London, November 4 : An advertising agency has turned U. S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama white, and his Republican counterpart John McCain black, in a set of ads posted around New York City..

The work by Ad agency Grey NYC also contains a slogan between the two “skin colour-switched” candidates, saying: "Let the issues be the issue".

Tor Myhren, the company''s creative director who has designed the posters, told the design website, coolhunter. com, that the campaign was aimed at convincing people that they should cast their votes based on the candidates'' policies, and ignore their racial differences.

His message, however, does not seem to have reached as many people as he had intended because the posters have swiftly become collectors'' items, and passers-by have removed several of them from streetsides.

According to the Telegraph, the new ad campaign resurrect a style that the clothes designer United Colors of Benetton provocatively used in a 1993 issue of its company magazine, Colors, to raise questions over notions of race.

At the time, designer Tibor Kalman presented a feature titled "What If...", which contained manipulated photographs of the Queen and the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger as black, Pope John Paul II as Asian, the film-maker Spike Lee as white, and the pop star Michael Jackson as Scandinavian. (ANI)