As with any other piece of communication for a brand or service. you
need a simple powerful idea, expressed in a way that engages the
audience. In fairness to the Fianna Fail campaign last time out, the 'A
lot done, more to do', gave people a simple reason to vote them back
in, without actually saying an awful lot.

A simple idea of 'we haven't finished yet' gave people something
simple to understand. It's not rocket science. Deal in compelling
simplicity. Fine Gael's recent attempt at advertising was poor with
posed and staged shots of Enda Kenny – who few would recognize – and
with cliched soundbite headlines. It was uninteresting in the extreme
and gave me nothing to cling to.

Tony Gregory is the epitome of being single-minded. He has been
single-minded on the drugs issue for his people and this has made it
simple for people to know what they are voting for at election time.

Negative political advertising does work. Provided it has a single
powerful message that is important. The great Saatchi & Saatchi
Conservative Party ads were negative in their content. 'Pregnant man',
'Labour isn't working' and 'Tony's eyes' were all lampooning Labour.

They were single-minded and impactful. The Americans have taken
negative, scare-mongering style political advertising to extremes and
if they take it too far the electorate should reflect it in how they
vote.

Freedom of speech and expression should always be sacrocanct in our
society and and if people feel the need to be negative then they have
that right, provided they base it on truth. Our legal and libel system
is rightly there to deal with 'untruths'.

Hopefully this year's election will see competitive, compelling,
engaging communication. It is up to the opposition parties to drive
this as the current government have no real need to. A Fianna Fail-led
partnership will win again if imaginations are not captured.

McCann Erickson does not work on a political party as it is IPG
policy. Looking at the recent Fine Gael posters – as I cannot find any
other campaigns – they have missed a trick with consumers, for my money
anyway. Irish political advertising is amongst the most clich