A tale of two ads

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Two ads from the conservative American Crossroads: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy3xKL4vlc8]

The positive ad in Ohio is pretty good stuff. Nicely designed, I especially like the talking politician graphics they use both at the front and the end.  Not as fond of the middle section with the moving images of Portman, I much prefer the stills in the plan section, that seem to be a better fit for the overall scheme. Still, this is surprisingly good.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f85DHhYcqU4&wpisrc=nl_fix]

This ad in Colorado on the other hand.... I've talked before about trusting your concept.  This ad has a pretty good concept Bennet has spent X billions every day.  Whether it's a compelling message or not, is another argument, but graphically, the idea of a calendar and $2.5 billion in spending could be really nicely pushed home.

But instead of trusting the concept they muck it up with too many CG's, pictures of Bennet (why do we have to see the guy, you say his name 5 times, will the picture of him really drive the point home).  Then they mix the monthly calendar with the daily calendar, which is not a grave offense, but just adds to the visual clutter.

It's ironic because in their attempt to make this ad more clear, they made it less so.

Live by the sword

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/BennetForColorado#p/u/1/wOkB9gnACks] I showed the Romanoff ad the other day, here comes the Bennett response. I think it's pretty effective. Using the newspaper as a third party validator is particularly effective here, since the language is so harsh.

This ad isn't pretty and it's a pretty standard setup (the rebuttal, the truth, the choice), but I hate it when the quotes become closed captioning as CG, what's the point?  Even in an ad like this, when you have great quotes, I think it would be better to have the CG's and the voice over in sync but not repeating.

I have to say Romanoff had it coming. When you start playing with the truth to such a degree that the leading paper in the state says it is "cynical politics," then you've gone way too far.

Sometimes we all get too greedy

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Looks like the primary race for Colorado Senate is now in play.  I looked at a Michael Bennett ad a while back commenting that how dishonest it seemed for him to be playing the Washington isn't working card, since he is in fact a sitting Senator. Here's the latest attack from his opponent:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8z1IEUV7S4&wpisrc=nl_fix]

A bit generic for my taste, more like a haymaker than a knife to the back, but alright.  Unless of course, it's all a lie.  The Denver Post headline of the ad review says, "Romanoff's ad is over the top," then goes on to detail how the facts of the story are basically a lie.

There's a real problem with negative attacks besides being boring and forgettable, they gotta be true behind a shadow of a doubt.  The campaign has to be able to stand behind the attack 100%.  Now that's not to say there's not a short term benefit for Romanoff, and recent polls show him close or slightly ahead, so maybe it's worth the risk to his credibility in the long term to make the play in the short term (after all, he did sell his house to afford the air time).

It's this sort of thing that makes people had political ads and politicians.  When ads get greedy with the truth everyone loses.