Go vote and get a date (instead of suicide)

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As opposed to the appearance, this is a political topic (and thus belongs here IMO). More seriously, what campaign videos does the parties in your country employ? Serious, funny, crazy, sexist?

I like this one, you don't need Hungarian to understand it (Hungary, by-election for an MP position for an area):

 

I worked as a polling clerk before. Don't remember any of that kind of thing going on though.

While you'd find a bland corporate PR type exercise if you looked hard enough campaign videos don't feature in Ireland at all. Posters of the candidate are plastered everywhere and it's all about the politician personally canvassing as many people as he can with a bit of local media thrown in. As the country is broken up into loads of regions the number of votes required to get in doesn't require using mass media.

 

That is certainly more racy than any political ad you'll see in the US. And certainly not anything you'd see from the Republicans. Running around and getting laid is not the type of "family values" they have.

It's a tried and true formula though - although not perfectly executed IMO. What they should have done is do it the way we do beer commercials here in the US. The error they made was using a young athletic guy for the ad. Everyone knows the way you sell stuff is to have the men all be average looking, and the women to be smoking hot. Guys with Brad Pitt type good looks are already getting laid on a fairly regular basis by smoking hot women, so they don't need the ad to tell them that. You sell your product by intimating that regular Joes can get smoking hot women to hop in the sack with them. So by that standard it's a bit amateurish.

 

I'm at work and I can't access the video. Is the ad targeted at men? Because if not, if might send the message that voting will allow a smoking hot woman to have sex with some homely guy; not much of an incentive to vote. (Now granted, homely guys might be all that women have to choose from in Hungary, but still... )

 

It's hard to know exactly what's going on in the ad, as it's in Hungarian, but you can easily gather just form the video that the guy is contemplating suicide, goes to vote, meets a smoking hot woman working as a polling officer, gets her number, she comes over, and screws him.

My point was that the guy is young, athletic, and pretty good looking himself, so it kind of defies belief that he would have a hard time finding a girl friend before now. The way it works in most commercials (and romantic comedy chick-flicks for that matter) is the guy is typically average looking.

 

Thanks for the youtube edit Tal, I completely forgot there was such an embedding option.

Yes, it's quite a "funny" propaganda video, so when I wrote that I liked it, I meant it's "entertaining", and not that it will affect seriously thinking (responsible) voters.

I also didn't spend much time for its analysis, but I suppose the story is supposed to be as follows: he wants to write a bye-bye letter before suicide, but his pen is empty, so he goes to get one at the election place...

Very good point. The only reason for the age of the guy might be the following, however: this political party (the negligible successor of a formerly powerful party that ceased to exist 2 years ago I think) expects young people to be its voters, but I am not 100% sure. Generally, you are right that they should address as many people as possible, but maybe this party knows that it has the biggest chance with young people. Nonetheless, a middle-aged man wouldn't have hurt to the video, true. That would have been more (too?) unrealistic then, however. Which girl would jump into the arms of a middle-aged man who has a reason to commit suicide (billionaire or not)? OK, she might not know that in advance, but still...

EDIT: so Tal, it seems that the party who made this amateurish video won't remove Fidesz from his place (sorry, sorry, just couldn't resist!)

 

It reminds me of this video from a Polish candidate. 23 year old Katarzyna Lenart does a striptease to her bra. So not much of one but it's still hard to take her seriously as a politician doing stuff like that.

 

The rope and insinuated suicidal thoughts of the young man are disturbing to say the least. The idea that you can get a hot girl at the polling station is absurd.

Yet some of the baseline material here is kind of understandable. It is my understanding that when trying to talk someone out of suicide, one technique is to remind them that they have no idea what will happen tomorrow, and therefore even if they see no hope in their future, they should stay alive because the future might just get brighter.

In addition, beer and cigarette commercials have used this technique for years. Drink Brand X of Beer or smoke Brand Y and you'll be extremely manly, and good looking. Hot women in skimpy clothes will cheer for you and want to be with you! YA! Whoo hooo!

The reality is much different, of course.

 

I don't get why this guy wants to die either ... are we just supposed to assume that as a starting point? "There was this attractive young guy who wanted to die. Then one day, while working on his suicide note ..."

I think the difference between this and beer commercials or buddy movies is projection. Average looking guys don't like to think of themselves as average looking guys, they hold out hope that maybe there are women out there who find them attractive and that they are actually attractive looking guys (because guys are almost universally vain and delusional), so in that fashion they can identify with a good looking guy in an ad by imagining they are him. (If an attractive-looking, young, stylish guy with very cool hair who's got it together enough to still be all those things and still have cool hair while writing a suicide note contemplates suicide, people feel sympathy and alarm. If some loser does, no one gives a damn.)

Also, the ad isn't real world, because the guy would give off a no-confidence vibe to the girl, which is a turn-off. Being as women value abstracts such as confidence as much as looks in men, that would be a deal breaker. Instead she would callously sleep with his roommate, which would push him over the edge. In the real world he would die and not even vote first.

 

There have been many elections where the thought of voting for one candidate or the other caused suicidal feelings to surface.

I've also felt screwed after voting before.