inside baseball — » Ad Nauseam

Sometimes it's hard to write about bad ads, sometimes it just makes me angry ,or makes me feel like I'm repeating myself. But sometimes an ad is so bad and cliche, well it just tickles me: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf_S6gPcc78&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

In what has got to be seen as one of the worst campaigns of the year so far, Dick Lugar comes up with one of hte most cliche and desperate ads of the year. Lugar you may know has taken heat for basically living in DC for 36 years while representing the state of Indiana.That probably wouldn't be so bad, but it only reinforces a growing image among conservatives and votrs in general that Lugar is out of touch. So in this context a little political aikido would be perfect.

This ad feels less like Aikido and more like... Inspector Clouseau. First off all, I was confused, "Washington Outside Groups"? It's a strange turn of phrase, usually we're worried about inside groups, what they mean is groups from Washington, outside of Indiana, but the phrase is awkard enough that it wasn't clear to me at first.

The next point that struck me as odd was the attack itself. Murdock is saying he's going to get national money, I guess if you're Dick Lugar and people think you're not in touch with the state that might be an issue, but I wonder if it's too inside baseball for most voters to really care. Inside baseball is a term we use from time to time, it means, focusing on the internal politics of a situation, how you make the sausage -- the kind of stuff that political junkies love. But most voters really don't care about inside politics, it feels, well, too political to them. They can be made to care if the inside baseball attack somehow resonates back to the story they already believe.

Finally let's talk about cliche. The music the voice over are so over the top, it really feels like the "Mickey Mouse" politics it talks about in the ad. Cliche can be useful, but in this case it just weighs the ad down. It's so overtly negative that it leaves the viewer no place to go, no room to put themselves into the ad emotionally.

So let's see we got awkward phrasing of an inside baseball attack that presented in a very cliche execution... what's that leave us with? Desperation. I read a study that said most casualties in combat don't happen during the combat itself, but during the retreat. One side starts to retreat, and suddenly the retreat turns into a route. Desperation is a bit like that. This ad wants to present strength, but really it only represent's Lugar's weakness.