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Oily the Splot: The Conservatives had a contract

I am not making what follows up.

I have just returned from an undisclosed location where I saw, with my inkless eyes, what appeared to be a contract in due form between Fuelcast Inc. and RMI — the acronym stands for Retail Media Inc., the Conservative Party of Canada’s media buyer — for a campaign of 15-second gas-station ads that would run between June 10 and July 7. The order date for the contract, which carries contract number FM-183, is June 3 and the cost of airing (gassing?) the ads is $200 a pop. I did not see the total amount of the contract or any information about geographical distribution of the ads.

Fuelcast hadn’t seen ads as of this morning, when they informed Retail Media that they don’t run political ads. The discussions between Fuelcast and Retail Media remain a black box to me, but if I was a fledgling company taking money for an ad campaign, I’d have asked what the ads were about before I signed a contract.

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