Obama revolutionised campaigning by spreading his tweet-like slogans on social networking sites, targeting a very young population. In Luxembourg, the innovation happens unnoticed under our beer glasses: the government thought that the moment between a human and his beer was the best time to spark European feelings, so it decided to print their communications on beer mats.
Yes, beer mats.
Let’s have a look at the design before going more into detail:
The beer mat is in fact designed to remind European citizens of their right to vote on 7th June (provided they have lived in Luxembourg for at least two years).
People do a lot of insensible things when intoxicated, and the letter-imitation of these young Europeans will hardly impress any pub goer. The most unfortunate part of the design is, however, the tiny little logo of the European Parliament, which probably vanish under a golden brown circle the first time a beer glass sits on it.
In an official statement, ASTI, an Association which supports immigrant workers in Luxembourg said this campaign was not only a disgrace to foreigners in Luxembourg, but also reducing the European challenge to a new low.
“These beer mats make the elections look like something trivial and not worth paying attention to”, says Serge Kollwelter from ASTI.
“Citizens need to be motivated, not be asked to please sign up. This is not a vote for or against the European Parliament, but for a political direction. Most people don’t realise this.”
According to ASTI, 200.000 euros were spent on flyers, posters, gadgets and beer mats to mobilise European citizens.
In 2004, 11 715 voters from 14 different countries of the EU were signed up to vote, which was a mere 9% of the total 132 000 EU citizens in Luxembourg. Needless to say that there was more to be done than beer mats.
Luckily enough, some communes didn’t wait for the beer mats to reach their local pub, but started organising events and talks to inform people of their rights.
Today, Luxembourg has a population of about 483.800, a little less than half of the population are immigrants (out of the 205.900 immigrants are about 177.100 from the EU).
Baring this in mind, imagine what implications the worst case scenario, illustrated below, would have on at least half of Luxembourg’s population:
(9 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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You get those mats when ordering water/coke/…etc. too! In my opinion it’s just as godd/bad as any other form of publicity. It’s not the beer mats that are bad, it’s the people =)
Beer mats render this ad and what it stands for to something trivial and unimportant, whatever you choose to drink, I think.
I think it’s a real bad place to put an ad:)