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Hi 
It’s your friendly political friend here with a brief & hopefully pleasant public service announcement as we get into political ad season. There are lots of ads running at the presidential level right now that are tweeted & retweeted here on the Twitters.
It’s your friendly political friend here with a brief & hopefully pleasant public service announcement as we get into political ad season. There are lots of ads running at the presidential level right now that are tweeted & retweeted here on the Twitters.
Truly this is every campaign manager (and former campaign manager’s) favorite time of the year. The time when EVERYONE becomes a political media consultant. We love it. (This is sarcasm font.)
But I implore you, before you share an ad you like (which is totally ok - I love to see what the group of people on this website find cool) with a comment like “why isn’t this running everywhere???!!!” & “why haven’t Dems made ads like these before??!!” stop & take a deep breath.
Political ads are hard. What people here might LOVE is not always what persuades normal people (let me be the 8 millionth person to say Twitter is not normal.) Most of the time the message you need to convey is really really boring - but boring is often what voters care about.
Good political ad makers & managers are operatives who put aside what personally appeals to them or the Twitterverse & go with the message that moves voters. Frankly I think too many young operatives think too much about an ad going viral as opposed to what votes it captures.
That’s not to say that we don’t need newer & more creative ads for TV & digital that grab people’s attention & look different. We do. Voters get A LOT of advertising shoved at them now & political ads need to stick out in ways our business has been resistant to in the past.
But while YOU may think that fancy new anti-Trump ad is so hard hitting & cathartic (“OMG THIS AD!”) - the voter you need to persuade might find it offensive or off putting or just dumb. You need to poll (GASP yes polling) & you need to test.
You need to remember that if you’re tweeting about political ads, well then you almost certainly already know who you are voting for in November. In other words, you’re the exact opposite of a persuadable voter & so the fact that that ad really lights your jam means bupkis. 
Ads are a tool. You don’t pick the one that looks the prettiest. You pick the one that gets the job done. Doesn’t mean you can’t love that new ad from that new Super PAC that you just heard of. Love away! But be clear eyed about what gets the job done.
(And before you give money to that group to run that ad in a battleground state - make sure they know it will work.)
Thank you for coming to tonight’s Ted Talk.
Thank you for coming to tonight’s Ted Talk.
