Fred Davis III

Fred Davis III (born c. 1952) is a U.S. Republican Party media and advertising consultant who is best known for creating political campaign ads for candidates.

Davis is the oldest of four children. Davis was 19 when his father died; he inherited his father's public relations firm and left college. In the late 1970s and early '80s, Davis was chief partner in Tulsa, Oklahoma advertising agency Davis & Nauser (with partner Jeffery Nauser), where his client list included his uncle, then Tulsa mayoral candidate and current U.S. Senator Jim Inhofe (R, Oklahoma).

Davis left for California when Oklahoma's economy suffered from the collapse of the local oil industry. He founded and leads Strategic Perception, an advertising firm based in Hollywood.

He created the Celebrity ad for presidential candidate John McCain and the Demon Sheep ad for California Senate candidate Carly Fiorina. Davis was described as "the most creative person in the business" by Republican media consultant Mark McKinnon. He created a 2010 ad for U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell which featured her declaring she was "not a witch", in response to the re-airing of past statements made by her about her interactions with non-Christian religious practices. This ad inspired many video parodies and O'Donnell later said that the ad backfired and focused attention on her decade-old statement.

In February 2012, Davis authored a controversial ad for Representative Pete Hoekstra for his Senate campaign against incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow. The ad attacked Stabenow as Debbie "Spend-it-now" and showed an Asian woman riding a bicycle in a rice paddy thanking Stabenow (in broken English) for enriching the Chinese economy at the expense of the U.S.

Republican strategist Mike Murphy tweeted that the ad was "really, really dumb," while Stabenow called it "shocking" and "nasty." Hoekstra denied that the ad was insensitive to Chinese Americans and was meant to focus on Stabenow's voting record. Within two weeks, the Hoekstra campaign removed the video from his campaign website and YouTube account.

...
Wikipedia