What Makes a Campaign Ad Effective?

In accordance with what Zach said, I think that the most important thing for an effective campaign ad to have is a mixture of the components emotion, persuasiveness, truth, and style.  These elements combined would make the best ad possible, so not just one element outshines another.  I would say that the ads which best incorporated all of the necessary components would be "Surgeon" by Clinton, and "Any Questions" by Bush.  Both of these ads portray all the components very well.  In "Surgeon" the emotion is lighthearted and enjoyable because of the children shown.  The topic of college and tuition would be very persuasive to a student with dreams of getting an education.  They would be persuaded to vote for Clinton because of his reforms on tuitions and other collegiate things.  They would be deferred from voting for the opponent because he is showed in a video clip to say "We are going to eliminate the Department of Education."  This leads me to the truth of the ad.  Though one cannot be sure if the quote from Dole is taken out of context, he still says it and this gives a truthful element to the ad.  Clinton could be lying about his stance of giving lots of reforms on college funds.  However, this would be a bad political move and is unlikely.  The last component is style, and the video does portray good styling and taste.   Similarly, the Bush ad "Any Questions" was styled well in that it the information given was moderately attention grabbing.  The truth aspect is definitely extremely believable because all information is coming directly from comrades of Kerry while in the Vietnam War.  The information given by these war veterans is very persuasive because one would want to believe what these men are saying about Kerry's untrustworthiness and schemes, and then vote accordingly for Bush.  Lastly, the emotion portrayed was serious and at times a bit monotone, however, the information given was quite shocking and therefore made the emotion i felt surprise.  These two were very good ads.  They are prime examples of how if the four components are mixed correctly, the best possible ad could come out.  There were some minor flaws and ways the ads could have been better, but these were true cream of the crop, and deservingly so. The worst campaign ad would be "Laughter" because it the emotion portrayed is unclear, there was no truth, and I am honestly still confused as to what the main idea of the ad is.  This is not the type of ad one would want.

This is the ad "Any Questions".