Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon launched a new campaign for a referendum on Scottish independence today.
The campaign’s logo is good.
It uses bars of colour to represent Labour, Green, Conservative and Liberal Democrat in order to distance the campaign from the SNP.
The bold colours and choice of font give the brand a contemporary, optimistic and approachable feel.
The blocks of the logo are also used in a modular design system that enables them to do lots of nice animations.
Below is one showing how the coloured bars will work in motion.
They’re also using a sort of “flecks of coloured paint on white” as a panel to hold the logo and url (instead a more standard plain a block of colour).
It’s a nice idea that and gives life and energy to their communications.
One big shame about the launch is that they chose to make the central claim in their first ad a misleading one.
The advert said “there will be an independence referendum on Thursday 19th October 2023”.
But in fact, as Sturgeon herself made clear in her speech, there is no guarantee there will be a referendum on 19/10/23.
Why not say “we want to hold” not “will be held”?
Perhaps because they thought the truth was less persuasive than the misleading claim.
And the fact that someone can make that decision without fear of an electoral content regulator being able to ban the ad is one of the reasons everyone needs to go to reformpoliticaladvertising.org and support the cause.
Interestingly, a post later in the day corrects the language to say the campaign has “set out a path to the referendum on 19 October 2023”.
Hopefully someone with decency in the campaign has had a word and we can expect better going forwards.
politicaladvertising.co.uk 