Rather, they were a reflection of sound bites, advertisements and the draw of celebrities who endorsed them, all part of carefully conceived marketing schemes.
In 2006, Anuncio Digital Media, a locally started digital advertising firm, installed its first mall-based digital signage network, which consists of a series of twenty plasma screen televisions around the main concourse and in the food court that display six-second sound-free advertisements.
But roughly a month into the general election campaign, the Obama and McCain campaigns are already locked in a minute-by-minute fight, trading advertisement for advertisement, sound bite for sound bite, press release for press release — and, yes, insulting name for insulting name — with rhetoric that can be as harsh and misleading as that of any previous campaign.
"Do not make them sound like an advertisement," one firm investigated by the attorney general cautioned its writers.
Though, on second thought, talking advertisements sounds a bit too much like Minority Report and could be aggressive (and terrifying).
On the other hand, students are finding there are other jobs that sound attractive in newspaper advertisements and on the Web, though they often turn out to be sales jobs that pay only on a commission basis.
But as his campaign moves onto a national stage, where television advertisements and sound bites are more important than one-on-one encounters, Mr. Kerry seems comfortable with a kind of paint-by-numbers Clintonism that is effective in its own way.
And the business model, driven by specially targeted advertisements, seems sound.
The geniuses at the Y have decided that your mobile phone screen is a prime place to show "graphical advertisements," which sounds a lot like banner ads to these ears.
The Brown campaign introduced an advertisement featuring sound bites from Mr. Schwarzenegger spliced with clips of Ms. Whitman making nearly identical remarks.
