I got a rather random email from a PHD student from the University of Pennsylvania who is writing his thesis, it seems, on the use of t-shirts in political advertising (great work if you can get it!) asking for information around the KEVIN07 t shirts. I thought I’d blog our correspondence as it made me think a bit about what we did in KEVIN07. On reflection, the more I think about it, the more this approach won’t work for Gillard or Abbott – it’s ‘been done’ and I’m not sure whether it would be embraced by Australians as anything more than a one-off that made them chuckle – without the chuckle, it might fall back into the category of ‘naff’.
Dear Camilla Cooke,
I have been comparing Kevin07 T-shirts to those of presidential campaigns in the US, and I noticed that the T-shirts were priced lower in Australia ($7 versus around $20 in America) and that the design was more visually spare (for example, no portraits of the candidate, unlike the Obama shirts, and generally very little in the way of razzmatazz). I was wondering what your thoughts were on the design and pricing of the T-shirts, and if this reflects a more Australian approach to political marketing. I also saw a quote of yours in which you said the Kevin07 campaign used a lot of Australian-style humor which would not be found in the US – do you think this was reflected in the Kevin07 slogan and T-shirts?
Best wishes
Hi There
Yes – seems a bit strange now – all that work and he was gone in a few hours!
Happy to answer your questions. Political campaigns are very different in Australia due to cultural and consitutional differences. We have compulsory voting, so it’s less a question of motivating people to vote, and only a question of persuading them which way to vote. Fundraising is regarded with suspicion and raising money from individuals still takes very much a back seat compared to group or corporate fundraising. It is considered to be in poor taste if a candidate/party keeps asking its supporters for money, so it needs to be a subtler and less frequent request.
Obviously, we don’t have a president, and so anything that idolises the individual over the party is also considered as dubious. KEVIN07 (NB: this is allways in caps!) was regarded as a very American style approach, in fact, as it involved the cult of ‘kevin’. But there is an inherent joke (for Australians) in worshipping the name of ‘Kevin’ which is considered a very mundane name – anti-heroic in fact. And Rudd was just that – an ordinary slightly geeky bloke, so part of the success of the campaign was the incongrous juxtaposition of the candidate in question and the presidential approach – this amused Australians but also warmed them to Rudd as it was so tongue-in-cheek, which played on his self-deprecating humour (which Australians like). A great moment during the campaign was when he was asked by a journalist if he had set up a My Space profile simply to be cool – “Oh, we are already cool” he replied – very funny – he was the antithesis of ‘cool’ in the typical sense. Ironic humour is very big here.
The pricing on the T shirts relates to the fact that it was the Labor party, and as a party of the left, it was beholden on us to make the T shirts affordable. Anything else would haved alienated the hard core and could have been attacked by the press, so our brief was that they had to remain sub $10 (AUD). The T shirts were therefore not a fundraising device (we in fact lost money on each shirt as we had to have them made 100% in Australia using Austrlian cotton in the stitching etc. – anything made in the third world would have been considered a) un-Australian and b) potentially exploiting sweat shop workers). I can’t remember what the loss on each shirt was but I think a dollar or so. The purpose of the T shirts therefore was really around awareness and giving momentum to the movement of KEVIN07 – people wearing them in the street, in parliament etc. It was a PR/media initiative and got a LOT of coverage. We ran the ‘get shirtly’ competition on the website, and people sent in photos of themselves wearing the T shirt in landmark locations – we had hundreds of shots from across 5 continents, in front of everthing from the Taj Mahal, the Empire State, and Big Ben, to Uluhru and the sign post for ‘Timbuktu’ – a great social media initiative.
The reason for the logo only was that we were wanting to create a brand – KEVIN07 – so we kept the logo consistent and repeated it everywhere. It came to represent a movement, more than Rudd itself, and therefore had its own identity. We wanted people to use the phrase and refer to it etc. It was recognisable from a distance for example – we got runners in the City to Surf run in Sydney (iconic Australian event – largest fun run in the world) and you could recognise the logos on the TV easily from a distance. The other thing is that we needed to deflect from the presidential approach – Australians would have found a photo of Kevin on a t shirt rather nauseating. The logo was used in all our advertising and all our digital media. It was more of a symbol than a slogan, and more stand out and memorable.
It is important to note, and I shoudl be grateful if you could reference in anything you publish, that the success of the campaign was largely in the KEVIN07 name itself, with its assonance, and this was thought up by the advertising creative director, Neil Lawrence, who came up with the line in the first place and suggested it be used across all communications, and set up the logo. The T shirts themselves had a precedent in Australia, when the ‘It’s time’ slogan, that brought in Whitlam in 1972, was printed on t shirts (although only a small number I think were made). You might be interested to read http://www.theage.com.au/news/investment/an-election-collection-its-time/2007/11/05/1194117956557.html
I think there were about 80,000 t shirts out there – a small number in American terms but for a country of only 20,000,000 population who on the whole don’t do this sort of thing, this was a big number.
To sum up, the slogan and t shirts were not so much mimicry of American electioneering techniques, but a mild satire of them – and this is, in my view, what made them successful in Australia.
Kind regards
Camilla
