Parsing Mugabe’s Poster
Things are grim in Zimbabwe. But that does not mean that we cannot find room for laughter. The blogger Copyranter, who has been an advertising copywriter in New York for sixteen years, dissects various ads and other forms of propoganda. Yesterday Copyranter tackled a Robert Mugabe campaign poster.
An excerpt:
Since present conditions in Zimbabwe suck dirt, Mugabe understandably decided to focus on the past to fire up some patriotism, while also reminding the ungrateful citizenry that it is because of HIM that they’ve been independent since 1980. However, R-Mug’s no idiot; he realizes that the downtrodden people need some assurance that the future is going to be better. And, like any good politician, he addresses this need with a slogan that promises absolutely nothing. But “all good things are possible” is maybe the worst campaign slogan ever recorded. It’s even weaker than 2005 NYC mayoral hopeful Freddy Ferrer’s. Mugabe might have done better by taking note of the brutally honest slogan used by fellow African autocrat Charles Taylor that got him reelected in a landslide in 1997.
Art direction-wise, the layout is an absolute mess. I do dig the image of the English colonial being lugged around by the enslaved natives, but I would have made it much larger while decreasing the size of the Mugabe photo (which is how old, Robert? Tsk tsk.). I like the “100% Empowerment” call-out, though I would have mimicked American sales circulars and placed it inside a brightly-colored starburst. But the poster’s visually torturous—way too much copy, and all the competing typefaces/colors/weights are headache-inducing.
It may be gallows humor, but it’s all we’ve got.