A new kind of ad

It didn't take long after the NDP announced its ad strategy for the first ad to be made public. And so far, the reviews have been nothing but positive. But let's look at a few of the ways where future ads can likely improve on the first appearance of the New Kind of Strong theme:

Now, the mere fact that the NDP has launched the first strike among the opposition parties and won praise from across partisan lines would tend to signal that the ad has served its purpose and more. But there's still reason to think there's some room for further development as the campaign progresses.

After all, while it's a huge plus to have launched the first shot across Harper's bow, the current success in winning exposure through the blogosphere looks to be based mostly on a novelty factor among political wonks, rather than any "cheeky and irreverent" entertainment value which would make the ad spread among members of the general public. Which means that it'll be tough even to get this first ad heard far beyond political mavens without a heavy TV buy - and even tougher for any more ads in the same vein to earn free exposure.

So I'll be hoping that future ads will add more entertainment without sacrificing too much of the strong push against Harper. But even within the pure political attack genre, I would think there's at least some room for improvement.

For one thing, the ad doesn't draw a direct visual connection between Harper and the problems he's associated with, making it relatively unlikely that anybody paying casual attention will link the two together as closely could be done with some minor alterations. Likewise, the transition between different issues could seemingly be made a lot smoother - particularly in the health care/oil sands split screen that was chosen as the featured screen shot. And some of the areas of attack themselves seem to leave loads of room for refinement: while images of the tar sands may make for a great backdrop to an environmental message, surely there's more to the problem to be dealt with (and pinned on Harper) than "Oil Sands" alone.

Now, none of the above is to disagree with the consensus that the ad is generally a good one - in rallying Canadians against Harper, in placing Layton and the New Democrats front and centre in that battle, and in setting the stage for the campaign to come. But considering that the NDP is facing the challenge of defining a leader who's had the entire resources of the Canadian government at his disposal and whose party additionally has more cash than it can apparently spend during a campaign, I'll be hoping for even these kinds of minor issues to be worked out quickly as future ads get rolled out.