We have a winner

… in the Bush in :30 contest: Child’s Play.

The writer was unsurprisingly an advertising creative. Charlie Fisher is the creative director at Leo Barnett in Copenhagen (Thanks to adland for the link), although he is originally from Denver. As this AdAge article mentions, the agency emphasizes that he did this on his own time.

It wasn’t my favorite, but it is a very good ad. I think three of the remaining ads, Child’s Play, In My Country and Poylgraph were all excellent and the decision should have been largely based on strategy.

The decision was indeed strategically wise. The winning ad criticizes Bush for creating enormous debts, an concern for both liberals and conservatives. It doesn’t attack Bush personally or sound like a rant. Libertarian Radley Balko doesn’t “…really even see how conservatives could have a quarrel with it.”

The only disadvantage to this strategy is that fiscal policy is generally boring. This as is obviously an exception, but the discussion it generates is bound to be dry. Contrast this to the anti-war ads which talk of presidents lying and soldiers dying. This is one of the reasons I picked “Bring it On” as my favorite.

My favorite was pulled and therefore ineligible. MoveOn put up a notice saying that the ad was removed “at the request of its creator” for “copyright reasons,” without specifying further. But thanks to this article I found out that:

Two days before leaving for New York, [[ad creator]] Cuenca, concerned that some of the soldiers’ parents might object to photos of their sons or daughters being used without consent, withdrew his entry from consideration.

Not really a copyright issue. And too bad. I liked the ad. Unlike the winning ad (and Polygraph) it was low budget and didn’t look polished. Which goes to show that a good idea matters more than any production values in an ad. (Thanks to Joe Sims’ comment in The Agitator for that link.)

Now MoveOn wants to run the ad during the superbowl. They probably have enough money, even though they sent me an e-mail hitting me up for more. That should generate even more publicity, not to mention get a really good ad to even more people. I hope MoveOn can serve some followup content from their site talking about Bush’s reckless spending, which they can mention at the end of the ad. I also hope they make sure to get enough server power to deal with an inevitable superbowl rush.

That man not happen at all though since:

A spokesman for CBS said the Viacom-owned network has received the request from MoveOn to run the ad in the Super Bowl, but added that the ad has to go through standards and practices before CBS will say if it can run an advocacy ad during the game. The spokesman said he didn’t think it was likely that the spot would pass standards and practices.

But Oliver “seem[s] to remember the Drugs = Terrorism ads running during halftime.” (via Xoverboard).

This contest was a fantastic idea. I really had no time before the deadline, but I am still kicking myself for not entering.