What's the point?

With the New Year upon us, I wanted to step back for a moment to talk about what the point of this blog is, it's mission for lack of a better word.  I was trying to describe to a friend what the blog was about in the context of my best spots of the decade posts, and he got confused, "Wait, isn't your blog about political ads?" I started to protest, to explain, and then I thought, it is isn't it. I was having a conversation with a very talented young person, who has chosen to listen to my career advice, talking about political ads, and she wondered why can't political ads be the same quality as Madison avenue produced ads. That's kinda my point, why should political ads be treated like the poor relations to Madison Avenue's Wicked Step Sisters?  There's not reason except desire and effort that we can't raise the bar on political advertising, yes the budgets are lower,  the deadlines are tighter, and the campaigns more intense than general advertising, but those are mitigating factors not barriers to entry.

I selected a list of the best general ads of the decade for a couple of reasons, one practical, the other more big picture: Practically, it was hard to find and compile a list of my favorite political ads of the decade.  The ones I can remember weren't always available on youtube or in another place I could point you to.  Big picture, the ads I selected represent the kind of work I admire, the kind of work that inspires me, the kind of work that we should be creating in political media.  I point to general advertising for themes, techniques, styles that we can incorporate into political ad making.

The fact is most of political media these days is pretty bland.  I try to point to examples of work I admire in this realm as well as work I think represents the worst of it, the fact is there's just a lot less political media, and a lot less exemplary work to point to.

So to answer the question in the title of this post, what's the point: my mission here is to raise the art of political media and ad making.