Okay, so on September 11 (no, not that September 11), Barack Obama started airing this two-minute ad, “Plan for Change,” in which he speaks directly to the camera about his economic plan. He’s sitting in a well-lit living room. The entire commercial is shot in one take, and he closes by encouraging people to check out his website:
About a week ago, Obama followed up with this one-minute ad, “A Stronger Economy.” Again, same idea: one take, slow zoom, brightly-lit room, talking directly to the viewer, plug for details on website:
Apparently, John McCain saw these ads and thought, “well, I can do that!” So here’s his response ad, released yesterday: “Week.” (Yes, “Week.”)
See, it’s exactly the same, except for the fact that they completely screwed up every single element that made the Obama ads unique.
Instead of a brightly-lit living room, McCain appears to be addressing us from some dungeon below his Arizona mansion, in the middle of the night. Instead of two minutes, the ad is a standard 30 seconds, but even so, he needs three jarring cuts to make it through the whole thing. Instead of encouraging people to read the specifics of his policy proposals on his website, the whole ad consists of vague generalities. And that soundtrack! Did somebody tap that out in a freeware MIDI program? Are they afraid people won’t understand the guy’s running for president if they don’t hear fake timpani and strings and see his face floating in front of a giant flag?
Sorry, McCain campaign. I was only 99.999% likely to vote for Obama before I saw this ad; now it’s more like 99.9995%.
You just lost yourself 0.0005% of a vote in a non-swing state. Think about that next time you consider producing media with inferior production values.
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