Melbourne Herald Sun, 30th January, 2010
If you think business is a competitive slog - keeping your product on the shelf, fighting price-cutting rivals, being subject to the whims of public popularity - then spare a little sympathy for politicians.
Theirs is the hardest task of all, with opinions fluctuating almost weekly and always some new election just around the corner. They use all the same phrases as marketers - defining the brand, segmenting the market, profiling the consumer (voter), and selling the message.
And if any politician tells you they are not interested in opinion polls, watch their eyes carefully through the TV screen because they are lying.
It's some years since I worked on a political campaign but I've got to tell you it's exciting. Your clients are all these famous faces off the telly, everything you do seems to end up on the evening news.
Issues can blow up into disasters in the space of a day, and the advertisers and policy makers will huddle together to hammer out a response. Sometimes you'd run out of a meeting straight to a studio to make a TV commercial overnight.
If that sounds stressful, you'd better believe it. But then after a while the adrenaline becomes addictive.
Right now we are seeing the political chooks aflap in three continents.
America's love affair with Barack Obama has turned to plate-throwing before they've even wiped the "Just Married" paint off the car. Two govenorships and Ted Kennedy's holy seat wiped out in a voter backlash that has both President and party stunned.
Always too smart to be proud, Obama has called back the team that did it for him in the first place. David Plouffe was his campaign manager in the election and he has been put in charge of all the Democrats' coming elections in November.
Taking another nibble of humble pie, he has turned to Bill Clinton. Not surprisingly - Clinton's biography for his first term reads like a day plan for what has happened to Obama to date. However, Clinton rescued himself and won a second term. Suddenly he is being looked on with new respect.
Of course down here it all sounds familiar, looking at our own Prime Minister. The Rudd of Kevin 07 has lost his gloss and even at a time when the economy and employment are bright there are still plenty of worried frowns.
The opinion polls are running strongly for the Government so far this year, according to Gary Morgan. The ALP sits on a comfortable 58.5 against a Liberal-National Party 41.5, and the PM at 61 per cent approval.
But every politician knows how quickly the tide can turn, especially with a new opposition leader in an election year.
So as in America, the ALP is re-igniting its advertising team. Nearly 30 years ago, Bob Hawke amazed the country by appointing arch-rightist John Singleton to do the ALP advertising, using his agency, now called STW. But Singo has gone, as have the key creatives who devised the campaigns.
So recently the party swapped to McCann-Erickson. This was the agency that created 1972's It's Time campaign, so the party has come full circle. Presumably their brief is, "It's not yet time".
It's an election year in Britain too, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown looking like he's preparing the charge of the Light Brigade. Within five months he will be galloping against the massed guns of a revitalised Conservative Party under their glamorous young leader David Cameron.
UK Labour's ad team is feverishly studying the Obama history book in the hope of inspiration. Sorry fellas, the author needs a bit of it himself right now.
Ray@ebeatty.com
