Dear Liberal Ad Gurus, Thank You

The other day, I was harshly critical of the "Let's get started" tagline from the Liberal Party's advertising (Turn The Page, Liberal Leadership). Well, I'm very pleased to see that you've changed the slogan to "Canada's Liberals: Always there for you" which is much better, since it answers two key questions voters ask themselves when deciding who to support: Who's more trustworthy? And, who cares more about people like me?

Now, with regard to the third question -- who's the stronger leader? I notice you're still going with the Liberal brand instead of Stephane Dion. Note: You do not combat a weakness by running away from it. At some point you're going to have to challenge the conventional wisdom that Dion is drag on the party's popularity head on. He needs to be present in these ads eventually, perhaps surrounded by the Liberal team, but he must be in some future ads. If not, you are tacitly conceding the argument that Harper is making -- Stephane Dion is not a leader.

I don't care what your polls and focus groups are telling you, Dion's continuing absence from all but one of the ads is starting to convey a negative message of its own about the leader, thereby undermining any good the existing ads are doing.

Hapernomics and Bush