Tomorrow’s ad – and three rejects

I think the above would have made a popular billboard, but the party had higher priorities.

Maybe it’s not too late to sell it to the Exclusive Brethren.

Below, two competing ideas for the final day full page press ad tomorrow.

The first uses John Campbell’s idea from the TV3 debate of stacking up children’s building blocks into towers.

The aim was to counter the main threat to ACT: people thinking they needed to vote National to get rid of Labour.

Of course they don’t. It’s not the number of your blocks, but the size of your bloc that counts.

I’m a bit worried that we’re not going with this.

The party decided it was more important to emphasise the symbolic cup of tea between John and Rodney.

This sent the signal to National voters to give Rodney their party votes in Epsom, and to ACT supporters round the country that it’s safe to vote ACT. 

Newspapers being about news, I thought we should feature several relevant facts up big, in case people didn’t read any further from the headline.

These facts are that Rodney’s safe in Epsom, that ACT doesn’t need 5% to make it back, and that there are three big policies that ACT will drive a hard bargain on if ACT holds the balance of power.

But after much debate, the guys in Auckland decided to go with the following simpler approach, challenging the voter and leaving the detail to the body copy…

What do you think?

Kiwiblog spoof now real billboard

What began as an idle suggestion by me on Kiwiblog and a quick mockup by Whale Oil has now become a real billboard for the Free Speech Coalition.

It went up this afternoon in Auckland and, weather permitting, Wellington. 

Stay tuned for the Tauranga special

The bottom line, if you can’t read it, says ‘Authorised as demanded by LabourFirst’s and the Greens’ outrageous assault on free speech by David Farrar of the Free Speech Coalition…”

Green there, done that, got the press ad

I like the Greens’ little girl poster. But I knew someone had done it before. My old art director Elwyn Pugsley reminds me it was us! – for the Board of Trustees Election campaign 20 years ago.

1988 – Department of Education

 2008 – Green Party

I’m not accusing the Greens of bubonic plagiarism. (A phrase I pinched from Austin Mitchell.) Most creative people are too proud to steal ideas.

More than likely, it’s just a case of two people downloading from the ether the same logical solution to a similar brief.

I remember our little girl was found by director Gaylene Preston for our TV ad. She’d now be old enough to be the Green girl’s mother. It looks like she might be!

My Sunday Star-Times review of latest Green and National billboards

 

 

 

The Sunday Star-Times has asked me to reviews this year’s election ads. The short version of my first review is in this morning’s edition. 

Here’s the long version…

Heineken refreshes the parties other beers cannot reach

Averting my gaze from the billboard of Helen Clark on the Hannah Playhouse, what should I find on the other corner of Courtenay Place but this?

Yes, the Greens’ concern with unhealthy food clearly doesn’t extend to drink. (Or, of course, dope.)

But more to the point…

Have Sue and the Greens counted the value of this prime central city advertising site under their expenses cap? I’m sure they don’t want to breach their own Electoral Finance Act again?

(So far, all the parties that rammed the EFA through have fallen foul of it, and all parties that opposed it have not.)

If they need an estimate of the site’s market value, I’m sure the media buyers at Clemenger BBDO can help.

They’re on the opposite corner.

(Oh, if you’re not in advertising, you probably won’t understand my headline. Check this example of one of the great English campaigns - voice over by Victor Borge.)