The UK held a referendum last week to decide whether or not we should make a minor adjustment to our voting system. The “no to change” won the referendum by an astonishing 68%.
What makes this most surprising is that one of the primary campaign angles was “Vote No or a Child Will Die.”
Seriously;
I’ve often attempted to come up with the most ridiculous and offensive marketing campaign imaginable (on the off chance I ever had enough money to rent advertising space nation wide and enough indifference to neglect the amount of homeless children who’d have to look at it.) However, this Prime Minister backed, serious political campaign had only previously occurred in my early drafts and was quickly dismissed as “too crude.”
I’ve decided that for once, perhaps I should humbly accept that I was wrong.
Claiming that a child will die unless you follow an order, irrespective of the veracity of that claim, just might be the solution to all of our problems.
I’ve made a few examples below:
Unfortunately, it appears that veracity is the Achilles heel of the dead child argument. Oxfam has had to up its game to “these children will get nice clothes and be well educated” rather than just “survive”.
Some day they might grow up to be business people.
Some day they might address the imbalance that has left third world children slaving away to make trainers for less money than I might stop to pick up off the floor.
Some day they will own global corporations and the advertising posters will look like this: