Naral Pro-Choice America: "The SBA List"

Looking toward the 2014 midterms, NARAL Pro-Choice America knew that one organization would spend $10 million to support anti-woman candidates: the Susan B. Anthony List. But because this radical right wing group chose to name themselves after an historic champion of social justice, TV viewers who came across one of their scurrilous political attack ads might end up confusing them for a group that actually stood for women’s rights.

Enter ART NOT WAR to clear up the confusion.

ART NOT WAR created what we call a “flex ad” for NARAL’s campaign—10 versions of a the same TV spot, each one aimed at a different right wing politician across the nation who we knew the SBA List would support in 2014. Our ad calls out the List for what it really is—“as anti-woman as it gets”—and challenges each candidate to reject the group’s extreme agenda.

As soon as the first ad—aimed at Thom Tillis—hit the airwaves, ART NOT WAR knew we’d done our job. Radical right wing bloggers rallied and, finding nothing substantive to criticize, focused on the ad’s final frame—an etching of a Victorian-era gynecologist examining a patient. According to sites like Breitbart and TownHall.com, our use of this image meant we were audaciously comparing the SBA List to “woman molesters.”

In the words of Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, “all I can say is wow.” ART NOT WAR sleeps well at night knowing we did the real Susan B. Anthony proud.