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Ontario Election 1999 Background Papers
by York University Professors Robert MacDermid & Fred Fletcher
Backgrounder # 6: A Winning Ad Strategy
It's hard to know how the parties have weighted and placed their media advertising this time without being able to watch several TV stations simultaneously in different regions of the province. There seem to be more Liberal ads airing now than those from the other two parties. This could mean the Liberals have intentionally purchased advertising time in the early part of the campaign to launch attacks against Conservative Premier Mike Harris and gain some momentum. Or, it could mean the Tories have made a strategic decision to place a large proportion of their advertising in the final week of the campaign.
The 1995 Tory campaign team placed 43% of their ads in the final week of the advertising period. Interviewed after the election, key Tory campaign strategist Alister Campbell said, "We disproportionately weighted our campaign to the back end. In the final week, we operated on the assumption that the other two guys would be viciously negative against us so that we would be able to match their combined throw weight." ( TV Advertising Campaigns, p 84.) The Tories did more than match the other parties' spots. In a sample of 11 Ontario TV stations, the Tories aired 611 ads in the final week compared to 271 for the Liberals and 177 for the NDP.
It is very likely that the Tory campaign team has done the same thing this time. And having the opportunity to choose the election date has allowed them time to prepare ad buying plans and execute them either in advance or at the moment the election was called.
Why would a party weight the last week so heavily? Logic suggests that the mid-campaign front runner will be attacked by the parties that are stagnant or slipping behind in the polls. These attack ads are sure to come in the second and third weeks of the three-week advertising period. The party with the most spots in the final week will be best positioned to launch attack ads and to defend itself against the attacks of other parties and, in effect, have the final say.
Television ad campaigns normally have at least two stages. The opening round is often positive, featuring the party's platform and their strongest assets. Depending on how the campaign develops, the nice is usually followed by the nasty, as parties attack the front runners, who in turn become negative in self-defence. This campaign has been a little different. While the advertising period is the same three-week length as before, the campaign has been shortened, so the advertising period is now a larger portion of the campaign and the blackout period for advertising is just a week. Whether intentional or not, the Conservatives benefitted from Government advertising that ran in the immediate pre-writ period and even into the first few days of the election campaign, and the blackout period for political party advertising. This advertising effectively became the first phase of the Tory ad campaign. Government ads about health care and education looked very much like the kind of ads one might have expected from the Conservative party in the first week of their campaign.
In federal elections, TV advertising campaigns are more tightly regulated than they are at the provincial level. Free advertising time is available to the parties, and the Broadcast Arbitrator is in place to allocate free time and rule on disputes between parties. There is no such position at the provincial level, and while disputes about the equitable treatment of parties by TV stations can result in complaints to the CRTC, these can only be dealt with after the campaign is over. Broadcasters may also choose to exceed the CRTC limit of 12 minutes of advertising per hour in order to accommodate the media buying requests of political parties during campaigns.
For more information on fund-raising by Ontario's political parties see the paper by Robert MacDermid, Funding the Common Sense Revolutionaries: Contributions to the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, 1995-97 on the website www.socialjustice.org.
Robert MacDermid teaches Political Science at York University and is the author of "TV Advertising Campaigns in the 1995 Ontario Election," in Revolution at Queen's Park: Essays on Governing Ontario. Sid Noel, Editor, (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1997). Fred Fletcher teaches political science at York University and is among the co-authors of Government and Politics in Ontario. He has written extensively on election campaigns.
For more information, please contact:
Professor Robert MacDermid
Professor Fred Fletcher
Sine MacKinnon |
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