| So, Patrick's ads are now up and running. They're not bad, but I found myself hoping for a little more bite. His 90-second convention video clip was just about perfect, drawing heavily from his Faneuil Hall rally, which may well have been his best event. The new ad seems like a pared-down version of that, but I think it tries to accomplish too much at once -- sort of a "bio" + "everyday folks" all wrapped up in one. In a sense, it suffers from the same over-ambition as the new Kerry Healey ad -- but thankfully without the defensiveness and rationalization. With the too-quick cuts and the cluttered imagery, the admakers get in the way of the candidate here.
Now, many folks here have already seen the Faneuil Hall footage -- or were there -- so that's not news to us, but it may seem intriguing to folks who don't know the candidate. But frankly, I'd rather hear 30 seconds of him talking -- uninterrupted.
The second ad, featuring Patrick in a classroom, is actually a bit better. I don't know how much time he's actually spent arguing cases in a courtroom, but he reminds one of a lawyer making a case to a jury -- not in an overtly manipulative way, but seeming to appeal to one's good sense. However, Gabrieli's been in that classroom for a couple of weeks, so this may well come across as a bit of a "me too" moment -- the atmosphere of it seems a bit staid and contrived.
In the end, the ads really don't do justice to the candidate. (And by the way, having talked to Gabrieli at length, his ads don't represent him well either. In person, he projects a certain wonky vigor and dynamism -- so why does he talk so slowly in his ads? Let the man out of the straightjacket already, huh?) Image-makers -- photographers, media consultants, even audio engineers in my experience -- tend to be control freaks, type-A, detail-oriented personalities. And you need that in a campaign.
But sometimes you need to just set the candidate free a little bit, to let the power of his or her personality express itself unmediated. A politician may have more or less charisma or polish, but usually there's some reason why people respond to him or her to begin with. It ought to be a consultant's job to find that, channel it, magnify it, and otherwise get out of the way. |
