LP_468x60
ontario news watch
on-the-record-468x60-white
and-another-thing-468x60

With the next federal election set for November 2019, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer has just under two years to improve his image.  According to an Abacus Data survey released last week, only 28% of Canadians have a "very good" or "pretty good" idea of the kind of leader he is, compared to 84% for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.  On the other hand, 71% reported that they "don't know him all that well" or "don't know much about him at all."

The Conservative advertising team promptly put this ad together, asking their supporters for $38 (a nod to Scheer's age) to help put it on TV:

The reviews poured in immediately:

None of what Scheer says in this ad is unpredictable.  Family.  Hard work.  Responsibility.  Prosperity.  Down with cocktail parties and celebrities.  Up with grocery stores and soccer fields.  All that's missing is a sign around his neck that says "I DEFINITELY DON'T OWN A VILLA IN FRANCE."

The video uses one of the worst elements of the Conservative's messaging under Stephen Harper: focus-tested buzzwords in place of the positive vision they should have had after 10 years in power.  This strategy is easy for non-partisans to ignore, and easier for a sizable swath of card-carrying Tories to scorn.  Hamish Marshall, the party's 2019 campaign chair, noted as much after he spearheaded Scheer's successful leadership campaign:

The central divide in the race is . . . people who feel let down by Harper versus those who liked the government. . . . They were okay with incrementalism when we had a minority, but wanted that to end with a majority.

If this ad is any indication, the party considers it more important to please the one-point majority who don't consider "Harper 2.0" an insult.

Scheer has something else in common with his predecessor: a fortunate choice of opponent.  Between Bill Morneau, the Paradise Papers and anxiety-inducing tax reforms, the entitlement mentality that undid the Liberals in 2006 has been rearing its head continuously for months.  Soft Liberal voters are already becoming disaffected as a result, and they are a natural choice for Scheer's outreach.  In reusing that crack about cocktails vs. groceries (as if people who go to cocktail parties don't buy groceries; where does he think they get the hors d'oeuvres?), he is telling us who his supporters are, and that he is one of them.

With no hope of beating either Trudeau or NDP leader Jagmeet Singh on style, athleticism or charm, the Tories have chosen to highlight the one advantage Scheer has over both: his aggressive normalcy.  He is the church-going son of a nurse and a librarian, married to his college sweetheart, with a pre-Parliament background as an insurance broker and constituency staffer.  He divides his time between Ottawa and Regina.  His greatest vice is popcorn.

But little of that aggressive normalcy is evident in the ad's production.  It combines the plasticky image quality of a Quendelton State University commercial with the stiff, stilted delivery of Birdemic.  It is set against the backdrop of a McMansion-filled development built where grass and young trees definitely hadn't been before.  And everyone is dressed for summer in November, which opens up three possibilities:

  1. This was shot in the summer and the Tories were saving it in case Scheer's name recognition stats remained just dismal enough.
  2. This was shot against a green screen.
  3. This was shot in suburban Phoenix (temperature as of this writing: 26 °C).

Why, instead of making the video with footage from Scheer's own backyard, did his ad team choose to place him in this synthetic suburban box?  Where are the Conservative diehards who gave him that squeaker of a leadership victory?  Where are the voters of Regina—Qu'Appelle who have kept him in Parliament for 13 years?  Where are the people who actually recognize him and weren't obviously paid to pretend they do?

If the Tories can get this ad to run during the evening news, their desired voters may remember Scheer's name.  But he can do better than this ham-fisted self-parody.  Someone as normal as he is shouldn't make his pitch this artificial.

Written by Jess Morgan

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.