Beware of subliminal advertising!
The LNP is mimicking Brisbane City Council branding on their election campaign material.
Cleat Cheats
A CLEAT is a blocked pattern down the left side of a page or poster. The Brisbane City Council’s branding includes a cleat of blue and yellow (and the Town Hall icon). The Liberal National Party (Qld) is mimicking the cleat with their own – coincidentally similar – party colours. Alongside each other, the differences are clear, but displayed independently, they are indistinguishable.
Colour Coincidence?
In 2008, the Queensland Liberal Party and National Party merged to form the LNP. Mysteriously, they adopted blue, yellow and white as their colours. The national Liberal Party is blue on a mostly white background and the Nationals are yellow on a mostly green background. Was the choice of colours matching BCC branding purely coincidence?
Why only Brisbane?
The LNP does not use the blue and yellow cleat on state and national campaign material. Why do they only use it for Brisbane City Council elections?
The LNP began using the cleat in 2008, immediately after their parties merged. They have used it in every Brisbane City Council election since.
The Council and Political Parties
The Brisbane City Council is the Assembly of elected representatives who make policy decisions.
The Executive Management Team implements these policies and oversees the city’s public services. Its former long-serving CEO Colin Jensen was an LNP appointee as is his replacement Dr Kerrie Freeman. She reports to the Lord Mayor.
These are two separate entities.
Political parties are quite separate again. Most local governments are not party political. Brisbane is an exception because of its size.
How they get away with it…
The Finance and City Governance Committee is charged with protecting Council’s brand. The majority LNP members in the Committee refuse to honor this obligation.
CEO Colin Jensen refuses to act in defense of the Council’s branding, saying the cleat and colours are ‘sufficiently different’. (Brisbane Times, 2016).
LNP majorities in Council Committees and political appointees are the problem. The LNP must be persuaded to do the right thing or their majority must be reduced to stop it.
The Independent Brisbane has been campaigning against it since 2012. The Bug has turned it into a hilarious satire.
Dubious Duping
By mimicking the Council’s branding, the LNP hopes to trick voters into believing they are the natural party of government.
It is a deliberate strategy on the LNP’s part to blur the line between the Council and political candidates.
BLOW THEIR COVER
Subliminal advertising doesn’t work when people are made aware of it. Please share this site widely and tell your local candidates you can see through it.
Deepfake. Where is all this heading? It’s the thin edge of the wedge that is playing out in Indian elections now with the help of AI.
Sadly, the ALP is now BLATANTLY using Council’s cleat on election campaign material. They’re not even TRYING to cheat!
