Writing for Ad Age yesterday, Elizabeth Wilner pointed out the popularity of manufacturing-related imagery in campaign commercials.

Said Wilner:

Of the 27 spots aired by big-spending presidential advertisers over the past month, 24 have focused on an economic issue or issues…And factories -- lots of factories, loading docks and assembly lines, mostly abandoned but some humming (again, depending on whose ad they're in).

Watching them all, you might think the vast majority of Americans clock in at the plant every day.

While Wilner later points out that 88% of GDP is not from manufacturing, this imagery makes perfect sense to us at ManufactureThis.

National poll results that the Alliance for American Manufacuturing (AAM) released earlier this week provided very sound reasoning for why campaigns may show images related to manufacturing – Americans think it’s important!

The voters we polled indicated that creating jobs, specifically in manufacturing, and strengthening manufacturing in the U.S., are top economic priorities. We also found that 78% of voters think the U.S. cannot have a strong economy without making things domestically; 53% believe manufacturing is the industry most important to the overall strength of the our economy, and 89% favor a national strategy to support manufacturing in the United States.

Perhaps the images in the commercials are not intended to reflect the current state of manufacturing, as Wilner points out. Perhaps those images are intended, by both candidates, to be indicators of what Americans would like to see in the future.

Image from flickr user USACE Public Affairs and used following Creative Commons guidelines.