Persuasion and Influence

Rick Perry ‘Strong’

This commercial is a political advertisement for Republican candidate Rick Perry suggesting if you were to elect him as Republican representative and eventually president then he would end ‘Obama’s war on religion’. However, he does so in a exaggerated and offensive manner by suggesting that it is wrong that it is wrong that ‘gays can serve in the military’ but ‘children are not allowed to celebrate Christmas or pray in school’. This generally makes for a political advertisement low in credibility as displayed by the overwhelming amount of dislikes and thankfully Rick Perry did not get the Republican presidential nomination.

In this commercial Rick Perry uses negative ‘attack’ advertising in an attempt to portray himself better than his competitors. A study by Pinkleton (1997) involved exposing 165 college students to political candidate profiles and then completing a series of pre-test scales evaluating the credibility of each, then they were shown some negative advertising on the candidates and asked again to complete a scale on the credibility of the candidates. The results showed that negative comparative advertising is shown to lower targeted-candidate evaluations without lowering sponsoring candidate evaluation. However, given the ham-fisted approach that was taken by Rick Perry in this advertisement it is unlikely that any negative comparative effects would be observed.  

Pinkleton, B., 1997. The effects of negative comparative political advertising on candidate evaluations and advertising evaluations: An exploration. Journal of Advertising, 26(1), pp. 19-29.