I manage to pretend most of the time that I’m a young person, but last night I wondered if I was in fact approaching middle age when I saw this:
Was I becoming an old fuddy duddy or was this genuinely an acquired taste?
Well, it seemed that proper young people weren’t overly impressed either. One wrote on my Facebook that it had “broken my brain.” That was, I have to say, one of the kinder things I heard said about it. Others liked it though.
To be fair, if you compare it to the original Uptown Funk video, there are bits of it that are quite clever. Where it suffers is that it just doesn’t have a decent hook.
Mike from Cassetteboy, the duo who did the David Cameron conference mash up, was particularly scathing, telling the Guardian:
It’s very flattering when someone releases something like the Liberal Democrat (unofficial) election anthem and people immediately think of Cassetteboy. It’s really nice – we’re not the only people who do mashups, nor are we the first. So it’s flattering. But the video itself is awful.
It looks as if it is a woeful attempt to woo the youth vote. I can’t see it’s anything other than that. It’s the political equivalent of dad dancing, isn’t it?
He then went in to a long list of errors that had been made in the making of this. Well, you know what, Mike from Cassetteboy, making videos like this is what you do. I bet the poor staffer who is responsible for this effort did it with inferior equipment in a tiny fraction of the time you had at your disposal.
Certainly everyone’s talking about it and you know what they say about publicity….
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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19 Comments
Have to say it looks like someone made a comment like “how can we get down with the young people?” in a stuffy campaign meeting, and came up with this! I haven’t read Cassetteboy’s comments, but the video is clunky and a bit contrived (especially at the start) when the best ones really are just cut from footage. Afraid to say that I suspect if this is an attempt to attract the youth vote, they’ll respond with one word – “FAIL!”
*I’ll get me coat…*
Clearly a Marmite social media Iniaitive, I know people who love it and hate it… ::Grin::
Kind regards
Mike Beckett
Cllr Michael Beckett BA DipIoD
Liberal Democrats Parliamentary Candidate for the people of Scarborough, Whitby and Esk Valley
Nick / / / don’t do it!
The internet has spoken:
“This is easily the worst thing I’ve ever seen, and I saw Vanilla Ice in concert.”
(By Az Butterfield on YouTube)
I haven’t even heard the song it is aims to parody so hard of me to pass judgement…
If this had just suddenly appeared, as if by magic, on a YouTube account not connected with the party then it would have been fine, but coming from the party itself it looks contrived.
Saying that, I’m all for the party trying to find ways of communicating with a wide variety of audiences. Sometimes it works, such as the Last Leg, sometimes it doesn’t . I’d rather this than a pink bus.
Everyone at my uni was talking about it – and the recurring theme that came us is ‘at least Clegg and the Lib Dems are trying different things to engage voters’. I found it quite clever and endearing – the people who dislike it are generally people who are either anti-LD or anti-Clegg anyway, and it’s clearly not targeted there.
What is going on in Nick Clegg’s head to get involved in this. If it’s trying to be funny it fails, if it’s trying to be serious it’s even worse. Who does he think this video will appeal to?
Oh dear. The Liberal Democrats will soon only exist on the Internet and it is a medium they clearly do not understand.
Max Headroom
For those too young to remember —
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=max+headroom+tv+show&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari
Oh dear. At this rate, I think Sara may be correct. I still recall the truly abysmal 2014 Local Government Elections “Manifesto” (dozens of cut and paste articles from such LD-friendly publications as the “Daily Mail” slagging off councils run by Labour and Conservatives and offering very little in the way of constructive promotion of LD strengths at local level (of which, of course, there are legions of examples, but which it was largely left to local parties to promote themselves). Among many other aspects of post-May party development, a root and branch review of PR/external promotion by the Party has got to be high up on the Agenda, surely?
Shockingly awful! Whoever did this, please stop! You are killing us!
I just feel sorry for all involved. Too much interest in politics when in their teens, not enough interest in the world outside. I’d say this was a Chris Morris satire were it not so amateurish in execution.
Well, the best one can say is that it may not be as damaging long term as Clegg’s now infamous 2010 ‘No More Broken Promises’ video.
@John Tilley: After the passage of some months, I might forgive you for reminding me of David Owen’s Max Headroom style video. Living through it once was bad enough.
Perhaps this is the time to remember David Steel’s rap?
That they didn’t even have the sense to get some stooge to pretend they’d made it shows just how much they don’t get it.
It would be nice if at some point election campaigning involved some serious discussion of the issues rather than silly gimmicks. It would also be nice if the party I joined many years ago was promoted as that party rather than as the Nick Clegg Fan Club.
Matthew Huntbach,
The occasional silly gimmick might be OK – if it was shown to work and improve Liberal Democrat support.
Unfortunately whoever it is at national level who is in charge of campaigning for the Liberal Democrats seems to not comprehend the words –“improve Liberal Democrat support in the polls.”
The main purpose of a political party organisation during an election is to maximise the number of voters for the party.
All these gimmicks and triumphs of style over substance have brought us down to single figure support.
I have not yet met one person who is talking about it, let alone seen it, spoken to young, old and in between. For myself I say well done to the person who thought it up, take a performance bonus, its original and different, good on yer..