I’m a little disappointed at the craftsmanship, the tone, the acting, and the messaging.
Disappointed in a professional sense, in that I come from a history of political marketing, promoting, and advertising. But that said, from a personal point of view, I’m equally encouraged that the failings alluded to in the first sentence are all to be found in the latest round of Conservative election television ads.
The usually sure-footed Tories have completely lost their way in an area where they were once kings. They now look like the cut-rate hired help. I suspect when they kick Pierre Poilievre out of the leadership of that party, they’ll be putting the boot to his communications guy, Sebastian Skamski, as well.
So these ads, while terrible, are beautiful.
Two guys, one middle aged, the other just barely hanging on to middle age, both at the golf course and on the driving range. The older fellow has his driver at the ready, while the younger guy is kind of standing there with his own driver in the Ken Dryden position, a retired goaltender who had this unique way of leaning on his stick. Young Golf Guy was doing this with his own driver while he was bitching away at the Liberals and Mark Carney.
The older guy is at the tee, but he makes some comment about the standard of living in these inflationary times. He shares with the other guy that Liberal leader Mark Carney has some sort of plan to help. YGG says to the older guy “You don’t want to give these clowns a fourth term, do you?”
The older guy responds by saying he was giving that some thought recently himself, whereupon the younger dude shares that he’s voting Conservative, I guess because a lot of people on the course had been asking him.
The older guy rips a drive, high and mighty, getting all of it. The younger guy says “There ya go!” And the old guy says “For a change.”
This is absolute brilliance. How they worked that whole “time for a change” theme into a golf context is nothing short of creative gold. It makes me wonder what other nuggets of political wisdom are going to be passed between the two, and others, as they navigate their nine, eighteen, or twenty-seven holes. Elections Canada should have set up a polling station in the clubhouse for these guys to mark their x’s while their passion and reason are so perfectly aligned.
The other ad features former prime minister Stephen Harper. Not Pierre Poilievre, but Stephen Harper, which is a reflection of the fact that the Conservatives feel their own leader is a bit too toxic as far as the electorate is concerned at the moment. So they trotted out Mr. Personality himself, the guy with the social graces and comfort of a bowling ball.
Harper says both Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney “worked” for him, but now that he has to decide, he, as in Harper, is going to vote for Pierre because Pierre’s a better leader, at least in the estimation of a former prime minister who was defeated by Goldisocks back in the 2015 election.
Poilievre was a parliamentary assistant and regular party hack at a young age, having experienced no other job but. He was an MP and underling in Harper’s government and saw duty as one of Harper’s attack dogs in Parliament. He achieved absolutely nothing other than to piss a lot of people off with his adolescent bitterness-based rhetoric. While Harper was by no means a good-looking man in his own right, it was Poilievre who was his ugly face. This is how Pierre worked for Stephen.
Mark Carney has a much different professional resume than Poilievre in that it includes an impressive array of credentials, both academic and professional, a resume loaded with distinction and achievement obtained long before he entered the political arena. It was as a pre-eminent economist within the finance department that Carney was named Governor of the Bank of Canada by Harper in 2007. The very next year, in 2008, it was Carney who led the Canadian response to the economic meltdown that led to a financial crisis in 2008, positioning Canada as the sole nation among the G-7 nations that weathered that economic storm, brought upon us by American greed. To say he “worked” for Harper is a bit of a misnomer, as Carney essentially saved Harper’s ass in a time of severe crisis. Yet Harper doesn’t see him as a qualified “leader” in these times desperate for qualified leadership.
Isn’t that cute? And desperate. Thinking Harper will be a positive draw, when actually filling a television screen with his face and that plastic hair of his that would send animals and small children running.
And then, perfection, right at the end. When Harper stops talking in the ad, he unleashes his sharpest weapon, that Herman Munster smile that makes people cringe and keeps therapists employed.
And they call the Liberals the clowns.
It appears, though, that a lot of people seem to be willing to give the Liberal clowns that fourth term that YGG refers to, and are prepared to do so rather than give the Conservative clowns their first term.
Stephen Harper’s smile will cement that deal. And I don’t think a golf ad aimed at older men is going to get the job done either. If this is the demographic the Conservatives are preaching to, it must surely mean that they feel they have to shore up this age and gender group, which is odd, because this is the age-gender group most in the Poilievre camp. It’s true the Conservatives are bleeding support (hemorrhaging?) among all potential voter groups, particularly among women who don’t like Poilievre because apparently they’re smarter than their male counterparts. So seeing an ad targeting old guys on a golf course seems to be playing to the choir. Unless they know something I don’t, which I hope they do.
I guess the Conservatives have moved past the “Carbon Tax Carney” ad from before, where they say Carney is exactly the same as Justin Trudeau, just with different socks.
Honestly, if this is what they’ve got going into the final stretch of a campaign, then there’s hope. Usually you save your best for last, and right now is when a campaign would be pounding out their most impactful ads as more and more people are more focussed and paying attention. With a plan like this, the best ad, the “killer” ad, would be released maybe this Thursday, and would be absolutely pounding the airwaves over the weekend.
If the ads I’m seeing are the ones setting the stage for the kill ads, I really have to wonder what the Conservatives have left in the cupboard.
Because these two ads are brutal.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 