latetotheparty

God help me for quoting Peggy Noonan, but she’s right in an aside in “Is there Progress Through Loss” published in Opinion Journal today, 10/28:

(An unreported story this year is the lack of imagination, seriousness and respect in the work of political consultants on both sides. They have got to catch up with American brightness.)

The ultimate problem lies with the consultant business model: spread-too-thin firms who look for the shortest-distance-between-two-points solutions– solutions that lack depth and, if you will, soul.

Couple the poor executions with pounding them into people by over-running them (2000 points is a common buy level nowadays– 100 points meaning that the equivalent of 100% of the people in the market will view the ad once. So, the average person in a market will see the ad 20 times– kind of hard to take, if the ad has all the imagination of “Head on: apply directly to the forehead!”) and you have a real overdose problem.