Sunday, September 17, 2017

Election 2017: Dancing Cossacks edition

For younger readers baffled by their elders’ occasional references to Dancing Cossacks, this was a three-minute “party political broadcast”, i.e. an ad, for the National Party in the 1975 election. It even has its own Wikipedia page.

Written by Michael Wall, then of the Colenso advertising agency, it was credited with National’s massive win. The ad was controversial at the time, essentially for accusing Labour, led by Bill Rowling, of being a bit, well, you know, socialist, but looking at it again the most shocking thing about it for me is the lack of an apostrophe in “April Fool’s Day” in the first few seconds of the animation. 

The dancing Cossacks themselves were on screen for just five seconds, so 2.78% of screentime –  from the 1 min 15s mark it is just National leader Robert Muldoon behind his desk talking directly to the viewer about his policy on superannuation and why it was better than Labour’s. Leaving aside the politics, the ad treats the viewer a lot more seriously than today’s election ads: nearly two minutes of the party leader talking policy, not feels. (Thanks to Simon Carr aka @simonsketch for the link.)

It would be interesting to see some Labour ads from that year – from memory they were made by Wall’s friend and fellow Westie Bob Harvey, then of the McHarmans advertising agency.  

2 comments:

Sarah said...

You can watch the Cossacks here http://www.ngataonga.org.nz/set/item/93 - no Labour one from that election, but a great 1969 one featuring Norm Kirk here http://www.ngataonga.org.nz/set/item/82

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