TORONTO – A new English television ad launched by the federal NDP Tuesday introduces Thomas Mulcair to Canadians.
The 30-second advertisement, starting off with six relatively diverse Canadians captured in their “everyday” activities includes endorsement from Jack Layton’s widow, Olivia Chow, and ends with “Thom” Mulcair introducing himself. It can be seen here.
Global News asked marketing expert David Soberman to analyze the ad to help explain the goals, symbolism and effectiveness of the video. Soberman is the Canadian National Chair in Strategic Marketing at the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, and has a significant interest in political advertising with a paper published in Management Science about the role of campaign spending limits in political ads.
Global News: What is the goal of a political ad such as this one?
David Soberman: There’s actually three goals of the ad. One is to introduce Mulcair to Canadians, because I don’t really think outside of Quebec he’s that well-known.
The second objective of the ad is to manage the transition from what the NDP was, to what it is now. They’re obviously the opposition party and one of things that they need to do is to make people understand that they are up to that particular role and have their team in place.
And the third thing, that I think is an important role of the ad, is to cushion what I would call the transitional uncertainty created by having had Nicole Turmel as their leader for some six months. I think that she was not really somebody who had brought appeal to Canadians and certainly her former association with the Bloc Quebecois would make a lot of Canadians wonder what’s really going on with the NDP and ask is this a legitimate political party?
GN: What is the significance of opening with the voices of six relatively diverse Canadians rather than Mulcair’s own voice?
DS: In ads you can have an aspirational element, you can have a spokesperson element, or you can have an element where you actually try to see yourself in the ad. And because they’re trying to actually make people feel comfortable, and get rid of a degree of uncertainty…I think making them feel as if they could have been in the ad is a way of making them feel much more comfortable.
| On the fact the man has a dog:DS:The guy has a dog in the ad which is a border collie, and border collies are known to be the most intelligent type of dog. So they’re hoping that by association, that people actually say, “oh well, Mr. Mulcair must be smart because he has a smart dog.” And not only that, any man who likes a dog and when the dog likes the man, must be a good guy. There’s a reason why you always see dogs in beer advertising, and this is basically making use of that particular mechanism which is known to be quite effective in advertising. |
On the man wearing a baseball cap in a pick-up truck in the woods: That guy looks a little bit like a hunter. What he in fact has in his bag is the handle of an axe sticking out of it, and not a hunter. And so they’ve been very careful…obviously one of the real issues for the NDP is trying to maintain their strength in Quebec but also grow their appeal outside of Quebec and most importantly in western Canada. In Quebec, there’s obviously a very strong support for gun control and quite a strong support for the long-gun registry, which has just been eliminated by the Harper government, and on the other hand you have the exact opposite going on in Alberta and British Columbia, where people are very much against this long-gun registry and are more in support of those policies. By having that guy with the baseball cap and pick-up truck and somebody that looks like he could be a hunter, is a way of saying, ‘hey maybe these guys are more like us than we thought.’ Traditionally the NDP is more of an urban party than a rural party.
Rural areas tend to be more Conservative, so it’s actually a clever way of trying to broaden their appeal. But at the same time, for people that really want–you know if Quebecers say ‘well it looks like they’re not really what we’re used to,’ you actually can look at the ad closely and see that it’s a guy that’s just gone out to cut some wood. It’s actually quite good.
GN: What’s the significance of the reference to Prime Minister Harper?
GN: Why do you think Olivia Chow was chosen to participate in the ad?
DS: The NDP have reached levels that they’ve never reached before, and in order for them to form a government, they have to do more than just retain that, they have to grow. But part of growing is retaining what you’ve already got. And that’s why Olivia Chow is there, to say ‘no, this isn’t some guy who’s been parachuted in who doesn’t have the same values as Jack. This is basically consistent with what Jack would have wanted.’
GN: Are there any negative effects of the emphasis on Jack Layton?
DS: It’d be one thing if they were showing pictures of Jack Layton. What they’ve been very clever, is that they’ve used the living link to Jack Layton who says it’s okay. And that means for the people who want the link, it’s there and they feel comfortable, but the people who want change, it’s not prominent enough for them to feel uncomfortable.
This goes back to the first frame in the ad, you have the guy in the pickup with the baseball cap who’s been out cutting wood, but also looks like he could have been hunting. These are not typically people that would vote NDP. So part of the ad is trying to expand.
GN: What do Mulcair’s choice of a dark suit and boardroom location convey?
DS: When you see him at the end, he looks like he could be a Bay Street businessman or a Bay Street lawyer and I think that that’s quite interesting. I think one of the things he says is ‘I was a cabinet minister, and also I was part of Jack’s team, let’s finish the work we started together.’ There’s a real emphasis on we and team, so I think it’s not by accident that this is shot in a room with long table with many chairs, almost suggesting to Canadians that it’s time for them to take a chair and sit at the table with Thom and become part of his team.
GN: How do you think this ad will stand up against possible attack ads from other parties?
DS: The interesting thing is that the Conservatives are very clever in this way and I think the issue is that Olivia Chow’s references to Jack Layton are perhaps the obvious risk. The other thing might be that he might try to dig up some dirt on his role as a cabinet minister in the Charest government, and the fact that he’s now talked about it in the ad, opens the door for that.
The real issue is that the number one best strategy to actually be effective with political ads is to have ads that say something positive about yourself that inspire people.
So that’s another thing, these ads will be very good as a transition ad, as a way to introduce Mulcair to Canadians, as a way to put the Nicole Turmel chapter behind, but these are probably not ads that are going to win an election for you because they’re not specific to issues and really, they’re to introduce a leader so people feel comfortable with that leader.
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