The Canadian election takes place on Monday, October 19th. Voter turnout is expected to be very high, which could speak to frustrations among the nation’s citizens, or solid campaigning by the candidates and their PR teams. I think it’s likely the former.

As it stands in the polls, the Liberals are surging, Conservatives flatlining, and the NDP are dropping rapidly. Regardless of the outcome, I want to touch on the regrettably poor ad campaign run by the Conservatives (see above).

Win or lose, after this election the Conservatives need to look for a new marketing chief.

Weak Conservative Ad Campaign

From the onset, and despite the NDP’s early front-runner status at the start of the campaign, the Conservatives clearly identified their greatest competitor, which is Justin Trudeau. They spent millions on ads going after Trudeau (like the one above); and in every ad the punch line against Trudeau was that he is “just not ready.”

Think about that for a moment… that’s not really even a knock on Trudeau. In fact, it’s more of an inadvertent admission by the Conservatives that at some point they think Trudeau could be prime minister material, just not right now. Is that the best they could think of?

All that ad really evokes in voters’ minds is that Trudeau as PM is more a matter of when, not if. From there, the voter can either agree or disagree with the argument of timing.

Undecided voters, the most important of all, were likely not swayed in the slightest by the Conservative ad campaign. It probably only made them question whether the Tories were right about the timing component of a Liberal government.

Taking the silver platter serving from the Conservatives’ open-ended punch line, Trudeau countered with a one word slogan about himself in Liberal ads: “Ready.”

https://youtu.be/UbI985_oN-k

The Conservatives poor ad campaign may be, in part, to blame if they can’t pull out a victory on Monday…

Instead of “just not ready” how about “just not qualified”?