Obamamercial hit 'right tones': ad expert: The Swamp

Posted October 30, 2008 2:58 PM

by Frank James

Barbara Lippert, long-time columnist for Adweek, had some doubts before Sen. Barack Obama's infomercial last night but on balance liked what she saw.

Full disclosure: I'm an Obama voter, but going in I had my doubts about the wisdom of running a 30-minute Obamamercial. Sure it was a macho move to buy up all that media time (estimated cost: $3.5-4 million) and roadblock the 8 p.m. hour on CBS, NBC, Fox, Univision and various cable networks.

But it also could come off as manipulative and wasteful, like a steel-tanked political machine rolling over America's living rooms...

...I had some cavils -- I could have done without the Google guy and Governor Richardson, along with the very iffy Deval Patrick and other politicians. (Message to Gov. Richardson -- lay off the Just for Men a bit!) And having him speak from the wooded version of the Oval Office was a bit heavy-handed.

But the genius of the O-mercial was that it was able to tap into a contemporary feeling that's very difficult to convey: Morning-After-the-Morning-Again-in-America. That's a tough place to be without making it depressing, but the 30-minute docu-reality-talk show fluidly covered all the bases (especially in the battle ground states) and hit just the right tones.

What was most impressive was how seamlessly and commandingly the presidential contender communicated, without shouting or deriding his opponents. (He never once mentioned them by name, and even when talking about the past eight years in the opening, "We've seen over the last eight years how decisions by a president can have a profound effect on the course of history and on American lives," he even gave Bush an out, sort of, adding: "Much that's wrong with our country goes back even farther than that."