Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them (7 page)

“Over the years of Diefenbaker’s ascendancy and decline, my Toronto office—otherwise and ostensibly an advertising agency—became a clearing house, talent bank, hiring hall and recruiting office for the Tory party… From there, forces were deployed to fight provincial campaigns in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Manitoba,” Camp wrote in his book
Points of Departure
.

All this advertising know-how and electoral success was obviously bad news for the beleaguered Liberal party and its new leader, Lester Pearson. The strongest hopes for the Liberals’ revival were concentrated in Toronto, home to that burgeoning ad business and a young radio salesman named Keith Davey. Davey, when he wasn’t selling radio ads, was living at the beating heart of the Liberal party revival, as part of what was known as Cell 13, a clubby backroom group of high-achieving Toronto Grits with lofty ambitions for the future—their own, their party’s and the country’s. They were meeting weekly, first at the King Edward Hotel, then at the Board of Trade, to plot the Liberals’ return to power. This being the 1950s, these ambitious Grits were attracted to all the things that were shaping consumer society: television, science, psychology and yes, advertising. All of them had witnessed how the advertising smarts of Camp and Associates had clobbered the plodding institutionalism of the Liberal party in the 1957 and 1958 elections. Davey, for his part, was also highly influenced by Theodore White’s book
The Making of the President
, which documented the slick style of campaigning that brought John Kennedy to power in 1960. Davey carried that book around as a bible, keen to import its lessons to Canada. His biggest import, eventually, would be Kennedy’s pollster himself, Lou Harris.

The Liberals’ chosen ad firm in these days was MacLaren Advertising Co. Ltd., which would bring its knowledge of the consumer marketplace into the world of politics. MacLaren knew its soap, too—the company had been putting together television ads for Macleans toothpaste, which boasted that it would make Canadians’ teeth “irresistibly white.” MacLaren also held the lucrative contracts for General Motors and Canada Dry. The ads for these firms’ products were aimed at Canada’s burgeoning middle class and the typical families of the time, and featured well-dressed men and women extolling the virtues of their new cars or ginger ale, the latter being an excellent mixer for the cocktails it seemed everyone was downing around the clock.

MacLaren also had significant input into the political soapbox of the time. The Liberals established a “public relations committee” in the 1960s, with heavy input from MacLaren, to help design winning political strategies that would ultimately seal the importance of PR in the business of politics. It was partly through MacLaren’s influence that the Liberals arrived at the idea—then revolutionary, as well as controversial—of picking ridings where they could win, and concentrating their efforts mainly in those places. Efficiency experts had been around the manufacturing world for decades, helping companies come up with labour-saving ways to churn out more profits. Why not apply the rigour of scientific observation and statistics to political prospects? Rather than mass-marketing their political campaign, treating all ridings as the same, the Liberals would target their efforts at the places where they could make gains. It was smart politics, undoubtedly. But it also put political contests into the same territory as business: a search for maximum profitability at minimum expense. In this case, though, profit was measured in votes, not dollars.

In a 1961 “progress report” to the National Liberal Federation, the MacLaren ad firm offered assurances, almost apologetically, that it was respectful of the distinction between the often wacky world of advertising and the serious business of Parliament, especially as it pertained to Liberal leader Lester Pearson. “While Mr. Pearson’s behaviour in caucus and in the House may be beyond the frame of reference of an advertising agency, we will mention that vigorous, outspoken leadership are preferred characteristics of a leader,” the report stated. Like Allister Grosart and his 1953 memo, the ad firm was trying to say that selling soap and selling politicians was not exactly the same thing.

The report then explained why Liberals should direct their efforts only toward ridings where winning prospects prevailed. “No money should be spent on hopeless ridings,” it said, flatly. As well, MacLaren argued there was no sense throwing money at ridings where Liberals were going to win anyway. “At MacLaren, we are satisfied that we know pretty well now which ridings are most likely to show a return on advertising investment.” This wisdom was being culled through “market research” and early, rudimentary polling efforts. MacLaren also advised that the ads have a different look and feel from commercial advertising: “The ads should not be pat, professional and slick-looking”—counsel that all political parties would follow for decades to come. People didn’t seem to mind slick sophistication from the people selling them cars or TVs or gadgets, but they liked their politicians to look like reluctant amateurs in the marketing game.

Keith Davey, in the meantime, was amassing market research on the images of Pearson and Diefenbaker, and his files were starting to bulge with reports on the comparative “pictoral appeal” of the leaders. One marketing report noted that people were fond of photos that showed Diefenbaker in “folksy” scenes—sitting in a classroom or holding a fish, for example. Pearson, on the other hand, seemed to evoke more positive responses in “more dignified” surroundings—in Parliament, for instance.

In 1962, MacLaren was also out testing future election slogans for the Liberals—yet another sign that the ad firm was starting to shape the actual party message, if not the party itself. The firm tested ten different slogans and found that Canadians, probably in spillover thrall from John Kennedy’s Camelot, were most impressed with phrases that talked of “vision” and a “new frontier.” MacLaren highly endorsed the phrase “Take a Stand for Tomorrow.” It also advised the Liberal party to be a little selective and strategic about where it placed its advertising. TV ads should be the priority, MacLaren advised, followed by mainstream newspapers. The third-ranking homes for campaign ads should be radio, weekly papers and the ethnic or cultural media. Don’t even bother with billboards or magazines, the ad firm counselled. Indeed, the 1961 draft of a Liberal campaign budget reflected this kind of thinking. With $1 million in its coffers, the Liberals set aside $450,000 for TV ads, most of which was to be spent on ninety commercials of one minute each, in prime time, on all stations. Another $264,000 was budgeted for newspaper advertising, as well as about $200,000 for radio commercials and a little over $80,000 for weekly newspapers.

It would take until 1963 for the Liberals to wrest power from Diefenbaker’s Conservatives, in what was, in essence, a faceoff between the emerging, ad-savvy politics of both teams. Davey, still in the thrall of US-style politics, put out an “election colouring book” featuring nasty drawings and remarks about the Conservatives, and enlisted a Liberal “truth squad” to dog Diefenbaker on the election trail. Dalton Camp, meanwhile, decided to run as a candidate himself in the 1963 election—unsuccessfully, as it turned out. Like many of the best people in the ad business, it seems, Camp’s talents were more suited to supporting than leading—more useful in the backrooms than on the stage. Lester Pearson became prime minister in the spring of 1963, kicking off a reign of Liberal power that would stretch for another twenty years.

In power, the Liberals’ attachment to advertising and imagery would only deepen. When Pearson went on TV to do a broadcast of “The Nation’s Business” in May 1965, Davey wanted to know how the audience was reacting. A select group of citizens in Hamilton and Toronto was asked to watch the show and then give their reactions in telephone interviews afterward. Though 2,000 people were invited to participate, the survey eventually winnowed down to 189 respondents, who offered their critiques of Pearson’s performance, on everything from his trustworthiness to the question of whether he was wearing makeup. More than 60 percent thought Pearson had “things under control,” for instance, while 39 percent were “somewhat bothered” by Pearson’s voice. Forty percent did not believe he was wearing makeup and 93 percent thought he “looked in excellent health.”

The southwestern Ontario city of London, Ontario, was often used as a test market for new consumer concepts and products. It was mid-sized, situated in the middle of Canada and had a large middle class, so Londoners were seen as good arbiters of potential success or failure in the commercial world. London was the site of Canada’s first McDonald’s restaurant, the first downtown enclosed mall, the first K-Mart, the first automated bank tellers and the first debit cards. At one point in the 1960s, Keith Davey and the MacLaren ad agency even surveyed the good citizens of London to determine what would make the perfect Liberal candidate—the idea being that you could apply consumer-preference test methods to politics, too.

So London was a natural place for Liberals to trot out an idea aimed at capturing consumer-citizens’ hearts in the 1960s. In 1967, the new Consumer and Corporate Affairs minister John Turner gave a speech at the University of Western Ontario in London, in which he sketched out plans for a guaranteed annual income for Canadians, to be financed by tax increases.
Globe and Mail
columnist Dennis Braithwaite caught the speech and wrote a column headlined “Beware of Grits”: “I wish someone would explain to John Turner and all those ambitious chaps who are seeking our favour that it’s a new ball game today. We don’t want any more handouts, thanks a lot. We just want to keep a little of our own money, so that when we save a little, or get a raise or pull off a deal, the rewards will be real and tangible, not an illusion and a mockery.”

Another person also noticed the speech with disfavour: Colin M. Brown, an insurance executive at London Life, one of the city’s major industries. Brown was perturbed at the way in which politicians were monopolizing the media to put only their own positions across—he believed that Canada’s hard-working citizens deserved a say, too.

On April 14, 1967, Brown took out a full-page ad in the
Globe and Mail
protesting that the Liberal government appeared to be on its way to turning a budget surplus into a projected deficit of $3 billion within the following five years. The ad reprinted the Braithwaite column, as well as some excerpts from other financial commentators. Brown, for his part, wrote, “All federal political parties, in their race for votes, seem to be prepared to make Canadians, in all walks of life, the heaviest taxed people of the world.” He ended the ad with an appeal for donations, to finance more and similar ads: “If you share my alarm, your support is welcome.”

Apparently, Brown had many allies. His son, Colin Jr., would recall bags and bags of mail landing at his dad’s office or on the doorstep of their London home, many with cheques. In this way, an organization called the National Citizens Coalition was born—an organization that would prove instrumental in the creation of a future Canadian prime minister. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

It would take a couple more decades for the NCC to start making a real impact on Canadian politics. In the meantime, shopping was still growing as a national sport. The Yorkdale shopping centre in Toronto had opened up to wild public favour, with spots for more than six thousand cars and expectations of $100 million a year in retail sales. Canadians were starting to agitate for evening shopping and retailers were keen to oblige.

Still, thanks largely to the increasing presence of women in the workforce, it was believed, retail sales were down. Canadians had spent 64 percent of their income in retail outlets in 1957, but that had dropped to 52 percent in 1967. Approximately 33 percent of married Canadian women were working, and they were finding it difficult to get shopping done on their lunch hours, according to a study commissioned for the national Retailers Institute.

By this time, the Liberals were also looking to the Toronto ad firm Vickers and Benson for some of their big projects. The firm, founded in 1924 by Rex Vickers and Don Benson, was an elite ad agency, catering to some of Canada’s corporate giants. It had been among the first to get into TV advertising, with a sixty-second spot produced in 1952 for a Ford dealer and shown on the fledgling CBC TV. In 1967, Vickers and Benson was given the contract to do the publicity surrounding Canada’s centennial year. The agency’s work in the commercial sector found its way into this project, too, specifically in musical form. Bill Bremner, then the president of the firm, had come to know a musician named Bobby Gimby through his previous ad work for Eaton’s. Gimby told Bremner that he had written a song for Canada’s one hundredth birthday, and he showed up at the Vickers and Benson offices wearing a cape and waving a regal staff. As soon as the diminutive Gimby started belting out the tune—“Ca-na-da, we love you”—the ad guys knew they had a pop anthem on their hands.

Al Scott, then the vice-president of Vickers and Benson, told the story to a magazine called
The Canadian
. “The government brass in Ottawa had already settled on a centennial hymn and an anthem,” Scott said. “But I knew neither would work. Canadians tend to be complacent patriots. And the sophisticated city slickers in the newspaper business have almost made it a sin to express enthusiasm about our nation. What we needed was a grabber. A stirring flag-waver that would make everybody feel, ‘Gee, this is a real good opportunity.’”

The Gimby anthem exceeded all hopes. By the time the centennial year ended, nearly every schoolchild in Canada had memorized the lyrics. More than 250 school choirs actually recorded the tune, and Gimby himself became known as the “Pied Piper of Confederation,” travelling to hundreds of Canadian communities, pumping up patriotism for the centennial year.