Politics ·
Political Consultants Accidentally Send Same Campaign Ad to Both Parties. Neither Notices.
VIRGINIA — With Election Day approaching, Virginia residents are being bombarded with political phone calls, text messages, mailers, and television ads from candidates apparently convinced that voters are too stupid to recognize the same recycled garbage they've been hearing for decades.
The source of the relentless campaigning was revealed this week after a political marketing firm accidentally sent nearly identical advertisements to both Republican and Democratic campaigns.
According to industry insiders, an employee using the company's proprietary Mad Libs-style campaign generator remembered to change the party logo and color scheme, but forgot to update the remaining answers.
“This turned out to be a wonderful mistake,” explained an agency representative. “We used to have separate creative teams for Republicans and Democrats. Now we've confirmed that all you really need is different colored ties and someone to blame.”
The firm's sophisticated advertising system allows consultants to select from a handful of interchangeable accusations. Each ad features the same ominous music, black-and-white photographs, and warnings of impending national collapse. The only meaningful difference is who receives the invoice.
“It's incredibly efficient,” the consultant continued. “We just swap out a few words, change the colors, and bill another $400,000. It's basically Mad Libs for millionaires. The politicians fill in the blanks, the voters fill in the bubbles, and we fill up our bank accounts.”
The firm's biggest discovery wasn't that the ads were identical. It was that supporters of both parties enthusiastically shared them, each convinced their version exposed the stupidity of the other side. When the mistake was finally brought to the attention of a politician from each party, neither seemed particularly concerned. “It really doesn't matter,” one shrugged. “The voters are too dumb to notice anyway.”
The consultant noted that the most frequently recycled campaign promise is to clean up Washington, regardless of which party is running the ad.
“Both parties promise to clean up Washington,” he explained. “Apparently, neither has figured out that they've been living there for decades.”
Not surprisingly, neither Rob Wittman nor Shannon Taylor was available for comment. They were presumably busy doing just about anything other than representing their constituents.