Brian Paddick Poster – Police are wasted on cannabis

Brian Paddick’s campaign have released a poster which calls for London’s police force to take a more relaxed position on dealing (tee hee) with cannabis.

It features the headline “Police are wasted on cannabis” and asserts that massive amounts of police time, money and energy is misspent policing the sale and use of the herb.

Now this is a ballsy advertising! As David Trott, creative advertising legend, famously says: the first job of any piece of advertising is “get noticed”.  Well done Team Paddick for having the cojones to be bold.

Brian Paddick has two significant points of difference from the mainstream candidates:

1. His background, policing, isn’t one of either of the ruling elites that most people despise – politics or journalism.

2. He has some policies which differentiate him from the two leading candidates; in this case, relaxation of rules on policing smoking marijuana.

And, as any sensible marketeer would do, he’s making these points of ‘product difference’ into seemingly functional benefits.  Very good.

The next step is to build an emotional connection, based on these functional benefits, with the audience.  If I was running his campaign, I’d be busy thinking up an ad along the lines of “what London means to me”.