Confessions Of A Poster Terrorist
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| Confessions Of A Poster Terrorist | |
| Patrick Collerton | |
| Eesti keeles | ||
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I have a confession to make: I was a poster terrorist. In the early
nineties, I was a student party promoter at Liverpool University in England.
Drunk on my own sense of self-importance I came to believe that the only
things worth caring about were those hedonistic party nights. Each spring I
invariably became enraged at the effects of the annual student elections on
my advertising campaigns.
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I would find the prime sites for my posters taken by the underwhelming
efforts of the student political candidates - those people intent on
becoming our representatives. To me Vote Mike Lyons, Labour Party, For
Student Treasurer, Services Not Cuts, never had the same attraction as
Wildlife Party Night - shake your ass to three rooms of House Music, Funk
and Soul.
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I became an active participant in the poster wars of that era. I would tear
down political posters to make space for my own, conduct dawn raids to
ensure that my posters secured the best positions and carpet-bomb walls with
my posters in an effort to stand out from those of my political rivals.I'm reminded of those times at election time, when political posters take over billboards, eclipsing the usual pop star and dance party publicity. Now, my clubbing days long gone, I find myself intrigued by the similarities between club night posters and their party political cousins. |
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I've come to think that the critical task currently facing political parties
is the same problem we faced in trying to attract large numbers of people to
our parties. It's all about how to tap the middle ground. Nowadays,
successful political parties don't appeal to contrasting sides, the right
and the left - they seek to attract all sides of society and gain the
largest vote. Just as we wanted to attract the largest number of people and
run the biggest parties in our youth. As political parties move to the
centre their policies become harder to distinguish from each other. The end
result is that the public vote for the politicians and the political party
they like the most. With our club night we were trying to create a new
brand. To this end we tried to produce publicity that was cool and fun and
gave out a warm, friendly karma. Just like in politics Ôcome on in, all
welcome' would be the subtext of our publicity, albeit in a groovy design.
We didn't try to attract the more marginal clubbers who liked extreme music
scenes such as Goth, Hard Rock and Hardcore Nosebleed Techno as it would
have alienated the middle ground of our potential audience. We wanted to
unite people rather than exploit their differences.
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In a very seductive way the whole branding of the New Labour and Tony Blair
experience suggested that a new era of plenty was about to dawn. New Labour
even adopted a House music anthem, Things Can Only Get Better by D'Ream, as
their campaign song. In my terms they'd become the biggest and best party in
town, one that people were proud to sign up to. It was a triumph of
presentation, achieved through perspiration and inspiration.
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They blew me away. For we had had to tackle the same problem as political
parties with our parties. How could we build a brand that clubbers
identified with, made them feel special, as if they belonged, as if it was
their party? In the first instance, to get them to join the party, the
poster had to be right. We agonised over our posters, managing to produce a
different poster for each party. The club name was Wildlife and that was the
overall brand, rather like the name of a political party. The Labour Party,
The Conservative Party so why not The Wildlife Party? Then, for each poster,
we produced a different character, The House Mouse, The Funky Lion, The
Dancing Skeleton... These were the figures that the public related to - our
Members Of Parliament. To our teenage minds, the characters looked great,
made you feel cool by association and had a sense of humour.
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| Estonian Art 1/03 (12) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2003 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 | |
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