Peter Mills has a new ad. It is just as vacant and without red meat as all the other ones we have seen previously. As such, it will melt into the white noise background of political advertising with the rest of the uninspired ads we have seen so far, never to make an impact or be remembered again.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I definitely like the concept of it – a ticking clock as a metaphor – but much like all the other ads we have seen so far, it sets up with a good idea, and then completely fails to deliver.
Here it is:
As I said, my frustration level with the GOP field has reached a point where my niceness is gone. Apologies to all of the candidates for that, but it has been more than a year now. Speaking of things it is “time for” – quality ideas and innovative advertising is certainly at the top of the checklist.
Why does ANYONE think this kind of advertising works? Pardon my sarcasm, but how does this argument play out when scripting ads like this? What do they expect the viewer to say once they see it? “Oh, well Senator Mills, since you think it is time to move education forward (whatever that means) and let businesses grow, I’m sold. Sign me up!” What do they think this ad offers a voter that they are not already hearing from six other candidates, and will hear continuously from all seven for the next two months? What would make me view this ad and say to myself, “wow, this Peter Mills fellow really seems interesting – like a serious candidate. I want to go learn more about him!” Nothing, of course.
Mills didn’t even bring you down a logical path. He identified several things that it was “time for”, yet never once in his ad looked at the camera and said, “…and I am the candidate who can bring the solutions that will make these goals a reality.” Rather, we were treated to an ending of “…it is time for Peter Mills.”
In fairness, I did like the ticking clock and it was a much more creative idea than much of what we have seen previously. But still, why when there are going to be 6 other candidates who say essentially the exact same thing, is anyone even wasting the money on these ads? They certainly don’t distinguish one candidate from another. They may marginally raise name ID I suppose, but that is about it. Airing “priority” ads won’t really move you to the front of the line in a primary like this, since essentially every single Republican shares the same priorities.
Now, I’ve gotten a lot of push back on my earlier criticisms of the Republican field’s advertising efforts so far. The complains go something like this:
“Well you can’t expect them to come up with any kind of policy proposal in 30 seconds.”
“They can’t give you their ideas now, because everyone else would just jump all over those ideas and attack them.”
“What you are missing is that they are working really hard on the ground, and talk about policy a lot more on the stump.”
All of this is utter nonsense, of course.
30 seconds is plenty of time to at the very least communicate that you actually have ideas, even if they are just simple ones.
If they can’t give some kind of general solution now, when exactly can they? What in the living hell am I basing my vote off – the identification of problems? Is this the kind of bankrupt, brain dead brand of conservatism that we plan to practice into the future – one that says “that is broken” and then fades to black?
And please, for anyone who wants to point me in the direction of stump speeches or “on the ground” action, I hope that you realize that what you see on the stump and in debates is no more substantive (did Abbott say anything here other than he’s pissed off? Any proposed fix? Any ideas? This is what a lot of people seem to think is “substance” these days) than anything I have seen in the ads. People who have bought into campaigns see a lot of substance where not a lot of substance has yet existed.
You should also understand that most people who will be voting in this primary will fall into one of three categories:
- Will have never met the candidate, and will be basing their vote on what they hear from their friends and family
- Will have never met the candidate, and will be basing their vote on what they see on ads
- Will have probably met multiple candidates – if not all of them – and gotten very similar pitches all around
In short, you can tell me all you want about how full of substance a candidate is when he is out there meeting people – but the reality is that most people will be making their voting decision based on other factors, and with due respect, as substantive as you may think the candidate is being, they likely are being just as general as they are in these ads 95% of the time, and the other candidates sound awfully similar.
Am I saying you never get any ideas from any of these candidates anywhere? No.
I’m saying that most people will not be voting based on personally digesting policy with them on the stump – both because most voters will not even meet the candidates, and because those who do will be inundated with 6 others at the same time. With a smaller field, that personal contact and a John McCain in New Hampshire in 2000 style “straight talk” with the average voter campaign on the ground would be a game changer, but with seven candidates it will not and media will play a much more important role as voters try to sort it all out in their heads.
So that brings us back to ads. I will repeat myself here – we are going to need a little something more from you here guys, if you want our votes.
Mills is certainly not the only culprit. As many Poliquin supporters who felt I “singled out” their guy yelped about last week, I hit Bruce on equally vapid and substanceless ads last week. But he is hardly alone. I’ve already gone into great length on Otten’s weak ads, and then there is Steve Abbott.
Almost immediately after I made that criticism, I saw the release of this gem from the Abbott campaign:
A personal appeal from a credible source that Steve Abbott likes to hunt and fish, and that he has gone out with Steve into the wilderness a number of times. Oh, by the way, he loves the outdoors. Did I mention he likes to hunt?
Thank God this was just a web ad and didn’t go up on TV.
Now, I have to couch this, because I know exactly what he is doing. This is actually tactically/strategically brilliant – he is cutting a biography ad that quickly identifies “Steve Abbott” with salt of the earth working class stiffs in the second district who love to hunt and fish. He wants those people to identify with his campaign, so the ad focuses on a “he is one of us” type of commentary, and has lots of shots of Steve holding dead Turkeys and the like to drive that point home. In a race when no one else really seems to be positioning themselves like that, and an electorate who practices high volume identity politics, I have no doubt it was a smart ad to cut.
But, my gripe here is that this is what the Abbott campaign is exclusively focusing on. In other words, my problem isn’t with this ad – rather my problem is that this type of ad is all he is doing with his media appeals. It may be tactically smart, but the fact that this is all he is doing makes the entire effort bereft of any kind of center or soul that would actually inspire me to crawl over rusty razor blades and broken glass to support his campaign.
The only ads – television and web – that he has made thus far have been biography style “get to know Steve” videos that have told us that he was good at football, loves Maine, and enjoys the outdoors. Any notion that he would be positioning himself as “the ideas candidate” is apparently of little interest to the campaign – which is a shame since I happen to think Abbott likely has a hell of a lot of them, most of which are probably good.
I need more from you Steve Abbott.
You are creating 1/2 of a credible campaign for Governor right now – you are identifying yourself with a lifestyle and a set of values that aligns with me – great job. But if you want to turn that double into a grand slam, I need to hear what your ideas are and what you want to do.
Right now Abbott appears to be avoiding any kind of risky, substantive discussions on policy and focusing (like everyone else) on simply identifying complaints and problems that he would like to see fixed. This is of course designed to make him an open canvas that we can all project our own ideas on, and make him as inoffensive as possible to everyone, thus hopefully maximizing his personal appeal. But by doing so, he is also building an unfortunate narrative that he is the “I played football in High School” candidate, and not the “I have serious ideas to fix this state” candidate.
It may be risky to “talk straight” and potentially isolate yourself from certain segments of the voting public by being specific and talking about hard decisions, and concrete ideas that the others aren’t talking about. The crazy thing is that this almost always ends up as a huge win for the candidate who takes this supposed “risk”, because it earns them a great deal of credibility and respect, even from people who don’t necessarily agree with all the ideas.
But right now, I would settle for just about anything other than blank platitudes about vague goals and commonly shared priorities. I like every (virtually) single one of these candidates on a personal level – and frankly so do most voters – so to really break out from the pack, I need to believe that you aren’t just going to repeat the same catch phrases and hollow rhetoric that candidates have been using for decades. I need some kind of “there, there”.
This is all mind-numbingly transparent, and virtually everyone viewing your ads (this is said to every single one of you who have bought them so far) is sitting there asking themselves, “yeah, but how?” after they see it. In other words, they are skeptics, and shake their heads and move on because you haven’t told them anything. You are wasting your money on state wide TV ads if you do not take this point seriously.
I know it is difficult to fly in the face of conventional wisdom, and doing the safe, conservative approach on campaign ads is very alluring. But, I’m not asking for a manifesto or for you to boil down your solutions to one 30 second ad – I’m asking for you to realize you are all in a seven way dogfight, and that we need to see something different from the campaign to distinguish you from the crowd. Something creative, but more than anything else, something that satisfies our desire to be talked to like adults and to be told something worth being told.
Nobody has done that yet. Everyone is playing it safe. I can say without question that the first person who is able to build a narrative around themselves that evokes “leader”, “problem solver”, “ideas candidate”, “creative”, “innovative” and “interesting” by actually giving us some kind of substance that we can respect, will enjoy an enormous advantage in the election.
People notice and are attracted to candidates that don’t play it safe. Taking a risk may in fact be the “safest” political strategy out there. Show me something guys, I beg of you.
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