How to utterly fail at winning over minority voters

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A famous political poster from the early 1980s:



Note not only the risible text (which, naturally, demonstrates a total failure to understand the lives and priorities of West Indian and African voters in the cities of England in 1983), but the man in the picture and, more importantly, what he's wearing.

The suit is too large. The cut is unfashionable. The impression, therefore, is not of a prosperous and worthy citizen of Britain going about his business, but of the desperate variety of job interview or (worse) a court appearance. Which sends (or rather sent) an interesting message about how the Tories viewed black people...

lol

[bedstuy]

Note not only the risible text (which, naturally, demonstrates a total failure to understand the lives and priorities of West Indian and African voters in the cities of England in 1983), but the man in the picture and, more importantly, what he's wearing.

The suit is too large. The cut is unfashionable. The impression, therefore, is not of a prosperous and worthy citizen of Britain going about his business, but of the desperate variety of job interview or (worse) a court appearance. Which sends (or rather sent) an interesting message about how the Tories viewed black people...

lol

That's the way suits were in the 80s and 90s.  And even so, the suit would look perfectly fine if they hemmed the pants.

[ElectionsGuy]

Why would clothes be more important than the content of the text?

[Peter the Lefty]

Note not only the risible text (which, naturally, demonstrates a total failure to understand the lives and priorities of West Indian and African voters in the cities of England in 1983), but the man in the picture and, more importantly, what he's wearing.

The suit is too large. The cut is unfashionable. The impression, therefore, is not of a prosperous and worthy citizen of Britain going about his business, but of the desperate variety of job interview or (worse) a court appearance. Which sends (or rather sent) an interesting message about how the Tories viewed black people...

lol

That's the way suits were in the 80s and 90s.  And even so, the suit would look perfectly fine if they hemmed the pants.

The 80's in general were a fashion nightmare. 

[courts]

Why would clothes be more important than the content of the text?

we don't make decisions based on conscious things, but subconscious. advertisers and politicians know this. that said i pretty much agree with bedstuy, although by the late 1970s that style of pseudo flared pants was already on the way out.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Why would clothes be more important than the content of the text?

we don't make decisions based on conscious things, but subconscious. advertisers and politicians know this. that said i pretty much agree with bedstuy, although by the late 1970s that style of pseudo flared pants was already on the way out.

     The suit I own is too small and cheaply cut, yet so many people that see me wearing it comment on how dapper I look. I just don't know how much the average person can pick up on this thing.

[Sol]

Hopefully the success of this poster has similar implications for akin GOP efforts.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

"Democrats say he's Black. Republicans say they only shot at him because they felt threatened."

"Democrats say he's Black. Republicans ask him if he knows their black friend."

"Democrats say he's Black. Republicans say he's Urban."

"Democrats say he's Black. Republicans say he needs to show them his ID."

[Cassius]

Well, its not as if the Tories needed black votes, since they were, at least at the time, nicely concentrated in Labour voting inner city areas. So its surprising that they made an effort at all.

[Hifly]

Your post is laughable. Not the poster, or the clothes the guy's wearing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's the way suits were in the 80s and 90s.  And even so, the suit would look perfectly fine if they hemmed the pants.

It's true that those decades were not good ones for such clothing, but, basically, the picture screams 'the accused' and that was certainly how it was read at the time...

[bedstuy]

That's the way suits were in the 80s and 90s.  And even so, the suit would look perfectly fine if they hemmed the pants.

It's true that those decades were not good ones for such clothing, but, basically, the picture screams 'the accused' and that was certainly how it was read at the time...

You must dress your perps extremely well in your country.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

That's the way suits were in the 80s and 90s.  And even so, the suit would look perfectly fine if they hemmed the pants.

It's true that those decades were not good ones for such clothing, but, basically, the picture screams 'the accused' and that was certainly how it was read at the time...

You must dress your perps extremely well in your country.

The dressing of defendants in suits that are obviously not theirs is a long and storied tradition in Britain. Thus the following appalling joke: 'what do you call a Liverpudlian in a suit? The accused.'

It is also true of footballers.

[minionofmidas]

This obviously referring to people out on bail until the trial.

Of course, the whole "we don't call him Black because he has been elevated to the status of Britisher" (so he's done very good for a Colored Person!) thing... um... when will majority group members ever realize just how that is justly understood by those to whom it's of concern?

[opebo]

     The suit I own is too small and cheaply cut, yet so many people that see me wearing it comment on how dapper I look. I just don't know how much the average person can pick up on this thing.

They say that, presumably, because you look better than you normally look.  Also it so happens that wearing things too tight seems to be 'in' at the moment (see the 'photographs of posters' thread).  But I'm sure some people do notice your suit's shortcomings, and in general those will be the people placed higher within the social pyramid.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     The suit I own is too small and cheaply cut, yet so many people that see me wearing it comment on how dapper I look. I just don't know how much the average person can pick up on this thing.

They say that, presumably, because you look better than you normally look.  Also it so happens that wearing things too tight seems to be 'in' at the moment (see the 'photographs of posters' thread).  But I'm sure some people do notice your suit's shortcomings, and in general those will be the people placed higher within the social pyramid.

     It did occur to me that businessmen and the like would notice, but they strike me as a less than central demographic for the purposes of this ad. I don't suppose businessmen were running around telling everyone that the guy's suit didn't fit, which would indicate that this is something most people catch on to across the pond.

[opebo]

     It did occur to me that businessmen and the like would notice, but they strike me as a less than central demographic for the purposes of this ad. I don't suppose businessmen were running around telling everyone that the guy's suit didn't fit, which would indicate that this is something most people catch on to across the pond.

The claim is often made that the British male is more cognizant of dress standards than the American - I do believe it is true once you equalize for class.  But the poor quality of the suit isn't essential to Al's original point, is it?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     It did occur to me that businessmen and the like would notice, but they strike me as a less than central demographic for the purposes of this ad. I don't suppose businessmen were running around telling everyone that the guy's suit didn't fit, which would indicate that this is something most people catch on to across the pond.

The claim is often made that the British male is more cognizant of dress standards than the American - I do believe it is true once you equalize for class.  But the poor quality of the suit isn't essential to Al's original point, is it?

     It's not essential to his point and I do agree that the ad is rather tonedeaf. I brought it up because it seemed strange to me. I didn't notice the suit was ill-fitting, and evidently many people that I know wouldn't have noticed either. It seems though that British people do notice.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

OT but has anyone noticed that advertisements in general used to have a lot more text in them than they do today? If you go through old magazines like Time or National Geographic and look at the ad pages, sometime in the early '90s there was a shift from having at least a paragraph or two of text to just having a tagline that was a few words long and nothing else. Any idea why this is? Did we start becoming a lot more ADD at that point?

Here's an example. It's a Ford ad from 1980:


And this is a Toyota ad from the 2010s:

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's because the advertising industry now attempts to sell ourselves to ourselves (and so, almost incidentally, products) rather than sell products directly. Or something like that. It is late.

[ingemann]

A famous political poster from the early 1980s:



Note not only the risible text (which, naturally, demonstrates a total failure to understand the lives and priorities of West Indian and African voters in the cities of England in 1983), but the man in the picture and, more importantly, what he's wearing.

The suit is too large. The cut is unfashionable. The impression, therefore, is not of a prosperous and worthy citizen of Britain going about his business, but of the desperate variety of job interview or (worse) a court appearance. Which sends (or rather sent) an interesting message about how the Tories viewed black people...

lol

But the point of that kind of ad is not to get minorities to vote for the Tories, it's a counterpoint to people calling Tories racist. So the target audience are White conservatives who don't like to be called racist.

[Kushahontas]

[freefair]

I've heard 2 stories about that poster- 1) Sabotage and smears (false flag campaigning) by left-wing activists to make the Conservatives look bad, and 2) Idiotic NF supporters or unwanted sympathizers trying to encourage whites to vote for the Tory.
Either way the Party has always officially denied they were responsible for the racist campaign.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But the point of that kind of ad is not to get minorities to vote for the Tories, it's a counterpoint to people calling Tories racist. So the target audience are White conservatives who don't like to be called racist.

Ah, a cynic

Yes, there's definitely a bit of that going on (and so well observed). But it's important to understand that in the 1980s that non-white voters (still generally referred to as 'immigrants' in a generic sense - even 'New Commonwealth Immigrants') were regarded by elements of the political class and the commentariat as being somehow up for grabs, even though the reality was that Tory rhetoric - and by this point overt support for police racism - and their own awareness of their marginal economic and social status (c.f. Grunwick) meant a fairly uniform lining up behind Labour by the end of the 1970s. Tory MPs who attracted even a handful of non-white supporters generally bragged about it in a way that seems bizarrely tin-eared in retrospect.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

I've heard 2 stories about that poster- 1) Sabotage and smears (false flag campaigning) by left-wing activists to make the Conservatives look bad, and 2) Idiotic NF supporters or unwanted sympathizers trying to encourage whites to vote for the Tory.
Either way the Party has always officially denied they were responsible for the racist campaign.

Lol at the misspelling of "burdened." Of course the people who insist brown people "need to learn English" are usually worse English speakers than any reasonably educated immigrant.