Melbourne Herald Sun, 28th August 2010
Whichever party wins government in the next few days, there is one fact that can't be denied: the Liberals won the campaigning and Labor lost.
While the rest of this newspaper debates the politics, let's see if there is a marketing lesson to be learned by those of us in business. You see the seeds of defeat were planted on Monday 26th November 2007. That day should have been the commencement of Labor's re-election campaign, Monday after the victory of Kevin 07.
Successful marketers start preparing their next campaign immediately. In fact there should always be one on the whiteboard - even as you run your current advertising burst, plan how you will do the next.
This was the system Labor ran back in the 80s when Cain locally and Hawke nationally, were always ready to win the next campaign. The modern team are obviously too young to remember.
I'm sorry to tell those commentators who say the parties should be more flexible and willing to debate the hard questions, that it's never going to happen. That's not how you win elections.
Want to see how it's done? Look at Tony Abbot. He had an impossible task - defeating a successful incumbent government with record employment and economic success. But his team devised a simple strategy.
From the end of last year they planned the marketing of the campaign very carefully. Enough time would pass for the memory of the Malcolm Turnbull assassination to fade. They selected a handful of key issues. They gave each of them its own shibboleth - a magic password to be repeated again and again in place of any debate. And they stuck to it like glue.
By now you can recite them in your sleep. "The new big fat tax", "we will stop the boats", "cut the massive debt", "stop wasteful spending". The phrases were repeated again and again, with absolutely minimal discussion.
You could see Joe Hockey cringe as he mouthed simplistic phrases like "big fat ugly tax" and “a balanced budget by 2013". He would have wanted to say something more meaningful, more perceptive. But he was under orders to stay on message or face the Abbott wrath. He stayed on message.
Labor’s campaign error was in not preparing its own shibboleths. Maybe, "we're the world's best economic managers”, “we saved your job", "we rebuilt health and education", "we'll give you a broadband network".
Keep hammering at those over-simplified statements until the politicians believe them and eventually the public will believe them too. Sorry to say it but there's no room for complexity in modern politics, nor is there in modern marketing. As the poet said, "keep it simple, stupid!"
Look at your own advertising. Sure your product has dozens of great attributes. Sure you could talk for hours about the benefits. But don’t. Select one or two phrases and stick to them. And make sure everyone else does too.
The hardest part of an advertising agency’s job is to keep the client on track. Clients get bored with one positioning for their product. They’ve seen the new commercial a dozen times before it went to air and after it has played for a few months they believe the public is as bored with it as they are. Wrong. The public has only just started to notice it.
So what about “the real Julia”? Well that should have been planned for from the start. Instead they put her into a straight jacket that made her look like a mannequin. Only in the last couple of weeks did she break free - and start hard-playing the shibboleths: “better schools and hospitals”, “move Australia forward”, “better economic management”, “building a 21st century economy”. Repetitive short sharp simple phrases, just like Tony Abbott was doing. Only he was already months ahead.
Take a lesson from Triathlon Man. Before you launch your campaign decide precisely what your objectives are. Set the key target points and give each one a shibboleth - five words at the most. And then make sure that everybody in your team knows them and sticks to them.
