Australia – In the latest Australian Elections, independent news outlet Crikey ran for Parliament with a campaign from DDB Group Melbourne. Of course, they didn’t get elected, but that wasn’t the point.
For this campaign, Crikey threw its hat in the ring to explore how political candidates take advantage of loopholes in the electoral system. Loopholes that allow for things like Clive Palmer’s dubious ads, Labor’s ‘Mediscare’, and the Coalition’s boat arrivals spam. A lot of these are taken for granted by political operatives and insiders who’ve worked in the system for years. But to voters, they stink.
To investigate them from the inside, Crikey faxed its application, paid the electoral commission (AEC), registered a real candidate, assigned reporter Charlie Lewis as campaign manager, and started making the most of those loopholes.
The editorial series, ‘Crikey for PM,’ contributed towards Crikey’s 1.25 million page views across the election campaign.
Throughout the month of campaigning, “Crikey for PM” produced mock up corflutes to show how candidates can mislead voters, appearing in the colours of the major parties and even the electoral commission itself.
Of course, the signs were misleading, but according to the AEC’s own fact sheet, it has no power to remove any of Crikey’s signs, regardless of the content, outside of six metres of a polling booth.
Crikey didn’t stop at corflutes. Tapping into public resentment over the practice, the team sent spam text messages, directly to the MPs and staffers responsible for spam themselves. Crikey for PM’s campaign phone texted Kooyong independent Monique Ryan, as well as Trumpet of Patriot’s Clive Palmer, and representatives of the Liberal and Labor parties.
It also didn’t matter how many times Monique Ryan responded with ‘NO SPAM’ to opt out, political parties are exempt from the Spam Act 2003, so Crikey for PM could carry on.
Whilst Crikey’s campaign headquarters did not have access to the sophisticated data that the major parties do, DDB Melbourne tried its hand with precisely targeted social advertising that showed the contradictory messages parties have the opportunity to use to sway audiences, all in the name of winning votes.
Psembi Kinstan, chief creative officer at DDB Group Melbourne, said, “Political advertising operates within an entirely different rulebook to every other advertiser in the country. They can lie, mislead and misdirect. What simpler way to spotlight this embarrassing ridiculousness than by running our own political campaign.”
Meanwhile, Crystal Andrews, Crikey’s readers’ Editor and founder of Zee Feed, commented, “If we had a campaign manager with some strategic nous, the ‘Crikey for PM’ ads could have been a lot more targeted and effective.”
