Ex-BBDO vice chairman Jimmy Siegel has a new challenge. Where he used to spend a great deal of his brainpower figuring out how to convince consumers to choose Pepsi over Coke, he's now channeling it into the political arena with his new venture A-Political, an "issue advocacy and political marketing group".

Founded in August, and created in partnership with Moxie Pictures in alliance with strategic firm Freud Communications, A-Political has already started breathing fresh air into a campaign for New York Gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer. The company has also pitched in for Attorney General hopeful Andrew Cuomo and Congressional candidate Kirsten Gillibrand, for whom A-Political tapped actor David Strathairn to reprise his role as Edward R. Murrow from the film Good Night and Good Luck.

We took a moment to speak with both Siegel and Dan Levinson, partner in A-Political and partner/director at Moxie Pictures, about how a couple of ad guys might change the face of issue-based marketing.

Boards: What was the genesis of A-Political?

Jimmy: I knew I was leaving BBDO in December of 2005. I'm also a political junkie. There have been good, strong candidates over the last few years that didn't win and I felt bad about that. I also felt that political advertising needed a fresher look than it had, so I thought I needed to get into politics and do some political advertising. But I didn't know how to do that. Danny [Levinson], who's been a buddy for a number of years, [invited me to a] gala for Eliot Spitzer. Unbeknownst to me, Eliot was looking for something fresher, and I was looking for a candidate that I could believe in. We've shot about 13 ads so far and they've gotten a really incredible reception. As this all started to happen, I sat down with Danny and said 'Why don't we form a company?'

Dan: It started politically but really it's only political because of the issues that Eliot stood for. So A-Political is not just about doing political advertising; it's issue advocacy.

Jimmy: It's a combination of strong candidates and important issues. One of the first things we did was for a woman running for congress in [New York's] 20th District, Kirsten Gillibrand, who's going up against Republican John Sweeney, who's been smearing her. David Strathairn lives in her district and he volunteered to help. So we recreated the famous [Joseph] McCarthy broadcast that they'd shown in Good Night and Good Luck. Instead of castigating McCarthy, he was castigating Sweeney.

Boards: The Gillibrand ad is really different from what most people are used to seeing. Is that a bit of lightning in a bottle, having David reprise his role from the film?

Jimmy: Yeah, that was a fortuitous thing. But what's interesting is the stuff we've done with Eliot and Cuomo is very optimistic. My feeling always has been that you could be fresher with political advertising whether you're doing positive or negative; that you can evoke a little more feeling than traditional political advertising.