Quick favor (watch my fake ads)

[blueyedbaby]

As a group project for a class on American political media we had to make a series of mock campaign ads for one of the candidates in the Presidential race. My group was assigned to Ralph Nader, and two of the videos we made are on Youtube

Comments

Constructive Criticism?

[regorfa]

I liked the first ad a lot. If it were me, I would have maybe chosen a picture of Ralph that was perhaps more upbeat and changed the music once the narrator starts talking about "Ralph Nader understands..." The narrator talks about Ralph the same way she talks about Washington insiders. There needs to be an a/v cue that Nader is different in addition to the words spoken.

[cos]

I think the first ad is higher quality, but I also think it's off the mark a bit. It plays up fear in a big way, with the images and the music as well as the words, and fear inspires people to more simplistic reactions in favor of candidates with "tought, strong protector" type images, which Nader doesn't have. I don't think it's an ad that would get people to vote for him.

[blueyedbaby]

Normally I would think that too, but in the last few weeks our professor's been pushing a lot of essays on us about how challengers go negative about 65% of the time and it's often beneficial for them. Our group didn't want to do an attack ad since it's really not in Nader's style, but since Nader understands that he's definitely not in this race to win it, the ad holds the frontrunners' feet to the fire a little more than a standard pro-Nader ad would.

[cos]

I think that's right. A challenger needs to establish why the "incumbent" (in this case, the major party candidates) isn't worthy of the office, before any claims that he/she (the challenger) is worthy will matter. Sometimes an incumbent is damaged enough through their own doings, or current events, and the challenger can focus on defining him/herself, but that's clearly not the case here; voters in general view the major party candidates as acceptable. Nader would need to criticise them directly in his ads.

However, I don't think a heavily fear-based tone & form for the "negative" ad is one that helps him.

On the other hand... since he's not in it to win, it doesn't matter if the ad helps him, does it? It only matters if it hurts the other candidates. In which case this does do the job.

... and yet on the other hand... Nader thinks he can/should win, I think, having met the guy and discussed this with him. I'm not sure what that means for this context :)