‘Fuck’ in ads still has the capacity to shock, especially in a campaign about the European referendum. But it’s here in lights in a new twist in the increasingly fractious campaign, ‘Don’t Let Others Fuck With Your Future,’ a collaboration, it seems, between agency adam&eveDDB and certain “high profile individuals.” Who seem to be keeping a lower profile on this one.
The point is to persuade the 50 per cent of under-35s who don’t plan to vote to get out and do it as they’ll be the people most affected by the referendum’s consequences. The campaign claims to be neutral although most people reckon a bigger turnout of younger people will help the ‘Remain’ cause.
The online campaign’s called “Five Seconds’ (the time it takes to mark your cross) and, first up, we have two posh girls followed by rapper Big Narstie.
Here’s Lily Cole:
Keira Knightley:
And Narstie.
Directed by feature film director Anton Corbijn.
Will it cause apoplexy at the Daily Mail and the Sun, surely part of the intention to gain extra publicity? Hard to say, it obviously would if it were part of the official Remain campaign.
Will it work? The Remain campaign is allegedly struggling despite the support of pretty much the whole political and business establishment. In part this is a ‘plague on you the political establishment’ phenomenon, not dissimilar to Donald Trump’s successes in the US. The likes of Trump and Brexit’s Boris Johnson may seem unlikely anti-establishment totems but that’s what they’ve become.
More importantly, though, the campaign is really about immigration even though neither of the official protagonists have admitted it. This is where the Tory-led Remain campaign is weakest as David Cameron and his allies have repeatedly said they’ll cut immigration and repeatedly failed to do so. This isn’t such an issue in London, which has largely thrived from EU (and non-EU) immigration, but it is the further north you go.
If the campaign really is that close then the belated entrance of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his left wing allies on the Remain side could be the clinching factor, if Corbyn and co can still influence the white working class vote.
If it’s to play a part, this campaign needs to punch way above its weight in social media and other Millennial playgrounds.
MAA creative scale (not that it particularly matters in this context): 8.
