Election 2005: The rules of political advertising

Marketing 27-Apr-05, 12:31

As the election draws closer, the parties' ad campaigns are intensifying. But their activity lacks the power of a central, unifying theme, writes Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy.

Political advertising has had some famous victories. After Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979, Labour, perhaps somewhat speciously, suggested that Saatchi & Saatchi's unitary theme of 'Labour isn't working' had won the election for the Conservatives. Almost two decades later, as it retook control, Labour's 1997 'It's time for a change' campaign focused and condensed, via its use of imagery, the unarticulated frustrations of the British people.

Hard evidence for the effectiveness of political advertising is mixed.

Historically, 50% of British viewers switch off party-political broadcasts.

Furthermore, the public claims not to be influenced: in 1987, fewer than 2% of voters said they had been swayed by press ads or posters.

Those who dismiss political advertising out of hand are misguided, though.

US research has shown that the attitudes of heavy TV viewers - those with a lower level of income and education - are more influenced than light viewers, and are precisely the audience politicians are seeking. Other research claims voters often forget where a message came from and erroneously attribute it to a news programme; further studies claim that political advertising is more effective telling people which issues to think about, rather than what to think.

With the development of a 'classless society', voters have become more promiscuous in their political allegiances, and advertising has assumed greater significance, offering parties the chance to persuade the electorate through an idealised perspective of both party and candidate.

Chasing margins

Advertising also gives parties the chance to retrieve defaulting groups.

Labour has women trouble - and knows it; young mothers are planning to desert the party in droves over the Iraq war. The Blair-Brown 'Africa' broadcast, in which the duo drink orange juice and recite platitudes about the need to 'solve' poverty in Africa, is aimed at them.

Elections are often about small margins and it is here that advertising grows in importance; in a close campaign, it can sway the non-committed. According to Professor John Curtice of the University of Strathclyde, 10% of voters do not know which way they will vote and a third of those who do are still uncertain. Others argue the election lies in the hands of only 800,000-1m undecided voters resident in 100 constituencies.

So, how does political advertising work? It is important to understand the lack of interest in politics among the majority of the electorate, whether it is caused by alienation or apathy. For them, advertising is an act of trespass on the consciousness: the consumer of political information is primarily an inadvertent one, force-fed images and facts that are intrusive.

Rules of resonance

Probably the best insight into the workings of political advertising can be gained from US guru Tony Schwartz, who created the 1964 'Daisy' ad against the Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, in which a little girl counting flower petals morphed into a nuclear explosion.

Schwartz called this 'resonance theory'. The ad is designed to use the viewer as a 'workforce', bringing to the fore what is already in their mind, but making them participate in the activity.

This resonance is epitomised by the Tories' 'Are you thinking what we're thinking?' ads. It allows the unspeakable to be thought, and permits a high degree of identification between voter and embattled party. Using handwriting to convey the key points is intended as a symbol of intimacy.

However, to be really effective, campaigns must be coherent, and this is where the Conservatives' and Labour's work is failing: it is not that the individual advertising is tame, rather that its overall impression is fragmented. There is a superfluity of targets - immigration one day, health another, crime the next.

Labour's current 'Gordon and Tony' film, which appears at times like an ad for a gay dating agency, fits within no clear central theme. Rather it proves an insecure riposte to suggestions that the two do not get along by taking pains to show them working together comfortably. In the end it merely emphasises, rather than exorcises, the fact that the party has two leaders.

In 1992, by way of contrast, there was only one strategic concept the Conservatives entertained: Labour's tax threat. This appealed to voters' fears and provided a branded antidote, using the imagery of aggression: masked men, blacksmiths, boxers, chains, bombs, barrage balloons, bristling hedgehogs. It was heavily symbolic in a resonant way.

Political advertising can, of course, backfire badly, particularly when it is interpreted through the media. The so-called 'War of Jennifer's Ear' in 1992, for instance, saw a party-political broadcast contrast the stories of two girls being treated for 'glue ear', one privately, the other by the NHS. The facts were ambiguous. Had Jennifer's treatment really been delayed? The film seemed to exploit a sick and vulnerable child.

The press proved vengeful, and the political ad became a political event in itself. A more recent example is the way the media interpreted Labour's 'Flying pigs' ad as evoking anti-Semitism, leading the public to see it in the same way.

Much will be said about negative campaigning in the context of this election.

A current 80-second Tory cinema ad shows Tony Blair promising 'Enough of talking. It is time now to do', before being cut short by Marti Webb singing 'Take that look off your face. I can see through your smile'.

New Labour promises flash up on the screen, followed sharply by headlines about them being broken, as the song - recorded in 1979 - continues. But the attack ad says as much about the party commissioning it as about the party it assaults, and in this case, could draw attention to the vacuity of Tory policies.

The real point of negative advertising is the offer of endless media replication. A brilliant, incisive poster can be unveiled at just a handful of sites, but appear on the front page of every newspaper the next day.

In 1997, Tory sources claimed its New Labour New Danger 'Demon eyes' campaign generated more than £5m of publicity from an investment of £125,000.

This year, it has been speculated that Trevor Beattie's 'Flying pigs' and 'Fagin' ads also accrued £5m of publicity by planting inflammatory images which could be disowned. The negative poster cuts through the cognitive clutter. Moreover, it does not need to be put up in many places, just target seats; controversy is manufactured, and the ads become a news event.

Wider concerns

Though the current election advertising has been undistinguished, this does not mean other aspects of marketing have been mediocre. Labour has succeeded with its use of visual literacy, creating serial tableaux, replicated in the media, which repeatedly telegraph its cultural identity to viewers: Blair with Little Ant and Dec, Blair and Brown at Billingsgate with model families; the stage-managed 'weakest link' manifesto launch at the Mermaid Theatre; posters unveiled in controlled environments with tame journalists and Blair-Brown bonhomie.

Nonetheless, no amount of New Labour urbanity can conceal the lack of a central theme. It is this which disciplines campaigns and creates clarity in the minds of voters. Without this clarity, campaign advertising will always suffer, because it lacks a definition in which to operate.

- Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy is professor of marketing at the University of Keele.