Obama 2012 Ads Are Desperate to "Sell" the Prez

Impact

 

The first Obama re-election campaign ads have been released online showing President Barack Obama looking to enlist volunteers for the upcoming 2012 campaign. In the two 30-second ads, Obama emphasizes the impact of the individual in starting a movement.

“Before long neighborhoods come together, communities organize, a movement builds, it all starts with you,” Obama says before urging viewers to call a number on the screen or visit www.JoinObama.com, where they can enter their zip code and email address to get involved with the campaign. But coupled with an instrumental soaring softly in the background and rising as the phone number and website URL appear onscreen, the entire thing reads off very much like an infomercial.

The point of a campaign is, indeed, to sell your politics and platform to your audience, the voters and citizens of the country. However, Obama looks weary in these ads, trying to recreate – or at the very least create a semblance of – the spirit he showed throughout the 2008 campaign while urging this “it-starts-with-you” agenda forward.

The attempt to rally up a large following of supporters appears to be an endeavor to make up for low ratings. To get that done, Obama tries to employ a casual, conversational tone but the effort to generate enthusiasm short and sound conversational falls short as it looks and sounds forced and much rehearsed, giving it a feel of insincerity. 

The main obstacle in getting that casual delivery across seems to be Obama’s desperation to save his job. It bleeds right through. “The 2012 campaign is underway and the outcome will depend not on what I do, but what you do,” he says. Obama is acknowledging the start of the campaign and now everything he is doing is in hopes to secure his seat for another term. “We’ve got so much more to do,” he ends one of the ads, and for a second I almost expect to hear a begging plea along the lines of “so please vote for me!”

 

 

Photo Credit: Barack Obama