Lately Alec, who turns 10 in December, has been asking a lot of tough questions about life. He overhears items in the news, sees newspapers in the stores, etc. so he is starting to notice what is going on around him in the world. I’ve always been honest with him about things he asks, although attempted to make it age appropriate for him. Now that he’s older and he understands more, the conversations are becoming more complex. Yesterday on the way to swimming lessons, he asked about Hezbollah and about things he had heard with regards to the war. As I’m talking I mentioned Civilian Casualties. He asked what that meant and when I explained to him what it was, he said;

“Mom, I don’t think casualty is a very good word for that. It makes it sound too little, like it doesn’t matter, like it’s casual. It should be civilian deaths.”

And as he said that, I realized, he was right. It’s easy to throw around the word casualty, and if we said Civilian Deaths or Civilian Murders, would we give it more credence. Alec doesn’t understand why people would do these things to each other. It makes no sense to him. And as he asks me questions about the war, about oil, about governments, I hope that I will be able to give him information so that he can form his own opinions.

No, I’m not filthy dirty, nor have I been on some unclean spiritual quest, lol. I ran out of my home made soap. I used to have a soap making business, making organic, natural handcrafted soaps. I’ve used my last bar and I had to buy soap. So as you can imagine I had a lot of soap laying around my house for a long time;) I’m used to the handcrafted soaps, so that’s what I’m going to continue to buy. Although I sure did like my Mint Rosemary Soap, sigh.

I also saw The World Trade Center movie last night. There was something jarring about seeing a drama about something I had experienced in a sense. It made me think about the movies I have watched over the years that were based on true events, ie. Schindler’s list, that were extremely emotionally powerful and evocative but I had no personal experience with the crisis. In some way, watching this felt different because I recognized the news footage. I remembered my feelings when the trade towers were bombed. It certainly brought back the memories of that day. There were also some not suprising right wing political messages embedded throughout that I’m curious about reading more about Oliver Stone’s direction with that.

I was catching up on the NB blogroll links and discovered a new blog to discuss the 101 people who are screwing up Canada, created by Spink About It. It should be both entertaining and interesting to say the least. Although, how he’ll mesh the opinions of the left and right should be interesting, as I suspect their lists would be different;) Although Spinks is taking that into account and trying to base his decision on the impact. It sounds like the anti-list of Canada’s Greatest Canadians.

I had a great birthday yesterday. Thank you everyone for all the birthday wishes:) I played basketball last night and one of the guys took me out for a beer after the game. Although I think the highlight for the night was stuffing a 6′5 guy on our team as he went up for a shot. I’m not sure how that happened actually, he must have been really crouched down. I’m often the only woman that plays with these mostly 40+ year old guys. Occasionally there will be another female or so, but rarely. I’m not a great player, but I really enjoy it and it’s good exercise, fortunately the guys tolerate me;)

Back to the grind today, although suffering from a migraine. Finding it hard to think straight these last few days, been feeling icky and tired. As soon as I have more brain power, I’m going to blog about the upcoming NB election (I promised Spinks that I would;))

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?