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Image by Kevin Cox
Kairos is a greek word meaning “a propitious moment for decision or action” It translates literally to “opportunity”. Kairos is important in advertising because when a topic is at the forefront of peoples minds and they see this topic within an ad, it resonates with them immediately. The need for kairos in political ads cannot be understated. If the topic that is being displayed or how the topic is being displayed in the ad isn’t relevant to what is happening today, many people who see these ads will not think that they are important and will switch the channel, scroll past it in their feed, or click the skip ad button on Youtube. Kairos is incredibly important in todays political atmosphere because people have an increasingly short attention span.
Brian Kemp, running for governor of Georgia at the time of this ads release, took advantage of kairos. During his race, and still today, illegal immigration, gun rights, and being “politically incorrect”, are hot ticket issues. This kind of ad would doubtfully have gone over as well as it did in 2010, the hight of President Barack Obama’s presidency when being “politically incorrect” was barley even thought of. Donald Trump has made being “politically incorrect” a major issue that people are talking and think about, both in a positive manner if they are supporters of the president, or very negatively if they are some of the presidents many critics.
Brian Kemp capitalized upon the controversy this “politically incorrect” way of acting and thinking was resonating with voters and made, perhaps one of the most “politically incorrect” ads ever made. What it may have lacked in class, it made up for in capitalizing on the moment. His ad was featured upon many news networks because it was current and so “politically incorrect”. It talked about guns, illegal immigrants, and other hot topics in a manner that was “politically incorrect”, which is what the voters that are being targeted with this ad are thinking about. In a time when many conservatives think that liberals are going to take their guns, get rid of borders, and make everyone say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, this ad showed conservatives that they could vote for someone so “politically incorrect” that he would never vote for any of that legislation.
Brian Kemp was able to appeal to the emotional side of his voters with this ad. In order to galvanize them to vote, he talked about things that made them angry or afraid, such as illegal immigration or losing their gun rights. Obviously this ad was well received by voters in Georgia since it motivated them to get to their polling place and enough people voted for him that this, “politically incorrect conservative” ended up winning over his competitor Stacy Abrams.
Some appreciated his “political incorrectness”, others did not, but one thing that everyone had in common was that they saw this message due to the Kemp campaign’s perfect timing in order to seize upon the political and social turmoil within the United States surrounding the theme of being “politically incorrect”.