Ever Wonder Why Political Ads Suck?

AdWeek recently gave the spec assignment of selling the presidencies of Barack Obama and/or John McCain to several ad agency creative directors. About half of the CDs, not wanting to risk pissing off (probably right-leaning) clients, refused to participate, Many of the ad hacks who did hatch ideas didn’t take the assignment seriously and created jokey, first-year ad student-like negative ads. Yesterday, AdWeek published the results. For some reason, the two executions above are only available in the print edition. They were created by The Kaplan Thaler Group, an agency not exactly top-of-mind when it comes to creativity. CD Tom Amico described them as “the ultimate negative ad(s) reduced to an indelible visual that conjures up each candidate’s vulnerability…but make you don a real un-Cindy McCain-liked toothy grin.” The agency also made “Nobama” and “McCain’t” bumper stickers. Let us hope that the voters take this election a tad more seriously.