Latest Tory billboard campaign which was
rumoured to have cost the party £500,000
While Euro RSCG London may be getting a bit of a boost from the Tory party at the moment it is safe to say that the industry is going to take a battering if they assume power in the General Election.
Companies have cut back on their marketing expenditure during the recession but the government has done the opposite. Government ad spend during the previous financial year was a record £211m, up 35% on the year before. This has helped someway to plug the gap that has been left by a shrinking of commercial advertising spend. Now of course the advertising and media industries must be terrified that if the government cuts back before we are out of the recession they are going to be in trouble.
There has been a recent trend that government ad spend shot up in the run up to a General Election. So it may be lucky for advertisers and the media there will be a poll next year.
Accusations have been thrown at the current government of increasing ad spend in the run up to the past two elections, in particular the last three months before the polls open. Have a look at the lovely graph I made, the orange bars show COI’s advertising spend in the financial year before the elections held in 2001 and 2005, both of which were held in May.
Figures show in the run up to the 2001 General Election advertising spend was £60 over three months. This was double what it was the previous year and almost half of the year’s entire budget. £16m was spent in January 2001, this rose to £16.4m in February and ad spend ballooned to £30.2m by March.
And amongst the 15 campaigns that were launched was a £3m campaign targeting benefit fraud. Why not have a watch yourself of some vintage government advertising…
Fair enough you might say, we have to target those dam benefit cheats and this advert may put the frightners on them. However the government was accused of not even targeting the campaign at those likely to commit benefit fraud. Panorama used a couple of media analysts to show that press ad expenditure was almost all in the ‘quality press’. Titles such as The Times, The Telegraph were used while The Sun, The Mirror and The Star were largely ignored. I’m not in trying to flare up a class war, but those likely to commit benefit fraud would probably favour the tabloids. So the message was accused of being targeted at those key middle class voters, the ones who’s support would win a second term for Labour.
Reassuring voters
Opponents have accused the government of trying to sneaking party propaganda into publicly funded ad campaigns. It’s not a new argument, Tony Blair levelled the accusation at the Tories in the build up to the 1987 election. But are sexual health, binge drinking, drugs and knife crime ads merely launched to reassure worried voters the administration is taking action on issues of public concern? Are they about reassuring the middle classes or are they intended to help solve the problem? Take the government’s new climate change campaign (picture at top) is this meant to help persuade people Global Warming is a serious issue or is it meant to reassure the green vote and persuade skeptics that the government is taking climate change seriously?
There are two arguments that critics throw at the government. The first is that government launch campaigns (like the benefit fraud spots) to reassure skeptical voters and not really to try and tackle the problem. However surely this cannot be said of the majority of government advertising campaigns, which are launched to try and tackle serious problems. Adverts are needed for public sector recruitment, to inform of new or changing laws or change people’s opinions about serious social issues. Adverts launched by the NHS about spotting strokes or quitting smoking cannot be viewed as political and are genuine attempts to help solve serious problems.
However the other and perhaps more damaging criticism is that the government jacks up it spend in the year preceding an election in the hope that a blitz of advertising will create the impression of furious government activity, in doing so persuade sceptical voters the government is working hard and tackling sensitive issues that are of concern.
Ad blitz in 2010?
Of course if advertising spend does jump again – particularly after last year’s record spend – it will lead to huge criticism of Gordon Brown and his government, especially as the public debt is at a record level. But with an election being held in either May or June the polls will have been closed for some time before the COI publishes it annual report in July, therefore the government may not have to worry too much about the backlash of ramping up its ad spend from now until the election. But an indicator that the government is beefing up its spend will be obvious to all. First the award of accounts after a number of pitches and then the inevitable bombardment of campaigns that will hit our TVs, magazines, radios, billboards, bus stops, buses and newspapers in early 2010.
Mark Lund, the chief executive of COI, recently told Campaign: “Government campaigns can help save lives and save money.” Well Gordon Brown may be hoping a government advertising blitz in the build up to the 2010 Election will help save Labour MPs and save his government.
While watching a bit of Question Time it was announced the head of UK McDonald’s will be a panelist in a few weeks time. This got me thinking how McDonald’s situation a few years ago is so similar to the row over MPs’ expenses.
McDonald’s came under intense pressure a few years ago from the media, the odd grassroots campaign and a lengthy libel case. It got so bad they even got their very own phrase coined in the dictionary. ‘McJob‘ basically describes a terrible job with little chance career development; apparently not many burger flippers were making it to the boardroom.
It was a pretty bad time for the public image of the company. They generally got a lot of pad publicity for a number of things, they took a battering in the media and through things such as McLibel and Super Size Me.
As a result of all the fuss they changed. And by golly there can be no argument that they have. They now have a healthier menu, their Happy Meals have the option of carrot sticks, grapes, orange juice and water. They are now a top employer and have all the official awards to back this up. They are now more open about the nutritional value of their food and what it is actually made of. A fantastic turn around for the company. As such they have had a lot of positive things to shout about and they will be the first to tell us all. One of their recent TV spots by ad agency Leo Burnett demonstrates their new business practices perfectly.
They may have genuinely wanted to change their business, although you may take the view they were pressurised into changing due to the bad publicity. It was this drip, drip, drip of bad media coverage and the pressure that just kept building up until they hand was forced and they to change their business.
In the same way this is true about MPs’ expenses. You get the impression that they don’t genuinely want to change, I doubt many of them want the public to know what they spent our money on. But it is a series of shocking revelations, the continued media coverage and public pressure that has forced Gordon Brown and his Government to do something. They know they have to change the system - which they have already started to do - but they have been reluctant to do so.
But if it wasn’t for the Freedom of Information campaign and then the subsequent revelations by the Daily Telegraph, the bad publicity, the media coverage and the subsequent demand from the public which followed, MPs would have continued business as normal.
While the government has been busy promoting energy efficient light bulbs, in a bid to oust traditional incandescent ones, it seems they have wasted their time, money and effort.
The government, along with the EU, has been that busy pushing incandescent bulbs into extinction that they didn’t see the rise of the LED.
LED bulbs are three times more energy efficient than current energy savings ones, they light instantly, have no mercury in them and last about 10 times longer.
LEDs have been around for a while but bulbs were expensive to produce costing around £20 a pop.
But now scientists have found a way to produce the man-made Gallium Nitrate, which is used in LEDs, cheaply and so bulbs will now cost only £2.
If they were used across the country they would cut the amount of electricity needed for lighting from 20 per cent to 5 per cent every year.
And the best part they are expected to be ready for sale in a few years.
Instead of building more power stations to feed energy wasting light bulbs scientists are dreaming up ways to our cut energy usage.
The Government has party funded this research through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, but why is the Labour Government not applying this principle to the rest of its energy policies?
They seem to have it the the wrong way round.
Labour Ministers are obsessed with talk about creating electricity rather than reducing the amount we use.
Instead of dreaming up plans for nuclear power stations and a new coal plant at Kingsnorth, why are they not providing cash and incentives to insulate homes, businesses and public buildings?
Gordon Brown should start an energy efficiency revolution to reduce our energy consumption, slash greenhouse gas emissions and lower our energy bills.
We need more political action on energy reduction and less on energy production.
