Design by committee

Why are many TV political ads so bad? Joshua Green reports:

Design by committee, Brabender says, stifles creativity and produces lousy ads. Less is often more in a visual medium like television, but many pollsters and campaign managers seem blind to that: they try to cram as many issues into an ad as they can. If someone throws five tennis balls at you, he points out, it’s tough to catch any of them. But with a single ball it’s easy. … political ads have remained strikingly similar since the 1950s, even as consumer ads have evolved dramatically. The difference seems to be that consumer advertisers prize originality, whereas political advertisers prize conformity. In that regard political ads function as a microcosm of politics generally’characterized by frequent and dramatic hyperbole, but resistant to all but the most incremental change.