By Craig Little, Senior Consultant.
About $10 million a week will be pumped into political advertising during the Federal Election over the next five weeks.
While more of this will find its way to Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter than before, the early signs suggest that where the big money goes, innovation and creativity do not necessarily follow.
Instead we have a play-it-safe, small-target start to the campaign.
Perhaps this is symptomatic of how quickly the gloss came off brand Kevin07, as well as the fact there is no long-term incumbent and the pledge for “new leadership” is implied with two leaders making their campaign debuts.
That both campaigns are being driven by 1980’s industry veterans, fuelled with large budgets, increases the likelihood that election campaigning will not be “moving forward” during 2010.
Whatever the reason, a campaign sans catchy slogan1, iconic imagery and significant creative use of the online space, is a dull campaign – and a narrow one.
This is a shame, as when done well campaigning in the online space is cheaper and more responsive to short-time frames. It can create discussion and leverage editorial content on the online (as well as print and TV) news sites.
Although given World Vision CEO Tim Costello’s effort to leverage the incredible success of the recent Old Spice viral campaign, perhaps we should be grateful Julia and Tony are playing it safe.
1:“moving forward” is not catchy… although very few slogans lend themselves to such repetition
