Labour’s new Mad Men: Design Your Own Labour Election Poster
Blog / March 30, 2010 / Comment now
Labour’s election boffins have come up with an interesting take on people power learning some valuable lessons from recent disasters in the political ads market. To avoid the potential humiliation of getting the billboards message hacked or at least tampered with in situ, Labour HQ are going for a pre emptive strike by asking people to design Labour’s next political advert.
As a bit of political knock about I quite liked the example on the Labour Party website with a photo of Gordon Brown looking like he had been rough hewn from a piece of solid granite alongside the slogan “Building A Foundation” and beneath a contrasting airbrushed image of “call me Dave” Cameron alongside the slogan “Wearing It.”
The idea is to design a poster that can highlight in a hard hitting way Labour’s pledge to protect frontline investment in key services and at the same time put the spotlight on David Cameron’s lack of substance.
If you are going to have a go at designing Labour’s election poster bear in mind that people should take away from your poster a simple message that Labour in government will protect frontline investment in policing, schools, childcare and the NHS, with a new guarantee of cancer test results within a week.
Labour has always valued the public services on which ordinary people and families rely. In 1997, when the British people entrusted Labour with the job of protecting our public services the task facing us was clear – to rebuild and restore them after decades of neglect. Thanks to Labour’s investment, standards have risen and now we need to give guarantees of high standards to everyone – not just the lucky few – at the same time as delivering value for taxpayers’ money and services which are tailored to individual personal needs.
The new state of the art acute hospital at Wynyard for example announced just last week by Health Secretary Andy Burnham will provide single room accommodation giving our people in the south of Easington access to the highest possible standards of health care, previously only available to a privileged few.
We also need to let people know about David Cameron’s lack of substance. He’s boasted about being a good salesman but he’s not the conviction politician we need for these tougher times. The message for our poster should be a straight forward one that running the country is a serious matter and David Cameron doesn’t have the substance to take on that job. As Gordon Brown said when his leadership was questioned by the media and some in our own ranks at Labour Conference “This is no time for a novice”.
All of David Cameron’s focus has been on portraying a change of image including airbrushing posters, sledging at the North poll or being photographed cycling. He is trying to distract the British people from realising that it is the same old divisive Tory Party on offer. If we have the skill we must use our own posters to get over to the message to the electorate that David Cameron seems to think that it’s easy to get away with the same old Tory policies – telling people he’s for fairness when promising a tax giveaway for the wealthiest and cutting Child Trust Funds and Child Tax Credits when families need them the most.
Instead of taking on the old fashioned, hard-line Tories in his Party, he has appeased them by giving in on the issues they are obsessed about like foxhunting, grammar schools and Europe. It is an interesting challenge to take on the ad men at their own game but for those of us who care about the future direction of our country and the prosperity of the many not the few, there is rather more at stake than an expensive advertising contract.
