What Makes a Campaign Ad Effective?

I believe that, like Cara said, an effective campaign ad incorporates all four aspects into it in a way that draws in the viewer and together clearly show the message of the ad. These four aspects of campaign ads - emotion, persuasion, truth, and style - are very different, but also similar in many ways, and together they connect in a way that can make or break an ad. Each component at its best has certain characteristics that connect it to the others while also highlighting its own power. Emotion, which ideally results in a clear emotional response from the audience, is akin to style, which, similarly, must be attention grabbing by use of relevant media. Additionally, persuasion, which utilizes evidence to argue a candidate's point of view, is like truth, which ideally uses reliable fact to support a candidate. Emotion also can be a product of all three of these (and likewise, persuasion can be a product of emotion), and this certainly factors into how the ad makes a viewer feel about who to vote for. An ad that has all of these components accomplishing each of their duties while still backing each other up by relating to one another is one that would be very effective. Hopefully, each component is able to lean against another should one of the components happen to fall below the mark in performance, as long as all are present. This support system as a result still enables the ad itself to succeed if there are other high-performing areas, and offers some leeway in terms of the direction a candidate wants to take with the ad (for example, a stylistically sound ad can get away with placing less emphasis on truth). An ad that demonstrates this is Bush's 2004 ad, "Any Questions" which was an attack ad against John Kerry. The ad, using the voices of people who reportedly had interacted extensively with him, drew out a feeling of mistrust, which satisfied the emotion component of the ad, and also shows a clear point of view on who the candidate perceived that John Kerry really was in a way that would signal the audience to feel similarly. The music and images stylistically connected to the ad's argument as they enhanced the emotion already being felt. While the ad lacked in truth (which in terms of the ad consisted of opinions, which are more often associated with persuasion, rather than facts) it was made up for because all the other three components worked together to convince the viewer of the ad's standpoint.