Been traveling this week for work, so it's been tough to post. Today is a hodgepodge of ads, I came across this week.
First up Chrysler's followup to "Halftime in America":
http://youtu.be/kjv8u_1uLzk
I thought the ad did a great job of re-framing the halftime in America message that started with Clint Eastwood at the Super Bowl. If that ad was a 50,000 ft view, this one is closer to ground level. It tells the story, without telling the story, if you know what I mean. I just read this list of writing tips from the great screenwriter Billy Wilder. The two rules that seem to apply here are:
5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
And,
7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
This ad is very subtle, it never reveals the subtext, and I think it's better for it.
The next ad up was sent to me by a friend:
http://youtu.be/_hQyHHWLsOs
I like the tone of the ad, and I think it does a nifty job of making it's political points without sounding (or looking) too political. The ad is well shot too, with lots of pretty pictures. It makes something that could have been dry interesting, so it scores points there too.
My only objection to the ad, is the whole "Your friend Ben" theme. Maybe it's how folks already see Cardin, but it feels a little forced. I guess it's better than a more traditional, "that's because Ben Cardin cares..." or "Ben Cardin is on our side..." line, but not sure I buy it, in an ad that I generally buy.
Alright, ad number three comes from the Republicans:
http://youtu.be/MXhLtb-NKY0
Don't love this ad/video for a number of reasons:
1. Not sure how folks will feel about using audio from the Supreme Court. Usually the Supreme court is above politics, pulling in Lawyer's arguments seems debasing somehow, but maybe that's just me.
2. The quote feels lacking context. So, the lawyer had a brain fart, but does that make healthcare a tough sell? Not sure I get the connection? Maybe if we heard a question asking him to describe what the health care law does or some other reference, but right now it just seems like a guy who lost his train of thought.
3. Who cares? I mean, yes we ought to care about health care, but what I mean is, hitting Obama for health care now seems like hitting Clinton for having affairs, haven't we played this out already?
Maybe as an ad that gets the base angry this works. The fact that it only had 400 hits on youtube (and I've watched it twice), makes me think it's pretty ineffective.
Finally, an ad that's about as simple a repines as they come. In one of those petty (and dumb) political moves, opponents of Jose Hernandez are asking a judge to stop him from describing himself as an Astronaut.
Hernandez answers quite eloquently in this one minute long video:
http://youtu.be/LQSD9UTgwcA
Is there a more clear example of show don't tell? This response is a also a great example of political aikido. Whatever a judge decides, the fact that opponents are arguing he's not an astronaut, this video response will cement the fact that he did indeed fly in space. At once a response like this makes the opponents seem small minded and Jose Hernandez never has to break message to do it, that sounds like a win in my book.