Anyone else recognise Labour’s admission of failure in their transition from their 2017 election slogan of “Let’s Do This” to the limp wristed 2020 slogan “Let’s Keep Moving”? Given Labour didn’t keep their 2017 campaign promises this is very funny indeed. Does anyone know where they are actually going? Do they?
The Greens are no better. Their 2017 slogan “Great Together” was hastily rewritten almost overnight into “Love New Zealand” when they were caught with their pants down after Metiria Turei admitted benefit fraud and suddenly resigned. Their slogan transition is akin to a marriage bust-up where one person does the dirty on the other – embarrassing, but please, have a little sympathy for the wounded party! It worked and the Greens got enough support to romp into government (ably assisted by Winston).
“Delivering for New Zealanders” was the 2017 Nats campaign slogan. Bill English almost came unstuck using the phrase while delivering his pre-election fiscal update at Treasury. His excuse was that the slogan was “also a tagline of the 2017 Budget, so it’s right through the Budget material.” Methinks this was a cleverly calculated media-job, not an innocuous oversight, but it was clever enough for the State Services Commission to clear Treasury of breaching political neutrality.
The Nats went on to deliver nothing during their recent term in opposition except oodles of juicy scandal. A staggering 19 members will have resigned from the 56 seats allocated to the party in 2017; that’s just over one third. Members left for many and varied reasons including bad behaviour. “Delivering for New Zealanders” didn’t work in 2017; time will tell if “Get New Zealand Working” works in 2020. With a hugely different line-up under Judith Collins’s strong leadership there is hope for the party.
For the upcoming election ACT and NZ First latched onto our future. ACT want to “Change Your Future” and NZ First will “Back Your Future” – whatever that means.
If you want to be President of the United States, you’d better have a strong campaign slogan.
Candidates and their teams will take pains to come up with a slogan that encapsulates the key message of their campaign in a pithy phrase. Think President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” or Barack Obama’s “Yes We Can.”
The key thing is to avoid being boring.
But sometimes campaigns land on a slogan that is memorable for all the wrong reasons — based on appalling puns, and inadvertent double meanings.
Check out the worst slogans in US political history below:
Republican candidate Barry Goldwater was well- known for his hardline small government anti-communist rhetoric, and in his acceptance speech for the 1964 GOP presidential nomination defended his “extremism.”
His campaign team attempted to appeal to the gut instincts of American voters with the slogan: “In your heart, you know he’s right.”
But the response of his Democrat opponent, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was devastating.
“In your guts, you know he’s nuts,” ran the Democratic reply in campaign ads and posters.
Johnson won by a landslide, taking 61% of the popular vote to Goldwater’s 38%. Goldwater won in just six states.
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