Angry in the Great White North

Brilliant.

I love NotALeader.ca.  For two reasons:

• The Conservatives have put my airplane post on the front page.  That post just keeps going and going.  I've seen the conclusion -- that the cash-strapped environmentally-friendly Liberals are flying a money-gobbling GHG-spewing bucket of bolts -- repeated over and over and over again in news report after news report after news report.  And now on NotALeader.com!  OK, so maybe this only matters to me, but there it is.
• The commercial construction tool is one of the cleverest meme-delivery systems I've seen.  The visitor constructs a simple commercial from a palette of video clips and taglines strung together.  The beauty of it that the visitor is enticed into clicking on each one, if just to see them all.  Oh, maybe he or she will make up an ad, but even if he or she doesn't, our visitor will have read every major talking point and will have seen videos Stephane Dion being incomprehensible or just plain said.

And hey, making the commercials is kinda fun.

And there is so much more to NotALeader.ca:

Notaleader.ca website -- launched today -- has hidden icons that, when clicked, reveal videos of the Liberal leader and his party colleagues in unflattering scenes.

By clicking on a flying bird that zips across the screen, for example, you might get a video clip of Liberal Deputy Leader Michael Ignatieff firing an AK-47 with Kurdish rebels.

One feature even allows people to create animated excuse cards they can e-mail to friends. When the e-mail arrives, the recipient clicks on a link and an animated cartoon of Dion pops up, saying things like: "Sorry for being late. Do you think it is easy to make priorities."

Brilliant.

Update: Maybe not so brilliant, but in one small way.  I was doing the Coren Show when this controversy comes up. An ad with a puffin pooping on Stephane Dion.  Geez.  Oh well, I guess it's some time for a few thoughts.

Did we forget something important?  Stephane Dion is right when he says it reflects mostly on the Conservatives. Insults usually do. That's what we tell our kids, but sometimes we forget that.

Will it win votes?  No, and unless you can look at an ad and honestly say it will change someone's mind, it probably shouldn't air. Cartoon poop?  Not likely to sway people.  And what average Canadian remembers the whole puffin thing?

Will it lose votes?  Not likely. The Conservatives have apologized quickly. It is only Day 3 of the campaign, with 34 days to go. It will disappear quickly enough.  This is where having a cordial relationship with the media pays off.  You get some bad press and then the news cycle moves on.

Should someone get fired?  Over one ad, probably not. You don't want to make your people think that all missteps are capital crimes. No one will take risks in that sort of environment. Better to learn from the mistake.

Any good news out of this?  It could have been much worse. The ad did not draw in a third party as part of the message, the way the Liberals suggested the military would join the Conservatives in making Canada a police state in the 2006 election. That was bad, as in really bad. That dynamic is not in play here.  In fact, there is no way to believe that anyone high up was involved in this.

Lesson to be Learned?  Comedy is hard. Really hard. Yeah, it was funny in a juvenile way.  Maybe you have to be a parent of little kids to realize that there are people who giggle uncontrollably when you say "poop", but little kids don't vote. Grownups do, and making them laugh is hard. Probably not worth trying.

Prediction?  In a week everyone will be considering the diesel gas tax cut, or something else, and will have forgotten the ad.

Advice?  For the Liberals, remember that the mileage on this is likely small. If you keep going on about it for more than a day, then people will start to wonder why you can't just get over it and move on.