New Campaign Uses Fairy Tales to Highlight Lies in Political Advertising
AnalogFolk is supporting the Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising, creating and launching its first consumer campaign demanding government legislation to stop lies in political advertising.
The impactful creative uses language and iconography from fairy tales to make the point that fictional claims should have no place in political campaigning, and uses the tagline ‘It’s time to separate the real from the make believe’.
The campaign is running across social media, online and across outdoor sites and encourages viewers to sign a petition at change.org/p/reformpoliticalads that demands legislative change. Executions include Theresa May looking like a pantomime villain, with the headline: "Families pay £1000 more tax a year since the evil curse befell the kingdom." and Jeremy Corbyn dressed as Little Red Riding Hood carrying the headline “10,000 more jobs have been created under the magic rock in the forest.”
As the Coalition states, political advertising is currently free to make wild and unsubstantiated claims. This is because, shockingly, campaign material in the UK is not regulated. Indeed, there’s nowhere to complain to if a voter believes that a political ad is dishonest. And with no regulator or body responsible, nobody has the power to remove political advertising that is misleading or indecent.
However, according to a new YouGov survey commissioned by The Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising and FullFact 84% of voters think there should be a legal requirement for factual claims in political advertisements to be accurate.
Benedict Pringle, co-founder of the Coalition, says: “When false claims are made during election campaigns, it undermines the moral authority of the result and increases voters’ lack of trust in politics more generally.”
Alex Tait, co-founder of the Coalition continues: “Lies from one political group muddies the waters for all of them (even the ones that tell the truth). Dishonest political advertising is damaging our democracy. It’s time for a change.”
The Coalition has a four-point plan which it is calling on the DCMS Select Committee to include in its final report on Disinformation and ‘fake news’ that is due later this month.
1) Require all factual claims used in political adverts to be pre-cleared.
2) Give an existing body the power to regulate political advertising content or create a new one to do so.
3) Legislate so that all paid-for political adverts can be viewed by the public on a single searchable website (so groups can’t hide dishonest ads from anybody).
4) Require political advertisers to carry an imprint or watermarks to show the sponsor of the advert.
