“Edi Rama 2007” is the first political campaign I ever made.
This one have a soft spot in my heart and critical milestone in my life.
It marks the beginning of my career as a Creative Director in political Campaigns AND friendship with legendary consultant Arthur J Finkelshtein (RiP) that I miss very much, who I followed afterwards in many other campaigns worldwide.
Edi Rama is an Albanian politician, painter, writer, publicist, former pedagogue, and former basketball player, who is currently (2020) serving as the 33rd Prime Minister of Albania (since 2013).
I was blessed to get to know him closely for that period of time and learn so much about his life philosophy and ideals.
I also have a couple of doodles he did on paper, while we were in one of those never ending meeting sessions, which I treasure deeply.
Creative:
Rama led the initiative to paint the façades of Tirana’s buildings in bright colours (known as Edi Rama colours – very bright pink, yellow, green, violet)
He had a very small budget to renew the grey city of Tirana after the grey communism era, so he decided to paint entire buildings in vibrant colours!
This not only created the “illusion” that the city was actually renew but also attracted since then much more tourists.
I proposed to use this into the whole branding concept of the campaign using “Rama” colours together with geometrical shapes(recalling the façades of Tirana’s buildings he did).
It was approved and at the end, it was surely the most colourful political campaign I ever did. hands down. Also the most existing (I must confess)
I remember during this campaign (3 months on location in Tirana) that as far as creative team, I was pretty much a one man show…:)
I did almost everything on my laptop(!!) from the actual graphics of the posters, flyers, brochures, billboards…to direction and animation of spots, print campaigns and guerrilla items…CRAZY!
In top of that, City-hall Elections in 2007 for the former Mayor of Tirana Edi Rama was a though one, attempting to be re-elected for the third time in a row!
Main Slogan: Power of Change
