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The advertising battle begins in Vancouver

October 3rd, 2008 · 2 Comments

The city’s civic parties aren’t spending a lot of money on advertising at the moment — not much point when all the noise of the federal election is going on.

“We can barely get the attention of the local media,” NPA campaign manager Paul Wilson told me. “There’s a lot of clutter out there. It doesn’t make me happy.”

In spite of that, the Non-Partisan Association has thrown a chunk of its budget at the Chinese media. The party started advertising there about 10 days ago, says Wilson, just an early reminder to people that there’s an election on and Peter Ladner is running.

He claims that the NPA hasn’t locked up every billboard in town. (That’s where the party put a lot of effort in 2005, which forced Vision Vancouver to spend on much more expensive and less effective television advertising.) In fact, he said someone else, he presumed Vision, seems to have tied up a lot of billboard space.

But Vision councillor Raymond Louie said the NPA is outspending Vision at this point on advertising. He noted, as have many Vision types, that in spite of all the hype about Vision’s momentum, it’s going to be a tough fight. “We should be wary of believing our own press clippings,” said Louie.

Categories: 2008 Vancouver Civic Election