Well it’s finally here – Election Day has arrived and voting is underway! I’m not here to express any political views but there’s no reason why we can’t get into the election spirit. We may well be entering into a new political era after today.

Marketing an election campaign makes for a really interesting case study! Especially as this is the first real digital General Election in the UK. In this blog I thought I’d take a quick look at some of the ‘dirty marketing’ tactics employed by the major political parties.

This election has been dominated by TV debates, social media, YouTube videos, blogs and online campaigns – the old-fashioned poster and leaflet campaigns seem to have taken a bit of a back seat. In fact many of the Branding experts say the main parties’ offline efforts have actually backfired.

Backfired or not, there have been some memorable campaigns and here’s one of my favourite examples of a retaliation poster campaign that went horribly wrong for Labour.

The Conservative Party plays on the Vicki Pollard character over the controversial leafleting:

The Labour Party come out with this angle of attack:

and The Conservative’s have the final word:

Humour factor aside, this style of political messaging to the masses sits really uncomfortably with me – being a marketer that respects the parameters of marketing etiquette it’s all a little too aggressive, dare I say immature. Innovation and creativity is key in any campaign, but does it really have to get so dirty? Besides, playing political ping pong can’t really be that effective for winning votes can it? Having said that, politics just wouldn’t be politics without all the fun and games so I’m sure it’s not going to change.
But in my humble opinion let’s keep it clean!