Polling Nation
The famous Saatchi poster for the Conservatives said ‘Labour isn’t working’. One might say the same thing about political advertising in Ireland as polling days nears, Breandan O Broin writes

Well, are you happy? Are you happy about the impact advertising is having on the general election campaign? It’s a strange scenario where if the man from Mars dropped in, he would see the nation’s poster sites bedecked with mostly middle-aged male mugshots and assume we were locked in the heat of electoral battle.

MORE TO DO: Fianna Fail failed with its photoshop-inspired young and old couples posing in poster and leaflet ads created by The Larkin Partnership. The truth is people no longer vote for the Soldiers of Destiny, they endorse the FF leader and ‘Bertie’s team’.

But the campaigns represent a phoney war as the publicity war chests got raided before the election was called and limits on spend came into force. In normal marketing terms, it is akin to spending 80 per cent of your budget on pre-launch activities and then limiting the campaign to leaflet drops and shopping mall tastings.

Whatever about the efficacy of the messages, the time lag between persuasion and purchase suggests many will have been forgotten by the day votes are cast. In such circumstances, it is fair to assess how advertising helps raise public awareness of the parties and clarifies issues of national and local importance.

Is advertising a power for the good by increasing the numbers of people voting? It may well be, but that is not the prime role of party political advertising which is to win votes from the floaters. Is its role better suited to a competitive or negative stance, casting slurs on the veracity of individual candidates or questioning party promises? So as people ponder over how to exercise their franchise, Stray Thoughts casts a cold eye on the advertising winners and losers in the race to Leinster House.

APPEARANCES COUNT

Let’s begin with the best make-up category where the ST jury has decided to make no award. How come our leader and would-be leader invariably appear under a cloud of over-toned pan-stick, looking pink and puffed-up?

In Enda Kenny’s case, the makeover artists have bequeathed him a worryingly effete countenance, as if they have overstepped the mark in an effort to blow-dry the Mayo out of him. Bertie has abandoned the blouson and is now nicely filling his suits. Trevor Sargent tends to look a bit too buttoned up (Sargent majorish), while Pat Rabbitte is all jowls and there is little anyone can do about jowls. Michael McDowell has taken to smiling down on us from above on the 48 sheets, which is scary.

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, the real media glamour boys, are busy elsewhere on the island and at this juncture are leaving the Sinn Fein campaign in the hands of their less winning and winsome cousins from the south. Mary Lou et al.

Such trivial concentration on appearances may seem unworthy of election commentary, but presenting the party leader as a vote-winning celebrity is one of the primary marketing ploys of the various campaigns.

As the TV debates loom, not everyone can hope to appear like John F Kennedy but no one wants to end up looking like bulldog-like Richard Milhouse Nixon. Looks could be a vote magnet or a banana-skin in polling stations soon.

CREATIVE IMPACT

In terms of creativity, the jury will not be handing out any gold awards for election advertising. One bronze and a couple of certificates is the best we can manage. Labour’s campaign by Bloom seems to have strategic coherence as it first tries to tune-in to the prevailing zeitgeist of unease about how modern life is working out and then follows it up by inviting the electorate to become agents of a lifestyle change. It’s clean, understated and hints at a newness of ideology and empathy.

Labour, it suggests, shares your pain, which is a decidedly middle-class consumerist positioning. Labour is talking soft values. Notably, the campaign doesn’t feature the party leader. Could it have anything to do with Rabbitte’s jowls?

The Green Party probably has even less to spend than Labour, but their ads by Nick Kelly and Damian Handley of Rothco (didn’t they once handle the Pee Dees?) earns plaudits for photo-shopping windmills on to power stations.

It says something and it is eye-catching. By inviting people to ‘Think Big’, the Greens also manage to offer something visionary to the electorate. The Greens have the prevailing wind in their favour; sufficient people may feel a green vote is their personal contribution to the battle against global warming.

Everyone is climbing aboard the environmental bandwagon, but the Greens own the rights to the territory. Their long-term investment in a singular strategy may be about to pay off, with promises of all sorts of seafront wonders adorning our shores.

Of the governing parties, the Pee Dees most need to get the advertising finger out. Last time, McDowell’s poster push warned against the dangers of one-party government and helped win his party their highest number of seats.

This time, the predicted electoral oblivion of 2002 may come true. Advertising saved them once and only great advertising may save them now. Instead, what do the Progressive Democrats offer? A set of predictable political claims which appear to be out-of-kilter with post tiger conservatism, plus a picture of Supermac.

Harsh economics make up the Pee Dee platform and it’s not nearly enough to save the party from the potential redundancy its leader has warned about.

UNCLE BERTIE OR FATHER ENDA?

Do you wish to “take the next steps forward together” at the crossroads with Uncle Bertie or prefer to place your fate in the safe hands of FG’s Enda Kenny, the aspirant New Father of the Nation? The lack of enthusiasm appears almost palpable; a failure to be wooed and wowed by the marketing offerings is universal.

Driving back from Kerry, it appeared as if Bertie the Benevolent One was hearing the confessions of the whole country, as we no longer go to the priests for such things. Irish Times columnist Breda O’Brien was scathing about the air-brushed nature of the Taoiseach appearing sandwiched between stock-shots of stereotypical models of the young and old. Pabulum for the masses is how she felt about it.

Desmond Traynor was similarly non-plussed in an article in Magill headed ‘Photoshop till you drop’. All the pundits declare Man Yoo-loving Ahern to be the vote-winner sans pareil, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

You no longer vote for a party called Fianna Fail, today you vote for Bertie and ‘Bertie’s Team’. Don’t ask awkward questions, just leave it all to us is the implication. Thing is, we sometimes want to ask awkward questions and a sycophantic smile isn’t always the answer we want.

FF’s over-personalised campaign could rebound. Brian Cowen is the Gordon Brown of Irish politics, waiting and scowling reassuringly in the wings. Post election, Cowen may take the biscuit should FF suffer from putting all its eggs in the Bertie basket.

ST admits to not being a Fine Gael fan, but the reason its campaign takes the hardest critical hit is because it deserves to from a professional marketing perspective.

Strategically the various party campaigns have been all over the planning shop.

Things began poorly with the PR leaking of the anti-McDowell/anti-Harney campaign, which was pulled by the party leader before the flak started to fly. This was replaced by a complex pseudo-ironic take on the government’s record in office.

Then along came the ‘Enda our Glorious Leader’ campaign from Atomic which claimed he was going to sort out the un-civil servants, tackle the drug lords and eliminate the queues in A&E with just one wave of his managerial wand.

Enda wasn’t going to be able to, he knew it, and we knew that he knew it. A campaign designed to build public confidence in Kenny as a statesman failed by making him appear to be led by ‘public’ issues rather than having any social agenda of his own. Overall, he has been poorly served by all those around him.

Reportedly, Kenny’s ard fheis speech went some way towards reclaiming the man behind the media mask. This is where he needs to be, appearing as a person of political honesty and not hyperbole. He has time to shine in the TV debates so long as he remembers not to pretend to be outraged at everything.

FG shifted the emphasis by reverting to all-type messages with ads in women’s magazines and no glimpse of Enda. ‘Your contract for a better Ireland’ sounded tired even if newly-minted, while the promise of more hospital beds, more gardai, less crime and more punishment did not move the emotional muscles.

There is nothing warm about FG and like Britain’s Conservatives under Michael Howard, they find it hard to make us want to love them.

STAND OUTS

The two main award winners for creativity in election ’07 are not from the political parties. The most noticeable effort has been the portrayal of the Taoiseach with a Pinocchio nose as Michael O’Leary and Ryanair berate the government for its alleged failure to keep its promises relating to the development of Dublin Airport.

It looks powerful, but Ryanair’s constant carping is losing its appeal. They need to look to their own house first and begin to serve their own electorate with a degree of human decency. The one thing you can’t call a fellow Dail deputy is a liar so presumably the ceann comhairle of the ASAI will write to the Mullingar mogul telling him that he is an extremely naughty boy, yet again.

On a more idealistic note, the Rock the Vote campaign designed to lure the nation’s disinterested youth into the ballot box needs to avoid any hint of do-goodery or patronisation. It competes with the plethora of advisory campaigns urging young people to drink sensibly, engage in safe sex, quit smoking, drive within the speed limits and, as such, may engender undeserved cynicism.

Full credit to comic Dara O Briain and actor Cillian Murphy for lending their support. Should be interesting to see how the use of YouTube boosts awareness and it could make a worthwhile media case study when contrasted with the efficacy of the use of blogs and websites by mature but media-savvy candidates from all parties.

Breandan O Broin is founder and director of Company of Words