Tesco – Denmark War

Tesco’s slogan changed from ‘Every Little Helps’ to ‘We Control Every Aspect of Your Lives’.

If you’re not familiar with Time Trumpet, the premise is very simple – it’s a show that recaps on the news stories of yesteryear. However, it is set in 2031. And was broadcast in 2006. So effectively , all the talking heads are concerned with things from the distant past, even though they’re in the future. Which is doubly weird to watch now, as we’re currently much closer to 2031 than 2006. Let’s not dwell on that, as it’s pretty scary. Said talking heads are an impressive ensemble of comedy greats; Richard Ayoade, Adam Buxton, Jo Enright, Matthew Holness and a frequently completely bald Stewart Lee.

So, in this fictionalised version of reality, Tesco had a superstore in every square mile in Britain and as such are running out of space to build new shops. Because of this, they invade Denmark on January 21st 2013 in an attempt to create the world’s first retail state. The war lasts five hours in total. The outcome is unclear, though according to the report, Copenhagen is transformed into a smouldering pile of rubble.

Now, I was originally going to do this as a two parter. As in have a design for the Danes and one for Tesco, but I did realise that the latter would encounter problems because, well, you can’t have a promotional propaganda poster for Tesco without including the Tesco logo, can you? So quickly dismissed that idea due to the lads down Tescos probably not being too keen on me swiping important parts of their brand identity and using it to infer that they’re genocidal lunatics.

However, as far as I’m aware, using a country’s flag is fair game. And they’re hardly the aggressors in this. So we’ve got the Danish flag, a chinook, some missiles and the Little Mermaid, all deployed to enourage sign up to the Danish Army. If you’re looking a for a translation, it runs thusly:

Fight to Save Denmark! Sign up for the Danish Army and Help Repel the Satanic Force of Tesco.

Which is all a bit dramatic, but this is a war, after all.

The basis of the poster should be fairly obvious if you’ve ever had a history lesson at school. There are thousands of different propaganda posters to choose from, in varying levels of famousness. Lord Kitchener and Uncle Sam doing the pointing and so forth. I’m afraid my knowledge of Danish culture doesn’t stretch very far and I figured Helena Christensen built out of bacon-shaped Lego was probably more insulting than inspiring, so I went with a more generic Chinese / Soviet feel.

Now, I’m not saying that Denmark are a bunch of Communists, but they do – at the very least – have a flag that is predominantly red.