Covert campaigns

Many are pulling off Obama-like strategies, tapping online channels to reach desired markets. Billboards worth more than Php50,000.00 each are lined up along EDSA, breaking the series of commercial advertisements and causing more eyesore and traffic strain poor drivers endure every single day.

As if these blokes own the colors of the rainbow, branding themselves with one or two. I mean, MMDA's pink and blue are tacky enough, and even if orange and blue are complementary, it's now marked and labeled as equivalent to Sipag and Tiyaga. I feel bad for designers who have to choose another scheme for an otherwise perfect poster, just so it won't be associated with a presidential candidate. And yellow? Owned by the Aquino, like there's some kind of a patent.

The covert campaigns are here again, the overture to a noble practice of democracy. But here it's ironically loud and it's dirty. And it's not cheap.

But let's be optimistic. Let's spell hope and change and put them out there as Pepsi does with their new campaign. It uses the whole spectrum of the color wheel, besides making use of that new trend that's advocacy advertising. Selling the product by selling an idea, an ideal. As if we can all be fooled. #