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. It first appeared in AdNews print - if you want to read it hot off the press you better subscribe here.
Political advertising tends to enthral ad agencies. It does so because it allows us to do something taboo; it gives us permission to scare the living daylights out of our target audience.
Thus many of the great political ad campaigns have fear arousal at their core. 'Labour Isn't Working' is one of the definitive ads of British politics and it certainly helped turn an election, securing victory for the Tories and ushering in the Thatcherite era.
In some ways, however, it was an exception. Normally it is the incumbent that uses fear and the challenger that uses hope. In this case it was the other way round as the Tories were the party of opposition at the time.
With the Brexit debate that's rumbling on in the UK, the normal rules apply. The Remain campaign has used every possible scare tactic in the book to perpetuate the status quo including, literally, the threat of World War Three. We only need hobgoblins and a plague of frogs to complete the set. Incumbency is drawn to the inertia of fear.
This is why challengers are drawn towards the impetus of hope. Think of Obama's 'Yes We Can' campaign, or Blair's 'New Labour. New Britain’.
Perhaps the political campaign we can learn most from at this particular moment is Reagan's promise to 'Make America Great Again’. Now, who have I heard that from recently? Reagan's campaign line isn't so much being overhauled as over-combed.
For this reason, joking aside, it's time to be afraid. Very afraid. Because the angels don't always have the best tunes. And no matter what our liberal group think tells us to the contrary, the man with the hair is winning big amongst his electorate. He understands, better than anyone in a generation of American politics, the visceral nature of election appeals, and the power of making the disenfranchised feel good about themselves.
Check out Saatchi & Saatchi global CCO, Kate Stanners 'The best political advertising forgets the complexity of party politics' here.