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Equality New Jersey Goes Proactive

Timothy Kincaid

November 4th, 2009

Equality New Jersey is being proactive in their efforts to get the legislature and governor to legalize same-sex marriage before Governor-Elect Christie is inaugurated. Christie has vowed to veto any measures that provide marriage equality.

Rather than wait and respond to a campaign of lies about schools and children, they set out first and defined the message. On election night they ran ads seeking to build a groundswell of support.

The first, Marsha and Louise, features a couple for whom civil unions were inadequate.

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The second features a straight woman who compares her hospital treatment to that of another couple in a civil union.

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I am not certain as to what type of advertising is most effecting in influencing legislative support or building groundswell. But I do have some observations.

As far as emotional appeals, it doesn’t get much better than Marsha and Louise. This is not some discussion of theoretical inadequacies of civil unions.

This ad featured real people, good people, burdened with the confusion that comes with civil unions and finding themselves unable to provide for physically and mentally handicapped children. Who is going to oppose healthcare for handicapped children?

Although I knew it was a political ad, I still felt myself pulled in and experienced empathy for this couple and disgust for their plight.

The second, Emelia, though weaker in specific evidence of harm, comes across as less practiced and more genuine. It has an ability, I think, to speak to New Jerseyans where they are and in a language that is more organic.

I especially liked “…they were in that civil union, which I don’t know, that, that limbo…” I think it reminds the viewer that they, too, have no idea exactly what comes with a civil union.

And they are all very, very New Jersey.

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Amicus
November 4th, 2009 | LINK

I am not certain as to what type of advertising is most effecting in influencing legislative support or building groundswell. But I do have some observations.
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I can’t say much about legislation advertising, but I can a little about product advertising.

If your assessment is that the competition already has an estblished product, then there is no short-cut, no short-term groundswell.

To capture the market from such a product, one almost has to engage in a lengthy, costly campaign.

Companies like Coca Cola continue to spend enormous sums on advertising, even though everyone already knows the product. Continuously investing in this way keeps an established brand, and any rival to Coke would have to spend almost a prohibitive amount.

People who can successfully run what might be called a “strategic ad campaign” to upset an entrenched product or company are rare and worth every penny. Truly, the campaign is conceptualized from start-to-finish. The ones that people study in the casebooks are masterpieces, I think. Of course, there are plenty that fail…

Regan DuCasse
November 6th, 2009 | LINK

Whenever the opposition keeps saying that marriage is about children and their well being, isn’t it amazing how they can look at gay parents and lie through every part of their face on that argument alone?

Maggie Gallagher, nor Brian Brown, nor any of the myriad spokes faces of the anti marriage movement have themselves tried to adopt a child with special needs into THEIR homes.

Marriage is essentially about ENHANCING life, if not necessarily INDUCING it.
A quality of life issue, not whether or not you make a life.
These women are two of many, many thousands who give life AND a better life to children, marriage would make those lives even better.

So, the opponents are effectively doing without saying: damned do or don’t, they don’t care about a large segment of the population having self reliance, and MORE children having their needs met.

That about right?
That’s something that can’t be said enough to the public at large.

So is the question before the public, why WOULDN’T anyone agree with self reliance AND more people meeting their own needs and that of their children at no expense to anything?
I still haven’t heard an answer to that very rational question and expectation.

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