'Fine. I’ll do it': Kelowna resident elected to city council after signs went viral

Imagine a politician campaigning by saying he doesn't like politics and doesn't know what he's doing, and then he wins. Well, Brady Rogers ran for city council in Kelowna, B.C., using a campaign, as you see, built around some irreverent humour, I'll fix everything, let's see what happens. What else has he got? Fine, I'll do it. Marianne, he's got the job now. Yeah, and it says, let's see what happens. Well, what happens is he won. He didn't expect this to happen, so he didn't foresee that. He was an engineer, small business owner, and now one of the newest members of city council in Kelowna. Really tongue-in-cheek humor there, but clearly it was something he took seriously. He did have a serious platform behind these tongue-in-cheek signs, but, you know, these went viral. People thought they were funny, and they weren't sure, is he serious? He did speak to CBC News, though, describing what his motivation was and why he decided to run. I really genuinely felt like I could do some good and participate in my city at a larger scale. So when I decided to do it, I figured the best place to start is just being genuine and honest. And that meant, fine, I'll do it, even if I don't really want to. So that's what inspired the humor of it. I was hoping it would, of course, draw some attention, whether people like me initially or not. If it gets them asking questions and interrogating my campaign, I think that's a good thing. But then it took off from there in a way I could never have predicted. It certainly did take off. I mean, more people wanted to support him than didn't like the idea of the campaign. Right, more than 30 candidates he was against in this election campaign. He was the fourth most popular, more than 12,000 votes. So clearly this resonated with a lot of people. And while some people maybe didn't get it, he said he overwhelmingly got some positive feedback. For the vast majority of people, they saw the humor. I think most realized right off the bat that it was a little tongue-in-cheek and I'm probably not as unserious as I might seem. But even those who were questioning, I think once they dug into it, they realized that I'm here for a reason and I do have a meaningful platform. So, yeah, it's been overwhelmingly positive. On top of that, newfound fame. David, people are recognizing him on the streets. His Dad Life t-shirt, which may be hard to see in that sign, But he is wearing that same green T-shirt, dad life, that same expression, and yet people are still stopping him on the streets. All right. This does, in some ways, sort of open the window to what is politics today and why is something like this a successful approach? I think it's not uncommon to see very serious signs on the lawns as we drive around during election campaigns. And for whatever reason, the fact that he wanted to be more genuine, the fact that he's used some humour, It seems to have resonated with voters who took the time, I assume, we can assume, to look at his website and see that he had a very serious platform behind all of this, dealing with homelessness, taxes, transit in the community he grew up in. For more on this, we heard from David Black. He is a professor with the Royal Roads University talking about why this may have been successful for him. I think the public, you know, gets a little tired of the orthodoxy of how political communication is done. the predictability, if you will, in which campaigns operate and how they speak to us. What we see in this example, again, humbly, just one candidate in Kelowna, is, I think, proof that some degree of independence, some room for the individual creativity of an individual candidate at any level might not be a bad thing. and looking ahead to the new things first day on the job where he'll learn exactly what this all means his tagline there fine i'll do it i wanted to ask you do you have a one-liner what i don't have a one-liner like that um just yeah just do it that's mine is i'll follow your lead okay you you led me into that one marianne thank you very much just in case yeah