BallotVox

Obama’s Infomercial

Watching the infomercial [basykes / Flickr]

Obama’s half-hour infomercial aired last night on seven stations. It cost over three million dollars, was unprecedented in the realm of campaign advertising, and was watched by 21.7% of the 56 top TV markets. It didn’t bump the World Series.

Here are some early reactors from the blogosphere:

Group blogger Jeff Fecke admits to being a “surly curmudgeon who tends to view politics with a jaundiced eye.” He nonetheless fell for the infomercial. It delivered, he felt, a critical message of purposeful unity:

I found this to be not just well-done, not just effective from a political standpoint, but genuinely moving. Yes, the people who put this together used all the standard tricks of the trade. But they used them in service of a powerful and clear message: you’re not alone, America. Things are tough, but we’re going to get through this together. That isn’t socialism, that’s the basic American ethos that we help our neighbors out when they need it, that when we work together, we can accomplish anything, whether it’s whipping Hitler or sending a man to the Moon or building the internet. […]

I don’t expect Obama will be a perfect president, and I’m sure I’ll find plenty of reason to criticize him, but I think he understands that basic fact: we are all in this together […]

An anonymous American blogger living in Britain was sleeping (time zones!) during the infomercial but caught up on it later. She’s “99% vegan,” a dog lover, and a “burned-out writer.” She voted for Obama and succinctly related the infomercial to an overarching Obama campaign strategy:

Just like in the rest of the campaign, he puts the focus on us, not him.

Blue Lady (yes, a liberal) lives in a red state (Georgia). She was nervous about the infomercial, but in the end it made her teary in a good way.

I must admit I was a little hesitant to watch the Obama infomercial last night, but I did. The campaign is in a really good place right now, I feared they might blow it somehow. I forgot who he is. I forgot that he is a skilled speaker, with a bunch of skilled people working behind him.

The show featured the lives of several Americans, and the problems they face in today’s economy, and although they were very different than me, I related to them all somehow.

And now for the flip side: “Red state of mind” Mary living in a blue state (featured before here and here) admits she watched with her biases and “wouldn’t be sold on the product.” Unsurprisingly she didn’t like it:

[T]he infomercial seemed like a parody to me — the images, the music, the testimonials. It played almost like a political version of Spinal Tap.

It was such a dramatically scripted, choreographed, and scored production. It was so overproduced, so Hollywood, so fake.

Mary did think that Obama “connected” when he was talking about his mother’s death. That, to her, seemed “sincere and apolitical.”

Forty-seven-year-old Allen, a libertarian born in Mississippi and living in Fort Worth, Texas, thinks “Charlie Robison, Bob Dylan, and B.B. King are among the few things that separate us from the apes.” He concedes the infomercial was “very very well done” but says analyzing the whole thing “would be like deconstructing a Home Shopping Network Sale on cubic zirconias.” Which is where the sarcasm comes in. He does go on to dissect much of it, including the the opening and the actual set:

OMG, that’s brilliant! Barack Obama’s infomercial begins with a shot of Amber Waves Of Grain!

[…] I bet we’re in Obama’s home state of Kansas, and we’re being reminded of Obama’s deep-rooted midwestern values. […]

Cut to Obama in a down home, scaled back, raw lumber version of the Oval Office. This part was brilliant. The setting lets you imagine him as President. He’s not in an exact Oval Office replica, which would be presumptuous on his part. It’s saying See, I’m not so scary. You could get used to me talking to you from the White House, couldn’t you?

On the content front, Allen wryly notes that the ad “promised goodies for just about everyone” and that “[i]f elected, Barack Obama will be a busy man.”

Keli Ata describes herself as a reporter somewhere in New York (I didn’t find a byline for her so assume she’s not on the election beat). She couldn’t stomach the infomercial and switched to America’s Next Top Model after ten minutes:

Reality TV this night was much more palatable than the tripe Barack Obama was serving. An infomercial for a presidential candidate–and not a fringe candidate like Ross Perot either. Barack Obama in one fell swoop has reduced the office of the president to an infomercial right up there with Ron Popeil’s pocket fisherman, Pro-Active acne treatment and the sleezy, overhyped and thankfully gone from the air Greatest Vitamin in the World money making scam.

Finally, a comment on McCain’s response ad. Mannd writes for EP Studios Blog (EP meaning electrophysiology). He believes McCain’s ad boosts the Obama=Muslim smear:

Didn’t anyone notice in McCain’s response ad to Obama’s infomercial last night that it contained what appears to be a nearly subliminal photo of Obama wearing a white Muslim-style hat? During the ad there are a number of still photos shown, separated by a loud old-fashioned flash camera sound. One of those photos, shown for a fraction of a second only, is the Obama/Muslim hat picture. It is literally shown so quickly that it is difficult to see or appreciate, but it is definitely there, as those with a DVR can easily demonstrate. All the commentators seemed to miss it; I haven’t heard anyone talking about it. It seems to be an attempt to implant a subliminal message in the mind of the viewer that Obama might be a Muslim.

The relevant photo occurs at 6 seconds in.