Do campain producers give us what we want?

“Political advertising ... is just the artful assembling of nominal facts into hideous, outrageous lies.”
Bob Garfield, Columnist, Advertising Age

Campaign 2008 broken all records for advertising dollars spent in a single election -- no picnic for the bombarded electorate, but a bonanza for the industry that does the bombarding.

So who are these marketing wizards, and how do they decide what works and what doesn't? For answers, we nominate this excerpt from The Persuaders, a 2004 FRONTLINE classic that looks at the sophisticated niche marketing tools advertisers use to customize messages for particular constituencies.

In the excerpt, correspondent and media critic Douglas Rushkoff visits with Republican political consultant Frank Luntz, a venerable practitioner of the persuasive arts and a master at telling people what his research says they want to hear.

For Mon 10th Have a blog entry created answering the following questions:

1. Where are we headed? What's the future? What are your thoughts on how far the techniques of persuasion might go?

2. Is there something distinctive in the American character that makes us susceptible to this world of advertising and messages? "The Persuaders" program explores the idea that Americans are seeking and finding a sort of identity in buying/joining a brand. What is this about?

3. What are the common elements in the persuasion/selling strategies of advertising and marketing? And how can we move about in this world with a degree of self-awareness as to what's happening, especially since all these messages are increasingly trying to move us to act and make choices on an emotional level?