For your information…

I received this from a friend yesterday. It was taken on a mobile phone in Copenhagen where world leaders are meeting today in, as one newspaper amazingly put it, “the most important international meeting since World War II”. “Brad Pitt is saving planet Earth in Copenhagen” is printed on the side of a 20 ft long reflective metallic trailer parked in the streets of Copenhagen.

Here is another image of this monstrosity from (of all places) the America.gov Flickr photostream:

The caption?
“Brad Pitt is Saving Planet Earth in Copenhagen”… a fun experimental project that will feature 12 non-Brads dressing up like the megastar to promote climate change action.

Yes, this comes from a US government social media account.

On the other side of the trailer is a web address which reads “bradpitt.dk”. When I checked the website, I found this awesome image:

In other decidedly non-warming news, Copenhagen was hit with a blizzard last night dumping 4 inches of snow on the Danish capital.


Copenhagen, December 6th 2009


Copenhagen, December 17th 2009

Drastic climate change in our lifetime.

Do I have to tell you about the ice caps of Mount Kilimanjaro?

Liberal reaction full of holes

Too illustrative, too offensive? The Liberal comms strategy on this IS full of holes I’m sorry to say.

Yesterday, I went on Evan Soloman’s Power & Politics show to talk Photoshop faux-pas and the illustration that was put on the Liberal Party website showing the PM in a Liberal partisan “assassination fantasy”. I mentioned that ad hominem always fails in communications; personal attacks such as the Liberal photoshop failed and the Conservative poopin’ puffin failed too.

Soloman mentioned another illustration (which was not available at airtime) of “bullet holes” around Stephane Dion’s head that appeared on the Conservative Party website.

Here is the is the illustration in question, held up by Kinsella on P&P yesterday and today on CTV’s Canada AM:

One of the tools in a web designer’s toolbox is the stock photo. For a buck or two, a designer can grab a professional illustration or photo to accent a base illustration or photo. In this case, a Conservative web designer grabbed a stock photo of
“holes” from a website called iStockphoto (a website I highly recommend, btw).

Here is the image from iStockphoto:

and the name of the file on the iStockphoto website? Not “Bullet Holes” but “Paper Holes“:

Holes in Dion’s plan, holes in Dion’s platform?

Why do the Liberals only see death?

Let’s consider the process of the Liberal apology:
1) An apology from “The Web Team” at Liberal.ca if the assassination photoshop may have offended some people.
2) An apology from Ralph Goodale suggesting that social media does not allow for editorial control. This is so absolutely wrong and misleading. The Liberal.ca photoshop contest had a screening process (ie. “editorial control”)
3) An accusation from Warren Kinsella that the other guys are just as bad so let’s all just forget the Liberal transgression.

When the poopin puffin was released, the Prime Minister apologized to Stephane Dion. When will Michael Ignatieff apologize to Stephen Harper for a mock assassination photo that appeared on the Liberal leader’s website?