The power of party broadcasts
Although often ignored, party broadcasts can offer voters a real insight into the policies of candidates rallying us for our votes at the end of this week. For the first time, these five minute clips haven’t just been shown after the news on the BBC, but have also made it on to student friendly iPlayer for us to watch in high quality, on demand. With the significance of these videos increasing, there remains a serious problem for British political parties: why are they all so rubbish?
The campaign videos that the British public have been unfortunate enough to experience all have the distinct whiff of politics-sixth-former-project-work about them. The range is diverse; from a smarmy Nick Clegg, choosing to shoot his broadcast in the same format as the confused.com adverts, right down to fringe parties such as the BNP, who have put together some kind of nightmare history lesson, mixing World War 2, some truly terrifying and ill-informed views on immigration, and even some dramatic music for good measure (as if Nick Griffin’s face wasn’t scary enough).
The only party that seems to have put any thought into their broadcast at all are the Greens. At just under three minutes long, the broadcast is extremely well put together, and really very persuasive. It’s the only one that feels like any real effort was made over it, which considering the fact that their budget is dwarfed even by the Lib Dems, is pretty impressive.
Am I going to vote for the Green party? Probably not, but if I was unlucky enough to have to make my judgement based only on the party broadcasts, there’s a pretty good chance I would.
Party broadcasts mean that in the future, voters hitting the polls will be the best informed that they’ve ever been. Surely it’s only so long before a party comes up with something viral to harness the herd power of the Internet. The Greens are the pioneers here- it can only be so long before the other parties match suit and also give their ad campaigns some serious budget.
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Hahahahaha it turns out that you *do* listen to my rants in seminars!
The BNP one was great!