Red Vs Blue
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I spotted an article recently about Labour’s new spoof take on Cameron and his shadow cabinet’s methods of dealing with the current global economic downturn. The page contains a fake webchat via an instant messenger service in which the cabinet try to decide their policies and who to blame over the state of the economy.
The creative, made by Labour’s new media agency Tangent One, has caused quite a stir; with some praising their having a sense of humour whilst others claiming it is the digital equivalent of childish name calling.
Overall I think a lot of politics is just name calling – I would hardly say the famous evil eyed Tony Blair was a sophisticated intellectual masterpiece… it seems to me that these kinds of marketing poke fun at politics and they do so in a deliberately mocking and easily accessible way. Both sides have taken similar approaches to this over the years – and I don’t think this piece stands out as any more condescending and immature than any of the other campaigns of this ilk.
Personally I am not a huge fan of this particular piece – I think it could have been taken a lot further – for example, instead of a webchat (which is just a set sequence of text) this could have been an interactive piece. The public / Voters could have posted questions into the screen to a ‘live’ Cameron webchat (in a parody of the webCameron aspects of the Tory parties real site) and the website could have generated his answers. This sounds complex – but for any question the system couldn’t pick out the keywords for they could have given a generic comedy answer. It could have been very funny… I think right now it is getting them a lot of attention and might get people to think a little about politics but really it just doesn’t utilise the capabilities of the Labour parties’ online space as well as it could have.
Have a look for yourself and see what you think Labour’s spoof shadow cabinet webchat
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This post is part of a series – read all the Red Vs Blue articles here
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Labour has another version of this webchat on it’s site now located here: http://www.labour.org.uk/shadow_cabinet_reshuffle. The new one centres around the idea that Cameron is bringing back Ken Clarke to replace their own ‘inexperienced’ Osbourne rather than creating policies to help the country… I had some priase for the first installment of this, as an interesting idea which wasn’t as fully realised as it could have been, but had a good sense of humour.
This new installment is more of the same, but not as funny. I do hope they plan to develop the idea further or scrap it for something new soon. This joke is getting tired now and isn’t really going to get them the attention they want. Come on Tangent One – update this with something with more interactivity – the campaign is crying out for it.