Read something the other day that said young people ignore political pamphlets. What was new about this puzzled us. If it looks like a political pamphlet, it deserves to be ignored. We have been redesigning and creating new forms of communication for politicians for many years. Communications have to be written for the audience, not the subject.
Brochures are the fun and creative side of politics. Once many years ago a friend was studying a new brochure we had created and he said, “This looks like it is selling hamburgers.” Everyone loved that brochure, but the hamburger lost.
It was about the same time as another designer friend put together a brochure for a chap who was running in Toronto’s Greenwood riding. The obvious occurred to him and he portrayed the candidate as a modern Robin Hood. The candidate was offended by the suggestion and killed the idea. He lost the election so there was no way to tell if Robin Hood would have won.
But these two examples are probably what give political pamphlets a bad name. Too many of them do look alike and most are very badly written—not because of the inept writer but because of the candidate’s interference. The other problem is that the central campaign always provides cheap formats with the leader already in it. Not much thought is wasted in adding in the local candidate.
The best advice we can give anyone writing a political brochure is to get the campaign manager to give you a couple poll lists that will give you a balanced sample of the riding. Now take something to hand out, even just the candidate’s card, go knock on some of those doors and listen carefully. When you are ready to write the brochure a few days later, you will have a much better idea of what people want to know about the candidate.
One time we found out that nobody trusted the various candidates but the voters liked our candidate’s dog. We featured the dog on all the literature and the dog won handily.
And it has been a very, very long time since we last designed a two-fold, two-sided eight-and-a-half by eleven sheet that would fit in a business envelope. Sure it is cheap, but what is the point if nobody opens it?
You have to catch the attention, you have to have it relate to the familiar, you have to make a statement and if you do not, nobody is interested.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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