Ad Insiders' Favourite Political Campaigns

In the run-up to tomorrow's UK general election, the party propaganda machines have well and truly cranked up in the battle to win hearts and minds.

Creatively speaking, it's been a fairly pedestrian parade of campaigns - though honourable mention must go to Creature of London's witty Green Party broadcast, The Race to Number 10, and Forever Beta's nihilistic offering for the aptly-named Can't Be Arsed party.

Ahead of casting their votes tomorrow, we asked five industry insiders to trawl the archives and share their favourite political campaigns with us.

Alex Grieves & Adrian Rossi, co-ECDs, AMVBBDO London

It’s simple. It’s powerful. It’s effective.

Horribly effective.

Lord Kitchener’s cold, basilisk eye follows us, like Mona Lisa, around the room, daring us to break his gaze. And his finger, like death’s scythe, commands us and only us, to do our duty.

No wonder the men of the Cities and the Shire trampled over one another in their eagerness to sign up for King & Country.

It’s not just the greatest political poster ever.

It’s the greatest poster full stop.

But it’s everything that’s so right about it, that makes it so wrong.

Hmmm. Morality and advertising. That’s a subject for another day.

Ross Neil, ECD, WCRS London

Lil’ Bryan Hardin. God bless him. Could he be any more blond and angelic? That is apart from the lethal rifle he holds, which will define which party his parents and neighbours will vote for.

The poster boy for the ignorance of hanging on to an amendment that kills more people in America than cancer.

An amendment that is like a lethal drug to a nation that claims that this amendment is un-amendable.

This advert is proof that America’s sorry current state is baked in far deeper than one reality star being voted in as President.

Dave Henderson, creative partner, Atomic London

My all time favourite was for the youthful Ken Livingstone, which has such a brilliant, arresting headline and masterful art direction. I don’t think this has ever been beaten.

But a close second was this exceptionally well written and beautifully art directed protest banner from a recent women’s march in the US.

Jonathan Trimble, CEO, 18 Feet & Rising London

Having been part of the London’s women’s march, it showed there’s no such creativity as that which happens when people use their own hands to make placards. Some of the crudest, most hard-hitting visuals and copy right through to creative so sophisticated, most agencies could waste a lifetime trying to say it better.

It inspired, it provoked, it made us laugh out loud and it hurt – all at the same time.