Award for Green Party’s party political broadcast
The Green Party’s party political broadcast has won a prestigious Shark Diploma at the annual advertising awards ceremony in Kinsale this week.
The three-minute broadcast featured dozens of children who explained that they were too young to vote, and instead asked adults to vote on their behalf. It was broadcast on RTE1 television May 10th this year
The Green Party’s broadcast won a diploma in the Public Service and Social Welfare section. According to advertising copywriter Nick Kelly, who wrote the script: “This is traditionally one of the toughest sections, because everybody likes making charity ads. So winning a Diploma was quite an achievement.”
Just three diplomas were awarded this year in what are called the Sharks awards. The award was presented to Antidote, the Dublin company that made the broadcast on behalf of the Green Party, which is led by Andrew Freedman and Ken Wardrop.
Commenting on the award, Green Party Leader John Gormley congratulated the team that made the broadcast. He said: “This three-minute vignette was not only the most successful broadcast in this year’s election, but probably the most successful in the history of Irish politics. No other party political broadcast came close to generating the same interest. I expect it will be the template for all party political broadcasts to come.
“The Green Party took the unusual step of not including a single politician in our broadcast, and this is probably the secret of its success. We wanted to emphasise that the Party was campaigning for a better future for the next generation. We weren’t asking people to vote for us politicians; we were asking them to use their votes for the betterment of the next generation. We owe a great deal of our success in the election to the power of this broadcast, and we will honour it in Government by striving to secure the future of the children’s country and their planet,” said Mr. Gormley.
Notes for editors
The Green Party’s PPB can be seen on www.YouTube.com, where already it has been viewed more than 14,000 times.
The Shark Awards were established in 1962 and now at the birth of commercial television in Ireland, the Shark Awards now rank as one of the top creative advertising festivals in the world. For more information on the festival, visit www.sharkawards.com