Michael Karnjanaprakorn

I just saw a post on Kevin Rothermel’s blog about politics and ads. Ryanmade one a couple of weeks ago.

“So I wonder in the end if the differences in elections are made not by changing voter’s opinions about parties and candidates, but by which side is able to convince more of their nonvoting party sympathizers to actually get out to the polls.”

Very good point that led me to think about the state of politics in the U.S. While in the UK, my only exposure to politics are cnn.com and The Daily Show which is one of the few shows we get over here. It got me to thinking and thanks to Kevin’s post for reminding me to post this.

One, why are political ads so bad? I wonder if they hire agencies or departments to work on these things? You want to talk about conventions in a category?

Don’t all ads look like this? Candidate A supports this topic and Candidate B opposes said topic. Candidate B runs an ad about Candidate A and bashes him. Candidate A retaliates and bashes Candidate B back. Doesn’t this kind of remind you of high school? This is so juvenile; it’s not even funny.

While in undergrad, I remember reading something about politics and how each side promises to do this and that but while in office, everything that gets executed is right down the middle to cater to both sides. Has anyone heard about anything like this?

Two, if I were consulting a candidate on his marketing campaign for his (or her) election, I would probably approach it like any other marketing problem by looking at his “brand” and looking at his “target market.” I really hate using those two words, especially in the same sentence. But, the main “problem” or “challenge” is that people just do not vote.

In 2004, George Dubya racked in close to 62 million votes under his belt. The last American Idol racked in 63.4 million votes for Taylor Hicks. Let me repeat that last sentence.

THE LAST AMERICAN IDOL RACKED IN 63.4 MILLION VOTES FOR TAYLOR HICKS.

People aren’t lazy, as you can see, they actually do vote. Yes, texting is a lot easier than heading out to a poll but is this where I put in a cool chart to show that there is a huge opportunity to reach a new market? Wouldn’t that be a cool “strategy?” I’ve always thought that the electoral college was to blame for the low voter turnout. Now, I am not really into politics but living in Virginia, I knew my vote was wasted when I voted for John Kerry because I live in a “Red” state. I almost didn’t vote for that very reason.

I think this entry will ruffle some feathers but does anyone want to start an agency creating political advertising? Uhhh, actually that sounds really boring. Nevermind.

To change the subject to a funny one, here’s the video clip of the day. Honest fact, I almost went into banking and I thank God everyday that I don’t have to sit through presentations like this. This is entitled “One Bank” by the wonderful people at Bank of America. While watching, you will ask yourself if this is actually real, and yes, it is real and they are dead serious.