Liberal, Tory, same old story – in ads

The new Liberal ads are out to much fanfare and swooning at Libblogs, although to be fair, any video with Ignatieff in it would have that crowd swooning.

The Jurist at Accidental Deliberations points out that these ads are “inoffensive and vaguely positive” and bare a resemblance to a certain sweater-vest wearing politician of the last election.

This of course prompted me to find the sweater vest ads and compare.

First, Ignatieff’s new English ad (there’s just the one for now):

Lot’s of big notions and words and attempts to reach at “hope” and working with China and India. Oddly enough he still hasn’t given us one Liberal plank. Basically he’s saying “I’m better than Harper because I say so.” Please, Iggy, let us know what you stand for, because so far you don’t seem to stand for anything. And you know what they say about those who stand for nothing.

Now, Harper and the Conservatives released eight different warm and fuzzy sweater vest ads!

Not to defend the man, but at least his team knows about media strategy (like not launching your ad online on Labour Day weekend when no one’s paying attention). I won’t post all eight embedded (the links are below), but he does approach a number of different issues and some really try to play to his base with talk of family and foreign policy.

• Soft on crime does not work
• A nation of immigrants
• Family is everything
• Strong foundation
• True North strong and free
• Lest we forget

And since it somewhat relates to Ignatieff’s “Worldview” ad, here’s Canada has to stand for something:

So all-in-all, I’d have to say that Harper’s sweater vest ads are actually better on the whole than Iggy’s vague lost in the woods thing.

Still my favourite is Marg, Princess Warrior’s take on the Sweater Vests:

Finally, let’s remember that even though the NDP ran radio ads criticizing Ignatieff for backing out of the coalition in January, they had these classy “Chalk Talk” ads during the election (of course I may be biased):

Update: Here’s the comment I left at BigCityLib Strikes Back who’s trying to defend the use of Bland ads:

There’s positive and then there’s bland. While I have nothing against positive ads, why does Iggy refuse to give anything of substance? Where does he stand on Afghanistan, EI, the tar sands and other issues? Instead of answering this we get bland, and that’s what’s wrong about these ads.