Olympic advertisement

A couple weeks ago, the two campaigns made news with $5-6MM ad buys for the Olympic TV coverage. My take is that both campaigns ads are fairly good, but that Obama's positive ad has a better tone for an Olympic broadcast than McCain's mixed negative-positive ad. (More below the fold.)

Edited to add: When an observation is this obvious, everyone notices. See here on Kos by BarbinMD, here again on Kos by BarbinMD, and here on 538.

As some news analysis about ads from the AP says, Olympic advertisement tends to have themes of "unity," "the spirit of athleticism," "humanity," and (moreso in other years than this one) "national pride." When companies pay top dollar to release ads during the Olympics, they don't tend to be ordinary "3 out of 4 people prefer the taste of Pepsi" ads---they tend to be "Coca-Cola teaches the world to sing" ads.

Obama's "Hands" ad is a good commercial per se, but I think the aspirational can-do theme of potential achievement makes it a great ad for the Olympics.

By contrast, McCain's "Family" ad would be a decent ad for a cable news show where guests are shouting over each other to insult candidates, but the negativity of the Ominous Woman narrator clashes badly with the overwhelming positivity of everything around it during the Olympic broadcast. It's also confusing for the commercial to begin by implying that it's bad for crowds to be cheering for Obama, moments after the network cuts away from crowds cheering for athletes. Also, I think it's a bad choice to use the same narrator for both the negative and positive halves of a political commercial; every detail of a contrast ad (lighting, background sound, narration, etc.) should enhance the desired contrast.

I'm not creative enough to come up with a good idea for McCain's campaign, but I would think that he could effectively use a theme of American pride or victorious emergence from personal struggles.

I've been watching the Olympics so far on cable channels from a SW Connecticut provider, and broadcast channels from New York and New Britain (CT, between New Haven and Hartford). I've seen a ton of the McCain ad, and the Obama ad only once. I don't think it makes much sense for either candidate to be advertising in a NY/CT/NJ market, so I'm glad I'm seeing more McCain ads here. Any other reports of Olympic ads broadcasting in unexpected places?