As you all know we are running a weekly series called Political Corner: Election 2020 where we highlight social media ads, speeches, and videos from the election campaign of each political party. Because of this, I am looking closely at their election ads on Social Media.
There are two kinds of election ads, positive and negative. Negative campaign ads are also known colloquially as attack ads. The Labour party currently are running a very positive ad campaign where they bring to the viewer’s attention good things about their party.
In complete contrast, the National Party are running a negative ad campaign where they attack Labour, the Greens and NZ First. Now there is nothing wrong with running a negative ad campaign as it can be very effective, but it takes skill to get it right.
Unfortunately, the National Party’s campaign is not in the skilled and effective hands of Crosby Textor or its two Kiwi stars Sean Topham and Ben Guerin.
Kiwis Sean Topham and Ben Guerin have emerged as two of the heroes of Boris Johnson’s victory. They came up with the social media campaign that included the infamous Boris Johnson ‘Love actually’ parody. They have been dubbed the ’24 hour meme machines’ and have been described as young Millenials skilled in the dark arts of social media. If they worked their same magic here in New Zealand I am sure that the NZ Media would describe what they do as Dirty Politics.
The BFD
The “dark art” of negative campaigning is very effective when done right, especially if it uses humour. Crosby Textor fired National as clients, and the lack of a professional “dark arts” team shows.
National under Simon Bridges has the goal of knocking NZ First out of the water and completely destroying them at the ballot box so that not only will they be unable to be a coalition partner for National, they will be unable to be a coalition partner for Labour either.
Since that is their strategy when they attack NZ First then surely their goal should be to make NZ First look bad?
One of the key things that Winston Peters‘s NZ First party campaigns on as a plus for voting for his party is that he will act as a hand brake against the worst excesses of both the Green Party and Labour. Correct me if I am wrong but doesn’t this National Party attack ad actually reinforce the idea that NZ First successfully acted as a handbrake on the Car tax?
The National party need to hire some dark arts professionals to run their campaign toot sweet. This ad is a complete own goal!
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