AN ASSESSMENT OF POLITICAL ADVERTISING ON ELECTORATES IN THE 2015 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
chapter One
Foreword
1.1 Research background
The practice of advertising has a long history. Frank (2000.p,31) traces this story back to man’s creation and his stay in the biblical Garden of Eden. Eve is said to have successfully persuaded Adam to ask for the forbidden fruit. But modern advertising can be traced back to the activities of media brokers. Media brokers acted as agents to reserve media space for advertisers to publish sales messages. Media brokers were later responsible for developing customer-facing sales messages and designing them to be more engaging and persuasive to consumers. The process of crafting sales messages in fresh and impactful ways to capture consumer attention and elicit desired responses has long been a role and challenge in advertising operations. Advertising functions are typically divided into (i) creative and strategic development, (ii) media planning, purchasing and monitoring, (iii) media exposure and compliance, and (iv) marketing and brand management.
Even today, manufacturers and retailers rely on advertising to sell their products. Without advertising, shoppers will not know and will remember your product or service. As a result, the modern industrialized world can collapse (Jefkin, 2006). Advertising must continue to be used at the right rate to keep factory production profitable, to understand and internalize political messages, and to interpret economic policy. Jeffkin (2007.p,47) argues that “mass production requires mass consumption, which requires mass media promotion to the mass market”. In addition to products, ideas and services must also be promoted for approval. Such ideas can be economic or political in nature. Therefore, candidates for elections at different levels and in different positions in all countries of the world spend big bucks to market themselves to voters. The pervasiveness of mass media, including advertising, in our daily lives is well documented by various academics and communication experts. It has become an essential tool that voters use to convince people to vote. Advertising and public relations are central to the advertising of candidates and political parties competing for various political positions in an election campaign. Political advertising has changed a lot in the last few decades. According to Iyenga (2000), political advertising is increasingly a major component of political campaigns, and party institutions and grassroots organizations are less important than they once were. Diamond and Bates (1992.p.51) likewise find that, unlike past political campaigns, advances in media technology give candidates more opportunities to attract larger groups of voters, and with little effort, We think the process has been streamlined. According to Boundless.com (2015), the growth of political advertising, especially in the United States, is due to cable TV networks and the Internet. The website boundless.com was used by incumbent President George H.W. Bush and Governor Bill Clinton in 1992 in reaching new target audiences, especially women and young voters.
The 2004 election brought perhaps the biggest change to political advertising yet: the growth of the Internet. Web-based ads were easily distributed by incumbent President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry’s campaigns, both of which hired companies that specialize in accumulating personally identifiable information. This gave rise to, for the first time, advertising that was tailored to a specific audience (a technique known as narrowcasting). Political advertising has grown significantly in Nigeria over the past two decades. This is probably a result of the growing awareness by political parties and their candidates of the usefulness of advertising to educate the electorate about a candidate as a ‘better brand’, and to communicate their offerings in form of manifestos to the electorate. Olujide (2010) notes that advertising has become the most commonly used technique to create a favourable image for the candidate and a negative image for the opponent. Before now, political parties and candidates channeled most of their resources into political rallies, speeches and direct contact to gather the support of electorates, as noted by (Opeibi, 2004). Between the 2007, 2011 and most recently the 2015 elections in Nigeria, the use of political ad campaigns has expanded with regard to mode of delivery, type of language used, and forms of media used to communicate these messages. The 2007 presidential election saw the overflow of both traditional and new media with media campaigns of the two strongest contenders, who were Goodluck Ebele Jonathan of the People Democratic Party (PDP) and General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressive Congress (APC). The popularity of these three candidates among voters made the campaign highly competitive. Each candidate tried to outdo the other in their political propaganda campaign. They developed various jingles such as “We all love Jimi Agbaje” and slogans such as “Eco Nibaje”. According to Nworah (2011), the 2015 presidential election was characterized by elections held between former PDP President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and his CCP General Muhammadu Buhari. Goodluck Jonathan was elected president during his first term, so he had a responsibility to convince voters that he was a better choice than his chief adversary. He has achieved this by investing heavily in media campaigns that include traditional and new media.
While some scholars agree that political advertising is important to election campaigns, certain policy advisers disagree about the extent to which political advertising influences voting behavior. In the past, political campaign researchers such as Iyenga agreed that campaigns in political media had a significant impact on voting behaviour. However, recent research indicates a growing understanding of the effectiveness of political advertising communications in elections. Holbrook (1996) concludes that “fluctuations in candidate approval ratings during elections are primarily due to the occurrence of election events”. Iyenga explained that political ads are persuasive rather than manipulative, and that the message informs voters of the candidate’s position and allows voters to paint a nuanced picture of the candidate. Interestingly, Nigerian voters are now exposed to far more political advertising than before, resulting in increased awareness of political decisions before they are made. The continued use of political advertising in Nigeria’s election campaigns has made voters increasingly aware of political information, including information about candidates and their manifestos, party politics, and voting policies.
1.2 Problem Description
His 2015 presidential election case in Nigeria illustrates a situation in which various political parties in the race for political power used advertising extensively to market various parties and candidates to voters. The above statement implies that political parties may have improved their odds through advertising messages persuading voters to vote for them, or they may have failed their goals by ignoring or misperforming them. However, this message delivery process is complicated.
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