I am an ad creator, an ad guru of sorts, and a Canadian taxpayer. From all three standpoints, I’m very, very unhappy with what I saw in The New York Times the other day.

It was an ad that was – I’m pretty sure – attempting to sell Americans on travel to Canada. It occupied a page-and-a-half, of which the product got the final half page. Let me take a moment to describe it, as objectively as I can.

It started with a full right-hand page, the top half of which was an all-type headline: GIVEN THE ECONOMY AND WORLDWIDE UNCERTAINTY, MAYBE THIS IS THE SUMMER TO STAY IN THE U.S. AND VISIT THOSE DISTANT RELATIVES. Below the headline is a framed picture of the ‘distant relatives,’ showing a weird mom ‘n’ dad, a weird auntie, two identically weird teen-aged girls, and an extremely weird dog.

On the following right-hand page, the full-page unidentified teaser ‘pays off’ with a half-page follow-up: OKAY, PLAN B, and in smaller letters, ‘LET’S TRY CANADA.’ There are a few words of copy, three photographs the size of large postage stamps, a Canada wordmark and the line, DISCOVER OUR TRUE NATURE.

Now I’m going to drop objectivity and give this ad hell. (Strategy, please give me a little extra space this week, I’m going to need it.)

‘Given the economy and worldwide uncertainty.’ Has anybody noticed America’s mood lately? Come on. Is this really a great time for the U.S.’s closest neighbour to attract visitors by ridiculing the American family? (This isn’t the main reason the ad is awful, but let’s get it out of the way first.)

Even supposing it was a good joke, would it merit taking up two-thirds of the ad in the hugely expensive New York Times? Ignoring for the moment the ad’s strategy – we’ll get there – look what happens when you spend 66.7% of your budget on clumsy foreplay. You have no room left to sell your strengths. You jam a picture of a beach, a totem pole, and a sidewalk café into less than seven square inches. (The entire ad covers well over 300 square inches, and the weird family gets 42.) Way to display your assets, Canada.

It looked great in the boardroom, but… People don’t read newspapers and magazines in an orderly fashion. I happened to pick up the Times travel section, started an article on page one, turned to its continuation on page 14, and then leafed idly backward. I therefore – like thousands of others, I’m sure – came upon the second part of the ad first. And there I discovered the sovereign nation of Canada positioning itself as Plan B. Oh, great.

I don’t care which way you’re going in the paper, ‘Plan B’ is a pretty wimpy sell. As Globe and Mail columnist Roy MacGregor put it when he slammed this ad, the message is ‘Please, pretty please, give poor little Canada a shot this summer if [you’ve] nothing better to do. It is the advertising equivalent of that renowned Canadian sports cry, ‘Go for bronze!” Nicely said, Roy.

The theme line – if you can find it – is ‘Discover Our True Nature.’ Why? More than a decade ago, Camp Associates (now Axmith McIntyre Wicht) did an outstanding and successful Canadian travel campaign with the cosmopolitan theme, ‘The World Next Door.’ To get to that positioning, they rejected the tried-and-true Canadian backwoods appeal – nicknamed, Moose, Mountains, and Mounties – on the grounds that ‘nature simply reinforces the U.S. view of Canada as that big empty space where all the cold fronts come from.’ Canada did and does offer a lot more to tourists than pork-and-beans around a campfire. Why are we again talking about our true nature?

Somebody decided that to get attention, we’d better use borrowed interest. In other words, Canada’s attributes alone won’t snag readers of the New York Times, we’ll have to drag them in with a funny photo.

This is really what bothers me most about the ad. Anybody who has spent more than eight months behind a keyboard or layout pad knows the moment when you turn to borrowed interest. It’s when you don’t have confidence in your product. If you have something that really differentiates itself – a great new car design, a new form of home entertainment, an innovative piece of software – you just shut up and show it. When you’re assigned the introduction of grapefruit-flavoured Whooppees, you tap dance.

I have done a lot of tourism advertising myself, and one thing that I have learned is this: Here is a category where you don’t have to borrow interest.

You already have an involved audience. People are bored, they like to travel, they want a new kind of excitement; jour job is simply to demonstrate, why choose you?

Certainly you present the product in a stylish and winning manner, as John McIntyre did with ‘The World Next Door’ – but you don’t try to impress by putting a plaid lampshade on your head.

O Canada, please make these ads go away. Please.

(For more on this campaign, see ‘Moving beyond mountains,’ p. 1.)

John Burghardt’s checkered resume includes the presidency of a national agency, several films for the Shah’s government in Iran, collaboration with Jim Henson to create the Cookie Monster, and a Cannes Gold Lion. The letterhead of his thriving business now reads ‘STRATEGIC PLANNING * CREATIVE THINKING.’ He can be reached by phone at (416) 693-5072 or by e-mail at burgwarp@aol.com.