When I first saw them, I thought I could live with them. I mean, slick they were not, but the Liberal ads WERE slick, so “not slick” seemed like a good thing. A week later, well, I dunno.
There are differing opinions on the NDP ad, but I kinda like it. On the one hand, it’s a negative ad, which is not so good just before Christmas. On the other, it’s pretty funny & to the point without being downright nasty, so I can live with it. It’s also, when you think about it, pretty sneaky. Although it’s clearly against the Liberals, the “corporate tax cuts – BAD” message could flip pretty quick to the CPoC (although they haven’t announced major corporate breaks yet).
But I digress. Here’s a roundup of opinions that I could find before I realized they were all pretty much the same.
CalgaryGrit – He hates them.
So does MKBraaten. With a passion. Although someone argues in the comments that the CPoC is currently going for “champion of the little guy” so thinks that’s why they went with “folksy.” And hopes the slick, negative ones are for January.
Paul Wells thinks they’re okay, but likes the Liberal ones better.
Hmmm… I’m sensing a trend here.
I guess the big question here is, YO! Stephen of the “we’ve received more donations than anyone else” CPoC!!! SPEND THE MONEY! PAY SOMEONE REAL MONEY TO WRITE REAL ADS!!! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR, CHRISTMAS IS ALMOST HERE!
Jeez. I guess I don’t like them that much after all.
cross-posted
I like them, especially the little honk at the end.
One assumes they “focussed grouped” them. But the market is dynamic so they might need to retool them.
Save the slick ones for post christmas. Spend the big dollars post christmas. Thats when the Liberals will be doing it, and they will have some negative ones. So be prepared. Dont start the fire but be “rain hell on them” when they do.
Canadian Gum* Registry
Exhibit # 789,909,788
“Son of A Gun Registry”
Cost to Canadian Taxpayers $2.9 gazillion
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Handgun `ban’ is the gun registry all over again
Liberals just out
to hustle votes
Dec. 10, 2005. 01:00 AM
So, this is what it comes to for Paul Martin and the Liberals � in a tardy response to the Summer of Guns, they will make illegal that which is already illegal, and ban handguns, except where they don’t.
It’s a real “son of a gun registry.” And it will be as ineffective in protecting Canadians from violence as the registry, in which the Liberals made illegal that which had previously been legal � unregistered rifles or shotguns � even though they had nothing to do with the targeted crime.
If the cost multiplier that affected the registry applies again, this could cost $2.9 gazillion, give or take a hundred million. Let us pray. >>
http://www.rapp.org/url/?RWN7YWK5
torstar>>>>>>>
* H/T David Dingwall @ $1.29 chewing gum wad.
Have you seen Steven Harper’s latest TV ad where he looks like to be in a call in talk show with some lady asking a question?
Harper is washed out from the lights, hardly blinks, and combined with a lack of camera angles (definitely not shot from his good side) and monotone dialogue didn’t help convince me this man wants to be Prime Minister.
Where’s the emotion, the drive, the vision? Do I want a cold fish for Prime Minister? I just need to look in my freezer if that is the case.
He may be the world’s smartest man, but if he can’t act like someone on a mission combined with some flash, forget about running Canada.
Oh my gosh even I am starting to think Harper looks scary…
They went with safe and got bland. Did anybody see their Quebec ad? It’s good and funny: a cyclist with his front tire stuck in a cement block/Bloc. And the message is something to the effect ‘don’t part your vote where it can’t move the country forward’, or something like that. But the Quebec media guy thought it was clever and funny. It finished with ‘this ad was paid for with clean money by the CPC’. Maybe the English agency thinks the ROC are boring. Time to kick it up a notch, and there is no shortage of material.
They’re frugal, which is just how I want the government to be with our money.
Frugal is good, folks.
Frugal communication isn’t though, Shaken, and that’s what I’ll get more of from my Conservative MP when he wins this riding again.
Anyway about the ads, I’ve only heard the Liberal one, and I’ve seen the one with Harper and the fake journalist and couldn’t help but think of the Bush scandal where he hired journalists to shill his policies, and let Gannon into the White house as part of the Press.
re Quebec ad….LOL I hadnt heard about that one. I am not surprised that went over well.
Quebec ads are usually humourous and cheeky, in the real ad world of business.
ROC ads tend to need to be more factual etc. Although the best political ad the cons ever did was the worker shovelling loonies into a pothole. That would work again I suspect, plays to preconceived notions of Liberals as profligate.
Anyway, leave it to the experts, it is the casual voter not us that they are trying to play to. Wente’s column is excellent today….darn right there are policiy announcements targetted at swing voters…smart politics.
I also like the fact that Paul Martin hasnt met a real voter yet this election, he has met with schoolchildren and american ex presidents.
I guess he is saving it for later, you know absence makes the heart grow fonder.
The commercials are terrible. The Conservatives need to scrap ’em and start from scratch.
They are quite dull.
And the main message “Stand up for Canada” is not effective when, after this message is uttered by the commerical’s narrator, a wimpy-sounding banjo type instrument can be heard in the background (ding, ding, ding).
The ads are very uninspiring.
Let’s see some knew ones with some upbeat energy to e’m.
This doesnt really capture it, http://www.guelphmercury.com/ but the real front page on here, http://www.members.shaw.ca/nspector4/
does capture it perfectly.
You cant buy this kind of coverage….in exactly the place where the CPC needs and CAN pick up votes.
This is why sometimes reading the majors misses what is really going on. The CPC is IN THE LEAD in southwestern Ontario, (519) which is Hamilton to Windsor. Let me repeat IN THE LEAD!!!…. I will say again, there is a return to traditional voting patterns with a swing to the CPC, which means 519 and 905 will swing CPC.
The city of Toronto is currently a wasteland for CPC and likely remain so. But to all of you who have been lambasting Ontario as “land of Librano” can ….no I wont quote Scott Reid here.
Now please explain to me why the CPC is falling off the map in lower mainland BC? If I was uncharitable I would be asking why all those lower mainlanders are supporting a corrupt regime, they are obviously part of it, and the SWOSM (southwestern Ontario Seperatist Movement) should grow exponentially.
A gentle, friendly reminder to all my Western friends that persepctive patience and perception is required. Dont paint Ontario with the same brush. We’ll do our part you do yours.
Now back to our regularly schedulked programming…doesnt harper look scary in that picture playing pool. :->
I keep thinking that fake journalist (even the “real” ones are fakes) is Rona Ambrose, but I guess not since no one else has mentioned it.
The ads are bad. They look like they were put together on someone’s camcorder.
The CPC should inject a little humour into these things; they’ve got to realize that far many Canadians vote with their emotions than they do with their noggin. A little humour would help.
I’ve seen Peter Kent on TV a few times, and the CPC should be pushing this guy to the forefront. He sounds good, he knows the issues, he’s trusted, and he doesn’t take any B.S.
Last night on Global News, they were stopping people in a mall to view the 3 ads from the parties. Some people chuckled at Jack Layton’s ad but said that he said nothing in it pertaining to his own vision of Canada. They thought Steven Harper’s ad looked as if it were filmed in someone’s garage. They liked the Liberal ad full of “Canadians” voicing their opinions. That is, until the interviewer told them that all of the people in the Liberal ad work for the Liberal party. After that they said the ad was a big lie. That’s right – the Liberal party didn’t find ordinary Canadians on the street who support them, they went to members of the Liberal party and put them on the commercial. How perfect.
No, you’re not off your rocker… they suck.
Informative, but pure cheese.
CPC ads are bloody horrible. Plastic, looks like he has a stick jammed up his A–. Give him a couple of drinks, do something. Don’t focus on him focus on the issues without him in the lead part. I don’t even like the guy when I see him in those ads. Fire whoever is in charge of the ad campaign, QUICK.
They suck.
Let Stephen tell the people the Consevative policeies, use the ads to create something like a Liberal Moment(like the B.C. ontario, alberta moments on CBC) start with Chretien and Martin’s red book, cut to Trudeau fingering the west from his train, Chretien strangling a citizen, Vancouver pepper spray, tanks in Quebec, police lines on Parliament hill, Martin’s ships with foreign flags, Homeless on Young street, Vancouver’s pidgion park home of Junkies,(show junkie passed out needle still in arm) TO’s bloor street (cocain central),list of shootings in TO Papers. Show paycheques from 1985 alongside paycheques for 2005.
Show taxes increases since Trudeau.
Good greif use some imagination.
We can’t take for granted Ontario knows what Canada has become under Liberal rule..Show them what Canada has become.
Trying to get a Liberal to listen to reason is like trying to teach a jellyfish to jump, it does not understand the concept.
They probably focus grouped them in Calgary.
Durward,
If the Conservatives came out with such ads, the MSM would accuse the Conservatives of going negative, suggesting that positive ads are needed, such as the Liberal ones from last election that featured U.S. troops coming out the back of a U.S. Bradley in Iraq; an aircraft carrier; a young, stressed out girl, sitting on the floor, leaned up against the wall, shaking because she is unable to get an abortion; chaos in an emergency room; and of course, a hand gun pointed at Canadian viewers.
Yep! The liberal-friendly media is just waiting for Harper to go negative so they can collectively condemn him while saying nothing of the Liberals’ smear campaign.
You want an example of hypocrisy? Take Allan Gregg, president of the Strategic Council.
In the Sept. 2003 Ontario provincial election, Gregg attacked the Tories ads, saying, “People just don’t like negative advertising … it turns them off.”
And just 9 months later, Gregg said of the federal Liberal attack ads, “Negative advertising is quite effective.”
Allan gregg said people dont like negative advertising…there must be some other context to this.
AG was the architect of the “bomb the bridge” strategy the tories used to break whatever trust factor Turner had with the Canadian people.
It was negative, accurate AND effective.
Do people LIKE negative advertising, no. Is it effective…YES if doen in the right way at the right time. Negative doesnt mean lying. ZGood negative advertising highlights your opponents contradictions, deceits or flaws….
Lots of time…work up a good list and wait for the Liberals to do it (trust me they will) then rain hell on earth on them with no apologies. Just not nasty.
And answer any negative IMMEADIATELY and CLEARLY. The pros know this, I am sure they are prepared (if not they dont deserve to win). Pre Christmas is not the time, post christmas just watch, especially if there is a CON uptick.
There are a couple of bombs waiting to go off in Liberal Land, some big, some small and some deliciously wonderful, but wait till post Christmas.
Shop, enjoy the season with family and friends, for those of you to whom this season is spiritually important reconnect with the meaning and values.
If the cons are smart they’ll remember Jan 7th is orthodox christmas….help them in Etobicoke Lakeshore….Come post January 8th the ugliness begins.
The CPC doesn’t have it easy with ad strategy. The Canadian advertising industry is a bastion of right-hating champagne socialists sitting smack in the middle of red-forever downtown Toronto. The Conservative party doesn’t go to them for help, and none of the big firms are interested in pursuing Conservative party business. They live by sucking off the Librano teet, for god’s sake! (both direct Gov’t advertising contracts, and ad business that exists only through Liberal protectionist policies and subsidies). The CPC communications are run by small conservative-friendly firms that are truly second-rate. The only alternative would be to hire Yanks – but they know the Liberal spin machine would make great hay out of that. So, what to do? A true Catch-22.
NCFTO,
Please dont make such generalizations. The ad industry has conservatives in it. They may not predominate but they are there…and they arent second rate.
Although I understand why you would think that….
I did not mean to imply that there are not talented, first-rate conservative individuals in the ad business in Canada. I am saying that the ad firms themselves have a vested interest, both ideologically, and financially, in the Liberal status quo. No matter how many good conservatives there are in a particular firm, there’s no direction from above to help with Conservative election campaigns. The small firms that the Conservative party uses may be dedicated, talented, etc., but they are pathetically low on resources (creative or otherwise) compared to their Liberal or NDP-backing brethren.
don’t perpetuate the scam. giving money to the liberal MSM would be stupid. i know it, you know it, every blog gets it. it’s countlessly reinforced. commit yourself to knowledge. who cares about the ads. liberal spin meisters and liberal pollsters. psyche!
I would agree that there is a general issue with the “one party state” that we apparently live in.
Incumbency brings benefits and those are that organizations are attracted to power. The flipside is that if they arent ideologically driven then they will shift with the wind.
I think the Liberals will find their house very very empty and lonely once the power goes.
The danger right now is preventing a Liberal, NDP combination that allows them to govern as a coalition. A strong con minority can find common ground with all three opposition parties on various issues.
A Con win and competent time in government would even pry votes and seats from the bloc. Think 1957 (the dief minority not majority)or 2 weeks prior to 1984, or a 1972 election without Stanfield “dropping the football”. Thats what this election will be.
Liberals out of power will cause rats to leave the ship. If the Con peak comes to early their will be a counter attack, if it comes late in the campaign the Liberals will see lots of people abandoning them and seeking to turn them in to prove loyalty to new masters.
There is a scenario of catostrophic failure on the Liberal side…I wouldnt bet on it but I wouldnt bet against it.
Lots of time, CPC should just keep chuggin along they are doing the right things. There will be a time to shift gears but not yet
When I saw the CPC ads my eyes rolled so hard I fell over, Jesus, Harpo should fire their ad-execs, they suck. One commenter here said “their frugal”, look spending money on a half-assed job is just another waste of money. Just like Harpo’s plan for a federal prosecutor, a FP that has no power to do the job that Harpo says will be his job, it cost us millions and it will do nothing. Just another waste of money, but hey, it’s good politics and CPC echo chamber eats it up, who cares if it’s a waste of money that will not do anything. Just as long as you feel good about the money being pissed away.
Zorpheous,
Just like banning handguns again and the money wasted on an ineffective gun control, and the money wasted on flags, and the money wasted on the freaking golfballs. By the way the difference between JC’s golfballs and Bill Clintons or Bushes is that they werent paid out of a fund that was supposed to “save the country”. And the money recycled/wasted on ads by the federal government in Adscam….ulm should I go on?
Shaken, “They are frugal”?
Might as well vote in an Amish elder…no offence to the Amish either.
The CPC ads suck like a Hoover that’s been re-engineered by Ferrari.
They either need a) a new acct exec at their agency or b) a whole new agency. Or why not get the Quebec agency to do some English-language ads? Les Anglais like funny ads, too!
P.S. Exactly, Candace, it’s not like the CPC can’t afford to pony up for good ads.
When I look at the ads with a critical eye, I find something very distracting.
But let’s look at some of the other things in this scene that are really important. Like why does the reporterette’s coffee mug have the handle facing to the right? Did she put it on the table and rotate it 180 degrees? Why would she do that? And, before anyone points out that she might be left-handed, from her perspective, the handle would be clear on the other side of the cup, in a position that would be completely unnatural for anyone of either “manual orientation” to have put it. I know having both handles face right is probably a subliminal message, but it’s pretty damn distracting for those of us who have a tendency to notice small details.
I suspect i’m the only Tory in Vancouver. But they vote in ethnic blocks here, and that is a huge problem. They’ll hold their nose and vote Liberal because they’ve seen it all before in the countries they came from, and most expect it – feel a benign dictatorship, no matter how corrupt, is acceptable, particularly when in return, they get all sorts of free stuff – health care, welfare, EI/UI whatever. It is what it is, and is a source of frustration. Non-ethnic types vote NDP. Outside Vancouver though, that’s where you’ll see the Tories move. A lot of these polls are way off, and if you’ve been watching Martin lately, you’ll know that they know they’re in trouble, and he is fighting for his life. Wait until Trustscam really breaks. He’s finished.
Iron Lady, you’re not the only Tory in Vancouver, I know a few. I’m hoping the seniors will revolt & go for the senior policy of the CPoC.
Zorph, you’re great at criticizing but not so good at suggesting what WOULD work…
haha that Harper ad where he’s on the mock talk show looks like an infomercial for some cheap house cleaner or something. I really don’t understand where these guys found their marketing team.
Easier to make a better commercial with stolen tax payers dough and sleaze-ball spin doctors producing your “work”. You know Dithers reminds me of that old guy in the investment commercial who asks the underling what he is supposed to think before he goes into a meeting.