Promoting the Conservative Economic Plan: Ethical or not?
Advertising, Political Communication Add commentsMuch coverage in the media of late over the impossible-to-miss ad campaign funded by taxpayers to promote the Conservative’s economic recovery plan. There’s concern that the government is spending more to toot its horn than to inform us about H1N1. The Liberals have joined the protest and are promising to do better. So, is the campaign strategic? Is it any good? Is it ethical?
Let’s start with the strategy question. The campaign IS strategic for at least two reasons. First, billions of our tax dollars are being spent on economic stimulus so communicating about it is a smart thing to do. I suspect I’m not the only taxpayer who wants some idea of how the money is being spent and why. Second, a big part of any economic recovery is rekindling consumer confidence and the ads, in theory, can help to do this. There should be some communication on this massive spending of dollars we don’t have.
Then again, the not-so-subtle efforts on the campaign website to promote the PM, his cabinet and the party’s colours opened the door wide for lots of criticism and negative media coverage. The political aspect of the strategy appears to have backfired, at least for now.
Now on to the more interesting questions. Is the campaign any good? Let’s put it this way, if it wasn’t for all the news media coverage, I don’t think anyone would be paying much attention. With the exception of the home renovation tax credit (which we already know about) there’s nothing much here to get our attention or leave us thinking. The “we have to stay on track” line is so blatantly political that the entire message of the ad is tainted. Too bad, there may be important information in there.
Which leaves the question of ethics. Is the campaign right? On the one hand, we could argue that the campaign is perfectly legal. The law is wide open and only prohibits public dollars being spent on promoting political parties. Other than the simplistic use of the colour blue, there’s nothing in the ads that crosses the line. For that matter, there’s nothing new in this campaign. Governments at all levels have been tooting their own horn and using their own colours with taxpayer dollars for as long as there have been taxpayers and advertising. This campaign just continues a long tradition and pushes as close to the line as possible.
The way I see it, the ad campaign is motoring along at 99.9 km per hour on a road where the speed limit is 100. The trouble is, the road drives by an elementary school and the speed limit should be 40. So who’s to blame, the driver or the guy who posted the speed limit? In this case, both. MPs of all parties should respect democracy more, they should respect the electoral process more and they sure should respect taxpayers more. The amount being spent on this campaign is too high for a government spending money on the backs of the next generation. More importantly, we need a law against this kind of politicized advertising that has teeth. Democracy is fragile and all parties should step up and pass a law that will help to protect democracy by limiting the ability of sitting governments to use their access to public funds to pitch their policies.
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