“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. 

May’s Brexit strategy: Playing the Blame Game

By Nikki Gommers

To put it lightly, September 20^th 2018 was not a good day for Theresa May. The Salzburg Summit with the EU leaders resulted in an outright denial of her Chequers proposal, with no new proposal on the table. A defeat for May, according to the media. The next day May gave a televised statement (click here for the transcript). Her wisely chosen words were picked up by the media, and she managed to define the news about the failed summit. She employed a smart PR strategy.

As Vliegenthart & Van Zoonen show, because of their political power, government officials can often define the news. Therefore, the televised statement was May’s chance to alter the narrative about the failed summit.

May’s full speech the day after the Salzburg summit. Credits: Statisma News 

Furthermore, Nord & Olsson emphasise that successful framing in political crises depends on the selection of certain frames, which should match the logic of the media. May’s PR specialists clearly followed this advice.

Frame selection

In the speech, May used two frames, outlined by Nord & Olsson as successful crisis rhetoric. Firstly, she puts the blame of the failed summit on an exogenous actor, the EU, employing the responsibility frame. This allowed her to make authoritative statements towards the EU, such as “they are making a fundamental mistake” and that their proposals were “unacceptable”.

Furthermore, she puts the blame of the lack of progress on the EU. She emphasises that “the EU is still only offering us two options” and that as long as they don’t present their alternatives, “we cannot make progress”. 

May depicted as dissimilar to the EU leaders. Credits: Lisi Niesner/Reuters 

The second frame that May adopts is the morality frame, emphasising certain norms and values. She blames the EU for not following these norms, presenting them as the bad guys. For example regarding values of respect, she seizes the moral high ground by saying: “I have treated the EU with nothing but respect. The UK expects the same”.

Reinforcing this superiority, she emphasised the moral value of “the integrity of the UK”, thereby framing the UK as a unified entity, despite divided opinions in Scotland and Northern-Ireland.

Frame matching

The frames employed should match the media’s logic, so the media are more likely to cover the preferred narrative.

Credits: Sky News

May’s ‘Unified UK’ frame, combined with the EU as an exogenous threat, gels well with the predominant narrative deployed by the media. Hawkins shows that the British media refer to the EU as a foreign power that threatens the British interest. Conversely, the UK is portrayed as a homogenous actor with a shared interest. In short, May matches her narrative with the media.

Additionally, May’s speech meets the important news value of conflict. She clearly creates two opposing sides: the UK versus the EU, caught up in a difficult divorce. This fight is likely to receive media attention in the sensational British press.

And indeed, the newspapers did pick up her narrative: almost all headlines refer to her demand for respect, (e.g. The Guardian, Bloomberg, and The Independent). With that, she managed to defy the frame of a humiliated prime-minster, and construct herself as a powerful leader.

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