Barack Obama's 2008 campaign advertising strategy and tactics

¶ … Obama Campaign

Barak Obama is getting an incredible amount of media coverage and most of it is good. Since Obama is spending an incredible amount of money on ads, this should be no surprise. Jim Rutenberg reports that Obama buys advertising time, "day and night, on local stations and on the major broadcast networks, on niche cable networks and even on video games and his own dedicated satellite channels" (Rutenberg). That being said, Obama is running a mixture of advertising. Some of his ads clearly attack McCain while others tend to promote fear in order to garner votes. Howard Kurtz reports, "Seventy-seven percent of the Illinois Democrat's commercials were negative during the week after the Republican National Convention, compared with 56% of the spots run by McCain" (Kurtz). According to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, Obama's ads are "39% of all general election Obama TV ads have been positive... 35% have been negative... And 25% have been contrast ads" (Wisconsin Politics). The more positive ads include ones about his heritage and family while the negative ads focus primarily on McCain and his policies.

The Reader's Digest reports, "If the election were held overseas, or even in the rest of North America, the Republican nominee wouldn't stand a chance" (Cannon). Author Carl Cannon writes, "In the Netherlands, Obamamania surpasses 90%. In Germany, it's at 85%-numbers not usually seen in political polling" (Cannon). While these respondents talking this poll did not live in the United States, this is an indicator of how Obama's worldwide perception.