“You can’t pick your family” – The ‘Brill’ negative ad

By Nikki Gommers

For link to quote headline: click here 

“I’m not going to break bread with a racist”. You wouldn’t expect people to say this about you. Especially not your own brother. And on the public stage no less, ending up in media all over the world. But this is exactly what happened in the 2018 Arizona midterm campaign between Paul Gosar and David Brill. We know that US election campaigns can get dirty, but this ad was next level.

If this is new to you, it’s best to just watch the video below.

Source: Brill for Congress, via YouTube

The initial reaction of many was: how is this going to play out? Nathalie Enderle explored the same question in her blog. We are two weeks on from the video’s release, and one can start answering the question: was the ‘PR stunt’ effective?

Why did he do it?

Negative advertising is common in US elections, but why did candidate Brill go for such a provocative ad? His political strategy to ‘go negative’ fits within a wider trend.

Firstly, Paul Gosar is the incumbent and David Brill is his challenger. Both for online and televised ads, it is the trend that challengers are more likely to produce negative ads than incumbents (Druckman, Kifer & Parkin, 2010). Decades of research shows that incumbents have an advantage over their challengers, for example because they can promote their achievements. Often one of the few options the challenger has is to attack the opponent (Nai & Sciarini, 2015). 

Paul Gosar's response on Twitter

Secondly, Brill was behind in the race, which is often an incentive to adopt negative advertising to scare off the opponent’s voters. Losing candidates have very little to risk and more to gain by going negative, regardless of potential backlash (Nai & Sciarini, 2015).

So going negative made sense for Brill, in the face of a strongly Republican state. 

But, did it work?

One thing is for sure, David Brill managed to get a lot of attention for his ad. Within both corporate and political communication, something becomes more newsworthy if it contains conflict and surprise (Schafraad, Van Zoonen & Verhoeven, 2017), which Brill’s ad did.

Also, multiple research shows that the more negative an ad is, the more media attention it receives (Ridout & Smith, 2008; Fowler & Ridout, 2009). This high level of media coverage of negative ads, in return, motivates candidates to go negative (Geer, 2012). Probably a consideration Brill also had in mind when he decided to develop this ad.

Source: OH Predictive Insights

But was it effective? That question can of course only be fully answered on election day, but so far it looks like Brill didn't create much of a change. A poll by OH Predictive Insights shows that to 58% of the people the ad made no difference. Among Gosar's supporters this number is even higher with 63% (click here for detailed results). 

So, it seems that Brill didn’t succeed in scaring away the voters from Gosar. Incredulously, among the Gosar supporters, 32% is now more likely to vote for him. But I wouldn’t say that Brill made a bad PR choice. He had nothing to lose, and in this case, you miss every shot you don’t take.

Nikki Gommers is a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Leiden University and has worked for several campaigns of the PvdA (Dutch Labour Party), as well as she is a keen advocate for a less-divided society. 

Family Fued: Social Media Stunt or Political Catastrophe?

Source: Paul is not working for you Youtube

On September 22 David Brill, the Democratic Congress candidate for the red state Arizona, launched a social media campaign that Buzzfeed called one “of the most scathing political advertisements the internet has ever seen”.

Starting like many American political ads, various people talk about the failing policies of current Republican Congressman Paul Gosar and emphasize that “Paul Gosar is not working for you”.

The Catch? Well, at the end of the ad it turns out the six people featured in the ads are actually Paul Gosar’s—siblings.

The ad ends with all siblings wholeheartedly supporting the other candidate David Brill for Congress. After this ad premiered, the Internet was abuzz and major news outlets, like CNN to Fox News, reported on this “family feud” unfolding under the publics’ eye.

In later interviews, the siblings revealed they decided to take a united stand against their brother’s radical right-wing policies after a PR staffer of Brill’s team had approached them.

Source: Paul Gosar is not working for you YouTube

A publicity stunt or a publicity failure?

It is clear Paul Gosar’s Republican opponent achieved a publicity stunt by incorporating the Gosar siblings in his campaign. In fact, while many of his previous campaign videos only reached max 300 views, this campaign ad climbed to 2 million views on YouTube. Research has shown that negative advertising, particularly in the political sphere, has a mobilizing effect on voters, yet remains inconclusive in which direction this mobility really goes (Martin, 2004).

While the increased exposure is unquestionable, Valentini (2015) reminds us social media usage should not be embraced uncritically and proposes valuable insights how it can also backfire; when PR practitioners create a social media campaign for the sake of getting attention even if it is controversial, it can also harm the organization when audiences deem the message offensive.

Brill’s team undoubtedly wanted to cause a stir by taking a family feud into the public eye, but their main goal was to undermine Gosar’s policies and highlight Brill’s plans for the state. They followed the script by combining PR’s two main traditions:

1.     The rhetorical tradition by creating viable content on Brill’s policies and fostering trust in him as a political leader

2.     The relational tradition by promoting the content on social media to start conversations among supporters and critics

(Macnamara & Zerfas, 2012; Valentini, 2015).

Yet conversations on social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube show that the public has been mainly drawn towards the Gosar family controversy rather than Dr. Brill’s bid for Congress. So did the PR practitioners approach backfire and lead the dialogue away from Brill candidature and towards Gosar and his family?

While political campaigns increasingly use social media for its “democratizing” nature, PR practitioners also recognize the danger of losing control of the political message and the candidates’ image once the platforms are activated (Macnamara & Zerfas, 2012).  

It seems we have to wait and find out.

If David Brill can gain the incumbent seat that Paul Gosar has held since 2013, we can assume his controversial campaign stirred the conversation in the intended direction. Yet if he fails we have to wonder whether Brill’s team went too far and lost hold of the social media jungle.

About the Author

Nathalie Enderle is a master student of communication science at the University of Amsterdam. Currently enrolled in the Public Relations elective she aims to embed creative writing into an academic environment through blog posts for PR professionals.

Academic Sources

Macnamara, J., & Zerfass, A. (2012). Social Media Communication in Organizations: The Challenges of Balancing Openness, Strategy, and Management. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 6(4), 287–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2012.711402

Martin, P. S. (2004), Inside the Black Box of Negative Campaign Effects: Three Reasons Why Negative Campaigns Mobilize. Political Psychology, 25: 545-562. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00386.x

Macnamara, J., & Zerfass, A. (2012). Social Media Communication in Organizations: The Challenges of Balancing Openness, Strategy, and Management. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 6(4), 287–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/1553118X.2012.711402