On election campaign slogans

Remember Kev07's pitch to Australia's 'working families' in the last federal election? What happened to those families and why does Julia 'Brutus' Gillard keep referring to me as 'the Australian people'? Have 'working families' morphed into just plain old 'Australian people'? If so, what were they before?

Perhaps Brutus is trying to embrace diversity, assuming that Kev thought the only working families were immigrants who hadn't been naturalised and, therefore, had not quite made the grade as 'Australian people'. Or perhaps, she has identified that there's a swag of votes to be had among the unemployed and/or occasionally employed families, who didn't quite identify with the 'working families' thing. But what grinds my organ is that the Australian people phrase is very third person - suggesting that Brutus may not be of this nation as she addresses us.

You know, 'the Australian people' thing is getting to me more than 'moving forward'. Both of these would probably be no more irritating than the Lib's battle cry, which might grate on me if they'd cut it in half so I could recall it.  All I can think of from the Lib's catchphrase is 'action' which, unfortunately for the mad monk, keeps regurgitating the budgie smuggler image in my mind.

Election phraseology and imagery is of national importance and we're all occasional victims of it.  Those that capture the mood of the nation like the legendary 'It's Time' campaign in 1972, produce outcomes that vitally affect all our lives.

However, most just cause mood swings rather than capture the mood. The more gratingly annoying this stuff is, the more it sticks in your mind and the gloomier you become. This year's Labor Party slogans suggest that the legendary 'Singo' (he of the infuriating Madge dishwashing liquid and 'Where d'ya get it?' commercials of yesteryear) is back on the payroll and puppeteering in the background.

Unfortunately, the Lib's malaise is akin to my experience of trying to create concise mission and vision statements in the corporate world. Recently, I came across a consultant who advised that a company's vision statement should be a single sentence. The executive group duly engineered a single sentence which, on any decent newspaper subs desk would have been broken down into at least five paragraphs. The result was identical to the Lib's campaign slogan - too long for anyone to remember, generic, and totally forgettable. I say sack the consultant and smuggle in a budgie to think of another.

Given that their leader will never get over the budgie smuggler or early morning cycling images, or the fact that the mad monk would be a first-time prime minister, perhaps an appropriate catchline for the Libs might be: 'Lycra virgin. His very first time'. Job offers - message me here ...