Tories' campaign poster

It’s nothing new to see political parties producing posters to get their message across. But it is rare that they do such a horrible job of it.

I’m sure that by now most of you will have seen the latest effort from the Conservatives. If not, well… it’s the image on the right.  I’m not entirely sure how you missed it.

If you ever had doubts that the next general election was going to be fought entirely on personality, then this should have changed your mind. This poster has been placed on billboards around the country. The general idea behind it seems to be that they want you to see the giant disembodied head of David Cameron looking down at you from on high.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the effort hasn’t been entirely welcomed. A number of the posters have been defaced and their message amended to the point where the abusive language used means I can’t reprint them on this blog. At least one of them suggests that Cameron should “go away for a bit” and they’ll “see him next Tuesday” – if you follow my drift.

Granted, a lot of people have a dislike for the Conservatives and (assuming that the issue ever becomes big enough that they need to comment on it) I’m sure this will be the reason given by the Conservative party. But I think their explanation could be a lot simpler than that. All you’d need is a simple sentence of about six words.

“It’s not a very good picture.”

It’s a perfectly legitimate reason and they’ll never dream of using it. In fact, I don’t think I could find any politician that would be brave enough to even consider admitting that they did something stupid or that they’ve wasted money.

But seriously, look at the picture. Are they really telling me that they hired a photographer and that this is the best picture that they could have taken to get their message across? Were they paying the photographer by the hour and figured that this picture was ‘close enough’?

What is the reason behind that facial expresson? Cameron is actually quite good at looking concerned or authoritative at times, and the photographer couldn’t get that on film? Personally I’d be asking for a refund, or maybe ask them to try again. The one thing I wouldn’t do is to enlarge the photograph and place it on posters up and down the country.

There are people that say that this won’t harm Cameron’s credibility and maybe they’ll turn out to be right in the long run. But when it’s widely accepted that all he needs to do to win the next election is to not make himself look stupid, I don’t think he’s off to a particularly good start.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, why not create your own poster slogan? Yeah, it’s silly and a complete waste of time but at least it’s a slightly amusing waste of time.

Report This Post

Processing your request, Please wait....

Report as:	Broken Links Invalid / Wrong Links Missing / Invalid Password Other
Write in Words: (Optional)