Like a duck

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sw_0a54S8po] This is the kind of simple ad, that really take a lot of work.  What a pain it must have been to find all those clips and match them up. The visual execution is not groundbreaking, but it's good enough and doesn't step on the message.

This ad is like a duck, on the surface it's calm and seems to be barely straining, underneath, it's paddling like crazy.  On the surface this ad is devastatingly effective because it is tying to Whitman to Schwarzenegger, who is not particularly popular in California.

Under the surface lies the real punch in this ad.  The repetition of the language points to the common cliches politicians use.  Hearing her words echoing Schwarzenegger's makes them all the more meaningless, they're just platitudes with no real meaning, no real value. At end of the ad, with the San Jose Mercury line splashed across the screen, "She utterly lacks the qualifications to be governor," there's a real feeling that Whitman is just an empty suit with nothing real to say.