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Campaign Ad Round-up
In with the New Year and up with the new ads. As early-state voters start to get serious about primary season, candidates are flooding the airwaves with their pitches. First, a Cruz immigration ad:
Second, a Trump immigration ad:
Interestingly, Rubio’s SuperPAC is ignoring those two guys and focusing on Chris Christie:
https://youtu.be/SlUAShLzZEQ
https://youtu.be/zpm7w2r1ZCA
Finally, undercarder Rick Santorum decided to take a swing at the Iowa frontrunner:
What do you think, Ricochetti? Which ads work and which are duds?
Published in General
Good discussion about the Cruz ad going on in the member feed here.
I’m not normal (I worked in advertising for many years) but I continue to be amazed by how bad most political ads are. 25 years ago there was (somewhat) of an excuse for poor production quality because it was expensive, but not today. And even production value can be made up with an effective message. (note, it’s not rattling off talking points).
A high school friend recently ran for congress and she featured the same cliched scenes of talking in the park with parents, talking in the diner with seniors, laughing with firemen. Snore.
So, I tip my hat to Cruz for trying to convey an idea, and conveying it pretty well. I also give points to Santorum for effectively injecting a little humor. I’m disappointed by the Rubio ads (maybe my guy) in they seem like the same old montage of headlines we’ve seen for 30 years.
The Cruz ad is strong and rightly populist for these times. A Princeton, Harvard-educated conservative Texan is the east coast liberal’s worst nightmare, I can tell you. Though I could see many Wall Streeters warming up to him.
I watched these ads and my reaction is to want to weep over the Republican field. Not one candidate — not one! — who is the complete package. Unbelievable.
We’re either gonna need a lot of luck in that the Democrats irreparably damage themselves (possible), or we’re going to need divine intervention.
Of those presented here, I love the Cruz ad.It’s very effective and funny. In a sense, that might be a negative, because the real issue is national security, but in this field, it stands head and shoulders above the crowd.
The rest? Meh.
Donald saying he’s going to make Mexico pay for the wall and take ISIS’ oil? Is he running for President of the United States? Or is he running to be chief of some super-villain organization? It is not ISIS’ oil. It arguably belongs to the people of those countries. Is he that openly advocating the idea that “to the victor go the spoils?”
Rubio’s PAC? Meh. Chris who?
Santorum? The message is supposed to be, “This guy isn’t serious, I am.” What comes across is, “Cruz is more effective at getting the point across than I have ever been.” The Federal Government is a joke, and we need more Green Eggs and Ham served in the Senate.
Got any more?
Cruz is the best candidate in my opinion – I wish the Trump supporters would research his ideas and background –
Color me cynical about populist Cruz….plus I don’t think he is right. Whatever….he has already gone to full pander mode so I ain’t gonna stop him. :)
Yeah I tend to agree that Cruz’s ad is actually pretty good
Yes, but which answer answered the question in the post?
Scenario: One of the Republican candidates decides to ignore the others and starts going after Hillary. They show what she is going to do, how it would hurt and what they would do instead and how it will help.
By going after Hillary, s/he enforces the assumption that s/he is already the Presidential candidate and the others are also rans. It also moves the aim toward the end game. Defeat Hillary.
Would this work?
The second answer….first answer was just a gut reaction but as to which ad works it’s Cruz’s. It conveys a message and I think is well done. In my opinion it is better to make an ad about a policy than attacking another R candidate.
Who is the Cruz ad targeting? Probably whites with low skill levels. Whites whose highest completed education level was high school went for Romney at a 62% clip. I expect with large gains in that area, states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin come into play with Ohio squarely in the Republican camp.
What are the costs of the ad? A bit of a laugh at the expense of college educated professions, probably not too negative and maybe it will give them pause to reconsider their own immigration views, which are more open than that of their less educated counterparts.
What is the tenor of the ad? I find the ad overwrought, fanciful, and a little “poor me” maudlin. So, a perfect fit for the tone of the primary campaign so far and probably effective.
The Rubio ad is meant to counter Christie’s mini-push in New Hampshire. Its purpose is to help to remind people why they disqualified Christie in the first place and knock him back among establishment “also-rans.”
The Trump ad seems to be the same surface level bloviating that has made him popular already. Why change horses midstream? It should be bombast from here through the convention, if he lasts that long. It seems to me that the ad should be hypereffective for a slim fraction of the GOP base. Can he energize these people to actually vote?
Santorum’s ad is… odd. I suppose it hits Cruz where he’s weakest with the base on foreign policy, but it comes across as “Ted Cruz has a sense of humor, I don’t.” The ad could be the first returns of the rumored Santorum Huckabee alliance meant to weaken Cruz in Iowa.
Only one question matters, does it appeal to possible Democratic voters. I would think the Cruz add would because it introduces a thought that would not have occurred to a person who is a Democrat.
Cruz ad is well (and expensively) produced, smart issue choice (rather than a medley), effectively tied to a strong moment in the debate (at which he was not at his best); willing to use uncompromising language: “economic calamity”; weakest moment is camera-on-Ted close, which is really a baseline problem for Cruz. I look for Cruz to stop the coy act and move right on Trump on enforcing immigration law.
Trump’s ad is a cheaply produced rehash with no clear appeal beyond those who believe Mexico will fund his wall and Special Forces can abscond with ISIS oil in blackhawks. Leaves me wondering if Trump is willing to spend his own money on this race. Nothing entertaining or controversial aimed at free media leverage. Awful all around really.
Rubio’s ads are effective. If you were on the fence about this pugnacious, conservative-enough prosecutor you probably step back down and brush yourself off. The Dylan-like string of adjectives in the first ad are a bit much though. If you are an establishment donor, you think twice about Christie’s viability as a Rubio replacement. Christie can only bluster really. Every point made about his mediocre record in a corrupt, economically moribund state is true.
I think what helps the Cruz ad is that it makes immigration an issue about the pocketbook. That changes the discussion from “republicans hate brown people”.
I live in a swing state and I have spent the last 10 years listening to the rubio commercials non stop. Its the same effing commercial for every candidate for every office just about every year.
I want to punch him until he stops breathing based upon those commercials alone. But I wont because I am a nice guy. In a just and moral world, with a just and merciful god he would be struck down by lightening.
The rubio commercials make me question my faith.
But perhaps the hulu commercial free option will Rubio’s savior as it stays his well earned divine wrath.
The Cruz ad is excellent, especially the inclusion of the side-by-side shot with Mr. Gang of Eight. The message makes a telling point about those obnoxious, virtue-signaling “suits” who are OK with massive Third World immigration as long as it only affects the livelihoods of uncool blue-collar workers.
The next step for Ted, who is slowly winning me over, is to make a direct assault on the guest-worker and student visa illegals. They now make up the majority of our invaders. A wall is irrelevant to them.
If he goes after that bunch, plus the refuge/asylee scammers, he will sweep one state after another.
Stop All Immigration and Affirmative Action Now.
I voted for Rick Santorum in 1994, 2000 and 2006. So it’s sad to see him re-gurgitating the same attitudes and arguments from that last, losing 2006 Senate race against The Son of Bob Casey for the 2016 Iowa caucuses. It didn’t work then; it sure as hell ain’t going to work now.
“Patriot Voices” and Rick’s last book put the emphasis where his campaign should have stayed: on the abandoned Americans who live away from the coasts and our large cities. Those folks are his natural constituency and they need his voice fighting for them.
That he persists in wasting his time saber-rattling and “neo-conning” about the Middle East over the airwaves is a tragedy for him and for them.
The contempt our elite culture shows to the traditional American nation has lead to the Rust Belt. It has led to desolate counties in New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio and many other places that had once been thriving, but where now the best job a man can get is as a corrections officer in our prison industrial complex. The criminal abandonment of a people by their own leaders has promoted despair, disability, alcoholism and meth abuse in those people. And nobody gives a CoC.
Rick should forget about ISIS and jihad. They are not killing his people.
Hillary Clinton is.
Clap… Clap…. Clap…
The policy is terrible, but the Cruz ad is at least amusing.
Cruz’s ad is the best one. I don’t get why Rubio’s SuperPAC made those Christie ones at all.
Rubio needs to win one of the first 4 states to remain relevant. His campaign views Christie as the front runner in NH and that is his best chance of winning.
It has already been done:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/06/11/carly_fiorina_ad_slams_hillary_clinton_no_accomplishments_lots_of_travel.html
Yet Fiorina doesn’t seem to get much traction from this kind of thing, even though she continues to focus on Hillary. I think this might work better after the primary field is narrowed to maybe two or three candidates. Right now voters are more focused on who is the better Republican to support.
I like the way the ad communicates how the “elites” don’t care as much about immigration because their jobs aren’t threatened by it. I don’t agree with the basic premise of the scourge of immigration but I like the ad. :)