exotic political ads from the north

I was talking to Bill yesterday about political ads, and explained to him that we don't have that usual mudslinging on TV that people in the states experience during an election year. In the states even Coroners re-election campaigns get bizarre ads. Sweden, not so much.

We run posters, print ads, lots of public debates and national TV debates and then some cinema ads. Now there's talk about political ads on TV, though not all advertising supported channels are accepting them yet.

In 1991, Roy Anderson, award winning director with his very special style of dark, grim and boring (often achieved by putting green makeup on the actors) made a political cinema ad for the Social Democratic Party. It ran in cinemas at the time, but it didn't do much to help the Social Democrats that year as a coalition made up of the conservatives and a new party took the majority.



In 2006, The Social Democratic Youth Legue made another surreal ad, this one was a new take on Romeo and Juliet where red is the social democrats (and the caring people) while blue are the egotistical conservatives. The ads voiceover asks the viewer what kind of society they want to live in. Bonus points for using the party leader Göran Persson's face as the MGM 'Leo the Lion'. Again, surreal ads didn't help the results and Fredrik Reinfeldt's Moderate Party toppled Göran Persson off the throne and his ten year reign as prime minister and political career ended there.



Now that more parties have decided to run political TV ads, some have made self-imposed ethical rules to follow, like the Christian Democratic party who published theirs in the national newspaper (Google translated). Their rules include;
• Advertising must not be misleading, offensive or inappropriate.
• Advertisements must not play on fear or fears or exploiting misfortune or suffering.
• Advertisements must not discredit the individual, group, organization or other political party by petition that is likely to bring contempt or ridicule.

Other parties play a little more fast and loose, take the Feminist initiativ party as an example. Their steamy ad (NSFW) was yanked off youtube in a matter of minutes, and carries the tagline "Feminists have better sex".