"I don't rely on how much you hear my message; I rely on you knowing what is best for our country."

or

I'm pretty sure that one of the principal goals of blitz advertising is to reach such voters while they channel surf so that on the off chance they wind up at the polls when they are in the booth they pick the candidate they've seen the most recently.

Same thing that all advertising seeks to achieve. Bathing the consciousness of the recipient until it become just background noise that influences subliminally.

I do think there is backlash potential, but the benefit outweighs the negative.

I remember looking at his commercials, when they came to the DC area and feeling alienated by them.  Like there was something BIG going on and you just haven't heard about it yet, and we're coming into your little town to share the joy with you, with him smiling down on the big crowds and shaking hands, and cheers, and chants...   Another problem I have with Obama's ads is that they speak little on how he's going to change our country for the good, but that he's just going to change it... because he's revolutionary.  That can have either a positive or a negative effect.  I guess it depends on who you are.

After Ohio, I was listening to Major Garrett (yes, from Fox News) talking with Rebecca Roberts on XM Radio's POTUS 08, and he was saying that when he traveled Ohio before the primary there, Barack Obama was everywhere - radio, TV, billboards - he had saturated the market with ads.  And yet, he lost.  Did the saturation mitigate the loss that would otherwise have been much greater?  Who knows?

Speaking only for me, after I have seen an ad once, I don't want or need to see it ever again.  Keep showing it at every commercial break, on every channel, and it starts to annoy me.  Call me over and over and I stop answering the phone.  A couple of nights of that, and I am a little insulted that the candidate thinks I must have severe short-term memory problems.  Trust me - people will remember the candidate after an ad or two, but when there is no escape, people tend to think of him or her less fondly.

Does it move the undecideds?  I have no idea.  All I can say is that the more someone is in my face wanting me to make a decision, the less favorably I look upon them.  I don't like being pestered by salespeople, and I don't like being pestered by political candidates, either.

I wish Hill would flip the script and call on Obama to stop taking these small donations because they are as exploitative as the FreeCreditReports and the pay day loan people.

Does he have a 401K? health insurance? And yet Obama keeps spamming him and he keeps giving.

Small donations add up for Obama
The campaign sent out an e-mail message from Obama to donors the morning after the New Hampshire defeat.

"I know you just made a donation, but we are about to enter the most decisive period of the campaign," he said, signing his name at the end, "Thank you, Barack."

I'm not even going to renew my O mag.

I like hearing Elizabeth Edwards saying she'll endorse Hillary health care plan over Obama's. Thats worth more to me than his folksy ads.

Lots and lots of young people are paying attention to THAT.  Trust me, this issue is huge.

Obamas spending reminds me of Arianna Huffington's 'ex husband, a millionaire who outspent Diane Feinstein for a senate seat and LOST.

I think some will see it as an attempt to buy the election based on his lack of experience. Others won't because it's not his personal fortune and it's all 'grassroots' money {wink}.

I think ads are only helpful if they get someone to think about an issue in a different way or reframe the conversation. This is why I think the 3am ad was so effective,  though it was not especially creative. It reframed the debate around national security, which I believe is a debate that Democrats MUST have if we are going to win the general election.

if you think about it, from a strictly economic standpoint, there has to be a huge ego return on investment, since the dollar return on investment is so pitiful.

the president is the CEO of USA, Inc., the world's largest corporation, with trillions in annual revenues, millions of employees and operations all over the globe. it has a hand in every single industry there is, from construction to high tech.

the president deals with a board of directors (congress) who are pretty powerful in their own right, is on call 24/7/365 and is charged with making life and death decisions, possibly affecting billions of people world-wide.

for all this, the president makes a paltry couple of hundred thousand dollars a year, what exxon spends a year on their CEO's insurance policies.

granted, they get some nice perks, probably worth another couple of hundred grand a year, and he doesn't have to worry about finding a parking space at work (ever tried parking in downtown DC during the day?), so that's nice.

For example, the Head On campaign. Annoying as he11, but you know the name of the product and that makes you significantly more likely to buy it. "Significantly more likely" does not mean 57% of us are going to run out and buy Head On. More like .0057%---but multiply that by 300 million and you have enough money to throw on the living room floor and roll around in.

Right now, I'd bet that most PA primary voters are at the beginning of the buying cycle. The first task is to get people to a place where they recognize the product. Lots of ad buys suggest to me that his campaign is looking for basic name recognition. So when the voter goes into the booth, the name "Barack Obama" will not feel strange to them.

Right now, that's what Sen. Obama has to do---seem familiar. Familiar is a lot more comfortable than unfamiliar.

He has an uphill battle because Hillary Clinton's name is already very familiar. (Her battle is changing the way she's been defined as a puppy-kicking baby-eater, but that's a separate issue.)

His target are those voters (Dem or not) who are not watching this primary stuff with baited breath. I dislike the term, "low information voter," because it assumes that people don't have high information about their own lives and needs. Of course they do. And usually (though, sadly, not always) that's how people make their election decisions.

Anyway, familiarity makes people feel more comfortable about making a choice. For example, you're driving cross-country to a funeral. You need to eat. Your choice is McDonald's or Guggletweek's. You have twenty minutes and you're tired.

Which one do you choose?

The flipside is that while familiarity can breed comfort, it can also breed contempt. I think Sen. Obama has to be very careful about his messaging. As one person noted about an ad with a Harvard prof talking about how smart Sen. Obama is. That can backfire because it assumes people don't already think a pres. candidate is, or should be, smarter than the average bear.

Such an ad can feel condescending, which, given the event that ended in the number 37, frames Sen. Obama as just another John Kerry. That would be difficult to recover from.

He has to be careful about his staging of the ads, too. He has to look like a man of action, while also being thoughtful and presidential, without coming across as too young, too inexperienced, and a know-it-all. The challenge with that is that Sen. Obama is not an actor---it takes training to know how how to project that image confidently to camera.

You can be a thing but not look it on TV. The camera definitely lies and not just about that extra ten pounds it adds.

"Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there."  -- Barack Obama, on Barack Obama

"To know me is to love me," said Obama when asked by the AP's Nedra Pickler about how he will overcome Sen. Hillary Clinton's, D-N.Y., advantage in national public-opinion polls.

"Obama's camp" has confidence but

not quite enough confidence to shut the f#$k up about Clinton quitting.

But style points for best spin of the day here. Kudos. Seriously

Use symbols to change the words.

Watching the tube in Pennsylvania these days might as well be called watching OBAMA TV. I've seen my share of saturation advertising buys during campaigns, but this is unprecedented. In a five-hour session of watching one network I counted 14 ads sponsored by Barack Obama, compared to a total of three ads for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

He also comments on the truth of the ad...

Long ago the media watchdogs, such as Politifact.com, determined that at best it is only half true for Obama to claim that he takes no money from federal lobbyists. He takes plenty of money and advice from those who work for lobbyists, such as former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.

I do not always agree with Craig Crawford... but sometimes he shows some unbiased thoughts.

So, game is STILL ON, shouting Hillary out has brought people forward and her base stronger.