Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and plowing through the Sunday New York Times, when I came across this on page 7.
Honest to God, Doc – I had to take out a magnifying glass to read the body copy, and even then it was blurry. Who in her right mind (lookin’ at you, Nita Mukesh Ambani) would sign off on a mess like that?
– Read ‘n’ Weep
Dear RW,
First off, just to be, um, clear: The ad that appears in the Replica Edition of the Times is marginally sharper than the print version.
Even so, it’s still ridiculously hard to read. That’s because it violates every tenet of legendary adman David Ogilvy’s rules for effective ad copy.
Use eye-easy typography. Text set in all-caps is extremely difficult to read… sans-serif fonts are particularly difficult to read…reverse type is almost impossible to read.
Reverse type on a rose background is even more impossible to read.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and leafing through the New York Times, when I came across this full-page ad on A5.
What’s going on here, Doc? Is there a moon landing scheduled for later this month? Is Elon Musk planning to SpaceX his Shiba Inu Floki up there? What am I missing?
SNOOPY MOONSWATCH RELEASE DATE CONFIRMED – 26.03.24
The much awaited buzz surrounding the Snoopy MoonSwatch has reached its peak, as another official teaser graces The Guardian newspaper today. Capturing attention with an intriguing image of a paw print imprinted on the Moon’s surface, it unmistakably announces the release date of a Snoopy MoonSwatch: 26.03.24! . . .
26th March is such a significant date for the MoonSwatch as it marks the two year anniversary: On March 26th, 2022, Swatch unveiled the incredibly successful collection, consisting of the much loved 11x planet themed Omega x Swatch Speedmaster Watches.
For those of you keeping score at home, not everyone loved the Omega x Swatch collection, as this letter to the Doc two years ago detailed.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and reading Jonathan V. Last’s Triad newsletter at The Bulwark, when I came across this item.
3. Watch Talk
It’s been a while since and I know that this if [sic] frivolous, but this just happened:
I have no words.
Taking the iconic Speedmaster Professional—the watch that went to the frickin’ moon—and turning it into a candy-colored hunk of plastic quartz . . . this is an abomination. An offense against God and nature. It’s like the Louvre partnering with Oscar Mayer to sell a Bologna Lisa.
So here’s my question, Doc: Do you want to see the Bologna Lisa as badly as I do?
– Swatched at Birth
Fun fact to know and tell, via Bianca Bosker’s “Lost Basquiats” piece in The Atlantic: “Researchers at the City University of New York instructed study participants to imagine that the Mona Lisa had been destroyed in a fire and asked them whether they’d rather see its ashes or a copy that not even connoisseurs could distinguish from the original. Eighty percent picked the ashes.”
But back to MoonSwatches. Those Snoopy newspaper ads weren’t even the first teasers for the new timepiece, as Wired’s Jeremy White reported several months ago.
Considering the long-established connection between Snoopy and Omega, after the original MoonSwatch caused pandemonium around the globe in 2022 and reinvigorated Swatch’s previously flagging fortunes, it’s hardly surprising that the brand should mine this rich Schulz seam to tease a coming Snoopy MoonSwatch.
There’s only one thing that could stop this cartoon-collaboration MoonSwatch from being the most popular version of the series since the Omega X Swatch’s frenzied launch: if it’s as unimaginative and understated as the Moonshine Gold editions that followed the bright and bold original MoonSwatches.
The Doc’s diagnosis: There’s no guarantee watch nerds will be over the moon for the new Snoopy-on-a-strap when it finally lands, either.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and enjoying Bess Levin’s Vanity Fair newsletter, when I came across a link to this Politico piece by Elena Schneider about a new ad blitz for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
[The Biden campaign] will start a six-week, $30 million TV and digital ad buy on Saturday, aimed at drawing out the “full-throated” contrast between Biden’s vision for “where the country can go” against “Donald Trump’s dark, dangerous and chaotic vision for the country,” said campaign communications director Michael Tyler on a call with reporters Friday morning. The ads will target battleground states, as well as Black and Latino-focused outlets and channels.
I dunno, Doc – isn’t that like Macy’s running ads in March for a one-day sale in November?
– Ad Homonym
Dear AH,
The Doc has taken a dim view of presidential campaign advertising on multiple occasions, but this seems to be a special case for one particular reason.
Those numbers come from an AP-NORC poll conducted last month. But Biden’s problem goes beyond the mind-boggling fact that more Americans believe Donald Trump “has the mental capability to serve effectively as president” than he does. There’s also this from a new Wall Street Journal poll, as Aaron Zitner reports.
Some 73% say Biden is too old, at age 81, to stand for re-election, the same share as in an August Journal poll. By comparison, 52% see Trump, age 77, as too old to run for the White House, up 5 points from August.
Ouch.
Baked-in public opinion like that can’t be turned around overnight, so it makes sense for Biden to get crackin’ now. And his first TV spot goes right to the heart of the matter.
The ad hits many of Biden’s high points: Covid response, infrastructure investment, climate change reform, job growth. It also hits several of Trump’s low points, including that “he took away women’s right to choose.”
The spot ends with an outtake, as Nicholas Nehamas notes in the New York Times.
After the standard announcement that Mr. Biden has approved the message, a voice off-camera asks him to do one more take.
“Look, I’m very young, energetic and handsome. What the hell am I doing this for?” Mr. Biden replies, flashing a mischievous grin before the screen goes black.
The Doc’s diagnosis: If Biden has any chance of defusing the time bomb underneath the Resolute Desk, this approach is probably his best bet for doing so. Given that pro-Biden forces will spend close to $1 billion on advertising in the next eight months, the current $30 million ad buy is a decent way to prime the pump.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and poking around Xitter, when I came across this tweet in “semi-recovered lawyer” George Conway’s feed.
@Out5p0ken elaborated in a reply:”Seriously, wtf and let’s all thank her for giving away a House seat and then calling the election rigged and not congratulating Schiff. Deplorable.”
What’s the deal here, Doc. Just sour grapes? Or something more rigorous?
– Katie Didn’t
Dear KD,
Katie Porter is upset because, as Joe Perticone reported in The Bulwark, “[Adam] Schiff’s campaign and his allies have shelled out millions of dollars to boost [Republican candidate Steve] Garvey’s bid and box out the other Democrats” in California’s jungle primary for the seat vacated by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Here’s a representative sample of the knee-buckling $11 million worth of ads the Schiff forces ran teeing up the former pro baseball player for GOP voters.
Post-primary, Porter cried foul, as The Daily Beast’s Matt Lewis noted.
In a tweet that has evoked controversy, Porter complained that her campaign had to withstand “3 to 1 in TV spending and an onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.”
And in a weak-sauce follow-up statement meant to clarify her tweet, Porter explained that “rigged” means “manipulated by dishonest means”—and that billionaires spending money to defeat her constitutes “dishonest means to manipulate an outcome.”
Some of Porter’s supporters protested Schiff’s strategy as “sexist and cynical” in pushing her aside for another male candidate. But that wasn’t the only factor in holding Porter to a disappointing 14% of the primary vote. As Jill Cowan reported in the New York Times, “[i]n the final weeks of the campaign, a cryptocurrency super PAC spent millions on ads attacking Ms. Porter, who has supported more regulations on the industry and has rebuked various corporate leaders in congressional hearings.”
Beyond that, there’s this inconvenient fact, which Maeve Reston pointed out in the Washington Post: “[T]o hold down Garvey’s support, Porter . . . countered with similar tactics — running at least a half-million dollars in ads raising the profile of another long-shot GOP Senate contender, Eric Early.”
Really, Doc? Trump’s trashing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is going to put a dent in his poll numbers when 91 felony charges, a sexual assault conviction, and an endless series of lies and grifts haven’t? Does that seem reasonable to you?
– Trump Stumped
Dear TS,
According to this New York Times report by Nicholas Nehamas, the Biden campaign “is running [this] digital ad in three states — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — that have significant populations of voters with Eastern European roots.”
The ad notes that every president since Harry Truman has been a rock-solid supporter of NATO – except for Donald Trump, who wants to walk away from NATO and its Article 5 mutual defense pact. (The spot also notes that Article 5 has been invoked exactly one time: in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on America.)
Trump’s “you gotta pay” message to NATO members, the ad concludes, is shameful, weak, dangerous, and un-American. (It’s also the unofficial slogan of made mobsters, but why get technical about it. Not to mention Trump’s lifelong commitment to stiffing his own creditors.)
As NBC News White House correspondent Monica Alba writes, “[the] campaign is aiming to reach the more than 2.5 million Americans who identify as Polish, Finnish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian — all NATO countries that share a border with Russia.”
That doesn’t seem like much, until you break down Trump’s likely electoral math: About 30 to 35 percent of his voters are ride-or-die MAGA who are largely there for the cruelty and the crazy; then you’ve got maybe 10 percent of voters who mumble “something something something Dementia Joe.”
It’s the next four or five percent who will decide the 2024 presidential election. This Biden ad might tell us whether Article 5 works for ballots as well as bullets.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and checking out BU Today, when I came across Doug Most’s Q&A with Boston University School of Social Work professor Bronwyn Keefe about Nikki Haley’s new ad campaign mocking Joe Biden and Donald Trump as “Basement Buddies” and “Stumbling Seniors.”
BU Today: When I saw this ad, I admit that I chuckled, but at the same time I cringed a little bit. Is this going too far in your mind? Is the ad an example of ageism?
Ageism is just pervasive. When you go to CVS or someplace to get a birthday card, it’s everywhere, jokes about being older, not being able to hear—it’s so normalized . . . This makes older people feel invisible, small, and useless. It has an impact on the older adult population that is really detrimental.
Isn’t that the point of Haley’s campaign, Doc – to be detrimental to the presumptive 2024 presidential nominees?
– Bidin’ My Time
Dear BMT,
Let’s start by reminding ourselves that Nikki Haley is no stranger to the issue of ageism, having been on the receiving end last year of sexist/ageist comments from ex-CNN bigmouth Don Lemon, who declared in an on-air flameout (leading to his exit from the cable network) that Haley was past her prime.
Haley tweeted in response, “Liberals can’t stand the idea of having competency tests for older politicians to make sure they can do the job.”
So Haley’s new media campaign – which consists of online videos, digital ads and voter emails according to Jazmine Ulloa’s report in the New York Times – is very much on brand.
As for the issue of ageism, it’s not like Haley is trying to take the car keys from Gramps. One of those two guys is going to occupy the Oval Office a year from now. Their age and mental competency are legitimate questions.
But that’s not the most important concern for voters this November. The real issue, which Haley’s campaign blithely glosses over, is that both guys might be old, but only one of them is an unhinged anti-democratic grifter. We’re not talking six of one, half dozen of another here, folks. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are not a matched set, no matter what Nikki Haley or Cornel West or the No Labelsniks want you to think
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and plowing through the Sunday New York Times, when I came across this full-page ad from Philip Morris International about its Zyn nicotine pouches, which are apparently quite popular among the younger set.
Think the tobacco industry’s latest damage-control campaign can work, Doc?
– Zynterested Observer
Dear ZO,
Zynteresting indeed.
That ad comes in the wake of this piece by Emily Dreyfuss in the Times Opinion section two weeks ago, which detailed the growing flight from vaping to nicotine pouches among teenagers and young adults.
Do you know what a Zynbabwe is? Or an upper-decky lip pillow? OK, here’s an easier one — how about just Zyn?
If you are scratching your head, don’t feel bad: Almost no adult I have spoken to has had any idea either. This is despite the fact that the nicotine pouch Zyn is a jewel in the crown of a multibillion-dollar tobacco company. Haven’t heard of nicotine pouches to begin with? Neither had I. But when I ask my 19-year-old neighbor Ian if he knows what a Zynbabwe is, I get a shocked reply: “You know about Zyns?”
Young people certainly do, Dreyfuss says, thanks in no small part to the tobacco giant’s efforts. “P.M.I. is . . . a company that has long denied it markets tobacco products to minors despite decades of research accusing it of just that. One 2022 study alone found its brands advertising near schools and playgrounds around the globe.”
Thus the full-page ads spinning out corporate eyewash such as “We restrict the marketing and sale of ZYN to those of legal age – which is 21 in the U.S. We do not use social media influencers in the U.S.”
That, of course, is meaningless, since social media influencers in the U.S. use Zyn – prodigiously – as Sasha Rogelberg has detailed in Fortune.
Nicotine pouches, which do not contain tobacco but are slipped under a user’s lip like snus, have grown wildly popular. Over 800 million units were sold between January and March 2022, compared to 126.06 million units between August to December 2019 and beating out its competitors. ZYN shipped 105.4 million cans in the U.S. in their 2023 Q3, a 65.7% increase from Swedish Match’s 63.6 million can shipments in the same period in 2022. Philip Morris International, which owns ZYN’s parent company Swedish Match, partially attributed their $9 billion in quarterly net revenue to the “exceptional growth” of ZYN.
On social media, young people and so-called “Zynfluencers” are spreading the nicotine buzz, withTikToks using #zyn receiving over 715.6 million views to date.
Something similar happened several years ago with Juul Labs Inc., which in 2019 owned 75% of the e-cigarette market and was valued at over $38 billion, Suddenly the Food and Drug Administration was on Juul Labs like Brown on Williamson, and there were over 5000 lawsuits accusing the company of deceptive marketing and targeting of minors. That led to a flurry of newspaper ads like this one.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and checking out Politico Playbook, when I came across this item about Joe Biden’s campaign jumping on “[a] recent Suffolk University/USA Today poll [which] found that 59% of voters agreed that prosecuting the [January 6] rioters was ‘the appropriate work of the justice system.’”
These public perceptions, of course, create a major opening for Biden. And, as we’ve written several times now in Playbook, the president continues to lean in. During his speech yesterday at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, Biden cast his own reelection — and Trump’s defeat —as imperative to protecting democracy.
“Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time. It is what the 2024 election is all about,” Biden said, a message that’s front and center in a new campaign ad that will start airing today in seven swing states.
Is pearl-clutching about threats to democracy really a threat to Donald Trump’s 2024 prospects, Doc? Or is Scranton Joe just whistling past the graveyard?
– Biden My Time
Dear BMT,
First of all, don’t say “graveyard” in the same sentence as Joe Biden. Beyond that, the Doc has previously noted that there are serious questions about the efficacy of presidential TV advertising (even if they’re raised by GOP chew toy Vivek Ramaswamy).
Regardless, Biden has so far failed to develop an effective advertising message. As New York Times reporter Reed Epstein detailed on The Daily podcast, his campaign recently spent $40 million on swing-state ads promoting Biden’s economic record – to little or no avail.
Epstein also pointed out that another potential ad theme – Trump’s 91 felony charges – is largely off limits. Biden can’t/won’t talk about the four separate Trump indictments because that just plays into Trump’s claim that the Department of Justice is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Biden Crime Family.
So what’s a fella to do? This, apparently.
Those people are nuts graf: “I’ve made the preservation of American democracy an essential issue of my presidency. Now, something dangerous is happening in America. There’s an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy.”
The ad, which is paid for by the Democratic National Committee, is not getting a lot of love on YouTube: 97,000 views but only 2700 thumbs up. Not to mention lots of comments like these.
As Epstein noted on The Daily, voters concerned about threats to democracy are likely already in the anti-Trump camp, so Biden might just be whistling past the . . . voting booth with that approach.
The Doc is not in the habit of prescribing remedies for ailing political campaigns. But in this case, Joe Biden might want to forget surrogates like the oily Gavin Newsom and get himself a witch doctor to generate some good juju.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and scrolling through Politico Playbook, when I came across this item about a new effort to free the eight American hostages held by Hamas since October 7.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — A new national TV ad from the families of U.S. citizens still held hostage by Hamas calls on U.S. officials to do more to help bring them home alive, and soon. “Act now, or more will die,” a narrator says. “Every second counts.” The eight Americans have spent nearly three months in captivity, and the spot highlights the brutality of the Oct. 7 attack. Targeting elite audiences, the six-figure ad buy from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum will run for a week.
Think that might make a difference, Doc?
– Fingers Crossed
Dear FC,
Given that the Hamas hostage standoff includes more moving parts than an hourglass, it’s tough to gauge what impact – if any – this ad from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum might have.
Start with the six-figure ad buy, which could be anywhere from $100,000 to $999,999. Assuming the ad budget is at the lower end of that range, the group might be hoping to create a news ad – “an ad that is designed to give news coverage,” as media theorist Kathleen Hall Jamieson has defined it.
So far, the ad hasn’t gained much traction, at least according to Google News. That might change, though, now that the New York Times website has posted this Michael D. Shear piece.
The families of Americans held hostage in Gaza since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel have released a television ad to press for urgent action to rescue their loved ones.
The 30-second spot, which is set to air on cable networks and during Sunday network news programs in the United States for the next several weeks, shows grainy images of the hostages being seized by Hamas militants, and black-and-white images of the captive Americans.
Given that the Times is still the assignment desk for much of the news media, that could jumpstart more coverage, especially tomorrow when the story will likely run in the paper’s print edition. Maybe by then the Hostages and Missing Families Forum will have also produced a press release about the ad, which it has inexplicably failed to do so far.
There’s also social media to give the group’s plea a boost. Although the ad’s YouTube video has garnered only 1400 views in its first 24 hours online, #BringThemHomeNow has lots of activity on Xitter, and the Bring Them Home Now Facebook page has 52,000 likes and 71,000 followers.
In the end, who knows whether the “elite audiences” the group is targeting will get the message. Regardless, the Doc’s fingers are crossed as well.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Dear Dr. Ads,
There I was, minding my own business and reading Politico Playbook, when I came across this item about a new ad campaign highlighting Donald Trump’s bromance with authoritarian figures past and present.
The Republican Accountability PAC is rolling out a six-figure ad campaign to take Trump to task, titled “Dictator Donald,” hitting the former president for his recent comment that he wouldn’t be a dictator if he returns to the White House “except for Day One.” The 60-second ad compares Trump to the likes of BENITO MUSSOLINI, HUGO CHÁVEZ, AUGUSTO PINOCHET and Hungarian PM VIKTOR ORBÁN.
In your home for the holidays: The ad will begin running nationally today on CNN and MSNBC. It will also be shown on the Hallmark Channel and during TBS’ “A Christmas Story” marathon in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
That’s some Murderers’ Row Trump is being compared to, eh, Doc? Think the spot might work?
– Christmas Jeer
Dear CJ,
So you’re sitting there watching Catch Me If You Claus when this commercial pops onto your big-screen TV.
Then again, anti-Trump ads generally face an uphill battle, as New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan noted several months ago.
A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald J. Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states.
The political action committee, called Win It Back, has close ties to the influential fiscally conservative group Club for Growth. It has already spent more than $4 million trying to lower Mr. Trump’s support among Republican voters in Iowa and nearly $2 million more trying to damage him in South Carolina.
But in the memo — dated Thursday and obtained by The New York Times — the head of Win It Back PAC, David McIntosh, acknowledges to donors that after extensive testing of more than 40 anti-Trump television ads, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”
Of course, an ad campaign depicting Donald Trump as a five-and-dime dictator could conceivably be more effective than accusing him of failing to build a wall at the southern border. And yet . . .
“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh states in the “key learnings” section of the memo.
Regardless, the Republican Accountability PAC ad is a good start. Let a thousand followers bloom, yeah?
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.
Ask Doctor Ads 