“For war rooms, perhaps. Voters might be less inclined to pop the champagne corks. If only they had a choice. By coincidence, on the day before the auditor-general kerfuffle, the NDP started running an ad called, “You Have A Choice.”
At two minutes long, the ad aired only at NDP rallies and in those late-night free-time ad slots nobody watches. It did not produce the shift in attitude toward the NDP. But it almost certainly can help us decode it.

The ad is all text. For the first half, the background is Tory blue or Liberal red and the music is ominous. Blocks of text spell out the message. “For too long in Ottawa, scandals and political games have gotten in the way of getting anything done,” the text said. A little later: “And now other leaders are telling you that you have no choice. That you have to vote for more of the same.” Who could this be about? The screen helpfully displays a blue door and a red door, just as Ignatieff described them in his flop-sweat scrum. “Doesn’t sound right, does it?”

The tone of the music changes—to celestial trumpets. “They’ve been telling JACK LAYTON the same thing for over EIGHT YEARS,” the text reads. “Jack Layton has proven them wrong.” The blue background switches to orange. The doom music becomes peppy acoustic guitar, Layton’s preferred instrument for serenading trapped reporters on the NDP campaign plane. “Fighting for our families. Our veterans. Our seniors.” Here the content of the pitch changes, from hope to accomplishment. “New Democrats sit first or second in 104 ridings across Canada . . . ridings where only New Democrats defeat Conservatives.”

We’ll spare you the rest, except to note that in the ad’s remaining 45 seconds, the words “You can choose” appear five times.”

- Paul Wells, Macleans (May 2011) “The untold story of the 2011 election: Chapter 3 ‘The velocity of indignation’” Page 29.

This piece started as an intro piece to the Platform launch event in Toronto and then morphed in an activist piece and our free time ad.