Honesty

While I found this video to be more than a bit condescending as well as overly long, I'm not the target audience-- I'm neither unregistered nor 18-- so I won't quibble over aesthetics. You see, what really bothered me about this video is the dishonesty.

It's clearly a liberal Democratic "get out and vote for Obama" spot that's trying to disguise itself as a non-partisan, "register to vote" piece of do-gooding. And while that sort of thing is par for the course in political advertising, consumers are far less prone to accept it in brand advertising.

There's a silly belief out there now that the more you can hide the fact that you're advertising something, the more consumers will like you.

Only that's completely missing the point. The more you bang people over the head with some arcane selling proposition ("Acme Widgets save you time and money by allowing you to widgetize the way you want, when you want") the less they are going to like you. But that doesn't mean they want you to try and trick them. They just want you to get to the point quicker and don't make them think too much. ("Acme widgets are speedy widgets.")

Online or offline, lying and trying to fool people only serves to piss them off. Even if you've got half of Hollywood in your commercial.