Pirate Party of Canada Forum

The Canada Elections Act gives us a minimum of 2 minutes' free advertising time per network, so long as we express interest in using it. We're also eligible to purchase up to an additional 6 minutes, again dependent on our interest/ability. We'll be negotiating with Elections Canada and the other parties on June 22nd, and I think we need to start thinking about what we will do with the time that will be allocated.

To that end, I suggest running a YouTube competition for 30-second advertisements, the winning products to be aired on TV and properly credited.

That's a wonderful idea! Get the masses rolling to our cause as well as showing that Canadians care! I like it.

You sir, my good man, are a genius. =D

We'd better wait until after the meeting to formally announce that, though, since we need to know exactly how much time we'll have available.

I think this is a great idea!

Plus we can always use the airtime to show links to say our webpage as well as say a youtube channel for the Party. That way we get the most out of our airtime.

Also gotta make sure it's prime time, especially if the other parties are getting prime time airtime. It's pretty useless if they give us a time slot at like 3am.

They generally give noontime or early afternoon slots, last I remember. I'm actually curious about radio advertising as well, and if there is some sort of option for that.

That is fantastic.

Here is what I suggest:

Aim for the use of that time, not to send our message, but to intrique our prospective supporters to go to YouTube and let YouTube carry the frieght of the message.

What the above would mean is a focus on *our* demographics, what motivates them to go to YouTube and how to 'set' the target address and the interest to go there in the viewer's mind.

I think that for a first go-round, we should attempt to reach people who know a little about the issues or have strong feelings about privacy, unfettered Internet access, etc.

Our 'core' issues require more education than we can effectively do in a TV commercial. We should be looking to leverage existing interest. We should not be attempting to persuade (and certainly not to educate -- there is zero traction in this) the general population to vote for the Pirate Party or come to belive in our issues. What we should be looking to do is persuade those who are *already* likely to belive in our stand on issues to go to YouTube and join us in our cause. Get this 'core' to then spread the word.

Jake and company did absolutely *nothing* to persuade me about 'digital sovereignty'. In fact, I coined that term independantly many years ago. It is possible it actually came from me. Certainly there was no evidence of the term on the web when I put it up there in 1999. At the risk of embarrassing myself with a hideous ancient experimental page, here is a link to a page archive in 2001:

http://www.hushnet.com/privacy.htm

What Jake and Co (sorry, I should know everyone by now, my bad) *did* do is provide the 'hook' to bring me in. They did an excellent thing by simply taking action and forming the party. People like me do not need any persuasion to join, just persuasion to look close enough to find the group. They will likely self-organize to some extent. We just need to let *our* people know we are here. Lots of people like me would rather lose in a *good* cause than win in a bad one.

The 'Pirate Party' as such is not likely well enough known to make a go of it just with the words 'Pirate Party' and there is some risk with that hook. We should look for a hook that will definitely 'get' people to look us up.

I did not want to get into it, because it gets complicated very fast, but social networking is a must. Somehow, that should be tied in.

From the Canada Elections Act:

335. (1) In the period beginning on the issue of the writs for a general election and ending at midnight on the day before polling day, every broadcaster shall, subject to the regulations made under the Broadcasting Act and the conditions of its licence, make available, for purchase by all registered parties for the transmission of political announcements and other programming produced by or on behalf of the registered parties, six and one-half hours of broadcasting time during prime time on its facilities.

And, in the definitions:

“prime time”
“prime time”, in the case of a radio station, means the time between the hours of 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., noon and 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. and 7 p.m., and, in the case of a television station, means the hours between 6 p.m. and midnight.

Well for a video clip we can always make some amusing/funny thing with a light political message and get people to goto our website or our stuff on youtube.

That said the best approaches would be IMHO...

1) Privacy: Expressing the importance of privacy by showing the world with a lack of it in a semi-humorous way like depicting a guy living in a glass house. This may get people's attention far better than traditional 'attack ads' and such.

2) Government Transparency: This will probably end up feeling more like the traditional 'attack ads'. Critical of the standing government and MP's declining audits into their expense accounts.

3) Copyright: Oddly enough the bulk of our platform but also the hardest to get into a small commercial segment.

"This is your life. This is your life on legally-enforced DRM."

Haha... I remember those anti-drug commercials... Actually that would be an amusing one.

Guy buys CD/DVD at the store. Guy goes home and puts CD/DVD into his player. It works. Guy goes to friends house and puts CD/DVD into their player. Then have the guy try to copy it to his MP3 player and have the thing go in a creepy HAL9000 voice "I'm sorry dave, I cannot allow you to do that. You must purchase a digital copy off of iTunes because of the Digital Restrictions Management on this CD". Have him do the same with his car CD player and his buddy's player and then just smash the CD and go onto pirate bay or something :D

Re: Social Networking

This is a thorny issue. The power of this will completely astonish even people who know about it. I can help with this, but...

Short-term, we need to get things together a bit more. Before people just rain down on us and crash the Server, we need to get our house in order.

Forums are great for threaded conversations, but I suggest that reference material be plonked onto the wiki. We already lost a bunch of material to a forum change. Whatever its faults, mediawiki is a workhorse that can be at least maintained for reading and I don't see it going away any time soon.

<rant>
As an aside, I was wondering why I had a recollection of 'SMF', but had not really installed it or used it. I have tried just about everything. I went to the SMF site and found my answer. It is 'BadgeWare'. In fact, it is worse than BadgeWare. At some point, it is near certain that the Forum software will change because SMF's license is a ticking time bomb. Eventually, it will fail. That might take years, but unless they do a complete '180' on the license, the software cannot survive. It is too much to go into here, but I am not talking about people voting with their feet and starving it (though there is some likelihood of that). I am talking about the fact that the license ties the fate of the software inexorably to the fate of the SMF organization. If wikimedia fails, mediawiki can be supported by anyone. If SMF fails, their software dies with them. Will they fail? Yes. It is not often that you will get an unqualified answer like that from me. It contains the seeds of its own doom. Only the SMF people can cure that ill and they have been quite vocal that they will not.

I wrote a rant on BadgeWare here:

http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/BadgeWareIsEvil

BadgeWare being promoted under the guise of 'Free Software' or 'Open Source' is just false advertising. In the page linked above, I give an idea of the many thousands of people (me included) who contributed to a working (say SMF) software system. BadgeWare basically insists that everyone thereafter must give credit and free advertising for one contributor over another. Ironically, I think SMF ended up as BadgeWare because someone else used their original code base without giving them visible credit. Oh my.
</rant>

Actually, I was thinking of something simpler. Show a mosaic of a video playing on TV, computer, PSP, iPod, car TV, and space-age lookin' hologram. "This is your movie." Then, one after another, all but one of the devices flip to static with a padlock icon. "This is your movie on legally-enforced DRM. Pirate Party of Canada."


Our wiki is more or less dead. If we want something to be read, it goes on the forum. We do have an EtherPad site (http://piratepad.ca) for collaboration, though.

What in particular would you like to recover from the old forum? I still have access, and can copy and paste if need be.


At the moment, I'm concerned with what can offer the features we need. I agree that SMF should have been released under the GPL, particularly considering the in-fighting that has gone on in the community recently, but it's still the most feature-complete, customizable open-source forum I know of.

I agree... any advertising campaign that we engage in is going to be primarily to create awareness that we exist and curiosity about why we exist. Humour will draw more attention than finger wagging... and let's face it, everyone loves pirates, nobody likes politics.

To me the most obvious tactic would be to reference the Disney (irony!) vision of pirates as freedom fighters. Maybe a short action scene of the dashing pirate captain rescuing a damsel from the clutches of evil imperialists... ending with the tagline "If you love your freedom, kiss a pirate!".

Just an idea... but I do think it's supremely important to keep things light... I think if a person who has never heard of PPoC's first impression is amusing/endearing we are more likely to gain their support than if we introduce ourselves by trying to convince people that 1984 is just around the corner.

Not happening.

However, I highly agree with your analysis with the "1984" complex.

I think we need to avoid pointed attack ads, no lower ourselves to the level of other political parties. Attack ads tend to turn people off and get ignored anyways.

Educate (about copyright and other technology issues), Reform (by fixing the problems rather than adding more as the existing government is doing with C-61), Rejoice (When we become victorious)

Bear in mind that even if our negotiations go perfectly on the 22nd we will have a maximum of 8 minutes per network allocated to us, so sixteen 30-second spots. That's not a lot spread over a 36-day election. All promotion that we air will have to be self-contained, direct, and clear.

And yes, I agree that attack ads will get us nowhere. We would, however, be well-served to refer to bills C-60, C-61, and C-32.

Exactly, don't attack the person. Attack the bad legislation ;)

Hey, I was thinking it might be a good idea to start separate threads for different campaigns (i.e Television, Internet, Print, Radio and Face to Face). With so many different things to cover, this one thread could could very cluttered and it would be difficult to cover things.

Also, I think that we should come up with a pamphlet informing people who we are and what we stand for, once we have a pamphlet we can create street teams to go to public places like university campuses, downtown areas etc. to interact with the public and get more people involved.

This isn't about Youtube, this is network TV we're talking about. Global, CTV, CBC. Youtube is uncontrolled.

Opps sorry! my bad -.-

When I hear the word "network" I assume it has to do with all media and social-networking site

* embarrass* :-[

*scene take place in a sunny park with birds chirping, trees swaying int he wind, kites being flown, laugher can be heard from kids playing in the sandbox*
A teenager walk through the park on the stone walkway while holding his skateboard and listening to his favourite tunes on his ipod.
The kid sat on the park bench.
Suddenly 2-3 tall guys in dark suit approach from behind startling the teenager and said they were from the RCMP.
They demanded him to hand-over his ipod for "national security reasons".
The check out his ipod and found he has been copying music 'illegally' (despite the fact he copy the music from the original CD he bought at the store into his ipod).
The three dark men then led the boy to his parent's house and later on in the court room. The Judge slam his gravel and slap them with a $300,000 fine plus 6 months in prison for the boy. The boy looks down and frown

Eventually in prison, the boy learns from the real criminals - and become a criminal himself when he gets out after 6 months and wreck havoc on society (drugs, murder, arson, etc), all because of the government clampdown on property rights.

-The end

(I add the last part was a fast-forward mode).

I liked the previous suggestion of avoiding Big Brother/1984/BNW style ads, or any real usage of such motifs. A few examples of good advertisements used:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA1RDyN7JTg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ux4uhxdewU

Another suggestion for an in-house video, I always envisioned a video made in the style of the second video, done with the song "Declare Independence" by Bjork. This wouldn't be for TV, this would just be for general Youtube video.

Nice one Anthony but going by what the RCMP say they'd rather not deal with anything but commercial copyright infringement because everything else is a waste of manpower.

Perhaps if we can get one of the RCMP big wigs on camera saying that and use it :)

Interesting concept, but I don't think it'd fit in a 30-second slot...

Anthony and Mike, you guys really have to work out how to use [quote] tags... :P

That was my first error with it, bug off >_>

It could fit in 30 sec, I can envision the whole thing in 30 seconds with the PPCA title and short description within 10 seconds.
The image could be quick gentle movement:

The boy could walk (with park in background) and sit on the bench with the guys showing up all in 10 seconds, the police at boy's house with his mother crying and father arguing (park in background would fade to his house), the boy face remain on the screen while the house background faded to the images of the court - the face of the boy fade as the giant wooden hammer appears and slam on the round wooden thing in front him as messages appear "$300,000" fine "6 months in prison". All that in additional 13 seconds.

Then it would all fade black while the bold "PPCA" and some short message for the next 7 seconds.

I know my spelling is awkward, but I wanted to get it all down before I forget.
Of course, I am unrealistically optimistic of doing everything in 30 seconds.  But at least its the thoughts that count.

By the way, whats wrong with my quote tag-hing, whatever it is?

You forgot to close it (http://www.pirateparty.ca/forum/index.php?topic=68.msg642#msg642). Just messing with you, it's still readable. Just makes it look like I said the whole thing.

Here's another idea: "You wouldn't steal billions of dollars from musicians. You wouldn't write restrictive contracts that exploit someone else's creativity. You wouldn't profit unfairly for decades after the musician dies. But you'd share music, find new bands, and support the musicians you love. Who are the real criminals?"

Thats a pretty soft messages with whip cream and a cherry on top :P

Re: what info from old Forum -- all of the threads I was in, but there was one in particular with lots of good ideas that has vanished. I had an iffy feeling about putting stuff on the forum -- should have put it on the wiki. I would edit stuff (at least some of the info I posted) and put it up on the wiki.

I think that we should at least explore the notion of taking our time in 10 to 15 second slots and directing people to YouTube. I do not know if it is possible, but we should try and find someone who has more clue.

I really liked the posting with the links to existing YouTube videos. We should be trying to dig up all the stuff that works for us like this.

Although I like the videos above and think they would reach many likely supporters, I think we need to be mindful that for the majority we have to 'pitch lower'. Many, if not most, people would have little idea what was being said in those videos. They assume a certain level of broad 'subject literacy' that from my personal experience simply does not exist.

We should approach the creators of videos that we want to use for permission to tack on our logo and distribute the message.

Although I expect others are correct about being too heavy handed with the 1984 references, I think we should be mindful that this is serious business and find some way to communicate that to people. Ultimately, we are called the 'Pirate Party' because of a 1984 style redefinition of the word 'Pirate' by the people we oppose.

Believe it or not, most people are quite ignorant of the substance of 1984 and not nearly as aware as they should be how far we have moved along that continuum since the book was written.

I have no idea how we 'educate'. Our main task is to persuade and 'education' should be handmaiden to that idea, not the end itself. First, we should persuade people to get to YouTube, then we should use that to persuade those who already agree with us to join in and help.

By the way, I took a quick look to see if PPC is making its way there already and it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sA7DuMh9zQ

Mike did a good job. I have a notion that maybe we should make sure others do similarly good jobs by practicing interviews. Actually, I am thinking we should do little interviews on our various talking points and put them up on a channel there.

Rather than speculating on what may or may not work, we should track down someone with more experience and attempt to set up some sort of research trials. We have a variety of target audiences. We need to identify them and attempt to reach them appropriately.

Thank you very much, it was my first time doing anything interview-related since Grade 7, and this was a large potential audience, so I feel I did pretty well.  ::) As of right now, our PR team is made of myself, Mikkel, Jake, and Daniel, while Nuitari sometimes handles mail, and two other members (Our founder, Rob Britton, and psema4) have done video interviews (the latter for CHCH Hamilton). I do feel there is  a lot of room for improvement. Our opportunities have decreased, and Daniel, as PR Director, really needs to step up his availability, which he has been trying hard to do. But I agree with the main point being that we be on top of our game when thrown a curve ball. As you can hear in my interview, my knowledge on ACTA was a little rusty.

I'm an animator (+I know many animators more skilled than myself), so if there is any consensus on what sort of ad we should run, I could give it a go.

That being said, I think that our ad should focus on the current disconnect between politics and technology, the public's love of filesharing (We could pull up the statistics that say Canada has the highest % of pirates in the world) & the hope of transparent government.

Also, I think we should minimize the amount of URLs in the ads, these people know how to click hyperlinks. We should direct them to our website. Then our website should direct them to youtube, facebook, twitter, etc.

Like I said, I think a YouTube contest would be the way to go. If you want to submit an entry (and have your friends do the same :)), you're more than welcome.

You know what ads are doing great? Apple's. They are managing to sell poison with them. Surely we can come up with something that will sell the antidote.

I think you should go for it. However, you should:

1) Define what the ad is trying to do. It should be to *persuade* people who might help us to go somewhere else to hear the longer (and sexier!) version(s) of our message(s). I favor attempting to move people to YouTube first and ultimately to our website. By the time they get here, they should be pointed to material on the wiki and finally make their way into the conversation here.

2) Examine other advertisements that are attempting to do something similar and have been successful. Great artists steal. Steal.

3) Do low quality mock-ups of the various ideas and test market them. Here is not a bad place to test market (on the Pirate Party Forums) because this is our initial favored demographic -- activists who will actually do something.

Re: That being said, I think that our ad should focus on the current disconnect between politics and technology,

Maybe, but remember, the purpose of the advertisement is ultimately *only* to persuade. I have my doubts as to whether that is persuasive enough to get me on to the Internet to look further. Whatever the case, this is an empirical question that you can test and answer empirically before we blow our ad budget 'live'.

I favor advertisements that are likely to result in the most votes in an election. My thinking is that we should *leverage* our TV time to get *more* time on YouTube. YouTube visits are free and they can go viral. TV ads (unless up on YouTube) can't go viral very well. I favor bringing people to YouTube rather than the website because Video is much more immersive, much more persuasive and much more accessible (the majority(!) of people have very poor literacy with the written word). Even the bookish are more likely 'hooked' by moving images and sound than prose, no matter how well done.

With respect to grabbing attention, you should grab the eyes first. If I saw an image of a predator like a wildcat about to pounce on a baby on it's mother's naked chest as they lay in a bed of rose petals, with the hint of a shiny weapon nearby, I doubt I would turn away. How about this: Imagery similar to the above, action starting on a close-up of the woman's chest (covered enough for prime-time). Idyllic music plays in the background as we pull out to reveal a baby's wide eyes and compelling face. Back further, and as the red background begins to show, the music takes on a slightly dark coloration presaging the action to come. Suddenly, a sharp sound from the orchestra as the cat moves into the frame mid-pounce and the baby's eyes widen in surprise. Freeze-frame right there and on a held violin note put up the youtube address of the full video and a voice-over saying 'Get the story".

The above capitalizes on a bunch of human hard-wiring. There is sex, danger, the natural instinct to protect the young and the arresting color of ripe fruit. There is also a storyline and it is incomplete. Curiousity as to what happens next will drive a lot of people to look for the ending, even if they are downright angry about being manipulated.

I am (way) not a visual artist, but I wonder if it is possible for the baby's wide eyes to look like they are happy initially in the context of the initial close-up and for the context to suddenly make them look surprised and fearful (but same expression and eyes) as you see the cat pouncing.

I would try to make the other side of it a happy ending. I have an idea that would require cgi manipulation and I think would be happy, funny and deliver a strong message all at once. Yeah. When I see someone take action on this, I will work with them on the ending. The rest of you will have to wait for the video buwa ha ha.

To get elected, we will need help from a lot of volunteers ahead of anything else. We can likely depend upon *some* like-minded people to look us up. However, even they have competing demands on their time. We need to grab people as well as we can, in much more primitive areas of the brain than the cerebellum.

We need to employ all the tried and true methods of persuasion. That includes a battery of techniques of salesmanship.

I suppose we should have some info about all that somewhere as well. One thing I think should be noted is that there is a higher probability of people saying yes after saying it ten times in a row. Everything that can easily be framed as a question whose answer is an obvious 'YES', should be. No questions should have a probability of being answered 'NO'.

We have a substantive message, but it is something that requires much more edification than we can deliver easily. It also requires a much greater awareness of the issues than even computer geeks have. Sadly, we have to persuade people to come into the temple, sit down and listen before we can deliver the sermon.

Calculus is a groundbreaking human achievement. [What the segue is this?] It is an interesting subject in its own right, but for some things, it is mandatory. Calculus matters. However, it is not going to be accessible to the majority of people ever and would not be accessible to anyone in a thirty second (let alone 15 as I would like) second commercial.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and even 'baby steps' are still steps. We want them off of that couch and over to the computer. Getting them to act even that much starts a process of interactive 'buy-in'. If they invest the time to go to the computer to see the rest of that 'spot', they will already be 'involved' in some sense. If we amuse them, they may just stay to learn more.

It bugs me that we have to do stuff like the above. It is manipulative. However, this is a contest between us and other political parties. They will be doing their best to use every trick possible. My goodness -- look at the completely stupid messages they put up. Surely we can improve on that. [Search for liberal and conservative ads on YouTube. It is enough to make you join another party to fight them.]

To asuage my conscience, even stuff that has to remain under wraps to hobble the competition during an election campaign should be revealed in all its gory splendour after the election. We should be as transparent (more really) as the government we propose to form.

For those who struggled to the end of this message nota bene:

We are in an election campaign right now. It is not a question of whether we are in one or not, it is a question of how well we are doing and if we can do better. I think we have a great start, but our campaign is not likely to win if the election were called tomorrow.

Have you seen our wiki? There are tumbleweeds blowing through it. They should visit our site first. pirateparty.ca is much easier to remember than youtube.com/piratepartyofcanada or wiki.pirateparty.ca. We do, however, need to make our front page more dynamic. Embedded YouTube videos would be a great start.


Uh...


Right.


Exactly. The argument I intend to make on the 22nd is that we need every second of advertising time from Elections Canada that we can get. We need to advertise our platform like every other party, but we also need the chance to put our issues on the map. Even so, with a maximum of 8 minutes of advertising time per network, we can't count on anyone seeing more than one ad. That means we can't run one on copyright, one on patent, etc. Our platform itself needs detailed explanation, because without background it seems overly radical and poorly thought-out.

Therefore, we need to advertise what we want to change more than how we intend to do it. It's more negative than I'd like, but it's necessary given the limited time. As well, I support 15-second slots where possible. With a maximum of 8 minutes, that gives us 16 30-second slots per network or 32 15-second slots. If people hear our name multiple times, they're more likely to remember it.


Didn't you just contradict yourself? We aren't, but we need to prepare for being. We can't begin to air our political advertising until the writ drops, but we can certainly open the YouTube contest.

How about Flash ads?
I just made one but I don't know how to embed it in my post.

You can't. Just post a link.

Here are my ads:
http://www.elementalcomputing.ca/FlashAds/ad1.html
http://www.elementalcomputing.ca/FlashAds/ad2.html
http://www.elementalcomputing.ca/FlashAds/ad3.html
http://www.elementalcomputing.ca/FlashAds/ad4.html

Oh, no! My sweet iPod Touch is rebelling against this 'flash'! Oh, the humanity!

*goes to laptop to boot up firefox*

Here are 2 more flash ads.

http://www.elementalcomputing.ca/FlashAds/ad5
http://www.elementalcomputing.ca/FlashAds/ad6

Any feedback?

The thing with flash is, as I previously stated, is the fact that there are compatibility issues with some browsers. Let's take Safari (or at least Safari Mobile), where Apple has its' hate on for Flash, and thus, you can't see flash. Secondly, when I opened this in firefox, AdBlock immediately detected it and hid it away. Flash ads are on the way out, and, to me, rightly so. This is all flash ads in general.

It's unlikely we could find a place to put those on the web. Flash ads are more expensive than regular ads, and those ads are rather plain, which would make it probably not worth the cost.

Even an ultra-flashy ad wouldn't get many clickthroughs that benefit us. The talking points in the ads aren't choice, and fail to incite passion in me.

We need to let these people know explicitly what bill C-32 is going to take away from them. Your average shmuck on the street type has no idea what C-32 is, or anything about how anything works. They just know they like movies and music.

Lots of great ideas on possible video ads in this forum. Some are a real (good) gas. A YouTube contest would be a great way to go and having it open to members and nonmembers alike could bring more people into the fold. Finding some friendly media to publicize it, by having perhaps a newconference with some wild sample, could pique interest. In my years of using (utilizing) the media they are always hungry for good copy they don't have to work too hard at getting. And, of course, social networks, with links to a sample ad announcing the contest, is a good way to supplement the traditional media way of publicizing the contest.

I had a 15 or 30 second video ad for T.V. in my head and I wanted to get it out before I forget.

It starts with a shot of some people standing together on a beach looking out at something in the water. A  female voiceover says something like  - "Did you know that your Internet Service Provider may be slowing the speed of your internet connection because of what you download? Did you know that you can't make a copy of a song you bought without braking the law?

Cut to a closer shot of the group and one person is looking through binoculars.

voiceover - "Are you concerned about your privacy when using websites like Facebook or other social networks? Do you feel your government isn't being open and honest about how it uses your tax dollars and personal data? If so........"

The guy lowers the binoculars, looks to the person beside him and smiles....

voiceover "......your ship has come in....."

Cut to a shot of the water. A giant pirate ship is in the bay with the PPoC logo flying in the wind.

The PPoC logo appears with the website address.


I think that would be epic if it was shot right. The voice over script is off the top of my head but it should reverence social networking somehow since its in the news for privacy issues a lot. Everyone uses Facebook. Maybe even replace the voice over with a pirates voice? Haha maybe that part is a bit  too much.

We would need about 5 people. A guy in his 60's, a guy in his 30's, 2 teens and 2 girls, any age. All different colors, races, backgrounds. Nice 'n Canadian hehheh.

I can think of a few awesome spots to shoot that. A cloudy day would be good. If someone had access to a pro camera to shoot it with we would be set for the live aspect. Of course the big issue is a giant CG pirate ship. Sounds expensive. Maybe stock shots of old ships? I remember seeing a Tall Ships Celebration in BC years ago. That would have been a good opportunity to shoot real "tall ships". Superimpose a PPoC logo on the sails and its good. Jake does computer graphic, correct? Is the CG pirate ship too much? Back when I messed with computer graphics it would have been impossible.

Maybe that's to ambitions but damn...it would be so effective in sparking interest. I like that it doesn't use scare tactics and dystopian imagery. That kind of stuff turns people off instantly. The ship would need to look baaaad aaaass though. I'm thinking Master and Commander style hehheh.

We should see what our Europeans cousins did...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_4VAl5TKjc
This is one of the ads PPDE ran, I'm trying to get the other ones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmXv3naV_IQ