Well, it looks like Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was serious when he promised to stay "positive."
The Liberal Party's recent TV ad, starring Justin, amazingly doesn't even mention the Senate scandal swirling around Ottawa.
To a lot of people that might seem counter-intuitive, but if you're ahead in the polls it actually might be a wise strategy to stay on the moral high road. (So long as you can count on your non-party allies or on the NDP to throw some dirt.) Besides which, for better or for worse, Trudeau has made being positive an essential part of his brand.
Yet, positive or not, I have some problems with this ad that have more to do with its style and content than with its tone.
First off, the ad starts with Trudeau telling viewers the Conservatives are saying he doesn't have the right priorities.
That doesn't make sense to me.
I mean, why repeat a Conservative attack?
Imagine a car company airing a TV ad that began: "Our competitors say our car is unsafe, but let us tell you..."
It's just a bad move.
What if I had never even heard that Tory criticism? Now suddenly the idea that Trudeau doesn't have the right priorities is planted in my mind, thanks to a Liberal ad.
Next, Trudeau utters a series of negative statements: He won't be indifferent to retired people, he won't shrug at unemployment, he won't shrug off lower middle class wages.
This is a mistake because, simply put, it's bad communication strategy to state ideas in the negative. When you say, "I'm not a crook" the primitive subconscious mind, which doesn't do well with negatives, only hears, "I'm a crook."
So in a sense Trudeau is unwittingly saying, "I'm indifferent to retired people".
Better for him to state his positions in a positive way, i.e. "I care about retired people, I care about the unemployed and the poor, etc."
But the worst thing about the ad is that its only strong visual, a graph, actually shows the viewer that both economic growth and middle class wages are going up!
Is that really the message Trudeau wants to promote, that the Tories are doing a great job with the economy?
OK, I realize, of course, that his point is that middle class wages are lagging behind, but his graph doesn't really reinforce the bleakness he is trying to project.
He needs a graph, in other words, with an arrow going down.
Finally, I don't like 60 second TV spots. For one thing the viewer usually tunes out after 20 or so seconds meaning a large chunk of your money is wasted, secondly and more importantly, 30 second spots can run more often meaning you get more message repetition.
I guess the lesson from all this is that just because a political ad is positive, doesn't necessarily mean its good.
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5 comments:
Gerry....Never estimate how much Canadians have been dumbed down...They will still blame Harper for being successful economically...there is nothing more that liberal socialists hate than a successful business environment.
So you're saying the ad does NOT appeal to " the primitive subconscious mind"....I guess Trudeau has written off trying to attract the Conservative base :-)
C'mon...ya gotta admit its funny.
Is your response still so negative to the Trudeau ad in the context of the new Conservative radio ad attacking his lack of gravitas?
This ad looks like an attempt to set the JT image in stone before the Tories try to wash it away.
Nicholls, you don't know your arse from page 5 about
advertising. All the conservative so-called attack ads are just projections. The tonality of the V.O. guy is pathetic.
Goodness Harper is no economic genius. He inherited a nice surplus when he became P.M. and turned that into a deficit that he's been having problems dealing with. His only economic plan has been production of oil from the tar sands, but has mismanaged the issue of getting the product to market, and by letting go of Canada's manufacturing base, he seems more like a one-trick pony. The EU deal will help where we don't need too much help - and that is easing more resource-based exports to the European market and we will be importing manufactured goods from Europe at a lower price. Harper's lack of vision will have hurt Canada by the time people wake up and toss him out.
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