Earlier today Stephen covered the launch of www.labservative.com saying,
The Labservative pitch is clear enough: Labour and the Tories are way too similar, and neither is capable of producing change. It’s a familiar enough Lib Dem campaign charge. It’s a pleasantly unfamiliar position for the party to be making the point in a wittily Web 2.0 way. Well done, Cowley Street!
The site is already doing very well at garnering coverage – and positive coverage no less (did someone mutter CashGordon?):
- Lib Dems target ‘Labservatives’ with guerilla advertising campaign – The Guardian
- The Lib Dems have launched quite an effective site attacking the Labour Tory duopoly on power in Britain since the war – James Forsyth, Coffee House Blog
- Gosh. The Lib Dems have finally done it … causing a stir on Twitter – Danny Finkelstein, The Times
- Something tells me Gorvid Camerown could become quite a star – Will Heaven, The Telegraph
- A slightly tongue-in-cheek, off-centre approach is a welcome addition to the election campaign, and appears to show a greater understanding of new media than the recent, disastrous attempts by the Conservatives – Samira Shackle, New Statesman
- A cracking attack on the status quo – Guido Fawkes
That’s a pretty impressive set of reactions, including from those who often have a rude word or two to say about the Liberal Democrats. Even if no-one visits the site ever again, that range of coverage will in itself have taken the message to a wide audience. Including the French.
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19 Comments
It’s a great campaign, the cleverest election idea in a long time. It is great that you are getting some coverage for it, just wrote a blog on it myself and twitter is buzzing! Good luck!
Nice campaign. But strictly speaking, that French site you’re linking to is French Canadian.
Best campaigning idea Cowley Street have had in a long, long time. It grabs you.
This is great, big congrats to everyone involved – a thousand times better than that awful NewToryLabour thing the party put out a few years ago.
Can someone create an online ap so we can make our own Labservative posters??
It’s been a great 24hrs or so all in all- in my Lib Dem bubble anyway 😉
It’s fantastic. BUT we have to have mugs with the slogans on not just the rather boring Labservative poster. I want a mug that has the ‘experience counts’ poster on it!!!!
It should have been called Conbour!!!!!
Labservative is the most perfect reflection of what ‘we the people’ see – that I can hope to imagine. Sheer brilliance and such a right angle.
For so long, the Liberal Democrats have worked to increase awareness through good policies, that make sense – but we could not be heard through all the spin or seen through all the gilt of the other parties.
Their morphing into one lump of ugly politics has made the complete contrast of the Liberal Democrat option, all the more clear and brilliant.
Well done… really well done.
Namaste,
Tina Louise
I agree with everything above – especially the need to get a wider range of mug merchandise! Price is a bit high too but would go for it if there were ones with slogans…..
I second Letterman’s request for an app so that we can make our own posters, MyDavidCameron-style 🙂
It’s a fun campaign. Well done everyone involved!
[Apparently the previous version of the following comment was deemed unacceptable in case it led to legal action by Viscount Falkland – which is quite a funny thought in itself. I have revised the phrase indicated in bold and italic.]
I’m afraid that every time I see an accusation such as “We promise to protect corrupt MPs from public accountability” made against _other_ parties, I wonder what the party has done about Viscount Falkland, the Lib Dem peer who claimed more than £140,000 in overnight subsistence allowance on the basis of a statement about his main residence which the Times quoted him as describing as “nonsense”.
If the answer is “something” – or even “anything at all” – then I think the party would do well to tell us.
If the answer is (as I strongly suspect) “nothing at all”, then I think the party is guilty of sickening hypocrisy in trying to derive party advantage from the abuses of parliamentary allowances.
This is the best thing we’ve done in ages.
As I blogged on this yesterday morning:
http://www.panscourer.com/2010/03/30/lib-dems-fund-advertising-campaign-on-behalf-of-ukip/
This will do UKIP more good than the LibDems…
I love it, but I don’t think it was thought through properly.
The LibDems are not perceived by many as that different to Labour or Conservative, hence the epithet LibLabCon being bandied about on the net.
“This will do UKIP more good than the LibDems”
Not really. UKIP is pretty obviously just a guilt-free wing of the Conservative party – even moreso than the Greens are of the Labour party.
@Jen 4:34pm
“Not really. UKIP is pretty obviously just a guilt-free wing of the Conservative party – even moreso than the Greens are of the Labour party.”
I agree with your latter point, but I’ve never heard UKIP described as a “guilt-free wing of the Conservative party”!
BNP in blazers, yes; fruitloops and nutters, yes; closet racists, yes; a Labour party stooge to steal Tory votes, yes.
I’ll agree that they are predominantly “of the right”, and that most UKIP supporters are disaffected Tories, but “guilt-free”? Care to share the logic there?
Scrubber – the idea is that with UKIP crusty old Tories can vote for an ideologically pure Thatcherite party, both economically and socially conservative, and not have to support Cameron, who apparently spends too much of his time dealing with the ‘trivialities… of African homosexuals.’ ((c) N. Tebbit, 2010)
Frankly, even if this does drive votes to parties other than us, it’s not a huge problem. In key Lib Dem seats, anything that takes votes away from our main challengers (the Labservatives) is a bonus. If people want to waste their votes on a small party, who are we to challenge them? 😉
Half a mind to vote Labservative?
That’s all you need.
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