The Conservatives are using the final week of the election campaign to run advertisements where older men are telling other older men to vote for the party — a closing argument that would have been unthinkable only months ago, political advertising experts say.
In new television ads that are airing regularly during the heavily watched NHL playoffs, the Conservatives are playing one spot in which two seniors are golfing and discussing how tough life is for their children, and another where former prime minister Stephen Harper endorses Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
Neither commercial shows images of Poilievre.
“We’re living in an upside-down world this campaign. Voters that were bedrock Conservative voters in the Harper era now need to be won over. And these are the boomers, 50-plus males,” said Dennis Matthews, president of Creative Currency and a former advertising adviser to Harper.
The federal conservatives really don’t do themselves a lot of favours with that cringe commercial. Also PP taking a page out of the Harper playbook and only answering two questions is what’s going to sink him. You know why people like Doug Ford despite how horrible everything he’s done is? He’s very accessible and communicative and answers questions. No I don’t like DoFo, but PP is just making himself less appealing by the day by not talking to people.
Doug Ford is famously dismissive of the media. He even created his own literal fake news outlet to avoid having too talk to them.
He’s making himself more USian. He sees their king and gets a hard on. He wants that.
And he doesn’t have the personality for that. Trump has his bizarre hold over people that they think is charm but is real narcissistic manipulation, and he’s outspoken which people find appealing, but PP has none of that and is just a faceless interchangeable conservative.