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October 6, 2003 - Strategy Magazine
Regular Features

Election Wars
Issues and attack ads: The strategies behind Ontario's election campaign

by Samson Okalow
page 2

By the time you read this, Ontario's new premier will have just been announced. And whoever that winner happens to be, there's no doubt that some of the credit goes to an effective marketing strategy.

The Liberals took the much ballyhooed "high road," even including the phrase in alleged "kitten eater" Dalton McGuinty's television ads. Peter Byrne, CCO at Toronto-based Bensimon*Byrne, headed up a freelance team (unaffiliated with the agency) for the Liberal effort, and says he would have refused to come aboard if anything other than the high road was the strategy.

"[Attack ads are] anti-democratic," he opines. "It's an old way of doing things and its time has come and gone. But I suppose it'll take a while to die out completely. We have serious issues and they need to be dealt with and it's not about calling each other names."

It's a position the Liberals could afford to take because the Tories already knew they were trailing McGuinty before the campaign began. The University of Toronto's Nelson Wiseman, associate professor of political science, notes that the Tories launched their campaign with an attack ad - despite being the incumbent and the Liberals being a minority. He calls that strategy unprecedented. But Wiseman says the Liberals were ready to turn those tactics against the Tories: "The Liberals have been studying what the Tories did and were determined not to be caught as flat-footed as they were in 1995 and 1999."

Most notably, he says, the Liberals waited for the Tories to release their ads to gauge media reaction before releasing theirs. "If [the Tories] had come out with positive ads I have a feeling the next day the Liberals would have gone for hard-hitting ads."

Tory leader and Ontario Premier Ernie Eves was aggressive with his campaign, but attack ads may not have struck the right chord with the electorate. Wiseman says they can work, but they can also backfire when they stretch the truth too much: "I felt the ads on McGuinty were really misleading. I don't think the Liberals are running on increasing taxes. I haven't heard them say so."

And the little guys? At press, the NDP was bringing up the rear, as has typically been its lot. Karl Thomson, CD at the NDP's agency, Toronto-based Compass360, says leader Howard Hampton's straightforward message made the strategy easier to execute.

"We didn't have to spin Howard," he explains. "He's been saying the same thing since before he was the leader of the party. It was just a matter of presenting what he's been saying all along in a compelling way."

The NDP also had perhaps the most innovative approach, especially considering the party's modest budget.

According to Sheila White, communications director for the Ontario NDP, the party tried something that hasn't been done before in Ontario politics by purchasing space for its "Spin vs. Substance" ad on 260 Famous Players theatre screens across the province from Sept. 15 to 30. "We had to be more creative and more strategic with our advertising buy because we don't have the big corporate money behind us," she says.

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