Attacking Attack Ads

There seems to be some buzz in the blogosphere today about some new Conservative "attack ads" as some people don't like negative advertising in our "political media" cycles. In a perfect world I might be inclined to agree with you, but it is not a perfect world and I measure right and wrong by what works and what doesn't work. Granted there is a precedence where if you go too negative, it can back fire. Paul Martin and Scotty Reid circa 2006 is a great example, when they released an ad suggesting that Stephen Harper would take the military and invade our major cities. It was a ridiculous ad and only hurt the Liberals. Even the CBC parodied the Liberal attack ads with bits like "Stephen Harper wants to put a giant laser on the moon and carve his initials in Greenland."

The guest host of Power Play today went nuts on this subject. From a marketing perspective, I think these latest Tory ads are brilliant. They are playing back Iggy's own words with commentary and music. Will they be effective? Conservative polling numbers have been very stable for the past year, with the Liberals and Dippers swinging up and down. These ads aren't likely to move the overall numbers up or down, but they should help keep Ignatieff's personal likability numbers low. Right now the biggest obstacle for the Liberal Party is that a large majority of Canadians just don't like their leader. I don't know how many Canadians will even see these ads, but I doubt that anyone will watch them and suddenly decide they like Iggy.

Personally my favourite wasn't about Iggy, but NDP ambition. It cracked me up in agreement.