Seriously?
Watching television tonight, I saw the new Ontario Liberal Party ad for the first time. The ad is basically a paraphrased version of the hugely successful Chrysler Superbowl ad that featured Eminem and did a tremendous sales job for Detroit. Both begin with a narrator’s voice over short clips of gritty city scenes and hardworking men and women. In the Chrysler ad, the narrator opens with “I got a question for you…” and the Liberal ad (narrated by Dalton himself) begins with “Ask yourself something…” The similarities only get creepier from there. Watch them in a row below:
The Ontario Liberal Party:
And the original Chrysler version:
Curious, I went to the internet for answers and found this excellent National Post article about the appropriateness of the deliberate rip-off by the Liberals, and the complete lack of ethics of the ad agency that stole from one of its peers. It’s not uncommon to be inspired by each other, or to come up with similar ideas independently, don’t get me wrong. But this crosses the line – for both the Liberal party and the ad agency that represents them.
