Since it’s clear that U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan and N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis are locked in a tight battle for Hagan’s Senate seat, we can expect no reprieve from campaign ads from the two combatants in the weeks ahead.
Let’s hope we won’t see a repeat of the “dishonest business practices” exemplified by a TV ad campaign launched in Arizona and documented by Brent Scher of the Washington Free Beacon.
A new ad in Arizona attacks Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Ducey, the former CEO of Cold Stone, for causing a group of the chain’s franchise owners to “lose everything.” However, all the victims presented in the spot are just stock photos from Getty Images.
The misleading ad by Restore Arizona’s Future PAC was paid for with “major funding” from the Democratic Governors Association (DGA).
The ad begins with four forlorn faces of former Cold Stone franchise owners who “lost everything” because of Ducey’s “dishonest business practices.”
The hitch is that in reality nobody presented in the ad ever owned a Cold Stone franchise or lost anything because of Ducey.
The ad’s first person image, presented with the caption, “What if you lost everything?” was found to be a generic “Sad Woman” on Getty. The other woman presented in the ad also is a Getty “Sad Woman.”
The group had many options, as Getty provides 795 pages of “Sad Woman” stock photos.
Former Cold Stone franchisee number two is actually Getty’s “Mature Man.” The ad used a man from Getty’s “Why Series” as Ducey’s final victim.
