Political Creative in 2026:
Break Through or Break Down
2024 delivered a sobering verdict: Democrats are losing the attention wars.
Despite spending billions of dollars in the presidential election, we lost the popular vote, the Electoral College, and every battleground state. We lost the Senate. And since 2020, we’ve lost more than 2 million registered voters.
Sure, the environment looks better for Democrats this cycle: Trump is unpopular, and Americans are still fed up about the cost of living. But to win in 2026, 2028, and well into the future, we can’t afford to win incidentally. We have to win intentionally.
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“In competitive attention markets, amusement will outcompete information, and spectacle will outcompete arguments. The more easily something attracts attention, the lower its cognitive load, the less friction there is for us to be drawn to it.” -Chris Hayes, “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” |
That requires winning the attention wars — and we can’t do it by running the political ads voters expect. So in 2026, our philosophy is this: The biggest risk Democrats can take is not taking any creative risks.
Winning the attention wars in 2026 requires break-through creative, and Trilogy has the experience and expertise to deliver it.
An Award-Winning Creative Studio
Few Democratic firms hire creative staff without political backgrounds. Even fewer invest in them year-round. Trilogy does both, and the risks pay off. Not only have we racked up dozens of Pollie and Reed Awards for our creative, but we’ve also learned to work together fast without missing a beat.
Our creative studio — led by women and people of color — brings together scriptwriters, designers, animators, editors, and producers with decades of combined creative experience outside the political world. Our team takes inspiration from movies, sports promos, music videos, and more. Our diversity and culture of experimentation have prepared us to meet this moment.
Here are the three tenets of our creative philosophy.
Today’s voters can spot a typical political ad in an instant:
- Unflattering, overly filtered photos
- Grave-sounding voiceovers paired with dramatic music
- Visual effects straight out of a horror movie
- Stock photos of sad, disempowered women
- Enough text on screen to fill a novella
- Stale closing lines like “he’s not on our side” and “we can’t trust her”
The downside of clichéd creative is huge: It screams “POLITICAL!”, and people who hate politics tune it out immediately.
Why would they pay attention when algorithms are serving them nonstop streams of content they actually want to see?
Leaning on played-out political ad tropes in 2026 is like leaning on a laugh track for a sitcom: It’s dated, it’s corny, and it attempts to tell people how they should feel, rather than making them feel it.
Making people feel something requires taking risks. So that’s what we strive to do. We love catching attention with humor, cultural references, and visuals that don't scream “political.” Check out a few examples of work we’ve done for advocacy orgs, PACs, and ballot measure campaigns:
Check out the ads below, too — these were not what voters expected from Chuck Schumer in 2022. He faced re-election in a midterm year that was supposed to deliver a “red wave” for Republicans. Inflation and fears about crime had pushed Democratic approval ratings to historic lows, even in deep-blue New York. As a national figure, Majority Leader Schumer faced attacks from all directions.
But he had an appetite for creative risk, and together, we produced ads that grabbed attention. They highlighted his personality and accomplishments, stole the spotlight on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and helped Schumer achieve a landslide victory.
Risk gets attention, and attention is the most valuable currency in politics. Earning it in 2026 requires doing more than stringing together poll-tested language and clichéd visuals — and our experience proves it.
Below are ads we created for House Majority PAC in NY-19. The one on the left is from 2022, and the one on the right is from 2024. Both races were between Republican Marc Molinaro (the incumbent) and Democrat Josh Riley. Which ad do you think was more successful?
2022 Ad: Choice
This ad was full of political ad clichés: grainy photos, sad women, and suited men holding stacks of cash.
2024 Ad: Signs
This ad cut clichés in favor of attention-getting visuals, including a highway sign from the district.
The ad on the right helped House Majority PAC flip the seat. We opened it with a short clip of Molinaro’s ad, using a “poison parasite counter” strategy. Then we used signs — including a highway road sign from the actual district — to show that Molinaro’s abortion record was more extreme than he was letting on.
It cut clichés, broke through, and made a decisive difference for Democrats.
Spend an hour on Instagram or YouTube. Watch whatever you want. Watch what the algorithm suggests. Watch the ads, too. Do the same on a friend’s device. Then ask yourself: When digital content is this boundless, what makes us think we can get attention, let alone change minds, by putting out the same staid political ads?
People know there is always something better, funnier, more beautiful, or more informative they could be watching. They sense the vibe of an ad and immediately decide whether to give it their attention. The typical poll-tested attack ad is a bad vibe — and people can spot it in an instant.
Trilogy has been a digital-first firm from day one. We create content that feels natural on Instagram, YouTube, and other digital platforms that have overtaken linear TV as Americans’ preferred sources of news and entertainment.
We spend a ton of time on digital platforms ourselves, so we think like consumers, not consultants. Through vertical videos, 6-second bumpers, creator partnerships, and more, we earn attention with fun, unexpected ads that look and feel like they belong on people’s screens, alongside content they watch on purpose.
We don’t just produce digital-first creative ourselves — we also partner directly with TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube creators to reach people through trusted messengers. While many Democratic firms outsource the work to creator agencies that rely on overtly political influencers, we prioritize partnerships with non-political creators (comedians, moms, trapeze artists, you name it) to build trust among audiences we might not otherwise reach.
We’ll do whatever it takes to make ads that move people — and we aren’t afraid to test creator content against our own. When we tested work from creators against work from our creative studio (both in the lab and in the field), the spot that performed the best in the field was one of the weirdest ones we produced. It looked nothing like the typical political ad. That’s part of why it worked!
No American is going around talking about how Republicans in Congress want to “allow employers to deny workers access to birth control.” Yet Democrats write messages like that all the time. Here’s a hypothetical example of a typical poll message from 2024:
Rusty Bootstrap voted three times to ban abortion nationwide. He supports banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest and criminalizing doctors for providing reproductive care. He even backs Project 2025, a platform that seeks to restrict IVF, allow the government to monitor women’s pregnancies, and allow employers to deny workers access to birth control.
Most Americans read below a 6th grade level. This message is written at a 12th grade level. And it’s packed with seven facts — more than a digital ad can comfortably hold.
That's why we love to work with polling partners who are game for testing shorter messages. With more granular data, we can create ads that deliver one message succinctly, memorably, at a level anyone can understand.
The Trump campaign gets this. They keep ads simple, and voters respond. Just compare the two ads the Trump and Harris campaigns spent the most money running last cycle:
Transcript:
Attention. President Trump is going to end all taxes on Social Security benefits and end all taxes on tips collected by service workers. I'm Donald Trump and I approve this message.
Transcript:
We all know costs are too high. But while corporations are gouging families, Trump is focused on giving them tax cuts. But Kamala Harris is focused on you. “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.” She'll make groceries more affordable by cracking down on price gouging, and she'll cut housing costs by taking on corporate speculators. Middle class families build America. We need a leader who has their back. I'm Kamala Harris and I approve this message.
As Democrats, we think that facts matter, and that the more we pack our ads with information, the more persuasive we’ll be. But facts don’t move people. Feelings do.
It’s our job to make sure ads reflect the way people actually talk, with words that evoke memorable images and feelings. For instance, we strive to use “pineapple words” — specific nouns that don’t sound like they were plucked from a white paper.
We’re hell-bent on making ads that feel like they were made by humans for humans, rather than by consultants for consultants.
LET’S WIN
Winning in 2026 requires winning voters who are sick of politics as usual. Cutting clichés, speaking scroll, talking normal: This is how effective communicators, from leading brands to successful content creators, already work. Democrats should, too.
Breaking old habits takes courage. Trilogy’s got it. Do you?