MANILA – Two years after its debut, the legacy of Metro Trains’ multi-award winning campaign ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ continues with the release of ‘Dumb Ways to Vote’ by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom. The video is supposedly a parody of the viral ad campaign, but it turns out to be more a parody of Philippine politics.
The three-minute animated video closely takes after the original campaign, using the tune of the original song and including the same quirky bean characters doing unwise things such as registering for the elections too late or selling ballots.
Some bean characters were also tweaked to resemble popular Filipino politicians. For instance, one character wore a terno and a beehive like Imelda Marcos, another disappeared behind a podium and had a mole like Gloria Macapagal, and another donned an Elvis hairstyle like Erap Estrada.
However, the foundation claimed that any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental, stating it in a disclaimer after the video.
The video was produced FNF themselves, with the foundation’s IT man Narwin Espiritu, while programme director Minnie Salao drafted the song in Tagalog.
“‘Dumb Ways To Vote’ encourages people to vote intelligently, or at least to think twice before they vote,” said FNF Philippines country director Jules Maaten. “Being famous as an actor or a sportsman does not automatically qualify you for public office. At the end of the day, it is the voters who decide whether their elected officials have integrity, or not.”
Maaten told adobo that they were fans of the original ad campaign and several of its paraodies.
“We saw it as a lighthearted way to encourage voters to think twice before they vote,” he shared.
According to Maaten, the response to his videos has been “overwhelmingly positive,” with over 30,000 views on YouTube for the English version and over 82,000 for the Tagalog version.
Maaten shared that they have only received on negative reaction to the video so far: “that it was not serious enough in dealing with a complex issue.”
View the video:
FNF is a foundation for liberal politics.
