The longer I work in the communication biz I cannot look at a story without thinking who has placed it and the reason it is in the media. So when I saw an interesting story in the BBC earlier titled‘Local Councils in England have £14bn in reserve’ it got me thinking.
The BBC ‘learned’ about the information so it has obviously been leaked to them, but for what reason and by who?
So you have to ask, what will the people reading the story think when they read it, also who benefits from this story and what they are trying to achieve by placing it?
We only have to go back a week and to the Coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review. Now there were a lot of cuts that were announced by George Osborne, but the deepest of the cuts will fall on the local government budget at almost 30% over four years. With these deep cuts in the local government budget the Coalition’s strategy was to pass the tough decisions onto local councils, and as such help divert public resentment away from themselves.
However the Coalition has got a lot of bad media coverage nationally and locally about their decision to cut local government spending by so much. The BBC story is an attempt to deflect responsibility back onto local councils. By saying they have money in reserve and implying their coffers are bulging, the strategy behind this story is to once again put responsibility back on local government and show the public that any cuts are their own decisions and not that of the Coalition Government.
So this gives a reason why this story is in the media and also demonstrates that someone from within the government has given the BBC this information.
David Cameron and George Osborne - the two men behind today's Emergency Budget should be happy at the way it has been positioned
The government has been quick to announce it is cutting its PR and communication budget but what is interesting is the PR of the cuts.
The Emergency Budget is set to be announced today, just as promised within 50 days since the election.
The Government believes it is going to have to make severe cuts to get the country’s finances back in order. The government have tested the public with the earlier announcement of cuts of £6bn of cuts. These were merely just the non-controversial start, ID cards and Quangos are not going to upset too many people and they allowed the government a chance to gauge public opinion.
But we are likely to see the true scale of the cuts in a couple of today’s budget and also further cuts likely to come in the Autumn.
Cuts in the public spending are always going to be controversial, so PR has been vital in order to try to position the government favourably.
The focus of the Con-Dem Government’s media activity has been about the economy and specifically about the need for cuts. They are trying to convince the public – and essentially voters – that the cuts are necessary, the cuts are Labour’s fault and the Con-Dem coalition are saving the economy and the country from tougher times in the future.
The first focus of this PR campaign started before the election with the Conservatives attacking Labour about their handling of the economy. But Luckily for the Conservatives a political consensus had formed about the need for cuts, this allowed the message to be accepted by the public.
Then after forming a government the Conservatives attempted to show the public that the tough decisions they will have to make are merely down to Labour. Stories were fed to the media about how bad the economy and public finances were and how it was all down to Labour. Examples of this are Ministers proclaiming black holes in the department’s budget, the Liam Bryne’s ‘No Money Left’ letter, etc. The strategy then moved onto the consequences of not making cuts, for example Nick Clegg claimed it would not be progressive for future generations to pay for our spending. We have seen in interviews and speeches over the past few weeks time after time government ministers telling us tough times lay ahead, severe cuts will have to be made. They have not given the public details but are merely preparing them for the budget. The public now believe cuts are necessary and that severe cuts are going to be made in today’s Emergency Budget.
We have also had leaks about certain aspects of the budget to try to prepare the public for the cuts and tax rises that will be announced later today – for example a rise in VAT is widely anticipated and if it is confirmed today it will not be a shock.
Overall the Conservative’s communication strategy has been good and they way they have positioned today’s budget, its cuts and tax rises has been top-notch
Although there is a single theme running through all the campaigns – getting us all to think about our impact on the planet and getting us to lower our carbon footprint – there has been a variety of creative executions.
They offered us up a visually stunning creative image with muddy footprints showing everyone has a carbon footprint.
They then moved onto a simple message, with simple solutions, offered up through a simple delivery with ‘Save money, save energy’.
They showed how to save the planet by saving water with ‘Save water’.
Then a bedtime story played on our guilt by suggesting we will leave an apocalyptic future for our children if we don’t ‘Change how the story ends’.
And now we have the latest campaign which asks us to ‘Drive 5 miles less a week’.
The campaign that sticks out is the advert with the dad and his family. It is by far the least creative of the bunch, its delivery is not as powerful, its message is not a strong, but it is by far the best advertising of all the campaigns.
It is entirely focused on trying to change behaviours and not on the far greater challenge of trying to change people’s attitudes of climate change. Although there are snippets of encouraging a change of behaviour in the other adverts, their core theme is the wider picture of global warming.
Everyone has heard about the climate change and some may feel strongly about it, but the majority are indifferent to it. It is not relevant to their lives or they may not be able to see what impact climate change could have on them.
The creative powerhouses washed over my mum, she didn’t scoff at them nor did she turn into an eco-warrior, it just didn’t produce any strong emotion, it genuinely didn’t effect her. But the adverts with the dodgy dad made her take notice. The advert will help lower carbon emissions through the back door as what it was asking us to do was achievable, it is relevant to people and it offered a benefit -saving money.
Climate Change is such a massive issue and it is easy for people to feel overwhelmed by it, but the dad advert is by far the best as it empowers people instead of making them feel powerless.
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.
NHS campaigns have a habit of catching people’s attention by creating harrowing scenes, using powerful imagery or landing a shocking message. But while browsing the Manchester Evening News’ website I came across this piece of advertising from a coalition of Greater Manchester PCTs that caught my eye.
The NHS flash ad on the MEN website (left turns into right)
The advert is promoting the supposed benefit of introducing a minimum price on a unit of alcohol and links to this website (which bizarrely has no mention on minimum alcohol pricing). This is a strange piece of NHS advertising as it’s political. Should the NHS be advertising to try to promote a change in the law? They have strayed into political advertising and this is not the kind of stuff we usually see from them. Their advertising is normally limited to public health advertising and the occasional recruitment campaign.
It is fair enough for the BMA have their say on the issue of binge drinking as they are a pressure group, but the NHS is a government organisation and you would think they would be only allowed to advertise government policy or messages the government wants to promote.
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.
