The fact that political advertising works proves Americans are too stupid to vote.....

[Logical]

If a TV commercial makes you decide to vote for a candidate then your dumb ass needs to not vote. People in this country are too lazy to research topics on their own.
We are a country full of reality TV addicted viewers who believe anything.

[demosincebirth]

1. I've said the exact same thing for years.

[izquierdista]

2. Not just Americans

I have paid attention to Presidential campaigns in other countries where I have traveled and it is a common thread -- really shallow campaigns, filled with empty slogans. "He will make us proud" (Tusk in Poland) or "We will win" (AMLO in Mexico), I don't think I've ever seen an actual policy slogan in use, something like "Medicare for ALL". It takes a citizen with a high level of involvement to seek out the newspapers and magazine articles on policy, or watch the TV debates of the issues. The much larger percentage of the voting public is left to the advertisers, who end up determining the electoral outcome. They do that in the same way they sell cigarettes and beer -- image and emotion, anything EXCEPT what the product is actually going to do to you.

[global1]

3. Seems That Most Advertisements Are Meant To Deceive In Some Way.....

A lot of manipulation. A lot of half truths. And in some cases a lot of lies. Seems we have a generation of MBA's that have learned this craft well. This is not just prevalent in political advertisements. The people have been conditioned to this approach and I guess that's why it works so well with political ads.

[Supersedeas]

5. Convincing people to buy what they don't need is an artform--you don't think Madison Avenue

has an interest in political outcomes in the economic environment where regulation and tax reform are at stake for their biggest clients and contributors...nah.

[fasttense]

4. I don't know. I would think Americans would be more immune to the con of advertising.

We are exposed to so much of it, I would think there comes a point where you don't believe any of it. I know that's how I look at advertisement. Especially today when corporations are allowed to lie about their products and or politicians and political parties.

I find most all advertising annoying. I think there are many people out there who also share my disdain for advertising.

I hope eventually all Americans will realize it's nothing but a con.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. I do not accept your 'fact' as you put it, not at all.

All advertizing 'can work' but none of it can be said to simply 'work'. It is simply not true that placing lots of ads gets a positive result. If that were true, not only would Meg Whitman be governor of CA while Fiorino sat in the Senate, Meg would be sipping a 'New Coke' and driving an AMC automobile to her flight on Pan Am.
Madison Ave would be thrilled if the fact was 'if you advertize it a lot, it sells'. That is simply not the case. Forget politics for a moment and think about other products you have seen be heavily advertized and yet fail quickly and totally in the marketplace. Weekly, products are introduced with all focus on selling that product, and yet the product fails.
Think movies, and we all know that often the first ad or two makes it look good, then after a week of commercials, you decide it does not look that great. Huge marketing push, the film 'bombs' anyway. Why is that, if 'a TV commercial makes you decide' why do they fail to make people decide to buy, so often, with all the efforts of the best ad people falling by the wayside?
The actual 'fact' is that advertizing can both help and hurt, there is a right amount to use, too much is as bad as not enough, sometimes much worse.
I could also launch into the viewership numbers for 'reality tv' to which you claim the entire country is 'addicted' and then ask what you say about the 275 million or so who never watch such shows.
I could ask you how an ad can 'make' a person 'believe anything' when that ad is followed by one just as well made that says the opposite.
'Our side' has huge paranoia about advertizing, and believes it to be like magic, like a spell that can 'make people do things' and that is simply not the case. No one ever ate a food they do not like because an ad 'made them eat it'. They might try it. But they will not keep buying it if they don't like eating it.
The actual 'fact' of advertizing is that you can have two opposing candidates with piles of ad money and lots of experts and still, one of them fails and one loses. To assume that the winning ad had some 'magic power' or something is absurd. The only rational conclusion is that ads are a part of it, not not all that definitive. Ads can harm. They can help. They can help, then harm because it was aired too much.
Whitman's ads in CA killed her. People saw each one of them as something she'd bought for herself with all her money.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Nice discussion you have on this thread.

A resistance to any form of debate or discussion on any issue indicates agenda. Thus, I feel I must offer that even when it sounds all 'hip and jaded' like an Apple ad, a message that seeks to persuade readers that Ads are magic and people are powerless in the face of them is a message that assists the goals of the advertisers. They have superpowers. They can 'make you do things'. Yes. Because you are stupid, and so are your neighbors. Resistance is futile.
But it is of course hard to argue that political ads for candidates 'work' anymore than they fail, because each election, one ad promoted candidate loses. In some elections, the loser is the one who had more ads. Logic tells us a few things when we actually think, as opposed to engaging in fantasias about magic spells and zombie like people. Which is what this OP argues. It argues that Madison Av is Superpowerful, and run by humans so far superior to others that they can 'make them do things' without the other even knowing it. The OP reads like a press release for Madison Ave as produced by the folks who make Apple ads.

[Honeycombe8]

8. Advertising works for anything. That's why it exists. It may not change minds...

of those who hold a firm belief, but it works on the others to at least some degree.

As Jane Fonda explained it to her kids when they were little..she told them when they see ads to realize that what they're trying to do is get inside their heads.

But advertising works. That's why I change the channels when yummy food commercials come on.

Political ads don't work on me, though, because I am usu. already knowledgeable about the candidates and the party, etc. I usu. already have a pretty firm belief at the candidates. And Rick Perry, handsome though he is, ain't no Papa John's Pizza, so the temptation isn't great to buy him.

[Cali_Democrat]

9. True. n/t

[AlinPA]

10. This applies to PA. This state put in a teabagger US senator and governor with early and persistent

TV ads that were full of lies.