UKIP have used the Swedish ‘make me a hero’ website to create a thank you card for their former leader Nigel Farage. Whilst it was no techincal feat to create the video (simply uploading a photo), the idea of using Farage’s image in this piece of majestic European cinematography is inspired.
Quite a funny clip which uses subtitles over the famous Monty Python sketch ‘What have the Romans ever done for us’ to promote various elements of recent EU legislation. A very British piece of EU promotional material.
I’m still desperately searching for some Blair4EU material and this is the best I can find – if anyone comes across anything cool, please send over!
As you know, I like to keep you abreast of political advertising from across the globe – so here’s an execution the German CDU are running in the lead up to the general election in 7 weeks time. The strap line reads “We have more to offer”. This isn’t a joke, but US based political advertising blogger ’30 or 60′ is unsure the PR coup will translate into votes.
Libertas have launched the most interactive, innovate and ambitious piece of political advertising yet created for the EU elections. Supporters can choose a template for an advert, upload a photo and message and then publish it. Not only does it give you the option to send on the advert to friends and prospective supporters, it also serves the advert straight on to myspace.com.
See my example on the top left – don’t worry this is not a sudden diversion from this blogs politically neutral standpoint to plead with you to vote Libertas, but a demonstration of the ease with which one can personalise and use this application.
This is a real lesson in political advertising for the more mainstream parties. If a minority party can create engaging and exciting content why can’t those who aspire to gaining a plurality of votes from the British public?
Alastair Campbell has written an interesting article highlighting the lack of political advertising in the UK around the EU elections. He gives anecdotal evidence of Rome being plastered with posters and leaflets, whilst the only campaign materials he saw from his journey from Heathrow to his house was the ‘vote Labour’ poster in his front window.
Something has to change with regards to how this country funds political communication.
Clear Channel, the UK’s market leader in outdooor advertising, have been attacked for providing media space to the BNP. Searchlight, the anti-racist and anti-fascist organisation based in the UK, have been organising action against the company.
Clear Channel have claimed no wrong doing, stating that their company policy was to “allow legal and legitimate political parties to engage in campaigning and maintain free speech” and that it will accept advertising from such parties without “bias or favour, regardless of the company’s own views.”
The message in above piece of political advertising ‘punish the pigs by voting BNP’ is a classic piece of nationalist populism. Fascist nationalist parties throughout history have reaped success from public anger over establishment corruption and jingoism; in this respect the EU elections could prove furtile recruiting grounds for the BNP.
The anger and hate that flows from the communication might be attractive to an extremist few, but I image most people – even those deeply disenchanted by the expenses row – will find it alienating and forbidding.
A classic ‘real people’ broadcast. It communicates their 2 messages, clearly and simply – 1) vote Green for European investment in our economy 2) Vote Green to help save the planet, for the sake of your kids.
It starts off quite slowly, but the emotional climax is brilliantly done. A nice music score and the light, pleasant, unimposing tone of the people featured in the video make it highly likely to evoke the reaction ‘this party understand my concerns’ and ‘this is a political party for me’ from floating middle-class voters who are disenchated with the more established parties.
On the basis of this broadcast, I wouldn’t be surprised if The Green Party do well in Ireland next week.
This could be forgiven for mistaking it for an ‘Injury Lawyers 4 U’ advert, which is about as damning as it gets. Nigel Farage could easily be the ‘serious, qualified lawyer’ telling you to take you employer to court. Obviously UKIP budgets are not huge, so they are forgiven to a certain extent, but this really does look cheap. And it really is boring.
As some of the comments on here previously have pointed out (thanks Theo), political parties HAVE to fill over 4 minutes of air time. The result is long, boring, cheap looking content. The rules on political broadcasts and political advertising in this country are so out of date it’s ridiculous.
The Liberal Democrats must have been pretty pissed off when they saw the Conservative’s most recent broadcast. The style and content is almost exactly the same. Clegg does not come across nearly as well as Cameron and the production values look lesser. Not at all a bad effort, but it’s made to look average because it looks like a ‘me too’ – even though obviously they would have produced it long before the Tories aired.
