Being for the middle class doesn't mean you have to be so mediocre

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MbYXOyIwaB4 Christine Quinn is the first candidate up in the NYC Mayor's race. I only have two short comments to make about this relatively generic ad:

1. Even though she appears in every scene in the ad, I never get a sense of who she is, what kind of person, do I like her or not? As I said above, it's all rather generic.

2. The final line: "While others talk about fighting for the middle class, I've been doing it..." Seems slightly ironic because we've just spent :30 seconds with you talking about fighting for the middle class. Yes, I understand she was "talking" about her accomplishments, but still I found it... odd. Maybe it's because the ad is so generic, and I wasn't emotionally invested so I'm nit-picking or maybe it's they're trying to hard to make their point, the ad yells "4" when it should be whispering "2+2."

3. (Ok, I know I said two short comments, so you don't have to read this one if you don't want.) There's just so many issues in the ad, I get it, you're trying to create a sense of what's she's done, the breadth of her accomplishments, but it feels like they're trying to say everything and instead they end up saying nothing.

It seems the middle class is the big issue of the NYC Mayor's race given this ad and the previous Weiner video I reviewed. Frankly I think Weiner video did a better job of being on-emotion, and showing true empathy. This ad is a list of issues, but ends up less than the sum of it's parts.

Here's what a billion dollars gets you these days

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCMhRshti8c&feature=player_embedded] Jeff Greene is a billionaire, he's running for US Senate in Florida, and this is his first Senate ads.

He's an outsider, he's not a politician.  Get it?

Yeah, right.  I've talked about the old rule of film making: Show don't tell.  It's a good thing to remember in ad making, anything you can show your audience is more powerful than telling them.

In the ad, Greene talks about politicians about being an outsider, what shows that?  The ad couldn't be a more generic political ad.  Is there anything about the ad that says Greene is different, other than the voice over?  What evidence do they give that he's different?  Why should anyone believe he's different? It can't be the background which looks like a Palm Beach mansion.

They have him reading from a teleprompter, and he's doing a bad job at that. When will people learn, don't make your candidate read from a prompter if they can't do.  And certainly don't put it on the air if your candidate stinks.

The more I think about this ad, the more it makes me angry.  Yesterday, I talked about the book, "Starting from Why."  The Greene campaign could take a tip from that book, the ad spends a lot of time telling us WHAT Greene is and WHAT he'll do.  They spend zero time telling us WHY -- what does he stand for?  Why is he running?  The ad sounds like someone went through a poll and just plucked out the top scoring items, I don't believe for a second Greene believes in any of these things.  I don't find the ad or him credible at all.