Celebrating the birth of the polls

Melbourne Herald Sun, Friday December 9, 2011

Opinion polls rule! Politicians jump at their peaks and troughs and are quick to dump candidates, even leaders, who can’t get the numbers. Products are minutely researched before they see the light of day.

We know about how many of us are fat or thin, when and how we shop, what we feel about any issue from a war to a proposed traffic island, and how often we have sex - and with whom. All is known to the all-seeing eye as we are pursued by armies of researchers.

But 70 years ago none of this existed. Here in Australia we may have read an occasional article about opinion polls in America, but on this quiet isle we relied on taxi driver polls.

Then in 1940 Sir Keith Murdoch (father of Rupert) sent his bright young accountant, Roy Morgan, to the US to find out about opinion polls from Dr George Gallup, founding father of the industry.

When he returned, Morgan was Australia’s leading - only - expert on the subject and immediately was put to work researching for this paper’s ancestors, the Melbourne Herald group.

In the spring of 1941, three months before Pearl Harbour, Murdoch set Morgan the task of measuring a “reader interest survey” for the Sydney Sun. It was Australia’s first “Gallup” opinion poll, measuring attitudes to equal pay for men and women.

Incidentally 60 per cent were in favour, showing that even 70 years ago, Australians were egalitarians.

However, political polling was tricky in the middle of a fierce war, but after it ended Morgan applied the Gallup method to pick the winning party for the next five federal elections from 1946 to 1954, within a margin of 1 percent.

Today of course an election would be unthinkable without its polls - and just about every other week in the year.

The Roy Morgan Research Centre became independent in 1959, though it received housing, power and postage from The Herald until 1973. But the other papers, and then television channels, were not going to take this lying down.

Since the late 60s, a number of polling companies have pushed forward. These days News Limited features within its stables the Newspoll and the Galaxy Poll.

In the early 70s Rod Cameron, whose research had guided John Cain, and then Bob Hawke, to their victories, formed ANOP. Fairfax use multi-national grocery researchers Nielsen.

What they all share is a high degree of accuracy that has grown from long practice. At the end of most modern campaigns, the postmortem shows all the major companies within a couple of percentage points of the outcome.

In both politics and consumer research they have introduced innovative methods. We are now familiar with political debates being underlined by a “worm”.

Morgans claim to have devised it, but the term “worm” has rapidly become a common noun so now it is named The Reactor . This is the squiggly lines across your TV screens as politicians debate, to show the public’s immediate reaction.

This is now available as an iPhone app from the Morgans web site so you can participate in research wherever you may be. The plan is to encourage TV viewers to comment on programs as they run - the good bits, the boring bits, the flow of interest. So if you want you can invite the all-seeing eye into your home.

Meanwhile, today, Morgans are having a 70th birthday party.

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

Rudd, Obama and the political beauty contest

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