Free advice for Kamala Harris from a veteran Philly adman

A bit of free advice for Vice President Kamala Harris lingered on a Center City building for nearly a week.

Taped to the side of a redbrick building on the northeast corner of 17th and Locust Streets hung an all-caps message whose form followed its content: “Kamala: Shorter Answers. Get to the Point.”

Its author is well-known Philadelphia adman Elliott Curson.

Curson owns an advertising firm in Center City, whose lauded broadcast spots helped elevate Ronald Reagan’s 1980 GOP presidential bid as well as various Arlen Specter campaigns in Pennsylvania. He also coined the classic 1970s slogan “Philadelphia isn’t as bad as Philadelphians say it is.”

The veteran adman said that he’s not doing any work for this year’s race, and that his advice for Harris was nonpartisan.

Curson had watched the VP’s town hall on CNN last week and was dismayed by what he viewed as overly long and indirect answers.

”Just shorten it! Give short answers. Give [voters] something they remember,” Curson said by phone Tuesday. “You talk around a lot. They watch you for an hour and they can’t remember anything you said.”

After the televised event, Curson printed out the seven-word sign at his nearby Rittenhouse Square office and marched to a building near the hotel where Harris stayed last week.

“I taped it up thinking maybe some of her staff will see it.”

Curson said the advice — which follows one of advertising’s golden rules — applied to campaign stops big and small.

“Even if it’s going to Famous for a pastrami on rye,” he said, referencing the VP’s recent pit stop at the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen. “Say ‘I went to Famous for a pastrami on rye and it was great. Period.’”

The sign seems to have taken to heart the message about brevity. By Tuesday lunchtime it was gone; all that was left on the wall was a single piece of tape.