Election '10: why the parties' marketing leaves us hanging
Studio North's Kerry Dennison argues that the three main political parties need to be more distinctive with their marketing if they want to grab voters' attention during the final week of campaigning.
Well... five years has come all too quickly and it's election time again. The polls are hinting at a hung parliament so the need for political parties to connect with the electorate has never been as important.
The UK population is bombarded with creative adverts and communications every day. The consumer, of which we all are for political parties, is now a pretty sophisticated beast so Planet Westminster needs to recognise this at a grass roots level.
You drive around any constituency in the North West and you see a wave of red, blue and orange placards declaring an allegiance but the real influence comes from the high profile billboard sites, posters and online ads that are designed to communicate the actual policies.
In elections gone by, the tendency was to demonise the opposition - just think of the 'Red Eyes -New Labour/ New Danger' poster in 1997 - but that kind of negative personality based marketing is just not relevant anymore. The expenses scandal has cast such a shadow and the economic crisis now means that most people's primary concerns are on jobs, front-line services and the recovery - not tit-for-tat point scoring.
There also seems to be a duplication of messaging which highlights the fact that parties aren't adopting the basic rules of branding and marketing... they all say the same thing! The Labour Party has the campaign line 'A Future Fair for All' and the Lib Dems, ' Building a Fairer Britain'. Great, everyone wants things to be fair, brilliant! But how do I distinguish one brand from the other?
Sure.. we've seen Dave in his kitchen, Gordon trying to empathise with working mums and Nick digging an allotment with his stunning wife but if political parties don't adopt an effective, engaging and message based marketing strategy in the last week of the campaign then they will, almost certainly, meet the pollsters predictions.