This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
We get an out-of-state perspective on the effectiveness of Gov. Kristi Noem's Freedom Works Here ad campaign.
Cait Lamberton, Ph.D., is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-editor of the Journal of Marketing.
She analyzes the message behind these ads and what makes them different from most political ads.
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The following transcript was auto-generated.
Lori Walsh:
Dr. Cait Lamberton, thanks for joining us on “In the Moment.” We really appreciate it.
Cait Lamberton:
Very glad to be here.
Lori Walsh:
We have a brand new Freedom Works Here ad campaign from our governor that just released, and this time she's a nurse and she's wheeling a patient down the hospital room and at the end she kind of gets lost.
It's very much in this thematic, I'm the governor, but I'm stepping up to help with all these open jobs, but by the way, I'm not very good at this job. So we need you to move to South Dakota to do this job.
When you first saw this ad campaign after we sent it to you, what were some of your initial impressions of it?
Cait Lamberton:
I'm a marketing professor and the first thing that I do is I think through two paths. There's a cognitive path and there's more of an affective path. I think emotionally affective, affectively interpersonally, it's charming. It's really charming as opposed to a lot of political ads that either follow a very prescribed format where we expect, okay, somebody puts a hard hat on, they walk through a factory, then they're sitting at a cafe having coffee with people. We know that script. This one broke the script. It did something really different and it did so without imposing a thousand different disclaimers.
So that, first of all, decreases this sense that we should be filtering everything we see through an, oh, this is a political ad kind of filter, and then it creates this real closeness. The self-effacing humor breaks down barriers, we're all in the same place.
No, she can't do every job in the world, but she's very honestly asking for help. So there are these really nice emotional aspects to it that I think do create a sense of connection and engagement.
Then there are the other pieces where you step back and you say, "Okay, what else is being communicated here?" We have the word freedom. That shows up a lot, and that is, on one hand, a universal value. Everybody likes freedom, but on the other hand, it's also an indication toward a political position that tends to rely on that as a principle over and over again. So just by using the term prominently, she's able to warm us up for the idea that there's a political position associated with this very engaging ad.
Still, doesn't hit you over the head with it, doesn't force you to say what party you're in, just allows you to enjoy the ride, and I think those things together work really well.
Lori Walsh:
Is it a political ad or is it an economic development ad? Because that's the criticism is that taxpayer money is being paid to do this thing, which she is saying, "Hey, this is about bringing people in," and other people are saying, "You're really raising your national profile with this ad."
What kind of ad is this?
Cait Lamberton:
Of course it does both. Anything she does affects her brand as a person. I would step back from it and say it's a branding ad. It's branding both for the state but also for her. Now, is a political leader allowed to develop a branding and a persona? Absolutely. Of course they can do that. As they do that, there may be other people who are drawn to that. So I know even here in Pennsylvania, there are certain officers that get to put a little sticker with their name and office, say for example, on the gas pumps that say that the gas pumps have been checked by the person who holds this office, and people have said the same thing.
They're saying, "Every time you do that, you're getting free advertising because you're building familiarity with that name." So I think it's a very difficult line to draw, and I think making the argument that it's one or the other is just going to be a very difficult position to take.
Lori Walsh:
When we talk about her brand, there is this moment of playfulness and a self-effacing humor. Especially as a female office holder, when does it go into the area of it's going to hurt her, it's going to make her look silly or incompetent? She has to be taken seriously.
I think, this is just my opinion, she's playing with that intentionally, what people's expectations are versus what she's bringing to the camera and that point. But where does she have to draw that line?
Likewise, as a brand for the state, where is the line between, we really want you to move here because it's a great place to live and there's no income tax, you get to keep more of your money. But then there's this other side that says, wow, nobody wants to live here and take these jobs.
Where is the balancing act?
Cait Lamberton:
My colleague, Adam Grant, had a really nice piece last week where he said, maybe we need to stop advising that women don't use some of the linguistic and interpersonal tools that they use because they turn out to be very effective.
That research has shown that when a woman, for example, uses gentler or more qualified speech, people listen to her more. So we can say, you should interact more in a masculine way and not do this because you don't have to do that just because you're a woman. But at the same time, it may allow her to get around some counter argument that she would encounter if she were more direct and aggressive with the message.
I think one thing that helps her is that she does drop some statistics. She does point to some facts. This isn't just an ad campaign where it's her with a bunch of puppies and kittens saying, "This is a nice place. We're all cute." That's not what she's doing.
She is embedding an economic argument in her appeal, and I think that helps her a lot. I think were she to drop reference to facts that can be verified, she would be in much more dangerous waters, but one can watch the ads, go online, verify the information makes sense, and then she's just the person who's able to deliver it in a compelling way. For the state, I actually think there can be a very different response I would expect people inside the state as opposed to outside the state.
The truth is that a lot of people just don't know that much about the state to begin with. We don't know. We've heard it's cold there. That's all we know.
Lori Walsh:
That's true. That is true.
Cait Lamberton:
And so what we're left with is a sense that this is a new kind of land of opportunity, and so I don't think the state's in great peril of not being taken seriously as a result. It's just being given a personality in a way that perhaps prior media has not done.
Lori Walsh:
One of the things this is capitalizing on is the memory that people have about COVID restrictions in one state compared to COVID restrictions on business in particular and on getting to the office in South Dakota. Memory is going to move beyond that that was ever a thing, and people aren't going to remember that at one point there was this place called South Dakota where we supposedly didn't shut down, which of course we did have many restrictions on our businesses.
But broadly speaking, people in California lived different lives than people in South Dakota at that time. How long does that last?
Cait Lamberton:
I doubt it's anywhere near as salient right now as sales tax — I'm sorry, income tax.
Lori Walsh:
Income tax.
Cait Lamberton:
I think at this point what people are facing is income taxes. They're back in the workforce or perhaps they never left. They're facing inflation. They're seeing their paychecks worth less. I think for people outside the state, I mean, I have no idea what the state did during COVID. Maybe I knew at one point, but I think the far stronger argument for people elsewhere has to do with their buying power given a paycheck size.
Lori Walsh:
You mentioned facts that can be verified. So when you go onto the website, and this is I want to transition into this idea of, is this effective? Does it work? Well, then the question is work for what? Work to generate people to the website or work to actually getting South Dakotans to fill jobs? How do we measure that?
But first, when you go to that website, one of the first things is how much the average apprenticeship pays, and that has been controversial in South Dakota with the governor has this information based on this resource. A lot of the trade organizations have said no one is going to come and make over $70,000 on an apprenticeship. So how livably accurate does that have to be? Is a person going to feel betrayed if they follow through and then find out that the thing that they thought was not the thing that was here, even though the governor has sources for it? Do you get what I'm asking there?
Cait Lamberton:
Yeah, I do.
Lori Walsh:
What kind of honesty matters in that?
Cait Lamberton:
What we would hope is that for something as major as a move to pick up your home, your family, everything you have and move from point A to point B, you'll take any claim that you face in light of multiple pieces of evidence. So you'll find a lot of things. So you might find out, okay, you know what? She's right. Unemployment is extremely low, much lower than a national average. That is true. I don't think there's much controversy about that.
But you'll also find, if you keep looking for example, is that about a third of the children in the state are covered under a public health insurance program that is not through some kind of private insurance. They're part of the social safety net. And also the state is home to one of the poorest counties in the country, largely populated by people who are from indigenous backgrounds.
There is a lot of poverty in the state at the same time. So if you take together very low unemployment, lots of people working and people still don't seem to have much, you might emerge with a perspective that says, "Wow, some people are making a lot of money here, but just having a job there doesn't mean that you get to be wealthy." So, one would hope with a decision that major, they sort of weigh this very low unemployment and this absence of income tax against the broader picture of how many people are faring in the state.
That said, people don't always do that. In some cases, people wishfully think and they take the piece of evidence that gives them the most hope and is inspiring to them. So the answer to how effective this message is and how strong the evidence has to be is very much contingent on how carefully people want to process. And we can't generalize about that. Some people will do it one way and some will do it another.
What will actually be interesting to see is if people come and they end up in jobs that don't bring in the numbers that she advertises, do they leave? It's a hard decision to undo, and I'm not sure whether people will be in a position to do that.
Lori Walsh:
Tell me a little bit about the longevity of these ads because it seems like this is the kind of thing that would benefit if you saw this message multiple times. You're not going to necessarily see the ad. It's not like a bag of chips where you can say, "Oh, they have a new flavor. I'm going to go to the store and look for it." It is a major life decision.
So is there a benefit for repeat ads and ad saturation, and how long does it become more effective over time?
Cait Lamberton:
So it's really interesting research on that. It's a great question. There are a lot of times when people think, so, I don't know if you remember the ads for the Head On thing. It was a medicine that was supposed to cure your headache and all the ads that over and over again was, "Head On, Head On, Head On," over and over. It was completely annoying. So people said, "How can that possibly work?"
But what it's doing is it's building a very strong association in your mind. So every time you see it, it becomes more familiar. And when things are familiar and easy to process, we misattribute that ease of processing to liking. You probably had this experience with songs where the first time you hear it, you don't think anything of it. The 15th time you find yourself going along with the song. So familiarity on its own will build this sense of liking for people.
And also when things are easy to process and familiar, they feel more true. So the more times people see it, the more credible it becomes. And in fact, ubiquity can send this extra signal that it must be true because it's everywhere. So there are lots of reasons to saturate even to the point of annoyance because it makes things seem so obvious and easy to process. And so I think it takes a long time to start going down the other side of that curve to actually become non-credible anymore.
What they're doing that's also quite smart is they're having different executions of the same ad. So it's familiar and structure, familiar person, familiar voice, familiar idea, but you don't get bored because there's enough change that it's not perfectly predictable. You still feel like you might learn something new. There might still be a surprise. And so that keeps people engaged.
It's a good blend of familiarity and that metacognitive processing experience and enough variety to keep going.
Lori Walsh:
One of the things that people have to decide is whether they want to pay for it to keep going as in an economic development organization from a rural city, an individual business or industry that is being asked by the governor's office to pay for it. And the governor's office is saying, "This is, you're going to get data. You're going to get the information that we capture through the website that people submit to us. It is going to benefit you and we need you to help support it financially."
How do you make that decision about whether that's a good choice for your bottom line?
Cait Lamberton:
I think you'd have to ask first what the barriers are to people filling the jobs that need to be filled. So if you really believe that the barrier is that people aren't aware those jobs exist, then this is great. They made a great campaign. You may as well go with it. But there could be other barriers that are not going to be addressed by that ad. So if the barriers are people don't think there's sufficient infrastructure in the state, or people are concerned about the quality of the schools or people are concerned about the social safety net or people are concerned about the weather, you have to figure out what the actual barriers are before whether this is worth investing in.
And I think all too often we assume that it's the barrier that we can deal with data. It's not always.
Now, that's the easy answer. The easy answer is just tell people and then it's logical and then they'll come. And what we find over and over again is that was never the problem. It maybe was this much of the problem, but you might need something else.
Or maybe that's part of the problem. And if it's part of the problem, you invest in it to the extent that it's a proportion of the problem. So I think I'd want to know that answer first, and that's a complicated answer, but it would be very interesting investigation. My cat has just decided to join us.
Lori Walsh:
Welcome. Welcome to the cat. Is this new territory. Are you aware of other ad campaigns where people have encouraged relocation for something other than tourism?
Our tourism ad campaigns have been incredibly successful, but this is different. Now we want you to stay.
Cait Lamberton:
Actually stay. Well, it'd be interesting to tag these onto the tourism ads. So you came to visit and you loved it, thinking about staying? Because I think when people are on vacation, they're in enjoyment mode. So if there are other non-rational reasons that people aren't moving here, that's a moment when those would be, they're not going to stand in the way. So you could say, "Hey, this is a moment when everybody feels great about us. They're on vacation. Now let's go in."
So to the extent that that could happen, I think that would be an effective dovetail tale. I am not aware of a lot of these campaigns. That doesn't mean they don't exist. I'm just not aware of them to be honest.
I think what we have seen in some cases probably are much less professional persuasive tactics like you see in any newspaper. I remember when I was growing up, there were always these ads for Alaskan fish canneries where you could go work for a summer and make $80,000 and you had no expectation it was going to be anything but terribly grueling work. But that was communicated and kids could say, "Well, I could work for 7.50 an hour at the Tasty Freeze, or I could go have an adventure."
But I'm not aware of a lot of other large-scale campaigns. Again, they may be out there, I'm just not aware.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, I find it interesting as well that the kinds of jobs that are featured are not always the kinds of jobs that young people, for example, who would be the number one target audience for something like this, would be you'd want young people to come. It's accountant, it's welder, it's dental hygienist, it's nurse, it's plumber, it's electrician. These are the trades.
This is a governor also saying, "These jobs have value and we want you to come and be part of a state that values this kind of work."
That seems to me to be significant.
Cait Lamberton:
Absolutely. Which affirms a lot of dignity. Now, people, they want to know that they will be valued when they come to a community. And that's a big statement at a time when people have very mixed feelings about power structures and people from all parties have mixed feelings about power structures right now. So it could be resonant in a lot of ways for a lot of people. I think too, that the state probably would like to draw people in that age range, in part because they bring entire families, which does generate more spending.
If you're going to come, you're going to buy a house or rent a house and outfit a house and send kids to school. That's a multiple factor win for the state. And like many states, there's a growing aging population that's falling out of the workforce. So you don't necessarily want to bring people in who are 22, who may or may not stay. And I think too, playing to those trades that make a community livable makes a lot of sense. You probably don't need a lot more people to come and be Starbucks baristas, as wonderful as they are. What you need is a place for people to get their cars fixed. So I think I can understand that rationale and I can see why it works pretty well.
Lori Walsh:
Any other thoughts here about this campaign that you think are interesting to the industry of marketing and advertising in particular?
Cait Lamberton:
Yeah, I think it would be very interesting to see how far this can go, how many ads like this can be made, and will this then translate into another kind of campaign that can use the same sort of humor and the same spokesperson? The governor does seem to be pretty talented in making this kind of direct appeal. What I bet will happen is that other governors will try it or other public leaders will try it, and I will be surprised if it works as well.
First of all, the “me too” approach never works that well. But second of all, there is a particular combination here of message and spokesperson that is fairly resonant. The other thing that I think will be interesting will be to see the difference in response for people who live in the state as opposed to do not live in the state.
People who live in the state, they know the devil they know. No place is perfect, no place is ideal. Every place has its challenges. It doesn't mean we don't love the places, but we see what happens as a result of certain policies. There are results of the decision to not expand Medicaid. Those things have effects, that the state appears to be very fiscally healthy, but that doesn't mean the world is perfect.
So inside the state, I think you could have a very different response, but given that they're mostly targeted at bringing people into the state, does that matter?
Can you say whatever you want to people who basically have a blank slate, and it's not until they're here that they become part of the community. So I think that's an interesting distinction, and I think it's actually not that common that a governor is going to make ads for people who don't already vote in the state. So that, as an externally facing media move, it will be interesting to watch. So we'll see how it goes.
I know we saw here in Pennsylvania where we had John Fetterman's campaign that was very humorous for a while, and then his opponent's campaign tried to also be humorous, and it didn't work in the latter case in the way that it did in the former case.
So I don't know if people can duplicate this, but I'll be interested to see if they try.
Lori Walsh:
Which also circles back to our earlier on in the conversation question about a governor doing an ad campaign for people outside the state who have not voted for her or cannot vote for her unless of course her ambitions are national, in which case that's what this is. So that's the tension that happens here in the state, is looking to see where her sights set, which is an in the state conversation.
Cait Lamberton:
And it turns out people are pretty smart.
And that makes perfect sense to me that people are saying, "What is going on here? This is a different kind of animal." And if you look at social media comments, you see that. You see that people who are both pro and against these ads in some sense are raising the national platform as a question. And what I think no politician should do is think for a minute that voters aren't really smart and that they're not thinking really hard, at least on some level from their perspective about how they're being manipulated and if they're being manipulated.
I think we've all become pretty attuned to that. Now, some people, if it's someone you love, you'll let them say whatever they want and it doesn't matter at all. But the minute we become skeptical, the entire meaning of the message changes. There's something called the persuasion knowledge model where once it's activated and we know someone's trying to persuade us, the words almost don't matter. We interpret what's going on in a completely different way. What looks like a normal persuasive argument becomes something else.
And I think that, if politicians could take a note, I think it would be don't underestimate the people who see these ads because they really are, they can sort of imagine the many hats that people are putting on and the goals they have, and they'll think about it and they'll hold you to account for it.
