Campaign Ads for Voters

The Upper House First Semester Project

What Does It Take to Change a Voter's Mind?

On Monday November 3, the night before the coming election, your team will present a campaign television commercial on a specific California proposition to the registered voters of the Metro community. The purpose of your ad is to persuade your audience on how to vote in the California election on the following day.

Your Task

Each team of four students will create the following products:

  1. a research brief on the issue of your proposal
  2. focus group research, based on interviews you conduct with the target voters of your campaign
  3. a campaign commercial (30 seconds or less) on one of the ballot initiatives in the upcoming election

Your Success

Your success depends on:

  1. the quality of the research on your team’s proposition
  2. your understanding of the art and science of voter persuasion
  3. your skill in video production and editing
  4. your ability to work collaboratively in a fast-paced, deadline-demanding election schedule
  5. the critical thinking and communication skills you develop in forming a sustained political argument

Campaign Ads 2008

The Upper Division students of Metro are proud to present their political ads for the California propositions of November 2008. These videos are the product of months of researching the ballot, interviewing voters, studying the media, thinking critically about the issues, and spending hours in video production.

We are thrilled that ABC-7 News came to Metro to film a story about our project. See the ABC-7 News story.

All of the ads are posted here.

Congratulations to the students of Metro for their wildly successful exhibition night.

Reference Documents

Benchmarks

  1. Ballot Review : due 9/19
  2. Team Platform : due 9/26
  3. Focus Group Research : due 9/29
  4. Commercial Treatment Proposal : due 10/3
  5. Commerical Storyboard and Script : due 10/8
  6. First Draft of Campaign Commercial : due 10/22
  7. Program Notes : due 10/22
  8. Final Draft of Campaign Commercial : due 10/29
  9. White Paper : due 12/12

Example of Student Work from 2008

refresh to see another example

No on Prop 4: Parental Notification of Minor's Abortion

Produced by Iris Gil, Orion Heinz, Angel Hinojosa, Maria Simmons

Our target voters are parents. We want to let them know that Prop 4 will have a bad impact on their daughters. We chose parents to be our target because parents are the ones that are voting. Parents may think about compromising with their daughters. Without ads like this, many parents automatically think that Prop 4 is a great idea because parents usually want to know about everything going on with their child. The narration in our commercial hits our target voters because it’s realistic and gets people to think twice about their decision. The pictures and videos show what things will be like if Prop 4 does pass. By showing this scenario, we hope to target our swing voter’s pathos.

See all of the 2008 student campaign ads . . .