Posted on by Raihan Hadi
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Road to APPIES APAC 2022: Meddle In The New Zealand Election – triple Gold winning campaign at 2021 APAC Effies Awards
26 Oct
Meddle In The New Zealand Election was a triple Gold winner campaign at the 2021 APAC Effies awards, created for Every Kiwi Vote Counts by Special Group NZ, with contributions from POEM Sydney.
Besides winning three Gold awards in the categories for Short Video Marketing, Small Budget-Services and Social Media Marketing, the campaign also received a Silver award in the Government/Institution category.
Context
Only 1 in 10 New Zealanders living overseas voted in their own 2016 election.
With roughly one million Kiwis abroad, that’s a lot of people not having a say.
So, in the 2020 election, non-partisan initiative Every Kiwi Vote Counts was created to convert non-voters.
Approach
Now, say what you want about Russia and their influencing of other countries’ elections, but you’ve got to admit, those meddlers get results!
So, the creators of the campaign turned to the experts in online election influencing.
Viktor, the Russian, led the campaign asking Kiwis to ‘Meddle in the New Zealand election’.
He targeted overseas Kiwis on social and through PR, constantly sending people to his curated website to vote.
As Viktor was the spokesperson for the campaign, the creators needed to design an online identity for the brand that was informed by his role, so they asked themselves – what would Viktor do?
Execution
In elections, colour is really important, and each party has their own to stand out and cut through.
Of course, he couldn’t just nick one of those party’s palettes. So, for maximum meddling, he used them all!
Using New Zealand’s national colour black as a base, he layered in some old found and faded Soviet-era construction paper for POP: dulled back by the breeze of a nuclear winter, cut out with scissors and layered on like election bumper stickers with an icon set stolen from his bitmap printer.
Tonally, the grade of the films had a muted vibe that felt like run down Russia.
Even subtitles were ‘generic’ yellow Helvetica, just like you see in films from the motherland.
Typography was pulled from his favourite proletariat propaganda films, supported by a trusty typewriter, to keep the information feeling ‘newsworthy’.
Viktor set to making his own website and social media content with a word processer and Dreamweaver 3.0, layering up tile after tile, colourfully entreating his followers to register and vote in order to meddle in their own election.
The result was an online identity designed as a loving reference of this humble meddler’s view of western election culture.
Cohesive through tonality, typography, colour, texture and voice, with a little bit of Viktor in every detail.
Effect
Did it work? Like any good meddler, he got the job done.
Enrolment went up 24%, online votes cast were up by 42%, New Zealand had the largest shift in electoral seats since 1999 and a Maori seat was historically gained.
APPIES Asia Pacific is an annual event that presents a rare opportunity for creative, media, digital and marketing agencies or brands to present their best campaigns to the industry.
Despite hosting this event virtually due to the ongoing battle against COVID-19, this is the only event in the region where Live Presentations meets Live Judging.
Similar to TED Talks, APPIES is the chance for great presenters with outstanding work to show it off to some of the region’s most important industry leaders.
This year’s winners will receive Gold, Silver or Bronze trophies for 10 categories, and 7 special Best of Best categories (red trophies) that require no submissions!
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