'Stop Harper' sticker campaign has potential to make a real impact, says expert

The message on the stickers couldn’t be clearer: Stop Harper, framed in the shape of the familiar red octagonal road sign. Or just the word Harper, designed to be slapped on a real stop sign, with the added benefit of being bilingual if you’re in Quebec.

The Stop Harper sticker campaign has become a vandalism nuisance for several Canadian cities from coast to coast, forcing them to repair or replace defaced road signs.

The stickers first began showing up last year, documented on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. It’s reasonable to think the lengthy federal election campaign could trigger another wave of them.

While they might seem juvenile, one political scientist suggests they’re an interesting backlash to the slick, stage-managed political advertising we now take for granted.

Officials in Prince Rupert, on B.C.’s northern coast, reported having to replace a half-dozen signs at more than $50 a throw. On the East Coast a spate of defacements of signs around the University of New Brunswick and St. Thomas University in Fredericton last May resulted a charge of mischief property damage.

“The initial complaint [was] we had about 21 of them put on in and around university campuses,” Ryan Kelly, an investigator with the Fredericton Police Force neighbourhood action team, told Yahoo Canada.

“I don’t believe we had any for a while. I know the city cleaned them up and there was one person actually charged for it.”

Kelly said that while only one person was collared, he suspects more than one person was responsible. The cost totaled $750, he said. The city says a handful of surfaced since the first ones were removed.

Related stories:

"STOP HARPER": City fights war on street signs

Alberta man to fight $543 fine over profane Harper sign

‘Stop Harper’ written in snow on Parliament Hill

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Calgary Southwest riding was hit too, with four signs vandalized, said Tara Norton-Merrin, communications supervisor for the City of Calgary’s roads and transportation department.

“We have not had to replace any signs to date as we have used our regular graffiti removal processes,” she said.

Stickers’ creator nurtures intense dislike of Harper

The Stop Harper stickers are the brainchild of Mac Ball, who works in the B.C. film industry and nurtures a, shall we say, visceral dislike of the prime minister and his government.

Ball, immersed in film shoot, was not available for a phone interview but said in an email exchange with Yahoo Canada that demand for the stickers is “through the roof.”

“The only thing I’ve heard is hundreds of people contact me over the past two years to tell me how much they love this campaign and how much they hate this goof prime minister,” Ball said.

The sticker campaign has gone viral since the election call, he said.

“The last order of stickers has arrived,” said Ball. “Sold out in maybe 2-3 weeks I’m guessing, maybe sooner.”

Do Stop Harper stickers qualify as third-party advertising under the Canada Elections Act? The law sets limits on what outside groups or individuals that are members of a political party can spend.

“If they spend more than $500 on election advertising they have to register with Elections Canada and provide a report at the end on what their advertising activities were,” Elections Canada spokeswoman Diane Benson said.

“Third parties can be individuals or groups. The definition of election advertising is promoting or opposing a party or a candidate for an issue with which the party or candidate is associated.”

Most of the Stop Harper stickers were put up before the election was called. Presumably someone who ponied up for more than five hundred bucks worth of stickers since the writ was dropped in early August would have to register.

“The costs of that would be captured under the act,” she said.

Ball said he is not connected with any political party, saying he’s suspicious of all of them and generally prefers independent candidates.

Regardless of when the stickers appeared, it’s still up for debate whether they will influence thinking as Canadians head to the polls, or simply reinforce the views of Harper’s opponents.

Grassroots nature could make sticker campaign effective

They certainly create the opportunity for an impact on the election, said Prof. Jonathan Rose, a political scientist at Queen’s University whose interests include political advertising.

“Because it is a sort of grassroots, clearly designed to be amateur campaign it creates the argument that there is this grassroots sentiment to stopping Harper,” Rose said.

“I think where it might be effective is providing a counterpoint to the professionalization of campaigns.”

Canadians have become inured to the professionally produced political ads that now dominate the airwaves, he said. To some extent they become white noise as people tune them and their messages out.

“Why this is so arresting, no pun intended, it’s so contrary [to] that style,” said Rose. “I think because of that it probably has people’s interest.”

A random, unexpected encounter with a sticker on a stop sign is more likely to get your attention, if only briefly, and embed its sentiment in your mind, Rose argued.

“If something is really anomalous and really quite different, it has high informational value,” he said.

In that sense, Rose said, the stickers hew to famed Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan’s declaration that “the medium is the message.”

“In communications how you say things is often more important than what you say,” said Rose.

“It’s tough to say whether it’ll have an impact. It’s tough to say whether it’s just going to reinforce existing sentiment. But what you can say is that because of its novelty it’s more likely for people to pay attention to it.”