I’ve been meaning to euroblog (can I turn that into a word?) for a few days now, but was only jolted into action by the sight of the EU’s new billboards.
Katrina blogged about them last month, but I hadn’t given them a great deal of thought until on an otherwise uneventful bus journey through a deserted north London on Easter Sunday, I was confronted by the posters at every turn. I’m not exaggerating - they seemed to be plastered across every billboard and bus-stop over a number of miles.
What first struck me was the massive sum of money it must have cost to plaster so many adverts across Europe.
My next thought was whether to the uninitiated and totally uninterested, this well-intentioned marketing campaign would have even the slightest effect.
My conclusion was a definitive no. They certainly draw on crucial issues - the global economy, energy supplies and work-life balance.
But that might just be the problem. The message is far too vague and nebulous. If the EU is going to convince voters - especially in the UK - that it adds any value to their daily lives, it needs to be much, much more specific in spelling out the very specific successes brought about by the European Union.
Or perhaps, it should have forgotten about policy altogether. It made me wonder whether the brains behind the campaign should have gone for something a little dumbed down. Had they gone down the celebrity route, would that have had more impact? Or perhaps down the sex sells avenue, as addressed by Stephen in a previous post.
One fun experience I had in Brussels was teaching an Italian blogger some idiosyncratic English phrases. I can’t remember what they were (I think it descended into obscenities), but it was an Italian expression he mentioned that sticks in my mind. It was something along the lines of … “You can cover an old woman in make-up, but she’s still an old woman.” He gestured to the audience sitting with us in the parliament building and said that that, in essence, is the EU, and by extension, Th!nk About It.
So, should the EU give up and accept its status as a proverbial old woman? Or does it simply not have anything tangible to boast of? Or am I not giving the people of Europe enough credit?
However, I have to say, the EU’s billboards are top-drawer compared to the pathetic effort by the fascist British National Party. In their latest ploy to garner publicity, they have used an image of Jesus and a scripture from John 15:20 - “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” - on its latest poster for the June elections.
Never mind sex selling. The BNP is following in the footsteps of those atheist buses and hoping that religion will sell their unique brand of bile to the British public.
The BNP aside, it can only be a good thing that the elections are being brought to the high streets and bus-stops of the average voter - or more to the point, non-voter. But I can’t help thinking we’ve got to be much more imaginative for any ad campaign to translate to people actually making that walk to the polling station.
After all, the only buzz they seem to have created so far is complaints from a breastfeeding group at the use of an image of a bottle of milk. The “use of the image is thoughtless and careless”, apparently.
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Good article, nice connection of European issues and the national scene. I had hoped to get more of this here on Th!nk09.
Thanks a lot Julien. Got another post on the BNP coming soon - I’m pretty sure that’s going to be the big topic in the run-up to June.
Good article… I think BNP’s billboard is still more effective: it is targeted and will resonate in that group. I was very surprised when the first EU-billboards were set up in front of a 5+ star Budapest hotel (I guess the only place the people from the Commission know) and walked around it to find it what it is about. Oh, this means that I should go voting?
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