With an election date secured, Australia now awaits an avalance of political advertising hitting our screns. In this five part series, creatives weigh in on what makes great election advertising. This article first appeared in AdNews print - if you want to read it hot off the press you better subscribe here.
Brevity is a concept that has always been lost on politicians, and never more so than during an election.
The problem with election advertising is that it’s developed an over-reliance on words. and politicians have a way with words like an arsonist has a way with matches. Legions of committees, research groups, pollsters and commentators have blunted words into meaningless gestures. Great election advertising needs to either dispense with words entirely or punctuate them with more memorable imagery.
You can ‘judge a man by his shoes’ is a sort of moral compass if you will. So picture Malcolm Turnbull’s shoes and think about the vastly different story they would tell to a pair of Bill Shorten’s.
Would you vote for the pair of shoes that had ‘worked the land’ in a pastoral proving ground, or the ‘carpeted corridors’ of a big city, future-facing conglomerate?
Visually arresting and convention-challenging imagery like this would likely tell us more more about a candidate’s values than any status quo election babble ever could.
If I were running an election campaign over the remaining six weeks, I’d be thinking about the image I want to leave behind. That’s how my election advertising would begin. It’s only when parties have left office, or the election dust has settled, that we’re granted a lasting perspective on a politician’s qualities or achievements.
Hindsight is one of the few things a politician can really count on. Clear language, strategic thinking and genuine values should be the end goal. Brevity will arguably resonate more with voters than tired campaign clichés and tactical skulduggery.