Back in 2008, over 7 years ago shockingly, an enormous advertising campaign was started by one J.J. Abrams. The movie Cloverfield was essentially sold to consumers without a title, any real idea of a plot, or any mention of actors to portrayed. The trailer, or rather the teaser, was first aired with only the title of the producer and the air date. The trailer:



This overly successful marketing campaign drew upon some very basic elements of civic life. It showed the US being attacked, which any American would be both concerned about and suffer disbelief leading to heightened curiosity, and then it showed some very average people dealing with it. These are not the only two pieces, but they were what immediately stuck out to me. This was only one piece of the campaign as well. My RCL Blog posts will go in-depth about the rest of the campaign and dissect the tools that the campaign used to make Cloverfield such an attractive movie to go see without really any hint to the actual plot. My blog will also go into how these same concepts have been and continue to be applied else where in advertising and other means.

When I first opened the links to these two advertisements, I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting. I believe before I can begin to analyze either, I have to understand exactly what was going on in each, and so I re-watched both two to three times over. The first one I watched, Ronald Reagan’s Bear ad, depicts a “bear in the woods”. The narrator provides two positions on the bear: the bear is tame or the bear is vicious and dangerous. At this point it becomes inherently clear that the bear is synonymous with the Soviet Union as at the time, the US was unaware of whether they posed a real threat or not. The suggestion made to the audience in the video is that it would make sense to be prepared for the bear, to be strong. This is essentially a call to action, or rather an assertion of the stance Reagan takes in the Cold War. Regardless of what the bear/USSR is actually like, wouldn’t it be the most sensible to be prepared? Yes, it would be, I answer as does the audience. The ad has by a single question sided me with Reagan.

The next video is from 20 years later when Bush and Kerry are running. Almost taking the same stance as Reagan did, Bush aligns himself with the idea that it is wisest to be preemptively prepared. This video is rather different though as it does not use an extended metaphor like the bear ad. The actual video footage depicts wolves and at first the audio has nothing to do with the wolves whatsoever. This is a sharp contrast from Reagan’s video where the entire time, the bear was being built up as a metaphor for the Soviet Union. It is not until the very end with the line, “And weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm”, that suddenly the wolves begin to make a move towards the screen. My first thought was, “wow”, whoever shot this video had guts. My second thought was that, though the video comes off initially as very firmly informational with the citing of Kerry’s actions and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it quickly makes an almost personal attack on the watcher. The viewer identifies with America and having the wolves approach them like that in sync with the idea that America may be in danger, gives the direct impression the viewer is in danger. Bush puts himself in the position where he would be the answer to protecting America, just as Reagan does.

The use of the animal imagery, the metaphors, and the subtle rhetoric all flow nicely in both ads to convince the reader to support the candidate by association with relative concerns. The candidates are not people, they are solutions.

Though the two speeches obviously had very similar tones due to the situation, it was clear that they had two somewhat different rhetorical situations that affected their audience in different ways. First of all, looking at the two speeches just from the positions of the two speakers paints two different pictures. One speaker is the leader of the nation that was just attacked. The other is a talk-show comedian. Both are constantly in front of the public and both are looked up to in certain ways. The president, being the leader of the nation, has an expectation to uphold what it is exactly that the people should be doing and how they should be reacting. The president, for lack of a better or more complex word, is the rock. Jon Stewart on the other hand is not in a position of literal power, but he does have a wide audience of the American people. He has the power to influence them just by being in front of them just as President Bush does. However, Jon Stewart’s role in the country as he himself says was to “sit in the back of the country and to throw spitballs”. He makes people laugh for a living. In a time of tragedy, what more could be needed? Jon Stewart understands this, but at the same time he is also someone who stands in front of the nation. He cares for the people and he is also one of them. He steps away from his usual casual demeanor in the show and talks deeply for a moment, bringing a rather astounding sense of realism to how big this event really is when most of the country is still in disbelief. He understands his role, but also how important it is not only for him, but for the people that he recognizes their grief rather than try to cover it up with humor. President Bush makes it a point to recognize the event and give strength and Jon Stewart does something very similar, but results in a more of a comforting effect. I believe that both speakers spoke completely appropriately and that how they acted and what they said needed to be done for a nation so shook up. They both spoke volumes about how it was the nation that should be commended for its ability to hold together in a time of crisis, but it was men like these who acted as they did, stood as beacons of support, that I feel was much of the glue that held the nation together.