Swedish political campaign from Christian Democrats gets thoroughly mocked

The Christian Democrats in Sweden have begin their election campaign and allow people to download their ads on their site with the caveat: "Please note that the posters shan't be worked up, changed or manipulated". Right, like anyone is going to listen to that. Predictably people have had lots of fun with these posters and twitpic has carried hundreds of variations between giggling social-media heads for days already.

The original posters seem to confuse most people, the leader of the KD-party is staring down wild animals, a gorilla, a hyena, an ostrich and an African buffalo, while the tagline asks for "a more humane Sweden".

"There's a bit of humor in it, and we use metaphors in this campaign" says Henrik Ehrenberg who worked on the campaign to SvD.

Personally, I think the tagline's position smells like the Social Democratic party commercial "Varför skall vi bry oss om varandra" shot by Roy Anderson in -85 that I show over at Brandflakesforbreakfast. " A more humane Sweden" and "Why should we care about each other" are both vague wishes for a less selfish society. The wild animals in these posters could be representing other politicians, as well as - in the case of the ostrich - a great mass of the population who are ignoring problems.

"The worst thing that could happen, is that if nobody takes any notice of them at all" says Henrik who is being quite good sport about the party-leader having a stare-down with Judas Priest singer Rob Halford. "This is great, it shows that the campaign is engaging people. That's only positive for the campaign, it's not unnoticed."

There's even a Mix&Match website* here to help you mock the posters with a few clicks on the mouse, created by Omer Rosenbaum, one of our resident adgrunts (I love that) who is finishing up his Masters degree in Communication and soon wants a job. (I drop hints as subtle as lead balloons, folks) Omer explains;

I felt that the KD campaign was extremely silly, and tried to show that it could be even worse. It's a small lesson in social media marketing to the parties who like to talk about how great their efforts within social media are.

* Link removed as the domain has lapsed and been sold to spammers.