Biff Guevara: Billboards, Billboards Everywhere...

Last week Labour's first billboard appeared. When the first bad Labour poll rating appeared I read somewhere that it was okay because Labour had yet to start campaigning. The message was - okay National's billboards are pretty good but just wait till Labour gets going.

Then we got the 'hanging baby'. I thought, when I saw it, it was a makeshift preliminary ad while the creative boys at the agency (which includes suit James Hall ex Saaaaaatchi and Saaaaaatchi) developed the advertising that was going to turn it all round. The baby killing ad was clearly a cottage industry product, developed by an electorate office in Auckland. The amateurish graphics, weird wording and incomprehensibility reinforced this. The message seems to be 'Vote for us or the baby gets it'. Rather than giving the electorate something to use to make a positive vote, threatening voters seems to be the strategy, sort of like political terrorism.

(Really amateur looking) Scissors have been added to give the ad menace, and perhaps making it more comprehensible for the many people who can't understand it.

Well it seems this ad is not the interim one - it IS the ad. Does Labour want to lose? Probably not. Will Labour lose? The baby killing motif won't help.

The Biff Guevara creative shop gives you some future Labour billboards in the same style:

Little old lady about to be crushed up against a wall (marked poverty) by a blue bulldozer (marked market rents).

A sweet little girl in pink (called Lilly New Zealand) about to be blown up by a blue bomb (called tax cuts).

A person in a wheedlchair about to go over a cliff (labelled unemployment) being pushed by someone in blue.

ENDS

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