Reading the signs for campaign effectiveness

Melissa Schorr

Thursday, June 11, 1998 | 10:13 a.m.

The panel of experts -- Bob Ingram, Marc Sperberg, Dan Sakowski and Tom Ayres -- who critique election season signs in the story on page 1D, here discuss the general do's and don'ts of campaign sign effectiveness:

Why do candidates use signs as opposed to other forms of advertising?

Sperberg: The real role of signs is name recognition. To get people to know who the candidate is and get familiar with the name. Running (citywide) TV ads can be a huge waste when you're only trying to reach an extremely small group of voters in a neighborhood.

Ingram: Small signs also show grassroots support. When you drive through a neighborhood and see a bunch of (yard) signs supporting a candidate, that means he must be popular, and if you don't know him, you'll take the word of your neighbors.

Why, then, would a candidate running unopposed or with high name recognition still use a sign?

Ingram: You have 5,000 new people moving into this town every month, you add that together, and in a short time, you have a whole bunch of people who don't know any of the candidates. Those are the people you have to be careful about, because a lot of people who move in do vote.

What are the key factors in designing an effective campaign sign?

Sakowski: Visual impact. Contrasting colors. Big bold letters on the name. You want the name to be as large as possible, so you get the name recognition. The position (they are running for) is secondary, and everything else comes third.

Ingram: People look at colors, pictures, they look at lettering styles, and it has an immediate impact, either positive or negative. The psychology of color is a good thing for people in the design business to study. They've done tests, and know women are more favorable to certain colors, like persimmon red. For men, it's a blueish color. One of the biggest flaws is that a lot of designers even lose track of the contrast in color. If you choose the wrong colors or photograph, you can knock yourself out of the box and not know why.

Sperberg: I stay away from red, white and blue, and stars and stripes -- it's too cliched. It's trying too hard.

Sakowski: But I still print a ton of them. No matter how much I try to convince (candidates) not to.

Sperberg: It's too obvious. It's overdone. But Lorraine Hunt's are red, white and blue, and I like those a lot.

Ingram: A good design will hold up in any color, but a poor design, you can't use a color to get it across. When you get a combination of a bad design and atrocious colors, it's an assault on the eye.

Sperberg: It's very easy to scream off the side of the road and get people's attention. But it's not about getting attention -- it's about getting positive attention. Little things like the difference between a high quality reproduction and poor are important, because if the execution is poor, I think that transfers to the impression that this person is of lesser value.

Ingram: You cannot enter that arena without some professionalism in everything you do. Everyone is subjected to high quality stuff all the time, and the contrast between high quality and not just blows you away.

How important is using a photo?

Sperberg: I recommend it 90 percent of the time. But it's critical to get the right shot. Most people never get to meet the candidate. The photo on a sign might be the closest they get, so if the eye contact is off, or the skin tones are bad, or the smile is not right ... I think a lot of them fall short when they say, "Let's save the 300 bucks and my cousin Bobby is an amateur photographer."

Sakowski: Or they go to Glamour Shots.

Ingram: It boils down to believablity. Do you believe this person is a good person? Do they look like a person you'd like in that office? People look at the signs and say, "He looks like a good guy, he looks like my grandfather, I could trust my kids with him." Or, he could have a leering-looking photo and they say immediately, "I don't trust that guy, I don't like him and I wouldn't vote for him" -- and someone made a strategic error in picking out that photograph.

Does size matter? Is a bigger sign always better?

Ayres: I think it comes down to where that size is going to be. If you can get a big A-frame, you're definitely going to have more visibility, but (what if) you've stuck it in a place that has a nice view as people drive by, and it annoys them?

Ingram: Naturally, bigger is better, you have a better shot of getting somebody to look at you. But be careful that when they do look at you, that it's favorable -- 'cause you can belch in church and get everybody's attention.

Sakowski: A large, poorly painted A-frame -- and there's a few out there -- can be extremely detrimental to the campaign. If it looks like a piece of trash with a name on it, it's a very negative impact.

Sperberg: (Another issue is) poor sign maintenance. If you don't run a strip down the back to keep the sign rigid, you get a ribboning effect. If it's drooping, my image of you has gone out the door.

Ayres: We tell our clients when you see drooping signs, just take it. It's better to lose one sign, and not have a negative image.

How do you know whether a design is good or not?

Sakowski: I will walk away from a sign I've designed and I don't look at it until I turn around. If I turn around and the name immediately catches my eye, I know I've got a design. If I have to study it, then I have a little more work to do.

Do you see any trends in this year's batch of campaign signs?

Sperberg: I see one massive trend. When we were designing Erin Kenny's signs, to us, she's purple, teal -- (because) she's very positive, upbeat, effervescent. A lot of the real experts told us, we wish you'd come to us before you put those out, because they're not earth tones. And you're supposed to be in conservative, quieter, more subdued colors. Teals and blues were unheard of political colors. Three-and-a-half years later, it's colorfest on the side of the road. Also, this election year, things are up, it isn't all that bad of a year to be an incumbent. So they're more relaxed to use "re-elect" or "retain."

Ever gotten any unreasonable requests from clients?

Sakowski: Candidates have asked me to print fluorescent pink against a white background. I had to physically make a sign for him and show him how poor it was. I also have had candidates who, to save money, wanted to bring me photocopied, laminated pictures of themselves and have me tape them to their signs. I said, "You realize, you're paying me for a quality product, and then you want to do this to it?"

Ayres: I have seen that done.

Ingram: You're dealing with clients who have definite opinions -- people don't run for office unless they're strong. And if you don't have the ability to persuade them, they're going to go with their own ideas, and then they may have something out there that is totally weak and negative, and it's their own fault.

Sperberg: There's education that goes into logo design and signage, it's not just some guy out of art school who says "this looks cool." There's logic and history. Let us present the theory behind the sign. If you're uncomfortable with your designers or consultants, fire them and hire somebody else. But if you're comfortable with them, allow them to do what they're very best at.

What are the pitfalls of using signs?

Ingram: When you have a hotly contested race, signs are the source for terrorist attacks.

Sakowski: There's nothing you can do to stop them.

Ingram: Devout followers think they're doing their candidates a favor. Also, if you have a name conducive for a change, that makes it into something that really catches the public's eye.

Sperberg: Changing one or two letters can change something into profanity.

Ingram: Like a guy named "Tuck."

Sperberg: I've seen someone make a swastika out of a crisscross. The vast majority is never done by the opposing candidate. It is always friends and volunteers of the opposing candidates, but it's never endorsed by them.

How much of a factor do signs play in winning an election?

Sakowski: You can't have the sign do it all. Politicians put too much on them. The sign is not there to sell the product, the sign is there to gain recognition. It can't be your entire campaign.

Ingram: It's many things, that if you do a lot of them right, you have a better shot. But it all starts with a good candidate -- it's hard to sell a bad candidate, because it all comes to the surface.

Sperberg: I agree. Although ad guys and public relations guys make a living from, and put a lot of stock into signs and image, I would take a strong candidate and lot of lousy signage in a minute over the most slick signage and a candidate who lacks substance. It is still very much about the candidate -- despite what people tend to think.

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