Monday, February 18, 2008

More on TV ads...

Last week I talked to WCHL about how Bev Perdue was expanding her lead on Richard Moore in the places where they're both on tv. You can listen to the story here.

Meg Martin asked me why I thought Perdue's ads were more effective. I said that at this point early in the campaign one of your main goals has to be to get voters to like you. With the Presidential race drowning everything else out and the candidates for Governor not that well known, a key objective is to raise positive name recognition rather than necessarily lay out your whole platform this far before the election. Perdue's biographical ads seem to have done an effective job of showing her life story in a way that connects with viewers.

As I thought about it over the weekend, I think there might be something else at play too. Barack Obama is the political phenom of 2008. He's talking about change. But he's talking about change in a way that sounds positive rather than negative.

Richard Moore, particularly in his ad deriding boards and studies, is also talking about change. But his tone is a downer, and that might not be the right note to strike in the year of Obama.

When he comes back on the air it will be interesting to see if he shifts his tone to be more Obama-esque when projecting a message of change.

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