Case Studies»

MoveOn.org: "Mitt Romney, Job Creator?"

To debunk Mitt Romney’s claim to the title of “job creator,” MoveOn.org asked ART NOT WAR to find workers who had lost their jobs–and were willing to tell the truth about Bain Capital’s history of buying then gutting American companies. ART NOT WAR interviewed Donny Box–a former employee of a Kansas City steel mill shuttered by Bain during Romney’s tenure. “We lost our jobs, they made millions,” said Box of Bain and Romney’s hypocritical greed.

Released in January 2012, Mitt Romney: Job Creator was the Promethean spark for mainstream coverage of Romney and Bain’s vulture capitalism. The spot garnered 51,074,346 media impressions (an earned media value of $811,425,06), almost 300,000 views on YouTube, was featured by 29 different media entities, including CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Huffington Post, and was chosen for the permanent collection at ABC-CLIO’s American Government Library.
Super PACs like Priorities USA admitted to studying Mitt Romney: Job Creator –using it as a template for a series of their own “real people” ads (including their own version of our ad featuring Donny Box) that ran at persuasion levels for the remainder of the 2012 campaign year—solidifying the meme that Mitt Romney was anything but a “job creator.”  In April of 2013, “Mitt Romney:  Job Creator?” won a Pollie Ad Award for “Best Use of Negative Contrast – Democrat.