Reaching the floating voter
This week, hot on the heals of the Labour Party’s controversial ‘Camera -on/Cameron- off’ poster, comes the Tory’s latest slew of posters designed to win votes and rouse confidence in the electorate.
The latest poster campaign turns away from personalities (albeit finely airbrushed ones) to feature policies affecting individuals and families from working and middle class England.
The new campaign is squarely aimed at floating voters or would-be virgin Tories.
Highlighting the targeted electorate, at the launch of the campaign Cameron said:
“We are not the same old Conservative party. We are the party of the mainstream majority in our country.”
Poster headlines start with the words: “ I’ve never voted tory before but …”
Whilst the campaign is clearly intended to win over the undecided, what was probably unintended was how the posters’ designs made them easy-pickings for bloggers and Tweeters to add their spin to the messages.
Sites like, http://ivenevervotedtory.wordpress.com, Facebook pages like http://www.facebook.com/mydavidcameron?v=photos, and tweets like, http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23ivenevervotedtory, sprouted up faster than yet another award for Lady Ga-Ga.
From a branding perspective this tactic may work for, or against a political brand.
On the upside, awareness is spread far and wide in a matter of clicks.
Wit from Tweets
However, the adpated message is often a far cry from the intended original.
In fact it clearly lampoons it.
Yet, strangely enough, all may not be lost for the political brand.
At the heart of politics is a debate.
As any corporation that has scrupulously tried to avoid blogging will testify – you can’t stop people talking about a brand.
The more you try – the greater the chatter.
In the case of the latest poster campaign, as fast as one Twitterer whistled up a sarconic interpretation of the campaign – another put across a different view.
The Web became a dawn chorus of wit and tweets.
Setting the Presidential precedent
The recent US Presidential campaign was the first to heavily rely on Web 2.0 tactics to boost political funds and awareness within disperate American communities.
Just as Web 2.0 shifted tactics and strategies over there, so in the UK, an important shift is occuring in traditional political branding and marketing.
Poster of the century as voted by Campaign magazine
Classic political posters such as ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ summarised manefesto pledges in pithy headlines and incisive graphics, to be seen and debated by the ordinary man and woman waiting for a bus, train or in traffic.
Today it’s not just what’s written on the posters and adverts throughout the country that forms the hub of the wider conversation. It’s how those messages are carried on iPhones laptops and Blackberries, and interpreted by the networked community that really matters.
Modern marketing directors will affirm that in the final analysis, real egalitarian power rests within the community deciding a brand’s fate rather than at such a community’s borders.
Irrespective of the number of marketing meetings and focus groups with floating or even sunk voters, taking the longer view, the real writing on the wall for a brand is something that no single poster campaign alone can cover.
And that is true democracy.
Jonathan Gabay
www.brandforensics.co.uk
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 1:50 pmand is filed under government branding, Labour party branding, political branding, politics on twitter, Tory Poster branding, UK party politics branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
