Background Analysis
The current Israeli election campaign is a clear example of
marketing gone wild, with politicians been foisted on the
public as little more than glorified consumer items. In the
large parties, especially those sponsoring candidates for the
Prime Minister, the spotlights focus on the advertising and
marketing experts, the public relations experts and the
propagandists, some of whom have come from abroad.
An article that appeared in the financial daily
Globes, after it was learned that the elections would
be held earlier than the originally scheduled date, points
out that in these elections, the politicians will vacate the
stage for the elite coterie of strategy advisors, image
makers, media experts, ad men and public relations experts.
Even if the private voices of the members of that select
group will not be very audible throughout the campaign, it is
they who will fashion its messages and images, and determine
its tone. "The formats which will be chosen will not reflect
issues at the top of the national agenda, but rather those
which will result in victory," the paper lamented. "The
parties understand that in order to sell their wares, they
must regard themselves as consumer products which require
pointed marketing and effective publicity."
Aryeh Rottenberg, the Labor party's publicity agent during
the past three election campaigns, explains the change which
the political system has undergone. "For many years, the
parties in Israel, mainly the Labor party, thought that
election campaigns are like seminars in which an educational
process takes place, and that the people vote for a platform.
That's nonsense."
He says that Arthur Finklestein's campaign on behalf of
Netanyahu in the past election, marked the end of the period
of the seminars.
An additional characteristic of the election propaganda is
the creating of antagonism between the parties and the
various competitors.
"The need to separate the parties, obligates extremism. The
elections are like a fight between gladiators, in which the
public sits in the grandstand and encourages the rivals to
rip each other's flesh," the paper wrote. "The bitter
reality is that it doesn't matter what happens before the
elections, because in the end the extremism only
increases."
The paper published a special supplement for marketing and
advertising, which contained an article written by the staff
of the Tzorfati Sternschuss Zamir ad agency. In it they
advocate using of the "negative campaign" format in
elections, on a broader scale than that of peddling a
candidate as a consumer product.
They said that in general, negative campaigns pass without
problems. There are a number of reasons for this. The first
is that people tend to remember the negative and biting words
more easily. No less important is the ability of the
broadcasts or the announcements which attack the other
candidates, to cause the discussion to veer to side issues,
or at least to issues which they want to talk about, in
relation to the other candidate.
The drawback of a negative election campaign, though is that
sometimes the voters become so disgusted with the
mudslinging, that they decide not to vote at all, as happened
in the recent elections in the United States. In such a
situation, all of the candidates are likely to lose. In the
wake of these public reactions, second thoughts arose
regarding all that pertains to the "negative campaigns."
The writers noted that during recent years, various proposals
have been raised in the United States, which aim to moderate
the extent of the negative publicity in the election
campaigns. One of them proposes forbidding politicians to
acquire television time slots of less than two minutes. The
premise is that in two minutes or more, it will be hard to
fool the public, something which can be done in 30 or 60
second slots. In order to fill two minutes, one must present
genuine explanations, and not merely suffice with jingles
and catchy slogans. If this law won't pass, it is proposed to
oblige the candidate to be the only speaker in broadcasts
which are shorter than two minutes. This idea bases itself on
the tendency of candidates not to attack their competitors
personally, but rather by means of a go-between.
Incidentally, the newspaper published an article by Nadav
Cohen, who claims that "the Nazis invented the teaser, the
jingle and the film-strip. The 1932 elections in Germany were
the hotbed in which the modern election campaign was
cultivated."
That election campaign, in which the Nazi party won about 40%
of the German votes, and transformed it from a marginal,
sleepy party into the second largest party in the Parliament,
has been the topic of interest for many historians, who wrote
various theories and gave many and varied explanations to
this shocking and horrifying trend.
But all of the researchers of the period, without exception,
agree on one point: The electoral accomplishments couldn't
have taken place without the propaganda revolution which the
Nazi leader, yemach shemo, led in the elections of
1932.
"This revolution didn't change the modern mass propaganda. It
created it. This campaign brought, new actors, such as the
radio, the television, the roving megaphone, and the teaser
announcements into the political arena. There was no more
suitable scenery for this performance, than that of Germany
of the Weimer Republic."
As is known, the ideas and the main principles of the
campaign were determined by Hitler himself, and appeared
already in 1923 in Mein Kampf. But the main political
strategist of the Nazi election campaign was Dr. Joseph
Gables. His publicity ideas had found expression in earlier
years, and he was the man who took the Nazi propaganda out of
the beer cellars and clubs, to the streets and the
squares.
"In addition to his proficiency as a speaker and a writer of
slogans, Goebels was an expert at organizing marches and
meetings which were documented on film, and saved in the
party's archives. Goebels was also the originator of the idea
to use megaphones, and the first to use mass distribution of
fliers in the streets. He copied the design of the red
placards with the old dense black print, from the Communists,
but the slanted lettering was his own invention.
In the elections of 1932, the methods were improved and
became more sophisticated. The Nazis were to first to
discover the political power of the radio, and in time, they
began to use record players which broadcast speeches,
marches, as well as classical and popular music, and had
created a mass impact for every jingle the party created."
The writer also notes that at the height of the election
campaign, the Nazi propaganda machine broke all historical
records, issuing eight million leaflets, 12 million news
sheets in one day, and holding 3000 meetings that very same
day.
