Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
There was one campaign that I worked on in 2009. It was for a state delegate race in
Virginia. And we were running against an incumbent who people thought they knew and they thought
they knew his record. And I actually went out there one day and I started Googling the
guy and I found all this stuff about him, about how he was on the wrong side of the
issues for the people that he represented. He was much more conservative than his sort
of swing district was. So I came up with a concept for an ad where it said, you know,
“You think you know this candidate. Search for yourself.” And then the ad showed a
woman Googling his name and Googling him on these different issues and all these results
came up. And it was sort of-- I was excited about it because it was the evolution of how
we demonstrate facts in ads. Viewers are very-- to them credibility matters so much. I mean
you can’t make a wild claim about somebody. So in the past we would maybe show a newspaper
headline. You know, here you go, it’s in black and white. Then we’d show footnotes.
Now we’re just opening the door to them. You know? We’re not giving you this selected
information, we’re saying search for yourself. Go on Google or any other search engine and
research it yourself. Now even if they don’t do that, it doesn’t matter, but at least
let’s them know that we’re confident enough about our information and the information
that we’re proving is credible, that we’re inviting them to go out there and research
this for themselves.