The best ad of the US election? Yet most of the country didn't see this Obama 'Oscar winner'
With advertising for the US election expected to top $1 billion this week - and consumers keeling over from watching competing commercials, one after the other, on television - you might have expected one national commercial to have roared ahead of the rest.
But in fact the 60-second commercial that has topped a survey by Ace Metrix for advertising effectiveness - and been deemed this election’s top ad - has reached only a select audiences.
Entitled Stage, it has been shown only in Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, and a few other states. Consider yourself one if the privileged few , viewing it here on the Drum website.
The Boston Globe said yesterday that in the view of advertising analysts "If there were an Oscar for political commercials, , the anti-Romney ad featuring a worker laid off by Bain Capital would be a serious contender."
In the spot, a worker from Indiana, Mike Earnest, narrates how he was asked to build a stage at his paper plant. The stage was for Bain Capital executives visiting the factory, to announce it was closing.
“It was like building my own coffin,” he said.
The ad was produced by Priorities USA, a super PAC backing Obama.
“ ‘Stage’ was a devastatingly effective ad,” said Jonathan Symonds of Ace Metrix, which also rates ads for carmakers, retailers, and internet companies and bases its scores on panels of at least 500 viewers.
Political ads generally receive low marks,but “Stage” was an exception. “It is a very good ad, by any estimation,” he said.
The never-ending barrage of commercials has made made swing-state viewers irate, football games unwatchable, and political consultants wealthy, says the Globe.
Several anti-Obama ads made Ace Metrix’s top 10, including “Missing Workers,” by Let Freedom Ring, a super PAC that opposes Obama.
Still, it’s the coffin ad, “Stage,” says the Globe, that seems most likely to join "pantheon" company that includes Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” ads in 1984 . Just to remind you, here's tone of he famous Morning in America ads that helped Reagan back into the White House.