Validators

in

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2lDIHyqo7Q] Validators can be powerful elements to a negative message. In the Rand Paul ad using his own words, I didn't quite believe it, this one I do. The execution is alright, but I think the message is a killer.  Fiorina seems cold hearted and totally unconcerned with the plight of the folks she's laid off. The "I'm proud of what I did at HP," comes across as arrogant and out of touch.

Validators can appear more authentic, and they do something else as well: they often times, show instead of telling. Sure they punctuate the point here , "Outsourcing Jobs, out for herself," but I wonder if the ad wouldn't have been better off ending with her saying she was proud of what she did at HP, and some summary, 30,000 jobs outsourced etc.

Here's another case of a validator. The ad has been pulled from youtube because Fox News has sued the Carnahan campaign over the use of Chris Wallace.

News sources are particularly good validators because of their "impartiality" works for them. In this case, Fox's bias works for the Carnahan campaign, because the ad is 25 seconds of him skewering Roy Blunt. Now, the press hates getting thrown into the middle of political campaigns, but heck if you're gonna say it, then you need to own it.

Again I'm not sure they need the "Worst of Washington," end tag, I think they could have just have ended with, "are you the one..." But, I like that they just went for 25 seconds of Wallace instead of feeling the need to cut to some punctuation of the message (well, they held off on that till the end).

Both these ads are good examples of how to use validators effectively (even if the first isn't entirely interesting).  They key to both of them is that they show and don't tell, that they feel authentic. The difference between these and the Rand Paul ad, is that in the later it felt like they were trying to make him say something I'm not sure he was saying, it felt dishonest (is Rand Paul really against selling drugs for example), and that undercuts the power of the validator.