With a general election looming, Breandán O Broin on how the parties size up
By the time February’s Marketing.ie magazine hits reception desks, the date of the nation’s general election will almost certainly be known. As the battle for votes swings into feverish action, frontline and social media will be consumed with unending appraisals of the performance and the promises of the political parties and independents (aka the ‘Celebrity Party’).
So here’s a conundrum for the creatives in advertising and marketing to consider. Assuming an absolutely level playing field, both in terms of media expenditure and financial reward, for which of the contenders would your agency most like to campaign? You are encouraged to be brutalist about this. But think about it for a nanosecond – the question is simplicity itself.
Showing the way: Taoiseach Enda Kenny will soon take to the highways and byways to try and secure votes for Fine Gael candidates running in the general election. Last time round, Chemistry handled FG advertising. The party’s handlers recently turned to the Tories for advice on electioneering. The FG team includes FleishmanHillard’s Mark Mortell.
It’s not for the party you can win most votes; it’s which party provides your agency with the most creative opportunity to win not only friends, but future clients. On whose behalf would you prefer to address the nation so as to impress your marketing peers? Enda’s Fine Gael?
Gerry Adams’s Sinn Fein? What strategy would you persuade your party of choice to adopt?
The type of mission-statement blather beloved by corporate bodies the world over is strictly prohibited here. The mission must reflect reality and be couched in real words. We begin with a little desk research, as all good agency planners do. Adland is aware of the publicity value the redoubtable Saatchi brothers gained from their work for Margaret Thatcher’s Tories.
Maurice and Charles Saatchi set out on the road to world dominance in 1979, their memorable claim that ‘Labour isn’t Working’ was a slogan that certainly worked for the agency and for the Conservative Party and still resonates to this day. But similar to most client/agency relationships, it wasn’t all sweetness and light down around the Soho shop in those days.
When Charles had gone all arty and departed the crude world of adland, the by-now knighted Maurice was named as the Tories’ campaign director in 2005. But things got messed up and the resultant campaign lacked clarity. In his post-election analysis, modestly titled ‘How I Lost the Election’, Maurice admits how, despite all his experience, he failed to keep the strategic show on the road and his beloved party ended up losing the election to Tony Blair’s Labour.
Fully aware that there is often more to be gained from studying a casebook of failure than blindly imitating yet another casebook of success, where did Maurice go wrong, and more vitally, what can be derived from his mistakes? In his great Confessio, Maurice acknowledges: “I failed to convince the party that if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
He added: “I failed to dispel the illusion of research that suggests the number one issue in how people say they will vote should automatically be the number one topic for the party to address” (Interesting observation that – never take research wholly at its word). “‘I further failed to prevent our number one advantage (the economy) to become a second-order issue”…
“Ultimately, I failed to prevent the under-estimation of the intelligence of the public.”
Let’s take Maurice’s crucial first point – standing for something – and apply it to each of our main political parties in turn. No Mother Teresa words allowed remember. You can agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed but the test is does the ambition ring true? Once you agree on the strategy, all that follows is making the ads. But that’s the easy bit, isn’t it?
Fine Gael: “We stood for keeping you out of the hole the others (FF) dug for you. Now we stand for stopping the other others (Sinn Fein) shoving you back down an even deeper hole.”
Labour: “We stand between a big rock (FG) and a hard place (the backbenches).”
Fianna Fáil: “We stand between the electorate and the clutches of the Big Bad Wolf (Gerry Adams). But after the election, we may stand for sitting down with the self-same BBW. We are Fianna Fáil, after all.”
Sinn Fein: “We stand for what we stand for. And we won’t stand for anything that gets in our way, and that includes you fella. We stand on the love/hate axis of politics.”
Renua: “We stand for truth, honesty, conservative Catholic Ireland, apple pie and everything that’s right and proper and upstanding and a bit boring and longer sentences for criminals and longer sentences…” (Lucinda Creighton, above, amid whispers of the PDs, perhaps?)
Social Democrats: “We stand for Old Labour ideals (Roisin Shortall); complex alternative policies (Stephen Donnelly) and asking awkward questions (Catherine Murphy).”
Anti-Austerity Party: “We stand for being anti most things. Angsty is the thing we’re not anti. Anti is where it’s at – to the point where we’re often anti each other.” Isn’t that right, Joe?
Others: “We stand for shouting out loud in a crowd and grabbing media attention. Shouting about what? Whatever…’”
Over to you, eager creative minds. Who would you sign up to because they’ll provide the best opportunity to produce great work? It’s not necessary to vote for your client, but it probably helps. In the near future, the campaign to put the rising into the Rising, followed by the Repeal of the 8th Amendment Referendum. Yes, no or don’t know: it’s all a potential vote for creativity.
Breandán O Broin is a director of Company of Words
breandanobroin@companyofwords.com
