Part One:
Effective Advertising 101 – by Michael Bloomberg.
Our guest is Justin Peters, correspondent for Slate.com, who listened to 185 advertisements for Michael Bloomberg, and reported on the effectiveness of those ads. Bloomberg’s saturation of the media has achieved a kind of brainwash effect: we hear his message over and over again and eventually we start to think maybe this is the truth.
Bloomberg’s career has included communicating messages to the public on behalf of corporate interests. He has accumulated an elaborate trove of data about every person’s likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, and life circumstances, and he targets particular messages to particular audiences. He is literally buying the presidency just as auto manufacturers would buy brand loyalty.
Oddly enough, though, Bloomberg is an unusually unappealing person himself. So Peters found that the most effective advertisements were the ones that didn’t hear from or show the candidate himself. The best ads were the ones which were only about generic “American values,” ads which draw contrasts between Trump’s words and deeds and the values we have all grown up cherishing and being proud of. I.e., reminding voters why it matters that everyone get out and vote in this election and that we free our country of Donald Trump.
Part Two:
Former Slaves Get An Education and Achieve Brilliant Outcomes for the Greater World
We speak with author Anna Mae Duane, professor and director of the American Studies Program at the University of Connecticut. Her book, “Educated for Freedom,” tells the incredible story of two schoolboys, fugitives from slavery, who attended the NY African Free School. Created by founding fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, this experimental school believed in freedom’s power to transform the country.
The two boys’ achievements were miraculous in a nation that refused to acknowledge black talent or potential. They showed the antebellum American public that black children could be symbols of — and leaders in — a fair and democratic future that fulfilled the promise of America’s founding documents.
The two also demonstrated alternative roads to accomplishing change. One was a charismatic, radical public figure, who articulated the vision. The second was a quiet, brilliant thinker and analyst who worked behind the scenes to advance society into a brighter world.
