Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s “Arabian nights” brownface scandal loomed large over week three of the federal election campaign, although it didn’t factor in any of the new ads released by the two leading parties.
Instead, the two frontrunners mostly stuck to their political knitting: The Liberals emphasizing small-L liberal causes like the environment and gun control; the Conservatives doubling down on their assertion that Trudeau is not as advertised while raising the spectre of increased prices for everything from gasoline to food under a Trudeau government.
While the Conservatives did see a slight bump in the polls in the wake of last week’s embarrassing photo(s) fiasco, there has been little change in the two leading parties’ standing in the polls. According to the most recent numbers from CBC’s Poll Tracker, which aggregates publicly available polling data, the Conservatives sit at 34% support, with the Liberals at 33.5%. The closeness of the campaign could portend the arrival of a wave of negative ads as the Oct. 21 election date draws closer.
“I suspect that if things don’t start moving next week, we’re going to see more negative ads that will get personal,” says Headspace Marketing president Eric Blais.
But Blais says there are also two types of ad campaigns running concurrently: One using traditional mass-media and YouTube channels, and another that is being “micro-targeted” to specific voters, ridings and demographic segments.
Tony Chapman, host of the podcast Chatter That Matters and a frequent political pundit, says social media and data have rendered traditional campaigning tactics obsolete, likening modern political campaigning to fly fishing.
“I now use data to identify your fears and dreams, your uncertainties and insecurities and where you feel happy,” he says. “I can then create the bait that gets you to bite, and fly fish it into your social media feed at the right time.”
About face
Trudeau’s infamous brownface and blackface images were notably absent from the Conservatives’ recent ads, with the exception of a Twitter ad that appeared on Wednesday showing the image and the negative headlines it generated internationally.
Blais theorizes that the Conservatives’ decision to ignore the scandal suggests they believe there’s little to be gained by launching further personal attacks on Trudeau. “I don’t see how the Conservatives could attack Trudeau any more than they have since he was elected leader and have any impact,” he says.
Lindsay Finneran-Gingras, vice-president of social and digital at Hill + Knowlton Strategies in Toronto, says there is also an inherent risk in using the images, no matter how it’s framed.
“I understand the intent to show that Trudeau has damaged Canada’s brand (and his own) across the globe, but I find it risky to use the blackface image in advertising,” she says.
Conservatives: The carbon tax and getting ahead
The Conservative Party ad outlining how much the cost of everyday items like gasoline and groceries will rise because of the carbon tax is “very on-point,” says Chapman. It fails, however, by not informing viewers that Conservatives also have a climate plan—that’s particularly important for younger Canadians for whom climate is a big issue.
The other ad showing how different families will be able to get ahead under the Conservatives is the type of rote advertising that Chapman says he’s seen countless times before. “It gets put in the folder of political promises made and rarely kept,” he says.
The Conservatives’ continued use of the phrase “not as advertised” in some of their ads is “very effective,” adds Finneran-Gingras, helping cement that message with voters.
Liberals: The climate and moving forward in Quebec
The Liberals’ new French-language ads are also notable for being the first to feature what Finneran-Gingras describes as a “strong creative concept.” The ads show a collection of the province’s Liberal candidates all moving toward the camera with other Quebeckers, which she says is strong tie-in with the campaign slogan.
The ads are also notable for the way they lean into Quebec candidates and away from what Finneran-Gingras calls “brand Trudeau.” The Liberal leader arguably appears less in this ad than he has in any of the party’s previous ads, she notes.
“The featuring of Team Trudeau is what you would expect in Ontario or B.C., where brownface or SNC may have hurt the vote, so it’s interesting to see in Quebec,” she says. “It may speak to the fact that they feel he lacks Francophone credentials.”
Chapman, meanwhile, says the Liberals are employing a classic strategy with the B.C. and Quebec ads: fishing where the fish are. “The environment is very important to B.C. voters, so Trudeau is there climbing their rocks, still fit and a champion of all the planet has to offer,” he says. “[Meanwhile] women, empowerment and individuals rights are very important to Quebec.”
The two west coast ads are clearly aimed at Liberal swing voters who may vote Green or NDP, but fall down by not being particularly memorable, says Finneran-Gingras. The climate change ad is “particularly stale,” she notes. “There is no clear creative concept. It looks like B.C. tourism shorts, or B.C. nature porn.”
Timing their release to coincide with the UN Climate Action Summit and global Climate Strikes led by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg might have helped the ads break through when they otherwise shouldn’t, she says.
The other parties
The Green party also released a series of ads this week that Blais suspects will go largely unnoticed, particularly since they are still struggling to define themselves as being more than a “one issue” party.
“The problem with that is they’re at risk of losing what sets them apart on an issue the Liberals and NDP are capitalizing on,” says Blais. After campaigning for two weeks in Quebec on the slogan “Not left. Not right. Forward together,” the Green Party this week changed its Quebec slogan to “L’urgence d’agir (the urgency to act).”
The NDP, meanwhile, has done little since its lushly produced launch ads briefly showing leader Jagmeet Singh without his turban. “They must have spent their full production budget on those,” says Blais.
While noting that Singh is exceeding expectations on the campaign trail, and connecting on shows like Tout le monde en parle, Blais says those victories aren’t showing up in the polls. “They risk implosion on Oct. 21 unless something dramatic happens, and I doubt it’ll be in the form of an ad.”
Some (free) brand advice from Tony Chapman
Chapman says he wouldn’t make Trudeau the star of any Liberal ad. “But maybe my biases have been shaped and twisted by five years of not buying the Trudeau brand,” he says. “That each time you rip off the perfect hair and face you see a different Trudeau.”
The Liberals should also be content to let Trudeau “face the music” at debates and let the other candidates bully him, he says. “The sentiment quickly shifts from what he did to being empathetic [about] how he is being treated,” he says. “We all make mistakes.”
The Conservatives, meanwhile, should take a different approach with Scheer. “Stop trying to be the cool dude. You are boring, a little overweight, and you deeply care about Canada. You don’t have to be a rock star to lead Canada.”
Chapman’s suggestion: Keep hitting people on how they feel after four years of a Trudeau government and billions in deficits. “Do YOU think it was money well spent? Do YOU or YOUR family feel better off? Is your job more secure, is transit running well, are we taking advantage of our assets like oil—or just buying empty pipelines.”
