New Labour, New Danger ("Demon Eyes")

Why it works

Demonic red eyes peer through a gap in red curtains above the line "New Labour, New Danger". M&C Saatchi, which Maurice and Charles Saatchi had set up the year before, made the campaign for John Major's Conservatives in 1996, then pushed it further: a smiling Tony Blair with a strip torn from his photograph to reveal the same glowing eyes. It is studied as the high-water mark of British attack advertising, and as a lesson in the gap between industry acclaim and votes. An advertising trade magazine named it campaign of the year, crediting it with some £5 million of free publicity for a £125,000 outlay. The Advertising Standards Authority stopped short of upholding the complaints, but ruled that the Blair version showed him as satanic and dishonest without his permission and asked for it not to be used again. The following May the Conservatives lost more than half their seats in Labour's landslide. The V&A holds the curtain poster.