Dalton Comes Up the Middle…

Adam Daifallah, a well-established conservative pundit who has done amazing work for someone his age, comments tonight on the Ontario Liberal’s new ad campaign, dalton.ca. I actually checked out the former site earlier today while browsing Bourque (the Liberals were smart enough to take a banner out for the site on the news watcher/racer’s page) and well, I think Adam has it half right…

I agree with Adam that the page is very cost effective and will greatly help the Liberals this fall to detach themselves from the “Dalton lies” monkey that they’ve had on their back for the last three years. I’ve said it every since early 2005, and I’ll say it again: John Tory isn’t going to win an election on the premise that another politician lied (shocking!), and as we saw last month, it seems that the only thing John Tory can guarantee is that he won’t break any promises himself…given that he really hasn’t made any!

That said, the website comes across as being far too urbane and artzie for me. As someone who has worked extensively on website design and development, I have to say that the biggest no-no on Dalton’s site is the font, which screams Bay St. or Fifth Ave. Winning elections is about being on Main St., and any advertiser will tell you that while sans serif fonts are great for catching people’s attention, serif fonts are almost always better for presenting a gentler message like the one that Dalton is trying to convey. Next sin: the video work. Some of it, like the one with Dalton and his wife, or the clip of his family is remarkably awesome. There are others though, like when Dalton’s explaining how he’s helped the doctor shortage in the province (and as a side note, he’s only helped make it worse!), the guy looks like he just woke up and got dressed five minutes earlier. The camera work on this clip is crummy and awkward and it really looks more like a high school media class assignment, rather than the man who just so happens to be Premier having a chat with us.

So, what’s the verdict? How does dalton.ca fit in with the media coming from the other two big parties in Ontario? Well, I have to say that so far I’ve been most impressed with the Ontario NDP’s new ad on raising minimum wage (despite how much I know that this will kill the economy here). In fact, so far I’ve been shocked at how well the NDP has been getting its message out, connecting with average voters and gaining momentum. I naturally don’t like this in that it’ll force the Liberals to campaign from the Left this fall in order to stop leakage to the NDP, but kudos to Howard Hampton and his team; they might have a snowball’s chance in hell of even coming close to forming government, but they’re certainly giving it a hell of a fight! On the other end is the Ontario Tory Tories who are either trying to show us just how gosh darn nice John Tory really is or remind us of how similar a Tory government would be to a Liberal government (except that the latter would spend less). They had their own ads out in February, which were disastrously bad, and now their website is plastered with John’s video blog. In comparison, Dalton’s website is more effective, efficient and eloquent. In other words, dalton.ca, while new and fresh isn’t as good as the NDP’s recent efforts, but it sure beats out anything that Bay Stre…er, John Tory has put out. If everything holds through October, a stronger NDP presence in the legislature with only moderate gains for the PCs (if any) looks more and more likely each day.