Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Concerned Citizens for BC

Concerned Citizens for BC is a group that has been created to go after the NDP and try and stop them winning the next election.   In my opinion the thinking behind the idea of CC4BC is fundamentally flawed and will have little or no impact on the election.

1) The very idea will be a red flag to the NDP and their supporters.   The NDP will be able to use this to get more donations and more volunteer hours, a lot more than all the planned spending by CC4BC.   You can see from Bill Tieleman's post from today how they will use it.

My guess is that CC4BC will help the NDP bring in something in the range of a couple million dollars and an extra thousand campaign volunteers.   It strikes me that the CC4BC campaign will in the end be more of a benefit to the NDP than the Liberals.

2) It assumes that the election is only a two party race.  With the BC Greens and the BC Conservatives running full slates and both parties running some fully funded serious campaigns, there are other choices the public can make than the black and white one CC4BC offers.

CC4BC can not point to any polling or data that would indicate there is any hope in hell of the Liberals winning the election.   Choosing to frame the argument as "You must vote for Clark to stop Dix" is not going to be taken very seriously by anyone and all CC4BC will end up doing is making people consider the alternatives.

3) Their total spending of $1,000,000 is really not very much at all.

On average the candidates in each riding of BC will collectively spend about $130,000 during the one month election campaign - that is a bit more than $11,000,000 province wide.  The four largest political parties will likely spend about $9,000,000 more on the election.  Other than CC4BC, other third party election advertisers are likely to spend close to $3,000,000 on election advertising,   This means there will be about $23,000,000 spent on the election.   $1,000,000 in advertising is not going to make much of an impact with so much other election related advertising out there.

Most advertising is lost in the media landscape these days, very little stands out and you can spend a lot of money for no measurable benefit.   As an example, I am not sure that with $1,000,000 you could even do one mass mailing to every household in BC.  If you did mail to every household, you would be happy if 1-2% actually read the material.   A $1,000,000 mass mailing might actually be read by 27,000 people.   Mass mailings are considered one of the better forms of advertising out there.

They may be talking about spending $1,000,000 but what they really want is earned media and a strong social media presence.  They will have some media coverage now but not nearly as much as John Slater will have.  When we look at their social media side, CC4BC has a Klout of 45 - not very strong at all.

The whole campaign seems an odd act of desperation unless there is some other longer term agenda at play and I have no idea what it might be.  

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes ,I am really concerned, that we get in a leader that will destroy our province and give it away to outsiders, as is happening as we speak. I am already looking for a better place to live, if the wrong person gets elected, and there are a few choices. I would like to stay in BC but I don't believe it is going to be the best choice for most

Arlene said...

Your ads are offensive and an insult to intelligent people. How about posting ads for all the Liberals who were ousted by RCMP in scandals and also the MLA who never paid his income tax. Is he pensioned, also Basi scandal it goes on and who knows what they will find if a new government takes hold. I am not NDP but will vote for them ESPECIALLY after this discussing ad. Its over and done with. Intelligent people don't need these ads. Hooray for Dix to go the other route.

Anonymous said...

Instead of continuing to attack Adrian Dix personally, I think it would be more effective to remind people of the Dismal Decade under the NDP. People are far more interested in their own finances.
Remind them that we now have an AA+ rating. We were a have not province gone from No.1 to No.10

Anonymous said...

Even as a staunch supporter of the liberals I am getting sick of your ads about the falsified memo. It is really getting old. The NDP is already admitting more taxes. Playing Robin Hood to the film industry. As in the 90's businesses will leave BC taking the jobs with them etc. Attack them on that!