Advertising Fails

“I would wash his mouth out with soap.” Have you heard this anywhere lately? You probably have if you turned your television on at anytime during the day or night in the past two weeks. I saw this ad run three times in a row recently while watching the local news. Most campaign attack ads are terribly annoying. They tell us nothing we can trust and assume we are all emotional idiots. Its hard to tell one ad from the other. The only real distinction is at the end where we see the picture of the candidates approving of the message.
The end of Heath Shuler's ads are particularly odd. We see his face glowing from a fill flash as if exalted. He’s looking heroic and visionary with his eyes to the horizon. How very American he must be, just look at how his face glows. I almost forget that he has no real experience in government or public service but who cares.
As for Charles Taylor he takes a different approach in ending his commercials. He sits in his blue business suit with the American flag and capitol building behind him. How long has he been sitting there? You can see the 8 terms of influence and connections he has made in his worn out posture and rumpled cloths. He looks like the great uncle we never see because he’s working all the time. I’m almost made to forget his ties to Jack Abramoff and his political maneuverings that helped make him the largest land owner in North Carolina, but who cares, just look at how professional that photo is.
With the exception of those endings the details of the ads just blur together. They both use black backgrounds with red and white text to make key points. When talking about their opponent they use the ugliest photographs they can find and then stamp something nasty over their forehead. After seeing these ads 800 times or more it all becomes a din of political noise that we all wish would go way. Each commercial puts November seventh a little further off into the distance. “I’m Charles Taylor/ Heath Shuler and I approved this message.” Did you really? Do you really want to take credit for driving the people of North Carolina crazy with these grating and repetitive ads?
Years ago there was an ad campaign for a brand of coffee. The spokes person would drink brand A and say “This coffee is bitter.” Then they would drink from brand B and say “but this coffee is good.” The message the consumer received was that coffee in general tasted bitter and coffee sales declined across the board. The lesson is that negative ads, no matter what they are selling, only convey negativity.
This brings me back to the retired woman with the soap ready for Heath Shuler. Not only is this constantly repeated scolding voice like nails on a chalk board it is completely inaccurate in it’s claim. According to her the Shuler ads say that Taylor voted to “cut social security.” It is this supposed lie that is soap worthy. The problem is that the Shuler ad claims that Taylor voted to raid the Social Security trust fund, not cut the program. That old woman at the picnic table has suddenly become the poster child for everything that is wrong with political commercials. She talks to us like we’re idiots, giving us misleading information and then tries to appeal to our gut emotions to get us to the polls. Who ever approved that message needs to get out of the advertising game because it’s only souring us all on the product they’re selling.