Essay 3

The green party need a fresh advertising campaign to gain notoriety and awareness about both their brand identity and the policies/beliefs of the political party. This should be represented in a way that is adaptable into both a flyer and a poster. The target audience which is the younger generation of voters should be taken into consideration, in terms of design; while also incorporating elements of the design that represent the core policies of the green party. The campaign should also feature the relevant downfalls of the leading opposition political parties in the past that contradict the green party policies in a direct way.

The campaign includes both posters and flyers, of which I believe both were successful in meeting the criteria of the rationale. In terms of typography the campaign features Bebas Neue throughout which ties in with the current branding as well as being a modern typeface, keeping the design concise and focused towards a younger design conscious audience; contrasting against the other political campaigns which focus towards the older generation. I believe a modernist look is what was needed due to the nature of the brief, to gain notoriety and votes you want to aim to a younger market, especially with policies that will end up effecting their future the most. This design conscious visual aspect is reaffirmed by the use of a grid which has been slightly broken giving each of the pieces a slightly off centre and unusual look, making them something new and different to look at in contrast to its counterparts.

The downfalls of the competitive political parties were added in through the use of small chronological timeline on each image, giving the date, information and leading party in a simple concise way. This tells the audience the way in which previous governments have slowly been making the green party come up with further solutions in a non-aggressive light, as can be seen below in figure 1. Further telling the audience their key concerns lie within sorting the issues. This issue is touched upon by Kiousis & Stromback ‘Political public relations should not be simply relegated to a technical or tactical function within political organizations or campaigns, but rather be used to help advance the political organization’s principal mission and broad objectives’

The branding of the green party has also been tied together not only through the use of typography, but also through colour, the plain gaps within the green speech bubble stand out the most on the page. Therefore, projecting the solution to the issue they have found in the foreground of the piece, this makes the information easily accessible; telling the audience exactly what the brand is about. Even though the text over it is in black due to the colouration of the paper it makes the white space underneath stand out more, this is why the campaign works both as a poster and flyer, in poster form it concisely and quickly get across the information needed, but in flyer form it can be further read into in further detail.

Each of the pieces have a different hashtag, once again this is linking to the pre-existing brand identity, although it has been taken out of its colour and made simply monochrome making it stand out, and making it seem more accessible to the audience to use on social media. The links to the very active social media can be found in the top corner in which the logo has been changed to accord with the visual identity of the logo.

Within my first two investigations I was exploring the idea of political branding and its importance in the political sphere as well as its link to commerce, from both investigations I discovered the need for political branding and the way in which a strong belief within a brand can influence a person to invest themselves within that product whether that be a consumable or a Politian. The green party are renowned for being ‘a wasted vote’ despite their positive policies and concern for peoples wellbeing in the country, this may be due to their lack of awareness. Personally I believe along with a strong brand identity and advertising that has a sense of emotional link, which comes from its placement; the party would politically become more successful. Therefore, through the production of a campaign which does both promote the key policies from the party whilst gaining awareness for the brand visual identity it would boost the green party’s ability to gain more trust within the public as a serious contender within politics. Strong branding is often needed to be considered as a contender, as touched upon by Scammell, ‘The brand concept brings together functionality and meaning; it incorporates the economic and the aesthetic, the substance of reputation and the details of style’ (Scammell, 2015, p.11).

The poster could be compared against the Brexit leave poster previously spoken about, figure 2, in terms of it states a simplistic statement of change as well as linking to the brand through the link of colour. The Brexit poster proves how a simplistic visual arrangement can be used to gain awareness and persuade, the information it contains it is not true, but due to the strong visual elements such as bold type, strong visual identity and a key slogan, people believed it. All of which are featured within the design, yet there is the link of emotional branding, as the audiences emotions will be evoked by the issues that they find dear to themselves; furthered by the information about the times they had been further let down by past governing bodies within the same subject matter.

Bibliography

Kiousis, S., Stromback, J. and Strömbäck, J. (2011). Political public relations: Principles and applications. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Scammell, M. (2015) Journal of Political Marketing. (14 Vols). Informa UK.