Story: Mug Punter
By the time you’re reading this we’ll have a new government — maybe. And maybe a new Prime Minister — and that’s not necessarily because of who won the election. Tennis elbow is a serious problem in the houses of parliament with all that back-stabbing going on. Even among the winners.
Being a politician is a tough gig. People complain that pollies are over-paid, over-perked and over-populated, but it’s a 24/7 job and that’s never fun. You can’t anonymously pop down the pub for a beer without dressing up as the Elephant Man. Try nipping to the milk bar for a packet of Winnie Blues without having to defend about seven different taxes and some kind of Medicare levy before getting your loose change out of 50 bucks (thanks to the tobacco tax).
DIGITAL POLICY PLATFORM
Getting elected is harder than ever. Back in the old days all you had to do was stand on a soapbox, sing ‘God Save The Queen’ and Bob Menzies would give you an electorate. Today, you have to make promises and dream up policies… and change them on the run, when someone does some research and crunches the numbers — bastards. Social media and the internet are proving to be the ruin of politicians. They’re now expected to be honest, which is unreasonable and wholly unfair. After all, how are they supposed to stay abreast of everything?
Which is why digital signage is emerging as the perfect platform for political advertising. Gluing posters to a bus stop is so 20th century, when the modern alternative is digital signage — a medium that can be tweaked the moment any kind of policy announcement needs adjusting. Redefining? How about clarifying? Anyway, a line of high-definition screens is always going to be way better for promoting a candidate’s political wares — and exposing their opponent’s unfortunate political underwears — than some tatty collection of A3 posters holding a corrugated iron fence together. You can change the slogan in an instant. Shift the decimal point, fiddle the budget figure, give the proposed tax a more user-friendly name. The possibilities for refining the message are endless and there won’t be a can of whitewash in sight.
GRAFFITI: PLEASE EXPLAIN
And it’s not so easy to deface digital signage. The obligatory giant graffito-phallus will be a ‘thing’ of the past, because vandals know the screen image might change to something completely innocuous within minutes and they might be inadvertently ‘penising’ the wrong thing. They can’t scrawl Hitler-style moustaches on Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten, because the screen might switch to a picture of Pauline Hanson and that wouldn’t work at all… oh, wait.
There is a risk that any digital signage political statement on an AV network might be hacked, but the beauty of political messages is they’re generally considered nonsense anyway, so nobody’s going to take much notice, if it all looks a bit silly. What’s more, today’s embarrassing, hacked/hackneyed catch-cry that needs an apology might be tomorrow’s copyright genius. After all, it’s never been a more exciting time to rip off a slogan.
PRIME (MINISTER) REAL ESTATE
A commercial windfall is possible, too. Politically-themed advertising could be very lucrative. Imagine Malcolm Turnbull holding up a pencil and declaring, “I use SuperSharp pencils, the only pencil that can fill out the entire Senate ballot paper without running out of lead”. It’d sell a million — or maybe a few million would get pinched from the polling booths.
Digital signage can also take all the doubt out of political polls — those polls before the election that predict everything so, hmm… reliably. Who are you going to vote for? Touchscreens can give you a blue button for the Liberals, a red button for Labor, and a black button for ‘Other’ parties. Press the black button and your image and personal details are instantly emailed to the Federal Police for immediate investigation… never know what subversiveness you might be up to; can’t be too alert in these dangerous times.
One problem might be that vast, politically-orientated digital signage networks will deliver poor ROI for investors, because elections only occur every three years or so — give or take the odd referendum and double dissolution. The solution would be to have more elections, more often. Swap Prime Ministers around a few times, chuck in some retirements and maybe the Governor General can fire the entire parliament every once in a while — that hasn’t happened for ages.
Given what’s going down at the moment, it shouldn’t be hard to arrange.
Mug Punter is a proper writer and novelist; get him outta here.
Mug Punter’s curmudgeonly carping does not necessarily reflect the views of DigitalSignage. If you have a differing view contact the editor Chris Holder.