John McCain recently released ads hitting Obama on his ties to FannieMae/FreddieMac.

I am not sure where these ads are running, but they are not running in the Kansas City media market.  (The Kansas City market being the 2nd largest in the swing state of Missouri.)

I have a pretty good idea why the Fannie/Freddie ads are not running in Kansas City.

And it has a lot to do with this graph.



So much human activity and trends fit into normal distribution it is almost disconcerting.

If you were to conduct a study of political/current events knowledge of the general public, the majority of public would be grouped in the middle of the bell curve.  (In normal distribution 68% will be one standard deviation away from the mean.)

Michael Barone would be on the far right.

My friend Darlene, who is vaugely aware that some guy named George Bush is President, would be on the far left.

Everyone else will be clumped in the middle with "some" knowledge of politics/current events.  If you are reading this, you are somewhere on the right side of the curve.

People who are aware of Fannie/Freddie as government entities will be to the right of mean.  People who are aware of Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines would be quite a bit to the right.

For a political ad to convert, there must be intensity and believeability.

The believeability is often formed by prior knowledge and inputs formed by (unfortunately) the news media.

Intensity is how much people care about it.

And here is the lesson:  People on the left side of the curve can and do vote.  People on the right side typically have their minds made up already.

An ad that converts addresses what people on the middle and left side of the curve know about and care about.

They do not know about Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines, therefore, it is very hard for them to care (intensity).  McCain's ads hitting Fannie/Freddie will probably not hit air in a swing state like Missouri.

In this youtube age, I suspect a lot of the ads that are being floated around are head-fakes or are being used for earned media in the cable news cycle.

Take this ad for example.

---