Impressions of MoveOn's "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest ads?

I've viewed and voted on several dozen ads so far. Some have excellent, strong messages, some are funny, some are very creative, but I haven't yet seen one that is good enough to win, i.e. good enough to earn a spot on national television.

Some general impressions:

1) Too many ads with lots of unspoken verbiage on the screen. I have the patience to read, but do Joe Sixpack & Sally Soccermom?

2) Too many ads with kids. I get the purpose, but usually it just doesn't work; the littl'uns are often hard to understand.

3) Voters' scores often seem to be directly related to the strength of the attack against B*sh, with apparent disregard for the ad's ability to captivate the viewer. E.g. There was a relatively high-rated ad that had strong shit to say, but merely (silently) printed the words on a black background. Now, I'm not anti-minimalist, but more than that is needed.

Nonetheless, I'm enjoying the process...any other thoughts?

keep them coming.

We need to be looking at these with "Average American" in mind. Has anyone seen the "Bring Em On" add....it was really good.

Kind of like your #3, but I didn't really pay much attention to score summaries --- IMHO, there are a lot of ads out there that would fire up liberals even more, but we are not the group that should be targeted, moderates are...

I also agree on your point about text... That lessens the effect, as people have to actively read...

The best ad I've seen thus far was the "An army of one" one, which although a bit textual, did a pretty good job of talking about how Bush was cutting all sorts of benefits for veterans... But it was somewhat weakened by using the "No WMD" line, which although true is kinda unrelated.

But among so many ads I imagine a few are real gems...

is greater than ad agency effectiveness or people fervor. it has to honestly merge both. Looking for masterpieces not angry placards. This is extremely hard to carry off but I would not like to depend again solely on the lone efforts of some ad genius. it has to erupt from the populace in our day because leadership is way behind the curve.

It does seem to me that the ads are not ranked based on what I see as how well they would play to the average guy. But since it is a moveon.org thing, and since they are having moveon.org members rank the ads, maybe they are trying to find ads that will attrac more moveon.org members.

I don't know alot about advertizing, but it seems that your target audience and what you want them to do are important. And I'd guess this early in the campaign season moveon.org might just want to increase its membership and fire up the base.

but what do I know?

Too many single-issue Iraq ads (WMD lies, $87 billion). Yes, it's a big issue, but not the only (nor in my mind the biggest) one. Not enough about connections to big corps (Enron, big oil, etc.) and rape of environment.