In a bid for the Massachusetts Fifth District congressional seat, Carl Sciortino was one of seven Democrats running in a special election in December 2014, the result of a sequence of events that were set off when John Kerry became U.S. secretary of state.

Sciortino is openly gay (he married his partner 10 days before the election), and the story in his ad plays with the idea of Carl coming out to his conservative Tea Party father. Not as a gay man … but as a Massachusetts liberal.

In other words: Gay? NBD.

Liberal? Ouch.

“He's been this way for 35 years,” Pops grouses in the video, in a kind of mock despair.

Sciortino was a dark-horse candidate and ultimately came in third, with 16% of the vote. Still, the effort received national attention (the New York Times, the Daily Beast, Hardball). The Washington Post's Aaron Blake called it “one of the more interesting campaign ads we've seen in a while.” MSNBC's All In host Chris Hayes tweeted about it to his then-250,000 followers.¹

At the time, political pundits praised it for the way the ad sets up Sciortino as principled but loveable, in the vein of former Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy: People might disagree with him, but they still seem to respect him.

At the heart of the video is a compelling narrative (and not just a political slogan). A son and father disagree; somehow, they make it work.

Think about this: Sciortino could've created a typical ad outlining what makes him different. He could've listed his progressive values, outlined his belief in the right to choose, and so on.

Would that have been compelling?

Nope. It wouldn't get people emotionally invested. It wouldn't make Sciortino relatable. It would've lacked heart.

The real “product” here is Sciortino's character. The video gives you a richer, fuller sense of who he is as a candidate. And the “why now” moment subtly suggests that Sciortino is a person who can work for constituents within a structure where people don't agree with him—even if they aren't related to him.

Instead of relying on the typical formulas of political campaigns, Sciortino scripts his own story.

One more thing, as it applies to Sciortino (and more generally, too): Innovation is more about brains than budget. Sciortino's video didn't have a big budget behind it. Yet it was effective because it told a true story well.