I won a partially paid summer lawn program back in the spring at a home and garden show. I went with the organics program they had. It’s 6 treatments of numerous things of organic fertilizer, corn gluten, aeration and various other factors. Then today they were out doing weed control and the guy who did it and wasn’t the usual one, stuck the sign in the lawn and it said it contained pesticides and to keep the kids/pets, etc. off the lawn. I was NOT happy. I told him how I was on the organics program and I wasn’t supposed to have pesticides on my lawn. So anyway they called the office, the office called me, big apology, I won’t have to pay my portion on the treatment. Big deal, I still have stinky pesticides on my lawn. My neighbors have cats that wander all over my yard. I wasn’t a pleasant customer to deal with, there didn’t seem to be much point using the organics program all summer only to spray pesticides on it at the end of the summer. Argggghhhhhh!

I’ll be honest, my typical political ramblings tend to be on a global/federal perspective. I’ve certainly been accused of being a Bush/Harper basher. I love Jon Stewart’s political satire and I regularly read alternet. Having said that, I find it’s easy to be a Bush basher, easier to jump on those political bandwagons, than discussing what is happening in our local scene. That’s because at this level, the lines are a lot blurrier, the issues more personal perhaps. So with that in mind, I’m more of a blank slate with this upcoming NB election. My opinions less formed.

So I’m finally going to write a post about the upcoming NB election. I think it’s important to clarify that I’m just a regular potential voter. I’m not a political expert, I only semi follow it in the news and mostly when issues that are important to me pop up and as I’ve said before, for the most part, I feel that trying to figure out who to vote for is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. What I do have are my observations of the election in a peripheral sense. In other words, Mr. Lord, Mr. Graham and Ms. Brewer, I’m your regular every day voter that your marketing campaign needs to appeal to. Here’s your demographic info:

single 37 year old Mother of two young children, one in school, one in preschool
Fredericton
Employed
income range (hey this is a public blog, c’mon;))
Post Secondary Education
Home Owner

What I’m curious to know and I know I could search and find it, but maybe a reader will have the info for me. What percentage of women vote in NB? How much of the female vote influences the polls here?

The reason I ask is that I’m going to blog about my perceptions of their marketing campaign. After all, they’re trying to gain my vote. I’m the one they need to sway. I read both the gleaner and the TJ yesterday and saw the full page campaign ads. With my new job, I’ve spent the last year investing a lot of time looking at marketing to women (I highly recommend. Marketing to Women and Don’t Think Pink) I saw both ads from a different perspective.

Liberal Ad:
1/2 page black and white (except for the liberal logo in red)
3rd person copy
team imagery

PC Ad:
full page ad, full colour
1st person copy
Close up of Lord 

Graham’s ad showed he and his team walking together. You can see the same imagery on his website. It’s a bit reminiscent of The Right Stuff but it works to a point. I think the colour version works better than the b/w ad in the paper. It’s too busy and loses it’s effectiveness of it being a team or community in b/w. Women are drawn to imagery that either connotates a team or community feel or they are drawn to imagery that shows close ups of people’s faces. The PC ad with Lord is certainly noticeable, but I find it’s too much in your face and not an appealing photo (no offense Mr. Lord;)). They both took different approaches with their copy as well. Graham’s copy is 3rd person (from the team) is specific in relation to energy, that the “PC’s have wasted 2.2 billion on the Orimulsion fiasco.” Which by the way most women are not receptive to that form of competitive put-down marketing.  He engages in “report talk” rather than “rapport talk” The PC Ad does a better attempt with the rapport talk as he uses the first person voice, the only problem, is that it’s too vague. The PC headline “Getting results for our children, families and seniors.” catches my attention, fits my demographic. The Liberal headline “Shawn Graham will make New Brunswick an energy leader”, yes it has my attention too, as certainly energy is important and definitely one of my “causes” but as the main leading headline, not as effective as the PC ad in that the PC ad hit on children and families, my critical focus for me.

So visually overall, I think the PC ad is more effective (although I think using a different image would have been better). In fact if you took the imagery (community/team feeling works) from the Liberal ad, combined it with the feel of the copy from the PC Ad. Keep the third person “we”, but give it a more personal touch, provide some facts and stay away from the competitive put-downs. Then I think it would have been a very effective ad. And yes colour ads are more effective, although more costly as well.

So what does this mean bottom line. I think it means that more people will be drawn visually to the PC ad then the Liberal ad regardless of where their loyalties lie.

And maybe I missed it (and if I did, that says something too about it’s effectiveness of reach), but was there an NDP ad?

So how much of a difference does an ad make? How much of a difference overall to their campaign will it matter which ad or marketing campaign, I prefer more? Will their signage that is just starting to be distributed all over town make a difference? How much do I trust the print media in NB which is essentially Irving owned? (another issue altogether). How does the every day person find out the election facts or will old engrained, pre-conceived and yes quite possibly false and ill informed info be my deciding factor. How much does my vote count? Who’s going to win my vote?

I’m afraid I have no idea off the top of my head. I was checking my stats this morning and discovered that someone had found my site using that search string. To the person who searched that, I’m sorry that my site did not provide the answer you were looking for. It took them to my soapbox category that had each of those words on the page. I suspect that someone might be searching that based on the recent news story discussing Kelowna tripling their Canada Goose culling.

I used to live in Port Credit, which is part of Mississauga. I spent a fair bit of time on the walking trails and parks there. The parks there were often covered with Geese and Geese poop. There’s no doubt that Goose poop everywhere makes an unpleasant area to spend time on and it’s a health hazard. And there’s a LOT of it. I’d prefer if they weren’t in the public parks. However, having said that, it upsets me that the solution is to shoot them, when part of the reason they are there is because of environmental and habitat reasons. That other solutions that provide habitat elsewhere or cutting down on reproduction might be possible.

I find Geese interesting to watch as I’m a nature nut, but I have a love/hate thing with them. I’ve been attacked several times by Canada Geese. I’ve also been attacked by a swan and other ducks. One time, crowds of people walked by these two Canada Geese, they barely moved, I walked by and one of them charged me, I had to hold my tripod in front of me to protect myself. So, I umm tend to stay away from them now for the most part.