The Ugly Truth Behind Attack Ads

The dust is settling after the 2024 UK general election, and the political ads aiming to inspire – or scare – voters into making a decision have quieted down for the time being.

Looking at the past 12 months, with fake news, the surveillance tech of artificial intelligence and attack ads, one might be forgiven for thinking one has stepped into George Orwell’s nightmarish vision from Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In the dystopian classic, workers gather for a daily routine of ‘Two Minutes Hate’, where they watch films of rebel leader Emmanuel Goldstein designed to whip its viewers into a frenzied state of distrust, fear and hatred. Look at some of the crude ‘attack ads’ deployed by both main political parties in recent years, and it might seem as if they’re taking a leaf from the Orwellian playbook.

On the attack during 2024 election

There were some striking examples this year. On the Conservative side, we had ‘Better Call Kier’ – which suggested Starmer had given advice to Islamist terrorists during his career as a criminal barrister – and an attack ad on Sadiq Khan, which portrayed London as the “crime capital of the world” (it was later revealed the video footage of terrified commuters was not filmed in London, but a New York subway station after false reports of gunfire).

From Labour, there were attack ads excoriating Rishi Sunak’s wife for her former non-dom tax status and a particularly distasteful ad claiming the former PM doesn’t believe that child sex abusers should go to prison. The latter drew widespread criticism within the Labour Party, from MPs and loyal members alike.

It was all quite unedifying, not least for those of us working in advertising. And it leads to the question of whether gutter-talk and misleading claims can really win an election.

Negative campaigning might seem edgier and more prevalent now than it has been in the UK historically, but it isn’t new, and the truth is that it can work – but only if it taps into doubts that already exist in the public’s/voters’ minds.

Just think of Saatchi & Saatchi’s ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ poster used in Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 campaign, where an image of a winding dole queue resonated with the nation’s concerns about unemployment.

Labour upped their own game after hiring ad guru Trevor Beattie – the brains behind Wonderbra's ‘Hello Boys’ and French Connection’s ‘FCUK’ – to spice up their own 2001 election posters, featuring Number Ten-hopeful William Hague with Thatcher-like hair. Or in 2010, portraying David Cameron as Gene Hunt from Ashes to Ashes, warning against a return to 1980s policies. (Admittedly, this backfired when the Conservatives appropriated the image, replacing Labour’s slogan with the more upbeat, “Fire up the Quattro. It’s time for change.”)

Launching an effective attack

Attack ads can also be effective if they engage in cheeky competitive sparring rather than maliciousness. Since the 1980s, McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s have frequently savaged each other for the size of their burgers. “Where’s the beef?” was one memorable Wendy’s slogan; more recently Burger King poked fun at their golden-arched rivals by revealing that in every UK advert during 2019, there was a Big Mac lurking behind every Whopper photographed (a clever way of showcasing its more generous dimensions).

But these ads work because they seek smiles not smears, while their authors, the fast food businesses, lay no claim to moral leadership. Caricaturing rivals through playful trolling or pointing out that ‘my-burger-is-better-than-yours’ is something consumers have come to expect, even enjoy.

A politician, on the other hand, is somebody you want to trust; somebody with a positive vision for the future. Can anybody really place confidence in a leader who smears their competition with falsified footage or spurious claims about criminal behaviour? Attack ads have made both parties look decidedly shifty. They also smack of desperation. As ad agencies know all too well, turning to nastiness to eviscerate the opposition is often a last refuge for creativity.

And ugly tactics fall flat with the public too. Following the Labour ad which suggested Sunak doesn’t believe child abusers should be jailed, one poll by insight agency Opinium found 12 per cent felt less favourable towards Starmer’s party. While we can now, following Labour’s landslide victory on 4 July, be certain that the distasteful ad didn’t harm the party’s chances, it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t what secured the victory either.  

Another reason why attack ads may have failed to hit home with British voters – unlike the US where they’ve been a staple of election campaigns since Lyndon Johnson’s nuclear war-invoking ‘Daisy’ ad in 1964 – is because the UK’s robust regulation protects us.

The Television Act 1954 (which states “no advertisement shall be permitted which is directed towards any religious or political end”) combined with our bullet-proof libel laws has meant these ads have traditionally found it difficult to find an audience. But with streaming channels and social media platforms not beholden to such tight regulation, attack ads could degenerate further. The advent of generative AI means these ads are cheaper than ever to make, raising the prospect of a deep-fake Conservative or Labour leader personally addressing voters by name to tell them the leader of the opposition is a secret sadist or strangles cats.

These ads can also backfire because they betray faith that loyal voters have placed in their party leaders. Continue to insult their intelligence in this manner and they’ll stay away from the polls because they’ll believe no politician can be trusted.

So, the next time any mudslinging Two Minutes of Hate video pops up on your screen, do what those in Ninety Eighty-Four couldn’t: swipe or shut down your browser, and move on.

Jason Cobbold is the CEO of BMB