Digging through the nearly 700 pages filed by the Elections Commissioner to support his request for a search warrant is well worth the effort. There's lots there that's already part of the public record or part of the record in the lawsuit against Elections Canada but there's a whole lot more that, it seems to me, is brand new.
Here's one paragraph from a second story I wrote tonight:
One of those initially worried [about the in-and-out scheme] was Andrew Kumpf, a senior executive with a company called Retail Media. Retail Media was the official advertising agent for the national party. That meant that, among other things, Retail Media placed the national ads on radio, television, in print and elsewhere.
On Dec. 6, 2005, just days after the election began, Kumpf sent an e-mail to Conservative Party officials, wondering if the scheme to have Retail Media place ads on behalf of local candidates would violate the Canada Elections Act: “While our thinking is that this option would be legal we are not certain beyond all reasonable doubt.”
From your story:
“Among the participants were campaigns by Quebec candidates Lawrence Cannon in Pontiac and Maxime Bernier in Beauce. Cannon is now the Transport minister and Bernier is now the Foreign Affairs minister.”
Although not explicitly, this sentence implies that the so-called “in-and-out scheme” was the deciding factor in those two MPs’ winning the election.
One may wonder what might have been for Cannon in Pontiac, who won by a margin of 5%, with 2371 more votes than his closest opponent, but the suggestion falls apart with Bernier, who won his riding with a margin of 47.1%, besting his closest opponent (BQ) by 25918 votes.
(info from http://www.sfu.ca/~aheard/elections/2006-QUE.html )
I doubt that voters watch political ads so closely that they cause people to change their votes. Anyway, the general consensus among media analysts at the time was that the Conservative ads were cheesy, not polished, lacking punch, so how influential were those ads? I doubt they could have swayed many votes.
If I wasn't a fan of yours before, I would be now! Well done.
And to the previous poster, I'm an ad guy – don't do political ads, I work on the brand side but trust me when I say – while advertising is fundamentally more art than science – if you throw $1 million into the national media mix you'll be sure to move a significant chunk of consumers (whoops, sorry I mean voters) to do something.
And efficacy, or not, is beside the point. Don't try and act like they were bad little boys who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. These yahoos stormed in from the West touting their moral rectitude. I don't care if they'd illegally overspent – and then lied about and covered up – $100. The fact is that they once again are being shown for the hypocrites that they are.
Sad, but – as many of us have known for years – true.
“The fact is that they once again are being shown for the hypocrites that they are.”
” … the hypocrites that they are” is not a fact, sir, that is solely your opinion, to which of course you are entitled.
And being an “ad guy” you might perhaps know that some people may react positively to ads, some may be totally indifferent to them, using the time for bathroom breaks, explaining your expression “to move a chunk”, while others still are enraged by the repetitiveness and inanity of the messages.
Dear Lost, I hope you use a bit more tact in selling your brands than the kind of branding you use here: “yahoos … from the West”?