Saatchi & Saatchi Operation Black Vote Campaign

I found this campaign on Creative Review's blog page.

It initially grabbed my attention because Sol Campbell (top) is involved in it. The ex-Arsenal and Tottenham footballer played 73 times for England, and in March 2014 he claimed he would've been the England captain for more than 10 years if he was white, see this article by The Independent.

Clearly Campbell is using his position as a (somewhat) well-known public figure to try and raise awareness of and tackle racism, which is good and necessary, especially seeing some of the comments on The Independent's article.

Saatchi & Saatchi did the above campaign for Operation Black Vote, which is an organisation that aims to get black and ethnic minority people to vote in the general election. A campaign about this topic needed to be careful because of social sensitivities about race, and I really feel this campaign failed to be this.

Some of the comments in the Creative Review article suggest that this was campaign was intended to be controversial and "edgy" to get public attention, which I can only assume is the case, and because of this I feel that what the campaign was saying is completely overlooked. Using the term "coloured" is now politically incorrect (as explained by the BBC here), so I find it particularly strange how the world "colour" is used, and it is an indication of how little attention and care Saatchi & Saatchi paid to the campaign.

I also find the inconsistencies in the imagery odd. The photo of Sol Campbell is by far the most striking of the four, but the one of Tinie Tempah is so completely different, if you took it out of the context of the campaign, you wouldn't necessarily know that the image was produced for a campaign about race.

One commenter said this; 

'Can you imagine if white people blacked up with the same text, ie, taking the white out of Britain, they would be branded racist. Hypocritical advertising campaign that just encourages a colour divide. An us and them campaign, how divisive. Everyone with the right to vote should do so if they wish, people of all colours and genders have fought for rights/votes on behalf of us all, so those who don't vote should always be encouraged, but not in this way. Shameful and racist.'

I completely agree with them. 

Campaigns like this back up the conclusion of my essay about anything being justified in adverts for good causes, specifically my point that effort isn't often put into the causes the First Things First Manifesto claim it is.