When creative director and copywriter Philip Taffs and art director Diana Thornley decided to make ads supporting the Labor Party, they weren’t answering a brief. There was no client or budget, only a desire to put their creative skills to use for a cause they supported.
“I vote Labor, and wanted to contribute the one thing I can: strategic creativity,” Taffs told B&T.
Best known for his work across brands including Honda, Australia Post and Esanda Finance, and as a lecturer in advertising and communications, Taffs teamed up with Thornley to try something unconventional: develop a striking, cohesive visual and verbal identity for Labor from the outside in.
“Political advertising is very different from normal advertising: it’s pro-active, reactive and produced on the run,” Taffs said. “You shoot from the hip, or the hustings”.
But Taffs and Thornley had something else in mind. “I wanted to see if we could create a distinctive and instantly recognisable new look and feel for the party,” he said. “We challenged ourselves to create a visual and verbal template that immediately says: ‘Labor'”.
The result? A suite of bold, unapologetically partisan ads anchored by a red sidebar, a clean logo lock-up and a rallying tagline: “We need all the ALP we can get.”
The message is clear: ‘Labor’s achievements under pressure—rising wages, falling unemployment and debt—are at stake, and a vote for Peter Dutton could unravel the progress’.
“Dutton boycotted the apology to the Stolen Generations, voted ‘No’ for Marriage Equality, and recently wanted to stop accepting humanitarian refugees from Gaza,” Taffs said. “These are not the sort of ‘actions’ we want for our country.”
Taffs cited Neil Lawrence’s “Kevin 07” as an inspiration. “So clever, so simple, so memorable,” he said.
His own tagline aims for similar impact—something that sticks, something that might even make its way into the vernacular.
The grassroots campaign has already travelled beyond the local: shared via Labor MP Ged Kearney’s office and “passed onto head office so they can use them if they want to”.
So far, the reaction has been entirely positive. “Not yet, only approbation,” Taffs said when asked about legal or ethical concerns. “Of course, if the party had the slightest issue with our campaign then we would withdraw it.”
Was the campaign a play for more formal political work? “If our work generated any leads then that would be the icing on the election cake,” he admitted.
Taffs knows his campaign may never see airtime, but that was never really the point. In an election where every message competes for oxygen, he and Thornley simply wanted to cut through with clarity, conviction, and craft. “We just wanted to do our bit,” he said — a quiet reminder that sometimes, the most powerful campaigns don’t start in war rooms, but in living rooms, driven by belief and built on instinct.
