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Good Question: How Are Political Ads Made Quickly?

(WCCO) Three hours after Barack Obama's campaign sent a text message announcing Joe Biden as his running mate, John McCain's campaign released an ad in response. How and why are the campaigns getting ads produced so quickly?

"With stock footage, cheap voiceover and digital editing, they can have it done in a couple hours," said Blois Olson, executive vice president of Tunheim Partners and a longtime political strategist.

According to Olson, things have changed from the days when campaigns sent commercials dubbed onto beta tapes via FedEx overnight delivery.

"I'm guessing the Republicans got ready for a couple different folks, and got them ready into ads," said Olson.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reported that McCain's team spent the past week tracking possible picks for the vice president slot, preparing ads in advance. On Saturday morning, when the Obama campaign sent its text message, the McCain camp sent its ad to CNN to be played as a news item.

It didn't cost McCain's campaign anything more than the minimal costs to produce the ad.

"One of the cable networks has 20 hours of convention coverage a day. They need something to talk about right now. [The ads] are something to talk about," said Olson.

Barack Obama's campaign has also been responding quickly to events in the news cycle. Last Wednesday, in an interview with Politico.com, McCain appeared to struggle to answer a question about the number of homes he owned.

"I think -- I'll have my staff get to you," he told the reporter.

By Thursday morning, Obama's campaign released an ad going after McCain. When it came to the number of houses, the ad said, "McCain lost track, he couldn't remember. Well, it's seven. Seven houses."

"I wouldn't be surprised if Obama didn't know that story was coming in. That they had seeded the question in a few places," said Olson.

Politico.com reported that the Obama campaign not only reacted to McCain's lack of answer, but indeed the campaign did try to push the story that McCain was rich and out of touch with the average voter.

Olson said that this is just another magnification of political campaigning that started with Bill Clinton's campaign against George H.W. Bush.

"Think back to 1992 when we had the rapid response system in campaigns. Now that's gone from media relations to paid media. And it's just part of the tools of the trade now," he said.

The best thing for candidates, according to Olson is that the ads are cheap to produce, free to put on YouTube and then reporters re-air them.

"Especially with the fun and creativity you can have in an ad, you're able to turn a phrase, send it to a micro-market, if it's funny enough its gonna get played and replayed," he added.

 

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