Ideas Made Well

If you go through the post-mortem of Obama’s triumph*, there are several fascinating “things he did” that led to his victory. As one cynic noted at the time, it was probably enough to say “I am not George W Bush and believe that everything that W stood for, was wrong.” would have been a pretty compelling strategy. But of course, politics is not as simple as that.

Obama pushed a number of buttons apart from not being Dubya – his opponent wasn’t W either after all.

1) He was perceived to “stand up to lobbyists and special interests”. Strange then that in the UK as we enter the pre-election phase, that so much has been spoken about the role of the House of Lords.

2) He told people “what they needed to hear vs what they wanted to hear”. Sounds a bit close to the Tory party views on the economy doesn’t it?

3) Obama’s team also declared: “This is an election for change”. How close is that to the current Tory slogan? Research showed that 34% of Americans were looking for change, and that 90% of them ended up voting for Obama.

4) He said that “he was looking for people around him who were calm. That’s how I am”. Funny then how Gordon Brown’s temper was suddenly revealed a couple of weeks ago.

There are plenty of other examples of how the Obama success story has been absorbed by all the parties over here; Labour’s attacks on Cameron’s Etonian background clearly are aimed at painting Gordon as the more Obama-like from a class point of view.

So, is it bad that the election strategies consist of doing the negativity thing (They’re cr*p and they know they are), which has characterised every political campaign for the last 40 years, or that the party strategists have dissected Obama’s route to victory and sought to apply those lessons?

Start would say “Yes”.

There has been a lot of talk about the incredible traction that Obama was able to make using social networks. In reality, the social networks were used for fundraising rather than anything more imaginative. It was a really successful strategy, raising $151m dollars in one month alone. This then enabled things like a 30 minute advertorial to be transmitted, which cost a mere $7m dollars and hit 33m people. So, it would be wrong to say that they didn’t use social networks very well….but fundraising is not a key issue in the UK – or at least nowhere near as important as in the USA where TV advertising still dominates as the medium of choice for political parties.

The beauty of social networks is that they allow you to show your prejudices. If I was a floating voter, I would definitely be influenced by what my social circle thought. Assume the average number of friends is 100, and that half professed allegiance to party A, while only 10% supported party B, that may well be an influence.

Posters that have innocuous claims of “We must change the NHS for the better” cost a whole lot more money, and can’t be that effective to any person with a brain. No substance underneath it – it is just a claim. “Committed to the NHS”. “Dedicated to a healthier Britain”. “Protecting essential services”. Blah blah blah. How does anyone really think that messages like this are going to change the status quo?

This SHOULD be the first election that genuinely uses the various digital platforms to make a difference – but we are already getting the photo opportunities that would have worked 40 years ago, and the posters that either say nothing or that slag off the main opposition.

PR will always have a key role in politics and it is where “dirtier strategies” can be employed. But often the messages are geared to making the party faithful ever more faithful, rather than attacking the floating voter. To effectively get to the floating voter, as in normal commercial life, you need to turn on the floating buyer, and you need to provide an argument of substance, and then communicate it succinctly but persuasively.

The vast majority of the target audience (the voters) don’t really care about who wins. That is a reality. Going back to the Obama lessons, perhaps his biggest plus was the fact that he was authentic. He didn’t appear to be playing the game. and hence demonstrated he was nothing like W. Sarah Palin and Joe whatsisname, played the game overtly. And so whatever they said about not being like W, they came across as being just like W.

So what would Start recommend to a political party to ensure success?

Ten golden rules:

1. Be authentic. Don’t underestimate the intelligence of the floating voter.

2. Restrict photo opportunities that are clearly set up.

3. Use social networks to use supporters to do the hard work for you.

4. If you are going to use posters, make sure that what you are saying is truly motivating and provides some new information.

5. Think carefully about who campaigns on your behalf. Having a devout Tory or Labour supporter try to force their views on the unconverted is destined for failure.

6. Learn from successful brands rather than learning just from successful political campaigns.

7. Accept that your target audience is not everyone in the country – the floating voter is your bullseye, not your most enthusiastic supporter.

8. Don’t get too reactive – it turns the battle into a spat.

9. Try and use media that allow you to explain “why”. And make sure you don’t have hundreds of people signing off what gets published

10. Be confident. If you believe something and you have a strong rationale, just say it.

There are clearly lessons to be learned from how Obama won but that should be only part of the strategy. It isn’t a strategy simply to mimic what has worked before.

*Source: The New Yorker: Battle Plans. ‘How Obama Won’, by Ryan Lizza, November 17 2008.

Rodney Fitch CBE founded Fitch in 1972. During a distinguished career, spanning nearly forty years, Fitch has also been active in the evolution of design education and the arts. Indeed when social historians analyse the past 20 years they will be unable to ignore Rodney Fitch; with Sir Terence Conran, he will be acknowledged as a chief architect of the retailing revolution.

Founder and chairman of Fitch-RS, the design group, he introduced the high street to stripped wood, chrome, glass and colour co-ordinates. Leading retailers to have benefited from being “Fitched” include Asda, Woolworths, Ryman, Top Shop, Debenhams and Boots. Such is his record for boosting sales through design that non-shopkeepers have also come knocking at his door; including Lloyd’s of London, Midland Bank, Heathrow Terminal 4, BT cordless phones and the Imperial War Museum.

Rodney came to Start’s London office and spoke about his career in design, and his views on design as an agent of change, its value to society and how design fosters innovation and helps shape a civil society.

Has anyone else been inundated with mailshots from potential candidates?

Not the standard shiny leaflet stuffed through the door (they presumably will come later) but the letter on four-colour letterhead sent by second class post, which must be costing a fair old bit if everyone in the constituency is getting the same. The content always starts off quite well, giving you an insight into the candidate but very soon slips into “The other party/parties are crap” mode, and then revels in attacking the policies/record of the other parties.

Such negative campaigning has been the basis of all political campaigns in the UK for as long as anyone can remember and so surely it must work. But does it really?
I suspect it doesn’t work nearly as well as convention would suggest. But, just like two football teams that hate each other, the war of words seems unavoidable.

The big difference is that no game of football ensues, so the combat is just words. Therefore it feels hollow and without substance.

Richard Branson is someone who has made ‘negative campaigning’ work, but he always has an argument or a reason to believe, before he lets rip. If only politicians followed his lead – so much of what they say is truly vacuous. “We need a better NHS”. “We must put education first”. “We need more police on the street to fight crime”. “We must ensure our boys in Iraq get the support they need”. This isn’t a strategy, and in this way, all the parties are as bad as each other, and it all sounds like political nonsense.

Yet the people in charge of the communications for all the parties are all really clever and very experienced – so how does this happen?

A lot of it comes down to passion and ideology. Without it, you don’t have a political party. With it, you have people who want to ram it down people’s throats. Some of the best brands in the world have a clear ideology but they also have a true understanding of target audiences, that goes beyond doing loads of research groups that ask people what they want. If their insight stopped there, then there would be no new products or new ideas. The best brands interpret research rather than just accept it as gospel – this is probably difficult with ideologically-based party stalwarts.

As with any other brand, political parties need ideas that make people sit up and think. Slagging off your competition can be one aspect of a campaign, providing you have a clear rationale for your slagging, and a plan to do it better that people believe, but it can never be the sole reason why people like you.

Yet it won’t be a surprise if the strategies of all the main parties will go down this route. Imagine a bloke trying to chat up a girl and spending the whole evening agressively saying how rubbish his rival suitors are. No communications agency would recommend such a route if they were working for the bloke. Working for political parties seems to colour the advice that is given. Negativity will rule and voters will ignore most of it. The party that will win is the party that moves away from conventional wisdom and resists the temptation (to the greatest degree) to slag off the ‘other lot’. This is 2010 after all, and whilst consumer-driven marketing is still a rarity, there is lots of evidence that it works …..

In the words of Barack Obama, can we change the way that political campaigns are delivered? Yes, we can.