KAMLOOPS — Did you catch that Pepsi ad that went viral this week?
Has there ever been such a blatant attempt to reach young people made by those who clearly have no idea what they’re doing?
Like WTF, bae.
I can’t even.
Stay woke.
But Pepsi isn’t the only organization completely out of touch with young people these days.
Political parties keep saying they want to appeal to young people; that they want to get more Millenials out to the ballot box on election day.
The latest set of attack ads, though, give the impression that what young voters care about isn’t particularly top of mind.
The NDP went negative early, concentrating on inside politics issues of donor integrity.
This issue is an important one, but it is far down the list for young voters.
Abacus Data says young Canadians care about exactly what you’d think they would care about: the affordability of life.
They want to ensure they aren’t saddled with an exorbitant amount of student debt, and they want to ensure they have a job to pay for the debt they have.
They want good ideas from political parties about how they will achieve that, and they don’t want to be patronized, as in the Pepsi ad.
The Liberals hit the NDP back, of course, focusing as they always tend to do on the NDP’s last turn in power in the 1990s.
But there will be voters next month who weren’t even alive when the NDP took power in 1991.
To them, the 1990s are ancient history.
There are only a handful of candidates this year, like Mike Farnworth and Harry Lali, who were part of that government.
The economies in BC and around the world have changed dramatically.
By talking about the 1990s, the Liberals might as well be talking about Tommy Douglas.
All political parties pay lip service to young voters, but their policies and their communication strategies say something entirely different.
