Perdue's new ad

Bev Perdue has a new ad out, and I don't think it's very good.

It starts out with a clip of Richard Moore saying 'I want to be held accountable,' then lists some ostensibly bad things he has done, then wraps back up with the 'I want to be held accountable' clip. I'm not really sure what the point of using that clip in the ad is. Is it saying that the voters should hold Moore accountable by not giving him their votes for Governor? I'm not sure and if I'm not, I wonder what folks outside the bubble who aren't really following the race make of it. Running that clip twice takes up over a quarter of the precious time in a 30 second ad and doesn't accomplish much.

The main issue though is that the ad takes too long to really get to the point. It runs the clip, lists three bad things, runs the clip again, and then says at the very end 'Moore is for Wall Street, not for us.' That's the point of this ad but it doesn't get there until the very end. It would be more effective to start the ad with something along the lines of 'Richard Moore wants you to think he's a man of the people. But the only people he's been helping as state Treasurer are rich guys on Wall Street. And he's been doing it at the expense of normal North Carolinians.' I'm not an ad guy and that's too wordy but that's the gist of how the ad should start, then list the examples, then finish with the same punch line. They need to do a better job of drawing people in with the core message from the very beginning of the ad.

Just my two cents. Moore's last couple ads have been very good, and I think the Wall Street issue is a good one for Perdue to counter with but it isn't packaged effectively here.