Part 9 of our series for Canada’s federal candidates.
The sad demise of small town and neighbourhood journalism in Canada has led to a dearth of opportunity for local candidates to be heard during election campaigns. The corollary of that is: do any of the candidates have anything to say? The truth is that the entire sales message for most political candidates is contained in their election signs.
But there are still candidates who need to be heard. To suggest that they will get that opportunity at the voters’ doors, in all-candidate meetings in local church basements, in social media contact and in city media recaps of local campaigns is totally inadequate. It leaves the campaign with recourse only to mailers and campaign literature. And does anyone today know how to use them?
It was 30 and 40 years ago that local campaigns relied heavily on tabloid style literature. These were usually printed on newsprint and gave more space to pictures of the candidate than to ground-breaking copy. To keep costs low, we worked up a standard format where we could insert a couple pages of the local candidate. Then we could spread the cost of the rest over ten or twelve ridings.
Nobody wants to work with that approach today because of those awful ten-percenters that Ottawa has been doing for Members of Parliament for the past ten years. Anything political that looks grey gets a straight trip to the recycle box.
The favoured approach by all parties today is the magazine format on glossy paper. These are typically four-page efforts on a 40 centimetre by 25 centimetre, four-color, single-fold full bleed sheet. (Don’t worry your printer will know what that means.)
There was one of those mailed pre-writ by the Conservative candidate in our riding. You opened it to see what he was saying for himself and you got a shock. It told you nothing. This guy is totally without redemption. He is not old enough to have a biography. He has never held a job long enough to have a career. And if you asked him why you should vote for him, he would tell you something inane about Stephen Harper. There is absolutely no reason to vote for him.
But if you have something to say for yourself, your designer knows the proper use of white space and can do a decent layout, these things can work for you.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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