One Of The Worst Political Ads Ever

Posted April 06, 2016

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Britain makes some of the best television in the world...

if not the best.

For such a small country, it pretty much sets the standards for quality TV, from The BBC's news, documentaries and period dramas to ITV's Downton Abbey.  For chat shows and quiz shows, they are decades ahead of America.

But when it comes to political ads on TV, they are in a hot race with the former Soviet Union.  

The reason, I suppose, is simple.  There generally aren't any political ads on TV in Britain.  

For Americans this is akin to the idea that there is no KFC in Britain, which, alas, there is.

But political advertising here is generally verboten, which is why a friend of ours was able to run sucessfully for Parliament and win at a total campaigning cost of about $20K. 

It's a lesson we could take from Britain.

But when they do run an ad, as the Labor (or Labour) party ran this week, they are (or at least this one is) absolutely appalling.

Take a look. (Then we'll have the comments)

This is without a doubt one of the worst piece of television (or video) I have seen in a long time - and I have seen a LOT of bad video... and television.

Whoever made this has absolutely no idea of how to use television to convey a message or tell a story.

If you want to talk about inequity in the economy, you COULD take us to families or places where those inequities are most manifest. We could travel the length and breath of Great Britain meeting with people who are suffering... just for instance.

But what do these people do with the rather remarkable potential that video and television offer?

Nothing.

Their idea of television is to sit this guy down in this (rather posh) kitchen and have him google some 'factoids', and then, he READS them to you and then he SHOWS THEM to you... on the screen.

This is about up there with teletext - another failure of trying to put text on TV screens.

How utterly boring! 

If you were sitting in the kitchen with this guy and he said, 'have you seen what the government is doing to the budget' and then he proceeded to pull out his laptop and start googling and and reading it to you, I think you'd be out the door faster than the almost endless three mintues and change it takes to watch this disaster.

And then, as if being read to ad nauseaum were not enough, at the end, we cut to a video of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, on the guy's laptop, talking to us.  A video of a video, watched on a laptop on a laptop.

It is so Meta, I can barely stand it.

Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb.

Absolutely unwatchable.

Terrible television.

There is a reason only 731 people have watched it on Youtube so far... and I bet many them either produced it (or are relatives of the production company).

I don't know what Labour paid to have this tragedy made, but I can only say that for a lot less money, I could do a much better job.

Call me!!!