Take a good look at this billboard.
It cost $56,000.
That includes over $38,000 for the board itself, another $16,000 for “planning” and another $1,130 for “services.
The money went to a company called Promoworks, Inc, which as some people have discovered is registered to the owner of Target Marketing.
You may recall Target as the agency of record for provincial government advertising. They also did the triffid logo thingy the provincial government now uses.
Promoworks is an interesting company. You won’t find it online. You won’t find it listed in the telephone book.
The only director of the company is Noel O’Dea, the guy behind Target Marketing. In fact, the mailing address for the company is the street address for Target. Unlike the corporate registry entry for target, Promoworks has a different mailing address. It’s a law firm – O’Dea Earle - which, among other things, is home to the Premier’s brother Tommy.
Now there’s nothing unusual in any of that.
What’s odd is that the bills flowed through Promoworks when, by any reasonable deduction, the work was done by Target. It’s not unusual for an advertising agency to do political work like this, even an agency like Target whose client list includes Air Canada Jazz, McCains, A & P, Irving and other major brands. And it’s not like some simple sleuthing didn’t figure it out.
Yet for some reason the bills went through a legally registered company but one without any public face at all.
Odd.
The campaign bills themselves seem a bit odd too, odd if one considers they were supposed to be advertising for a national campaign.
A single billboard in downtown Toronto cost almost half the total budget for the project, if you consider only the actual line item in the financial statement for the billboard. People who know don’t measure advertising by the amount of media coverage it garnered. They measure it by the impact it had on consumers and by all informed accounts, this sucker didn’t have any impact on consumers outside Newfoundland and Labrador.
Even allowing for some media coverage of the billboard, the total impact of that money would be negligible in the total amount of advertising, news work and other communications coming from the political campaigns themselves. It had about as much effect as a pebble tossed in the Atlantic in the middle of a hurricane.
It’s almost like this whole thing was supposed to look good even if it didn’t do anything substantive beyond generate billings, a campaign by Fernando if you will.
There are some niggling details that don’t add up here either.
Like the $244.50 for registering the domain “anythingbutconservative.ca”. It went to internic.ca, incidentally, not something called “intonic.ca”. Registering the domain doesn’t give you content and there’s no bill for the website design in there anywhere, apparently. None of the amounts or labels match up to that.
Like splitting the contract between two advertising companies when Target/Promoworks could easily have handled the whole thing.
Like figuring out what “advertising services” constitutes that wasn’t captured in the rest of the bill or why a billboard required $16,000 in “planning.”
Like what the heck is an Inbox Factory, anyways? That one still defies the searchers.
Rest assured though, they are still searching, even if all they turn up are more questions.
-srbp-
6 comments:
i suspect the inbox factory is a typo and should have read idea factory - a danny supporter
This is all good, I suppose? The investigative element and the questions are all water cooler issues however I am missing the overal point to the exercise. The names associated with comapnies are all for public consumpation and the fact that Noel O'dea and Target's fingerprints is not news.
My guess is that the high costs listed are associated with the regular client and graphic/PR breakdown that are very typical with all similar firms.
From my experience the itemized cost breakdown for services rendered were submitted to ABC however the itemized list was not forwarded to Election Canada. No big deal and not necessary according to the rules governing this requirement
I have registered a number of URL's from Internic and each time was required to pay. This was either done directly or through a third party.
As to whether Target could have done this piece of work.....sure they could have, however we are not privy to tax obligations or finacial prudence considerations concerning Target or corporate dilligence that precludes a clearer line of ownwership. Does the contract on the AOR stipulate such involvement?
There are no "niggling" bits. The trail is clear when the fog lights are on!!
the issue of Tom Williams and the law firm O'Dea Earl are red herrings. To think that the Prem's brother is not involved in strategy is silly, albeit that the strategy on this issue was out to lunch.
I am sory Ed but after reading and re-reading the posts on this issue I can't help and reference the TMZ show. On this issue there is no smoking gun or dark secret that will further the idiosy of the ABC campaign. They did that all by themselves.
I presume it is an oversight but nowhere in your posts did you reference that not one dime came from the treasurey but from money from the PC NL Party. To what's it's worth I would have distinguished this point. But then again, that's your perogative.
Anthony Roy
Not every post is intended to be an Earth-shattering revelation, Anthony.
Some are just discussions of aspects of the particular story that I find curious. Your mileage may vary.
In this case, I discussed a bunch of aspects I found curious, not the least of which was the huge cost for such a modest output.
As for who paid, it wasn't an oversight. All the stories I linked to including my earlier post on this noted the cash came - as reported - from the Provincial Conservative party coffers.
Who paid isn't as curious to me as what they got billed for and who did the billing.
Incidentally, I wonder how may people who made financial contributions to the provincial Tories would have done so if they knew their cash would have gone in part to this campaign?
Must piss off the Harper Liberals here in NFLD.
@ Anonymous 2002:
Maybe it would if anyone had any idea what you were referring to.
Have you done any research since this post to find out if the Inbox Factory was indeed the Idea Factory? It seems a likely link considering they do a load of work for the Provincial Government. I also heard Danny's son-in-law works there.
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