Here’s Andrea Silbert’s first TV ad:
There’s a second one that’s almost (but not quite) identical to this one. They’re both posted at her website.
My quick take: does a good job of staking out one important piece of terrain – jobs (surprise!!) – though it basically ignores everything else (tag line: “the jobs candidate”). Risky? Maybe – it comes across to me as an ad for a one-issue campaign. (Yes, I know, it pays for everything else, so it’s not really one issue. That’s a subtle argument that’s tough to get across in 30 seconds. Put yourself in the mind of someone who hasn’t followed these campaigns for the last twelve months.) But it could well stick in the minds of people who care about jobs – and there are lots of those people. Call it a high risk, high reward strategy. A smart move for someone who lacks overwhelming personal resources (Goldberg) and a built-in political base (Murray). Also, on a personal level, Silbert comes across well – serious and (fairly) intense, but with none of the (for lack of a better word) aggressiveness that has worried some observers.
Finally, the ad makes no mention of her personal story (street kids in Brazil, etc.), in favor of focusing exclusively on her one big issue. This is probably a good choice. Thirty seconds isn’t much time, and a lot of the people who will back her based on that stuff already are in her corner.
Murray’s ads will supposedly be available later today – we’ll post them when we see them.
Frightening.
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I watched the other version on the website and like it better. It closes with two kids (hers I assume) holding a Silbert sign and fighting their way through the disclaimer. I found myself rooting for the kids to make their way through the line. Might be a bit off message, but adds a memorable dimension to the ad.
A little vanilla … But yeah, it’s a lot more modulated and cuddly than the convention appearance. Focused like a laser. Clear identity. Not bad.
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(Argggh, we need a in-house committee of Democratic composers to write actually decent music for commercials — even if it’s just a bed for the voice track. The music adds nothing — “hanging out in a department store elevator with Andrea.” On the other hand, Murray better keep as far away from The Wiz as possible.)
Silbert is wise to stick to a single message in her ad. The worst mistake a candidate can make is to try to say too much in an ad: the spot turns to mush and leaves a generally bad impression. Around 10,000 new jobs sounds good to me. Goldberg has offered somewhere between three and 28 Brookline firefighters, many apparently hired as replacements for attrition, according to a Boston firefighter posing as a Brookline firefighter. What will Murray run on?
I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard on BMG before…
Not that you’d expect anything else from me, but this appears to be a solid ad. Gets the point across, has a possibly memorable tag line, and doesn’t get muddled in too much. This is meant to make voters remember her, not to make them love her. It’s all about the name they remember when they arrive a the polling place having not thought about the LG’s race one bit.
I don’t think your analysis makes a lot of sense. Trying to stuff a collection of issues into a 30 second ad would be high risk, low reward. Nobody with any eptness at politics does that, for a simple reason: most people who see such an ad won’t remember what it was about, unless it had a clear theme tying everything together. A 30 second ad is supposed to make one strong point, memoraby. That point should help define the candidate, and promote the candidate’s message. Silbert’s ad does the job. I won’t say it’s outstanding, but that has nothing to do with it seeming “single-issue”.
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People who see this ad will likely remember that Andrea Silbert emphasizes job creation and possibly that she has created jobs. If they were paying attention and have the election on their mind, they may also remember that she has other things she wants to do and says job creation is the way to pay for them. Whether they do or not, her message is strong, clear, and contrastive. Good message, solid ad.
you have a remarkable ability to add an unnecessary personal dig in just about every comment you write. It’s a bad habit that, IMHO, you should try to shake. The substance of your commentary tends to be quite good; the tone, not so much.
Sorry about that… umm, what was the personal dig in this comment? I honestly don’t see it.
“I don’t think your analysis makes a lot of sense.”
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Gratuitous. The rest of the comment was fine – though, oddly, it agreed with much of what I said in the post. But to lead off with something that’s not really that far from “you’re kinda stupid” doesn’t help get the discussion off to a good start.
I wouldn’t occur to me to conflate a criticism of someone’s analysis with a personal criticism of them. I read your analysis and I thought it didn’t make sense because it evaluated the ad the wrong terms. That’s not personal, though.
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I wonder if this means I’ve made a lot of comments that to my mind are about the issue being discussed, but to you seem personal.
from your comments in the various back-and-forths that you’ve gotten into here (mostly with folks other than me) that you often seem surprised and even annoyed by people’s strong reactions to your questioning of points that they’ve made. “Why can’t you just stick to the issue,” your responses seem to say. IMHO, it’s because the way you phrase your criticisms tends to verge on the personal. For anyone who spends a lot of time on email, IM, and other media that don’t do a good job of conveying tone (and I’d guess that you are such a person given your techie background), it’s doubly important to word things carefully. It’s very easy to mis-convey tone in these media (I’ve done it myself lots of times). You may think you’re just being forthright and plain-spoken. Problem is, it doesn’t always read that way.
which is not exactly front and center for most people, a media buy needs to cut through the clutter (like Silbert’s ad does).
but I really like the ads (not a big surprise for this Silbert supporter) I like the use of the blue coloring to highlight certain words like “DEMOCRAT” Yay, nice touch.
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I think women in particular will really respond to this ad. Andrea looks great, comes off very capable, has an impressive record and her kids are beyond cute.
Its a good ad, I still think saying Jobs over and over again will make her sound like a broken record and hurt her, it especially hurt her in the few debates Ive seen where people like Murray and Goldberg were able to tackle multiple issues at once, she and Kelly (shows you how old the debate was) were one issue candidates and seemed weaker in comparison. Now thats its a three person race her focus on jobs could hurt her, also the logic that jobs will pay for everything else makes no sense at all, FDR created more jobs than any other President and it still didnt turn the economy around or make everything suddenly better. Granted on a statewide level we are far from a recession let alone a depression, and granted our unemployment is a little higher than it should be, the idea that jobs will beget economic growth has been proven wrong, history has proven Keynes wrong, it will prove Andrea wrong as well.
I don’t think a comparison to FDR is fair because most of the jobs FDR created were through the public sphere – huge projects all around the country. Since the government was paying all the salaries, the payroll taxes we were getting couldn’t really offset the costs.
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Jobs in the private sector, which seems to where Silbert is going, wouldn’t run into that problem and in fact would gain Massachusetts a lot of revenue. If 10,000 jobs are created at an average salary of $40,000, Massachusetts would gain more than a billion in revenue. (That pays for a lot and with job creation even higher than that, you could even start talking tax cuts LOL).
I didn’t mean billions, I meant hundreds of millions.