters are starting to abandon him.

the presidentiables should take this fluid movement in a good light. that means the voters are vulnerable to switching to some degree. to increase the speed of that movement, the presidentiables can go into negative ads. the positive ads they have been running, ads that extol their positive side, has resulted only to marginal movements. perhaps negative ads, those that speak of the weaknesses of other presidentiables might speed up the movements.

except for marcos, negative political ads have not been done in the philippines before in the manner and form that it has been done in the US.  with so much at stake and with the top two presidentiables positions firming up, perhaps negative ads is the only way left to go for some of the presidentiables who are trailing in the polls.

are we ready for negative ads?

negative campaign tv ads : gilbert teodoro did it first & what ferdinand marcos & john mccain have in common with gilbert teodoro

the last time negative advertising was aired in the philippines by politicians was when cory aquino ran against ferdinand marcos in the 80’s, the pre-event to the The People Power EDSA Revolution.

marcos aired ads that depicted cory  as just a “housewife”, saying she does not know anything about running a country. cory of course in truth was just a housewife when she ran against marcos in the election. she did not hold any elective position or any government position before that time. what marcos forgot and the people never did was that cory was the widow of ninoy aquino who was assassinated at the tarmac when he returned home from exile in the US.

a most powerful man in marcos cheating just a housewife in cory in the elections was just too much for the people to take. the people kicked the dictator out of the country and installed the housewife in malacanang.

that negative ad, a first in philippine politics back-fired.

this 2010 election has a kind of negative advertising. this ad was aired by gilbert teodoro.

(read full write up here: gilbert teodoro’s “galing at talino” tv ads – anti-noynoy, anti-humility, generic promises)

in these ads, the announcer voice-over says “dapat lider na hindi lang puso ang alay kung hindi galing at talino“, an obvious reference to noynoy aquino., the expected front runner during the time the ad was first aired.

it is mild and indirect but we do not think anyone missed the reference to aquino. the ad points out aquino’s inadequacy to be president and attempts to discredit the strength of aquino in this campaign.  having  just “puso” was positioned here as not enough or inferior and compared to teodoro’s strength which were enumerated in this ad. the whole ad except for that single line talked about the  credentials of teodoro. it positions teodoro as superior to aquino.

this ad of teodoro is the only political ad in this whole presidential campaign that makes a reference to an opposing candidate and a negative tv ad.

we can’t say for sure that this negative ad of teodoro backfired for him but we do know his ratings at the polls have put him at best 5% while aquino remained the front runner in this election.

we disagree with the way this ad has been done. the attempt at discrediting aquino was too mild and of no consequence in this ad. it’s an ad that is neither here nor there. we think if they really wanted to draw the attention to teodoro’s superiority over noynoy or noynoy’s inferiority to teodoro, they should have gone all the way. doing it in this piecemeal almost forgotten way will not do anything for teodoro but only eat precious seconds. they could have removed that line and the ad would have worked as well. they could have used the freed seconds to add more good qualities of teodoro like having a hot wife or that he drives a BMW 7-series.

in the US negative TV ads are more direct and biting and has no qualms in mentioning the other candidate by name. in fact these ads talk about the opposing candidate and at the end puts to question the other candidate’s credentials or capabilities.

these ads are against barack obama aired by john mccain meant to stop the momentum that obama was enjoying at that time.  negative tv ads are usually aired when an opposing candidate is very much leading in the polls and needs to be stopped. it’s very much like a hail mary pass where close to the election, the candidate airs negative tv ads hoping it will spark a rally  among his supporters and recruit new ones.

results of negative ads are mixed in the US. some worked and brought down candidates and some didn’t. political strategists have always said it is very risky but for a candidate who is not doing well, it is surely very tempting to do. this mccain negative ad against obama obviously did not work.

interestingly enough, these anti-obama negative ads aired by mccain are very much applicable here in the philippines against noynoy aquino or at least that is the negative campaign the presidentiables are saying during debates and press interviews.

are we going to see negative ads soon?

The celebrity backers of Barack Obama say
they are not like Paris and Britney.
[ Los Angeles Times – July 31, 2008 ] :

TO HOLLYWOOD it smacked of desperation.

That’s why the reaction to a new John McCain ad attempting to portray Barack Obama as a kind of mindless celebrity — likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears — drew collective yawns and shrugs of irritation from politically active members of the entertainment industry.

Just for a start, industry types say the ad is wrong: In the Hollywood lexicon, Obama is not a celebrity. He’s a rock star. (Note to McCain strategists: That’s the difference between Jessica Simpson and Bono.)

Then there’s the small inconvenience that Paris’ parents, Rick and Kathleen Hilton, are supporters of McCain’s Republican presidential bid. According to federal campaign records, they gave the maximum $4,600.

No word on their plans for the general election, but this much is certain: Their daughter has never paid to attend an Obama campaign fundraiser. (It’s unclear whether she’s even met the senator, or whether she’s even registered to vote. The same goes for Spears.)

McCain’s latest attempt at discrediting his handsome, photogenic young rival particularly galls stars and executives with a memory, because only eight years ago, McCain was a fixture in Hollywood fundraising circles when he tried to raise money from the very people his ad now ridicules.

gilbert teodoro’s “galing at talino” tv ads – anti-noynoy, anti-humility, generic promises

these two ads are on the same strategy and positions gilbert teodoro as the presidentiable with “galing at talino” which is the key to the “pag-ahon ng mga mahihirap”. in the first tv spot, this claim is supported by his being  a bar topnotcher, a congressman  and a national defense secretary while in the second ad no support was given. we do not think those are enough to be convincing to the audience.

a major problem of teodoro’s candidacy is that he is unknown by most of the voters, he has no national personality. while he has been national defense secretary, this has just been for a few years and he had very little exposure in this capacity to gain a nationwide recognition. this is unlike his key rivals in the presidency where aquino, villar, estrada and escudero  have won national elections at least as senators. estrada aside from being a senator has been a vice president and a president.

these ads are also anti-noynoy aquino tv ads where both ads says the right leader is one who does not just have a heart (“puso”), an obvious reference to aquino but also “galing at talino”. the ads recognize the strength of aquino and attempts to weaken it by saying more is needed other than just heart.

teodoro also identifies his agenda in this election – jobs and good salaries, good education for all and good quality health care for all. these are populist platforms but they are also generic that almost all presidentiables promise on. the lack of specifics on how to fix these or how to deliver them weakens these ads.

the ads are on poverty alleviation and rightly so as we believe poverty is the country’s number 1 problem. while the ads talk about fixing the problem of poverty, we do not think the ads will necessarily connect with the poor, the intended target audience. we think the ads suffer on that point for the same things that teodoro aims to sell himself to the voters – the ads are too intellectual, it does not have heart.

we do not think these ads will draw much empathy from the audience. aside from the sanitary messages, the ad appears too clinical to us and teodoro does not appear engaging in the ads. also, we think parading your achievements and in the manner it was done here will turn off the audience more than bring them in.

in this regard, villar’s story in his ads succeeds very well where teodoro fails. villar is a multi-millionaire but he delivers his achievements and success from the story of rags to riches, a story that everyone loves and everyone aspires for. before those executions, villar ran ads that concentrated on showing villar helping OFWs get home or offering some help to OFWs.

the teodoro ads just tells it to us without giving us any good reason to believe it or even to appreciate it. given the way teodoro appears on camera, the way the ads are done and the messages, i think people will find teodoro as “hambog” or “mayabang”.