The Duping of the American Voter: Dishonesty and Deception in Presidential Television Advertising

Robert Spero, an advertising professional, dissects every presidential campaign television ad from Eisenhower through Reagan and shows how politicians borrowed the techniques of Madison Avenue to sell themselves — techniques Ogilvy, Reeves, and others had perfected for soap and cars.

Ogilvy listed The Duping of the American Voter in the "Recommended Reading" appendix of Ogilvy on Advertising. It is the only book on his list that is not about selling products — it is about how the same persuasive machinery gets turned on the public in the political sphere.

For a founder, the book is a warning and a case study. The warning: the techniques that work for selling your product also work for selling ideas, and they work on you too. The case study: see how the same advertising tools — image, repetition, positioning, the one big idea — are applied to the hardest sell there is.