Experience from election campaigns of such politicians as Aleksander KwaÊniewski, Andrzej Olechowski or Marian Krzaklewski as well as political formations – AWS (Solidarity Election Action), SLD (Democratic Left Alliance), UW (Freedom Union), PO (Citizens’ Platform) shows clearly that the application of tools and methods developed by specialists in commercial advertising can bring measurable results. The author’s basis of analysis is political advertising which is the most widely used element of marketing throughout the course of the election campaign. With particular care for detail, the author looks at the planning process of political advertising through the application of a „technique transfer” – the transformation of commercial advertising and promotion tools to the world of political campaigns. In the introduction, the author defines political advertising with respect to commercial advertising, and next describes the methods of presenting messages those advertisements are to convey, the planning cycles and stages in the creation process of an advertisement. To illustrate his point the author uses Polish election campaigns, with particular focus on the 1997 parliamentary elections and the 2000 presidential election.