Charlie K’s expression is prescient.
UPDATE: Double irony alert! Scrapbook wonders whether David and George recall this advert from 2008?
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Tag Archives: paid media
Tories dump advertising agency in Coulson plot dating from January's airbrushed posters
It has emerged overnight that Cameron has brought in advertising agency M&C Saatchi to steady the wobbles in its communications strategy. The official line is that Euro RSCG is not being sacked and retaining its status as lead agency. Scrapbook can exclusively reveal that Andy Coulson approached M&C Saatchi in January shortly after airbrush-gate saw the Tories’ posters widely ridiculed on the internet.
Publicly dumping RSCG with 42 days before the election it is simply not possible as it would send out the message that the Tory campaign is in total chaos. There’s no spinning around the fact that this is – without question – the most embarassing thing that could happen to a political ad brief at this juncture. Make no doubt that this is a scalp for Clifford Singer and MyDavidCameron.
The all-too-convenient thing to do here is to blame the ad agency. But effective campaigns build on an initial grain of truth and reinforce what people already feel. What Cameron needs to realise is that the airbrushed charges only stick because people think that he lacks substance.
In an admittedly witty bit of gallows humour, Euro RSCG chief David Jones said:
“There are a lot of people in the ad industry who would like to see the end of Brown’s regime. All great ideas that help us achieve that are welcome.”
Perhaps they should set up a website to crowdsource these ideas using twitter?!
Conservative campaign backfires (again) as Mock The Week slates "I've never voted Tory before" posters
CCHQ must be nursing the political equivalent of a red wine hangover. After a botched launch of their “Broken Britain” report (decimal points not included) segued seamlessly into another round of poster pisstakes this week, Conservatives awake this morning to the news that a YouGov poll puts them just 7 points ahead of Labour and 20 seats short of a majority. Even The Spectator is now passing comment on the number of “unforced errors” coming out of the Conservative campaign.
Following on from a gigantic 370-post “make your own David Cameron poster” thread on Mumsnet, yesterday evening provided yet more evidence that the left’s online attacks are gaining traction outside of the usual blogosphere/Twitter circles or even the watering holes of Westminster. Mock The Week, well, mocked Steve Hilton’s latest efforts for a whole two minutes and it was absolutely hilarious:
To over-simplify an argument made in The Independent this week:
Are the Tories going to kill the campaign poster?
Video: We never voted Tory in the '80s either
Tim Montgomerie wrote on Sunday that the Tories were about to “unveil three posters featuring three Labour supporters who now back the Conservatives (that will make them hard to deface!)”. Wrong – and we’ve even got a video this time!
The left have had great fun mocking Conservative Party posters but this should not be dismissed easily as blogosphere naval-gazing. As The Independent reported yesterday, we’ve forced them to rethink their entire paid advertising strategy.
They did try, bless them, releasing only lower resolutions of the latest adverts in an attempt to frustrate the creation of spoofs (you can have a play yourself here, here and here). This might explain the slight change in emphasis to Twitter, where lefties ran riot with a #ivenevervotedtory hashtag.
For Scrapbook, this latest salvo in the poster wars underlines what did not seem possible to many politicos at the close of play last year:
The left is actually enjoying this campaign.
Airbrushed Cameron to eclipse dog-whistling Howard?
While Scrapbook doesn’t share the class-war sympathies of the angry young man/woman expressed above, the majority of Cameron poster sites this blogger is familiar with now have graffiti on them. With an online assault led by mydavidcameron.com now penetrating the mainstream with 33 pages of spoofs on MumsNet, has this early-doors ad spend eclipsed Are you thinking what we’re thinking? as the most ridiculed poster in recent political history?
Nice touch with the mud!
Photo credit: LM (she’d better not want NUJ rates!)
We is all in dis ting together, yeah?
Expect a veritable torrent of poster spoofs (from all sides) in between now and May. mydavidcameron.com have set the bar very high with their mixture of home-grown and reader submitted material. Here are Scrapbook’s choice picks:
Those of a creative bent can try their hand with this template (the font is Franklin Gothic Demi).
More over at mydavidcameron.com!
David Cameron reunited with long-lost younger brother
David Cameron with his younger and better looking sibling
David Cameron has expressed his joy at being reunited with his long-lost (younger and better looking) brother.
Speaking exclusively to Scrapbook, the Tory leader commented:
“One minute I was stalking Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell on Facebook and the next I was shocked to discover the profile of my younger brother. It’s been wonderful catching up on lost time but also fantastic luck that he can now front the first salvo of our gigantic paid advertising spend!”
Despite his photoshopped chiselled good looks it seems the younger Mr. Cameron took some persuasion to appear before the cameras:
“I’m thrilled that Dave asked me to front the latest Conservative campaign. I must say I did have initial reservations but the offer of clocking up a few airmiles courtesy of Lord Ashcroft was too much to resist. Dave reassures me the facilities on that private jet are quite something!”
Expect to see Dave’s brother soon on billboards near you.
Photo hat-tip: Daily Mirror