Election Advertising The Bad, The Ugly and the even uglier

Here we are in the throws of a full-on election campaign, a time where the slightest vocal or printed message could make or break the leader’s political party.  A time unlike any other with Twitter offering incredible live reaction analytics as the live tv debates took shape.

Putting the Live TV debate’s and the general political noise to one side for a moment we take a look at some of the reactive creative campaign ads and messages out there.

Election Advertising The Bad, The Ugly and the even uglier

Political campaigns both from a social, print, digital and PR perspective could be argued as being the most important form of National advertising to enter our day to day space.  Which is why it’s so important to get it right….

Liberal Democrats

A comment made on social media made us laugh:

Q: Why did Nick Clegg cross the road?
A: Because he said he wouldn’t

So are the Lib Dem’s communicating to the right audience? Here in the Desique offices some of us remember the green cross code man and the government campaign for road safety but we’re not sure this communicates the message across to an earlier generation.

That said, for those who DO remember the campaign it’s a clever play on words and a simple message.

The Conservative Party

The Conservative Party launched their election push by creating their Ad campaign ‘Let’s stay on the road to a stronger economy’.  This led to an opportunity to many on social media to spoof and ridicule the party.

The ad stated that since taking power in 2010, the Tory Party had created jobs for 1.75m more people, halved the deficit and saw the opening of 760,000 new businesses.

The Conservatives are also running adverts against The Labour Party which are almost identical to campaigns launched in 2004 by the Nationalist Party in Australia.  The same Ad guru Lynton Crosby worked on both campaigns both down under and here in the UK.  Maybe a strong message but recycled all the same!  Boo!!!

The Labour Party

Maybe Labour’s arrogant stance in using business leader’s quotes without asking for consent may of  been branded a storm in a tea cup by some.  However, ethically speaking is it right to inform the business leader’s 24 hours before the adverts were due to go live that they were being used in a Labour party advertising campaign?  Some of the business leaders were not happy they had not been properly consulted over the use of their comments.

The advert row overshadowed Mr Miliband’s launch of his party’s business manifesto.

Juergen Maier, chief executive of Siemens UK, said it’s very clear in any conversations that I have with the Labour Party or any other party that our views are not to be taken as political or supporting any party, because we are apolitical.’

He added: ‘Certainly, for the article to be very closely aligned to a “Vote Labour” campaign is not what Siemens would want.’

Jonathan Myers, head of Kellogg’s in the UK and Ireland, was also quoted warning about leaving the EU. A Kellogg senior official said the firm was unhappy with the use of his comments and insisted he did not endorse any political party.

“Clearly we have concern with anything that goes into the public domain that would lean us to a political party. We are politically neutral.”