Election Briefing: Digital Creative: What’s Working, What’s Trending and What You Can Still Implement 

With less than two months until Election Day, campaigns looking for an edge when it comes to digital creative are more likely to find it by playing around the edges.

That could mean testing different versions of the first five seconds of a digital ad or it could be the addition of a subtle animation to a static graphic. The takeaway for creatives, according to two digital strategists who headlined a conversation on digital creative on Wednesday as part of C&E’s Election Briefing series, is that small changes meant to optimize an ad can make a world of difference in such a cluttered online media environment.

Emily Karrs, who leads creative at the Republican firm IMGE, and Joel Saklad, director of creative and persuasion advertising at the Democratic firm New Blue Interactive, told C&E’s Max Greenwood that the old debate between polished production and authenticity is largely a false choice. The right answer depends entirely on the candidate, the message and the specifics of the race.

What both strategists expressed skepticism of is creative that feel entirely untouched by humans. Karrs warned of a growing public fluency in spotting AI-generated imagery, and Saklad said there’s no good replacement for human judgement in the political creative process. Watch the full conversation above.