New McCain Ad First to Draw Contrast

The McCain campaign released a new spot titled, “Troop Funding“.  Ken Wheaton of AdAge stated that it’s “the first ad of the general election in which Team McCain attacks Barack Obama by name.”  I would also comment that it’s the first spot that attempts to use the Obama “Change” theme against him.  

In terms of production, I like this spot better than other recent ads produced by McCain.  Showing Obama in stills appears to be an effective way to visually illustrate him in a way that makes him look less smooth and less charismatic without making him appear overtly negative.  However, I don’t believe the same is true for the positive portion of the spot highlighting McCain.  While McCain often exhibits less fluid motion, almost surely a result of his war injuries, showing him only in stills (photographs) keeps his image just as cold and distant as Obama’s in the spot.  I think the better tactic for this spot, would have been to contrast the cardboard Obama imagery with warm and softer McCain footage.

This entry was posted by Brian Donahue on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 8:23 am and is filed under Discussions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.