ArticleIP_1575.txt

   
   
      
         
            The Warner Brothers

            
               Lisa , produced by
Trippi, McMahon, and Squier

            Of course, they aren't
brothers, but two Warners--John and Mark, Republican and Democrat--are running
against each other in Virginia for John's Senate seat. On the surface, this
60-second ad for Mark is what political consultants call a "bio spot."
Underneath, however, it is an implicit "comparative" in which every favorable
item about Mark is an unspoken (for the moment) push off against John. The spot
attempts to define the race; it's a road map to where Mark's campaign intends
to go.

            John is older (69) and a
career politician (31 years in public office, 18 of them in the Senate); Mark
is 41 and a high-tech entrepreneur. The spot begins with Mark today,
emphasizing that he's created a multimillion dollar business. He's trying, in
effect, to give John a gold watch, to cast him as a senator for the past--a
strategy often discussed in politics but seldom fully executed, as challengers
usually turn to harder-edged negatives. Here Mark is graphically portrayed as
the future; the spot tells us this visually, not only with his looks but
with its look, right down to the cyberesque chyrons--the writing on
screen--and the moving cursor.

            Both John and Mark are
wealthy. John is Virginia hunt country and the former husband of both a Mellon
heiress and Elizabeth Taylor. Mark, the spot tells us, is different:
first in his family to college, which was paid for with loans and part-time
jobs. His wife Lisa vouches for his effort to keep that old car running and pay
off the student loans (polls show that if you had them, you better have paid
them). This "common man" theme is also a pre-emptive defense. Mark will spend
millions of dollars of his own money against John, the odds-on favorite who
also has the clear fund-raising advantage. But Mark wants voters to know that
he earned every penny himself.

            A skeptical electorate
tends to resist claims made in political ads. So as this spot returns to the
present, it relies on an increasingly standard technique: It invokes
third-party verifiers--independent journalistic sources--to tell voters that
Mark deserves credit for "building the information highway." A second source is
used to prop up this improbable claim, while a short-sleeved Mark casually
reaches over a workstation in a postmodern office.

            Now the spot moves from
Mark the private-sector innovator to Mark the public-policy innovator in health
care. The images convey a sense of compassion and inclusion: The young guy
cares about the elderly and minorities. And again, the implicit comparison with
John: Mark has new ideas--and even better for a Democrat, they're not about big
government, but about a "public-private partnership."

            Finally, the spot weaves
together the "common man" theme (Mark himself replays it to camera), the
"future" theme (watch the blinking cursor), and a visual and verbal appeal to
"family" values. With this, Mark is fishing for stray conservative voters
increasingly alienated from the twice-divorced, now unmarried John, who is
pro-choice on abortion, voted against Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court,
and adamantly opposed Oliver North's 1994 Senate bid.

            Is that the subliminal
message of the slogan: "The Right Warner for Virginia's Future"? Just
kidding--the operative word here is "Future."

            --Robert Shrum