Don't Lean On Me

Remember that episode of "Mad Men" where Don Draper pitches what he thinks is a surefire ad campaign to Conrad Hilton for his hotel chain, only for Mr. Hilton to reject it because he didn't get the moon? And Mr. Hilton then walks out, never to return? Someone at MSNBC should have done the same after its ad agency pitched the new MSNBC campaign that has just started.

MSNBC is running a series of incoherent television ads showing pictures of famous Americans, famous American moments, and pastimes as different as Latin dancing and demolition derbies to celebrate the "diversity" of our country while a voice-over reads an atrocious paraphrasing of the Declaration of Independence. When I first saw one of these ads, I asked myself, "What the hell is this?"

Oh yeah, the ads - which you can't tell what they're for even twenty seconds into them - end with MSNBC's logo and its new slogan . . . "Lean Forward."

And I thought Volkswagen's "Fahrvergnügen" ad campaign sucked.

"Lean forward?" Isn't that what you do when a nurse needs to give you a shot in your rump? Or when you stand above a toilet when you have to puke?

This ad campaign isn't making anyone puke, because people are too busy laughing their rumps off to be indisposed. Fox News, despite its utter lack of integrity, is very good at selling itself. Although "We report, you decide" and "Fair and Balanced" are the two biggest lies in advertising history, they're effective because each slogan communicates a simple direct idea. "Lean Forward" communicates nothing. And compared to the TV spots for MSNBC, the new campaign's print ads are not much better, showing MSNBC on-air personalities in casual poses that suggest they're not going anywhere, never mind leaning in any direction. "The Place For Politics," MSNBC's old slogan, wasn't so wonderful either; MSNBC is supposed to report news as much as it offers punditry (and it does), and there are many places for politics, like in Congress or an insurance office. But from a point of message and branding, "Lean Forward" is irredeemably asinine.

I don't know how this slogan was dreamed up, but I'm guessing that some hotshot ad man proposed a slogan that suggested forward movement to complement MSNBC's liberal bias, but that "Go Forward" sounded like a car company slogan and "Moving Forward" already was one (it was taken by Toyota, itself going through image problems these days for different reasons), so "Lean Forward" - like leaning Democratic or leaning Republican - was a perfect fit. Right. It fits MSNBC as perfectly as a 28-inch-waist pair of pants would fit William Bennett.

Sean Hannity has already ridiculed this MSNBC slogan on his own blog, but more noteworthy is that Jon Stewart has skewered it even more wittily on his TV show. Stewart summed up the ad campaign's incoherence by playing a tape of MSNBC president Phil Griffin explaining the positive message of the slogan, and then showing clips of Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Dylan Ratigan, and even the clownish Keith Olbermann delivering pessimistic, decline-and-fall rhetoric about the direction the U.S. is moving in. (And Stewart didn't even mention the channel's sensationalist weekend crime documentaries.)

MSNBC insists it's not a propaganda arm for the Democratic party, which is why MSNBC personalities sometimes criticize the Democrats despite their support for the party's basic agenda. So, even though I'm an avid viewer of MSNBC, I'm reacting just as critically to this new ad campaign. MSNBC deserves better than what their ad men are pushing. It is a reliable news source, with on-air personalities that have strong identities, and they finally have a lineup that has a sense of permanence (though the jury's still out on Lawrence O'Donnell's show). Plus, the channel already has a solidly loyal audience. The channel's liberal on-air personalities may be preaching to the choir, but there's a lot to work with in order to make the choir bigger. The bosses at MSNBC have the opportunity to promote their strengths effectively, and this new ad campaign is not the way to do it.

And no, again, it is not true that MSNBC has more initials in its name than it has viewers. That would be true of CNN.