Green Party UK – Benedict Pringle

Green Party Election Broadcast – playground politics

The Green Party have released a new party election broadcast in advance of local elections and the London Mayoral contest in May.

The ad, which apes the format of Channel 4’s TV show The secret life of 4 year olds, accuses the mainstream political parties of behaving like self-interested children.

It’s an absolutely phenomenal broadcast.

The best in decades.

What an excellent idea and so brilliantly executed.

Huge credit to the agency behind it, Creature London, and massive props to the Green Party for buying and investing in it.

Green Party poster: Spot the difference

The Green Party have released a poster to coincide with the fact that the Sun Newspaper have decided to stop featuring topless glamour models on it’s Page 3.

The advert carrying the end line ‘Spot the difference’ features the leaders of the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and UKIP taking part in The Sun Newspapers stunt to launch their coverage of the 2014 World Cup. This is placed in stark contrast to Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP, who is pictured wearing a t-shirt campaigning against the Sun’s daily publication of partially naked girls in.

The implication of the poster is that those parties have long been courting the Rupert Murdoch owned newspaper and in doing so have been complicit in the regular dose of sexism that some feel Page 3 served up.

It’s a very clever piece of advertising that distances the Greens from their competitors and will likely be successful at recruiting the support of those who favour a radical break from the political parties that have dominated elections in Britain for the last few decades.

Green Party poster: what are you afraid of boys?

Green Party what are you afraid of boys general election tv debates westminster

The Green Party have released a poster which challenges the other, male-led, political parties to allow them into the televised leaders debates.

The Greens have seen a bounce in the polls since the issue around their lack of invitation to the TV debates was raised, so it’s unsurprising they’re trying to maintain momentum on the topic.

The poster’s headline “what are you afraid of, boys” also highlights that the Green Party’s only MP is female and that the party is also led by a woman; celebrating this point of difference versus the competition will help them pick-up left wing anti-Westminster votes.

Green Party video on Europe

The Green Party released this video last week to coincide with EU debates between UKIP’s Nigel Farage (pronounced like ‘garage’ with an f) and the Lib Dem’s Nick Clegg MP.

It’s very long. So, so long.

Something’s got to be intensely interesting to keep your attention on YouTube for over 3 minutes and I’m afraid this doesn’t quite cut it. There’s some funny moments, but I bet any vaguely normal person would have closed the window before the Green Party spokesman appeared.

The party win points for timeliness, but get a slapped wrist for overindulging themselves.

Green Party Posters

The Green Party have released some posters to support the personalised party election broadcast that they released earlier in the week. The posters communicate the same core messages as the broadcast (that the Greens are different from the rest and have a range of policies across a variety of sectors) in a simple, clever and visually appealing way.

I previously hadn’t appreciated the sheer scale of the campaign that Glue had created for this election. You can get the full details of the strategy that has been adopted, the range of the creative executions – including an online policy matcher and iPhone app – and the media channels within which it has been delivered here.

This must have all been done on an absolute shoe-string of a budget, but it just shows that you don’t have to have mega money to deliver a well thought out, creatively integrated and media neutral message.

Green Party Election Broadcast 2010

The Green Party have created a nice animation for their party election broadcast.

The aim of the piece is to communicate that the Green Party hold a wide breadth of seemingly common-sense policy positions (not just to do with the environment) which challenge the political status quo. It doesn’t take your breath away, but given the tiny budget they would have had to produce this, it achieves the objectives and is interesting enough to keep your attention throughout.

They’ve included a functionality on their website which enables people to choose policy issues which they think will be salient with their friends and then forward on a personalised, edited version of the film. Pretty cool.