Whether or not they follow politics, it’s fair to assume most people don’t actually read electoral programs. Podemos, Spain’s growing leftwing party, which got nearly 21% of the votes in last year’s elections, doesn’t think that’s good, so it adopted an unusual marketing approach to tackle that problem: it printed the program as an Ikea catalogue (pdf, link in Spanish).
Hoping to get the program in the hands of people less interested in politics, the party designed and printed a 192-page catalog featuring its candidates in Ikea-like settings, albeit offering political issues—from financial regulations to increase in pensions to renewable energies—instead of affordable design.
The program, which can be bought for €1,80 plus shipping costs, is structured in two parts. The first contains classic Ikea sections: kitchen, bathroom, living room and so on, and in each, one aspect of the program is presented in bullet points and concise sentences, highlighting the program’s numbers (jobs, investments) the way a furniture catalogue would do with an item’s price. The second half has, instead, a more extensive (and traditional) presentation of the program.
“If we want to pursue different objectives we need to take different measures,” said Carolina Bescansa, who openly acknowledged the Ikea inspiration. at the program’s presentation, El Mundo reports. She said the objective is that the electoral program becomes the “most read in the history of democracy.”
Despite the innovative format, the program doesn’t introduce much differences from what Podemos had presented in December, including proposals of €60 billion ($68 billion) in public spending, increased taxes on higher income for incomes above €60,000, a larger set products (food, medicines) to have reduced VAT at 4% and 10%, and VAT at 25% for luxury goods.
