What went wrong with McCain’s PR Campaign? The Psychological Methods of Focus-Group driven Madvertising.

People who know John McCain personally know that he is a very personable man, with very high decency, honor, level of truth, and very likable.

However his advertising campaign went sour when he was trying to use the same techniques that Bush used to win in earlier battles, going excessively negative on his opponent and to drive the voters by fear and intimidation. Basically the same people who drove Bush’s campaign were now working for McCain, and they used the same technique: Marketing-Psychologists were running focus groups for him to figure out what works.

For example, the selection of Sarah Palin was the result of his Focus group.  Putting Sarah Palin next to John McCain resulted in a much higher initial acceptance ratio than putting other people next to him, such as Guiliani, or any of the others. So Sarah Palin got selected, although he had met her only once before.

The problem with using this psychology-driven instant response focus-group thinking is that they are almost going after some instant stimulus-response reactions and feelings. Sarah Palin seemed instantly likeable. So she was used in the campaign. The idea that Obama could be connected to terrorists and the fear of another war seemed tremendously terrible. So it was used in the speeches and campaigns.

But these psychology-marketing buttons are not of any long-term value for strategy, and can be disastrous.  Indeed, Sarah Palin proved to be a weakness with her lack of experience. And when McCain and Palin were told to push the terrorist buttons and the war buttons they hated it. Palin went “rogue”, and that resulted in more troubles.

McCain was the MOST LIKEABLE when he was on the last Saturday Night Live episode, because although these were skits prepared by comedy writers, he was telling things that were actually true, it was fun listening to him and he was much more likeable than when he was regurgitating the psychology-madvertising driven marketing buttons in his speeches. Also his speech to congratulate Obama was probably written by himself, it was totally dignified, totally above board, and it showed that he is a man of incredible dignity, trustworthiness, honor and likeability.

Let’s hope that in the next years we see more truth and less psychology-madvertising in politics. The people don’t need to be corralled into fears of war and terror so that they are “manageable”. They are not stimulus-response dogs and cats. They are decent and human living people. They want to be happy and live successful lives. They are the people of the USA and of the world.