Can Obama's lessons save Gillard?

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday November 16,2012

The American election is over and you can be sure that in the headquarters of Australia's political parties, the lights are burning late as our own political pundits study the lessons.

Not many months from now, we will be bombarded by TV ads, billboards, leaflets and hearty telephone callers, as election fever crosses the Pacific like a tsunami of persuasion.

0bama's resurrection will inject new hope into the ALP as they see the pendulum swing back their way. Meanwhile the Coalition will be putting a Chinese burn on the arm of every supporter to squeeze out funds.

It's good news for our media owners. Every available TV spot will be snapped up, papers will be able to print extra pages, peak rates will be paid without argument.

But if there's one lesson that has emerged from America it's that content matters more than quantity. What won for President Obama was careful targeting and steely consistency.

In the end, elections are won by a few votes in a few seats. This will be the case here as it was there. In America they spent a billion dollars for what proved to be a few thousand votes.

Just as important was the remorseless door knocking, phoning and election-day voter-fetching. I wondered at the time whether the badly fluffed first debate - when Obama allowed the world to see how sick he was of all the election bull - wasn't deliberate. It scared his supporters out of their complacency, scared him into action too. Perhaps it was a self-inflicted slap in the face.

Where the advertising was needed was in defining the issues. The Democrats carefully controlled much of their media, including the outside support groups, keeping the lid on the crazies. The Republicans had 37 groups, ranging from tea-party to gun associations and anti-abortionists. What the Republicans didn't say is what the public wanted to know: who is Mitt Romney? To the end he remained the enigma, Mr Flip Flop.

Back home the lessons will be closely analysed by Brian Loughnane, a keen student of American politics, and his wife Peta Credlin. They are Tony Abbott's praetorian guard - Loughnane federal director of the Liberal Party and Credlin chief of staff.

They are credited with getting Abbott this close to power and now tasked with giving him the final push over the line.

Their opponent was revealed just last week. Mark Collis has been appointed to assemble an ALP advertising team. As a creative director at both Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, followed by a stint at Telstra, he is well regarded in marketing circles. The campaign will be based in Melbourne, to keep it free of the notorious NSW political machine.

Julia Gillard's senior political strategist, John McTernan, has been spending time with President Obama's pollster, Joel Benenson, learning about fine-tuning data bases and getting messages out to the right people at the right time.

Obama won through clever targeting of women, latinos, young people and auto industry families. All perceived as areas of weakness in Romney's campaign. It's interesting to note that not long after returning from her chat with Obama, the PM inflicted a festering wound on Abbott with her misogyny speech.

Now Loughnane has to find ways to get Abbott out of the "Dr No" cage he made for himself - which will be hard when much of the campaign's resources will be spent on negative advertising.

Because, we have to face it, unpleasant as they are - negative ads work, and we will be seeing lots more of them in the coming year.

ray@ebeatty.com
Blog: themarketeer-raybeatty.blogspot.com