Page 118 - An Introduction to Political Communication Third Edition

ADVERTISING

POLITICAL ADVERTISING: A DEFINITION

Bolland defines advertising as the ‘paid placement of organisational
messages in the media’ (1989, p. 10). 1 Political advertising
therefore, in the strict sense, refers to the purchase and use of
advertising space, paid for at commercial rates, in order to transmit
political messages to a mass audience. The media used for this
purpose may include cinema, billboards, the press, radio, and
television.
In the US, television ads are known as ‘spots’, and their cost in
the world’s richest media market largely accounts for the extra-
ordinary expense of US political campaigning. In some countries,
however, paid political advertising on television and radio is
restricted by law. In Britain, while paid advertising can be bought in
newspapers, cinemas and billboards, parties are prohibited from
buying broadcast airtime. Instead, they are allocated free airtime
in which to transmit party political broadcasts (PPBs) and party
election broadcasts (PEBs). The allocation of airtime is based on
the number of candidates which a party stands at a general
election.
While PPBs and PEBs (and their equivalents in other countries)
are not ‘paid for’ advertisements in the American sense, they are
produced using the same techniques and with the same budgets as
commercial advertisers. For our purposes, therefore, PPBs are
included alongside American ‘spots’ in this chapter’s discussion of
political advertising, both forms having in common the fact that the
politicians (or the creative staff to whom they delegate the work)
have complete artistic and editorial control over them.

HOW ADVERTISEMENTS WORK

Advertising, as was noted above, has two functions in the process
of exchange between a producer (of goods, services, or political
programmes) and the consumer. First, it informs. The political
process, as we observed in Chapter 1, is supposed to involve
rational choices by voters, which must be based on information.
Journalism represents one important source of such information,
advertising another. So, just as early product advertisements were
little more than simple messages about the availability of a brand,
its price and function (use), so contemporary political advertising
can be seen as an important means of informing citizens about who

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