Madison Avenue Would Cry

The new elections are at the end of the month, and the electoral commercials and publicity have been doing the rounds already. The four major parties each have a different way of expressing their intentions to voters. The PP, Ciudadanos, and PSOE all have commercials that are national. The only thing that might change from one region to another is the local language. Though I think that is only in the spot by the PSOE. Podemos, which has joined with Izquierda Unida for this election in a coalition called Unidos Podemos, has a national spot, and individual spots for the regions where they are allied with other parties. 

However, Podemos also has a catalogue that can be ordered from their web page. I believe that by donating seven euros to their campaign, they mail you a glossy catalogue where the major candidates to the Congreso are shown in their houses or offices. Each of them is introduced along with the campaign platform they all defend. From the beginning the catalogue has been in the eye of a storm. Because it was designed to look just like the IKEA catalogue. If the marketing strategy was to get people talking about Podemos, they succeeded. Their spot on the greater part of national television shows that an upset of the traditional parties or Ciudadanos would not cause a catastrophe. The world would not come to an end as some predict (PP and Ciudadanos) They say things do not change in a day, though change begins one day. Of all the spots of the four main parties, it's the most rational.

Ciudadanos seems to have a fixation with the leader of Podemos. Their national television spot shows a bar with its regular patrons and an outsider who is obviously not one of them because he's wearing a pony tail and is the only one drinking beer. The patrons discuss how every time the country has fallen it has picked itself up again because everyone chipped in. Except for certain kinds of people. And the camera focuses on the freeloader with a pony tail who gives a raised fist salute and mumbles something about "power to the people" while he kills martians on his cell phone after having played some coins in the bar's slot machine. This spot should get the prize for obvious insults and ultra-patriotic speeches oozing with condescension. It's enough to make anyone run for the bathroom. What were the publicity people thinking?

The publicity people must have been on a good trip when they designed the PSOE spot. The PSOE team decided to show a positive optimism by making Sí (Yes) the keyword this time around. People are shown walking happily through a town, each carrying a flowering plant or flower bouquets as they walk to a plaza where Sí is covered with flowers of all colors, much like a parade float. The line from a song, "shiny, happy people" runs through my mind whenever I see it. I think there's a limit to how positive a campaign can be, especially when whoever gets elected is not going to have a good time changing things. 

The conservative PP, however, has a convoluted message with a Byzantine logic only excelled by trying to make sense of something Rajoy has said. Yesterday he repeated himself campaigning in Pontevedra. "España es un gran país, y lo que la hace grande es que está llena de españoles." (Spain is a great country, and what makes it great is that it is full of Spaniards.) Their spot has a woman walk into a pet supply store and order a large amount of cat food, seventy kilos I think. When the shop assistant asks why so much, she says she has a hundred twenty-two cats. It's not that she likes cats, it's that she's totally against dogs. The spot closes with a voice over saying that if it's not intelligent in daily life to do something because you are against something else, it's also not intelligent to do so when you vote. If I follow the logic correctly, it's supposed to mean, why vote for someone you don't like just because you don't like the PP. And that's supposed to get people to vote for the PP?? 

I think most of the parties went to the cheapest publicity companies to get their spots done. They did say they were going to cut costs. Whatever the messages bombarding us, the circus has begun once more and will culminate the 26th of this month. And I'm afraid most are going to vote for the same thieves again.