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TONY BLAIR: "We're not just standing here
slagging off the Tories..."
DAVID GROSSMAN: It was the most aggressive British
election ever. Attacking billboards filled our streets - many complete
with senior politicians helpfully pointing at the words, lest we missed
their none too subtle message. Nineteen-ninety-seven was the high-spend,
hard sell, no punches pulled, billboard blitz.
CHRIS POWELL: At the last election the
Conservatives basically tries to buy the election, by the fact that they
knew they could get their hands on more money than Labour. And they hoped
that just by spending enormous sums of money that they would be able to
win the election.
GROSSMAN: In the tone of its advertising,
this election promises to be every bit as much of a slanging match as last
time, perhaps more so, since what little regulation there was, has now
completely vanished. But in terms of the scale of the billboard and press
campaign, this election will be nothing like as extensive as last time.
The parties would have had to have reigned back their expenditure anyway
- they are now subject to strict campaign spending limits, but also, their
strategists now think they've got a better way of grabbing your attention.
LORD BELL: I think the advertising
in this campaign will be utterly irrelevant and of no great interest.
I don't think that's where the battleground is. I think the battleground
is in direct marketing within the marginal seats.
GROSSMAN: You may not have noticed
but advertising at the last election was actually regulated. The Tories
were made to pull this rather comic but, meant to be sinister, portrayal
of Tony Blair, because they hadn't asked to use his picture. But when
the Tories tried to have this Labour effort banned, they were told to take
it on the chin. Blatant bias, screamed the Tories. Fearing another political
pummeling, the advertising authority which refereed the last code, has
stepped out of the ring - saying they won't come back until the parties
have agreed a new code.
ANDREW BROWN: Politicians are individuals
who seek legislative solutions to all problems they encounter, or certainly
regulatory ones if not legislative ones, and here they are, deeming themselves
to be a body above any form of regulation, whether it be self-regulation,
or statutory control, and I actually think that is, I think that's kind
of bad for them, I don't think it's particularly good for the advertising
business either.
GROSSMAN: The parties though, aren't
keen to have anyone looking down in judgement on their adverts, they fear
that being found guilty of breaking the rules could de-rail their whole
campaign, perhaps within days of an election.
LORD BELL: I think regulation in
advertising is a ridiculous thing. It shouldn't happen. I think it particularly
shouldn't happen on politics because politics is about ideas, it's not
about facts, it's about people putting forward their ideas and their opinions
and their ambitions and their hopes, and those things you can't regulate,
you can't say that's an acceptable idea, that isn't an acceptable idea,
that's an idea that's not, you know, not proper. Who the hell is going
to sit in that kind of judgmental role? They can't.
LORD RENNARD: It is a shame though, that
perhaps there isn't some control, such as there is over other adverts.
The Advertising Standards Authority, I think, would be very interested
in some of the claims made by parties, but in practice of course, there's
a very short period of time between these adverts appearing and polling
day, so I think what's crucially important is that the media themselves
must actually scrutinise the claims made by the parties in their advertisements
and help guide people, as to whether or not these claims are realistic
and honest.
GROSSMAN: New Labour fell in love
with advertising. They saw the success it helped the Tories achieve and
dreamed about what it could do for them. A strong advert also fitted in
with New Labour's obsession with staying on message - whatever the leader
writers and journalists were chattering about, a paid advert would always
stay focused and true to the party line. But now Labour isn't attacking
the government, it is the government.
Well away from the Westminster front-line, in advertising agencies like
this, they manufacture ammunition for the politicians. Chris Powell designed
fizzing grenades for Labour to lob at the Tories from the mid-seventies
right up until nineteen-ninety-seven. In advertising terms, he says he
believes governments give the tougher brief.
POWELL: I think it is more difficult
to run campaigns as government as advertising campaigns. It's interesting
that when the Conservatives were in government, if you look at the way
that they advertised, they always did it as though they were the opposition,
in that they always attacked Labour as though Labour was really the incumbent,
and said how incompetent and useless Labour was, because the alternative
really is just to boast about how good you are, which is deeply boring
and exactly what you'd expect someone to say. So, it is a bit more difficult,
but I think the answer to the difficulty is to make sure that you spend
your time lambasting the opposition rather than praising your own efforts.
GROSSMAN: And that lambasting has
begun. The themes of Labour's campaign are already obvious. While one
poster, with some "y-shaped" scissors attacks the Tories for planning cuts
in the future, another reminds voters of the Conservative's record. This
is one film Labour thinks voters won't want to see again. As an election
strategy though it's a classic, according to Lady Thatcher's favourite
ad-man.
LORD BELL: What the Labour Party
is bound to do is what we did in nineteen-eighty-three. We ran a campaign
for Mrs. Thatcher that was called "Britain's on the right track, don't
turn back" and we also made a great song and dance about the winter of
discontent that occurred in seventy-eight, when everything was on strike
and you couldn't bury your dead and so on. And we ran a great campaign
called "Do you remember the winter of discontent?" They will run a campaign
that is "Do you remember the Major government?"
GROSSMAN: Meanwhile outside Conservative
headquarters the Tories are almost ready to unveil their latest effort.
They too, more or less have to go negative, hitting out at Tony Blair for
not delivering on promises, or for planning to scrap the pound. This time,
ready to point at the words for us, is the Shadow Chancellor, Michael Portillo.
Now, Labour's "y-shaped" scissors have been turned into an attack on Tony
Blair. Sharp certainly, but will it do the job?
DR MARGARET SCAMMELL: I think it would be a nightmare to
be a Tory strategist at the moment. Room for manoeuvre is so slight, they're
going to have to wage a negative campaign, they simply have no option,
their positives are very low, what are they going to do with Hague? They
can't run a positive campaign around William Hague in the way that Labour
were able to run a positive campaign around Tony Blair with his message
of hope in nineteen-ninety-seven. They can't do that, the Tories, because
Hague isn't particularly respected even by people who say they're going
to vote Tory.
GROSSMAN: But the Tories also tried
a very negative and personal billboard campaign at the Scottish parliamentary
elections. And even dressing up the then SNP leader, Alex Salmond, up
as a telletubbie, didn't get the voters saying "again, again." Nor did
making Mr. Brown into a reservoir dog. Advertising, it seems, isn't guaranteed
to be a devastating weapon, no matter how negative and personal you are
prepared to get.
POWELL: It's actually a very weak
conversion tool, and thank goodness that it is, because if people were
really that manipulable, we'd live in a very difficult world. So if you
get someone trying to deny your experience, it just doesn't work, because
your experience is obviously much stronger to you than what any advertiser
might say. So you may remember in the past there was some wonderful advertising
that said it was the age of the train, or it's the wonder of Woolies, when
it clearly wasn't, and it didn't have any effect on anyone. And to the
same point really, the demon eyes advertising saying that Tony Blair was
a devil, didn't create a single, even teeniest-weeniest little blip in
the polls, it created enormous media interest, as does taking down your
trousers in public.
GROSSMAN: All the Liberal Democrats
are taking down is the cover on their new ad. The party's MPs and candidates
let out a cheer, not just because they're being told to, but also because
they rather like the fact that much of their advertising, as here, is very
often positive. Actually, they don't have the budget to get down and dirty
with the other parties. They parade their limited means as a virtue. The
Punch and Judy show, as they call Labour/Tory billboard ding-dong, is just
not their style.
LORD RENNARD: Well actually I think the
Conservatives are being so negative about Labour, and Labour are being
so negative about the Conservatives, we don't need to say anything negative
about either of them really. We will concentrate on what we will do to
invest more in Education, and in Health and giving pensioners a better
deal, and protecting the environment, and that's a very positive message,
backed up by saying where the money would come from.
GROSSMAN: Money in this election
is important. For the first time, campaign spending will be capped. It
means the the parties will have to get high-tech.
The limit on campaign spending will have an impact on what the parties
can do. In nineteen-ninety-seven, both Labour and the Tories spent over
twenty-five million pounds, trying to persuade us to vote for them. For
a May the third election they'd be capped at fourteen-point-eight million
pounds. So, if they can't spend bigger, they'll have to spend smarter.
Whilst in the eighties, politicians would talk with breathless reverence
about the power of advertising, today the big wheeze is marketing.
LORD BELL: The vast majority of
the funds are going to be spent on what we call direct marketing. What
that means is, communicating directly to individuals in their homes, direct
mail-shots, telephone calls, communication to e-mail addresses through
the web. Basically, advertising is mass-marketing, you say something and
it's looked at by millions of people, direct marketing is actually individually
talking to each person by name. I mean, I know that both big parties have
got the names and addresses and telephone numbers of every uncommitted
voter in every marginal seat, those poor people are going to be telephoned,
written to, have their doors knocked on, contacted on their e-mail address
if they have one, that's what direct marketing is about and that's what
the bulk of the money is going to be spent on.
GROSSMAN: If you're in a key constituency
and one of the parties knows your e-mail address, this is just the sort
of thing you might find in you inbox. What the Tories call an e-vert,
can be dispatched to millions of computers for less than the price of one
first-class stamp. So, does that mean the poster is past it?
POWELL: If you stopped advertising,
the other side probably wouldn't stop advertising, and rather like trench
warfare, it's probably safe while you're both lobbing shells at each other,
and in fact that is rather the case, that what happens during an election
is usually very little. The efforts of both parties cancel each other
out, but if they stopped, and the other side kept shelling, you might well
be over run. So I think, you know, the large part of the expenditure on
advertising in election campaigns itself, is to neutralise the incoming
fire that's coming at you.
GROSSMAN: Although the billboard
might be out of favour with party strategists, a snappy ad still inspires
the troops like nothing else. The parties will probably never entirely
do away with their full-page ads and bellowing billboards, but in the spiel
for votes, the incessant whisper of direct marketing is probably the voice
of the future.
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