Bang for your buck

Crossroads GPS is up with a new ad attacking Obama on the economy.  $20 million dollars a year and a half before the elections is a lot of money to spend.  So I figured their ad would be worth a look: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvnAE8olUxU&feature=player_embedded]

Wow. $20 million dollars and you get an ad that starts "These are the facts..." that was the line of the first ad I had to write all by myself (actually it went "The facts" just to be historically accurate) and that was 11 years ago.

I find this ad less than compelling.  In some ways it misses what's a trademark of of most conservative advertising -- emotion. There's no vitriol here, no anger, well, no nothing... Even the facts are kinda boring, and while they try to contrast "the facts" with Obama's statements, not sure the juxtaposition works.

Now I have a friend, who's opinion I respect, who thinks it doesn't matter how good or bad the ad is. His reasoning is $20m is a lot of money focusing people on Obama and the dismal economy, and I think he has a point..., but still come on, was this really the best they could do?

I guess if you hate Obama already this'll get you more angry, but if you're on the fence, is this going to do anything? I don't think so.... People already know they economy stinks, and they've put it into their Obama calculation.  Is this ad about the debt ceiling vote? I'm not sure, but this ad just feels kinda mushy to me, it may be on-message, but it's not on-emotion. It doesn't really make me angry, it doesn't push any emotional hot buttons or at least doesn't push them in an effective way (I suppose the Obama "shovel ready" line is supposed to make him seem out of touch, but it feels oddly out of context the way it's presented here).

$20 million is a lot to spend, but to me this is just another example of spending a lot of money to air something, when they should spend more than $12k to produce the ad.