Humor.
Humor takes the sting out of…well…the sting. And while political and advocacy ads were once heralded for taking down opponents with a chainsaw, sometimes humor can be more powerful and moving. Humor can also help a positive or response message cut through in a more memorable way.
There’s nothing more devastating than when voters laugh at your opponent.
In San Francisco, we needed an ad that would, well, make a splash. This ad titled, “Speedo” was created for the Residents Opposing Aaron Peskin for Mayor 2024. Mayoral elections in San Francisco are run by a ranked choice system. Our internal research showed that it wasn’t enough to get voters to simply vote for someone else, we needed voters to not rank Aaron Peskin anywhere on their list.
In this spot, we leaned into Peskin’s personal predilection for swimming in a Speedo. In fact, our opponent even cut his own positive ad swimming in the San Francisco Bay near Alcatraz (sans speedo). We knew our follow-up ad could shed some light on Peskin’s well-documented record of bullying, harassing, and threatening people to get his way.
In politics, few tools are as effective as humor when it comes to disarming your opponent. When voters laugh at your opponent, it not only diminishes their credibility but also fosters a sense of camaraderie among the electorate. By showcasing your opponent’s flaws in a humorous way, you empower voters to see beyond the rhetoric, encouraging them to choose candidates who resonate with their values and sense of integrity.
“The Most Important Election of 2023 Is Taking Place in Wisconsin”
– New York Times
So how exactly do you say PROTASIEWICZ? When we started Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s campaign for Supreme Court very few people knew… but by Election Day every voter could say it. Judge Janet’s name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue so we needed to familiarize voters with her name but also give them permission to badly mispronounce it.
“Tshibaka Loss in Alaska Adds to Trump’s Midterm Failures”
– Newsweek, 11/23/2022
We were hired to help defeat MAGA extremist Kelly Tshibaka in the 2022 Alaska U.S. Senate race (Alaska’s ranked choice and jungle primary system allows the top 4 vote getters, regardless of partisan affiliation, to advance to the General Election).
Polling showed it would be an extremely tight race with little room for error. Our IE effort was specifically dedicated to undercutting Tshibaka’s core argument for her candidacy that she would protect taxpayer dollars. In fact, Tshibaka’s own ads and MAGA-infused website stated, “I’ve spent my career holding government insiders accountable and exposing waste, fraud, and abuse in federal agencies.”
There was just one little problem: a federal investigation found Kelly Tshibaka overbilled taxpayers for five hundred and ninety-six hours as a government employee.
But the best part of Tshibaka’s problem was that, after initially blaming other people for her paperwork, she admitted that she was “engaging in fitness activities.” Our IE grabbed on to that “fitness activity” language in multiple ads. We knew from polling this issue was deadly for a “expose waste and prevent fraud” candidate like Tshibaka.
In this spot, we leaned into humor. The ad became a legend locally and helped contribute to Tshibaka’s ultimate demise.
“Nothing like a big heel crushing scurrying cockroaches to break through the political ad clutter.”
– Joe Monahan’s New Mexico Blog
In New Mexico’s race for Secretary of State we knew we had to do something different to cut through all the ad clutter on television. Maggie Toulouse Oliver had just been elected to office in a special election two years prior due to the fact that the former Secretary of State had gone to jail. We needed a memorable spot about the great things Maggie was doing to clean up politics in New Mexico – including shining a light on dark money special interests.