Scottish political parties' PR strategies - a review

Scotland turned yellow and black on Friday with a truly astonishing SNP victory, the largest in Scottish parliamentary history. And it did so only a year after the party’s major rival, Scottish Labour, maintained its dominance and increased its share of the vote at the General Election in Scotland.

How exactly did the SNP so successfully overcome those challenges and what if anything did the PR strategies of all the major parties have to do with it all?

This was a typical election with traditional techniques at play. Twitter, Flickr and Facebook were used to greater effect than ever before, but mostly to record events and as forums for staunch campaigners rather than as a means to attract new votes. And intriguingly the TV debates appear to have made no impact whatsoever, which is quite the opposite of the Westminster elections.

The PR battleground this year wasn’t a key issue or a moral dividing line – it was tone of voice and personality politics.

SNP

Scottish Labour was undone by the SNP’s wholly positive approach. A campaign fought on three ‘P’s – personality; populism; positivity – had at its heart an unwavering commitment to telling Scottish voters that Scotland would be a better place with Alex Salmond running the show.

My public affairs colleagues here tell me this aligns perfectly with the modern political concept of Triangulation – the basis of Tony Blair’s victorious New Labour and Bill Clinton’s New Democrats – which sees a charismatic and strong leader at the peak of a triangle with a broad enough base of policies beneath that tip to attract a wide breadth of voters from across the political spectrum.

The SNP unrelentingly pushed their leader to the forefront; they presidentialised him with PR stunts involving the aptly-named Saltire One helicopter and the constant use of images of the First Minister in front of SNP branding. The SNP’s single aim was to establish a positive narrative about Scotland’s future that was SNP-owned. This was a positive defence of their own record combined with an optimistic view of Scotland’s future and it was achieved in part through their own PR successes, but also thanks to Scottish Labour’s failings.

Scottish Labour

While Iain Gray’s slump in popularity is as much about policy as it is public relations, he nevertheless became the anti-Salmond in the race for First Minister, with the defining moment for him being the infamous ‘Subway moment’ at Glasgow Central station, when he and his entourage sought refuge from protestors in a sandwich shop.

Those are difficult moments for PRs as control dissipates and events take a life of their own. But the team saw only risk in that encounter, and ran away from the problem. Instead of potentially turning an anti-coalition protest to their advantage, the moment reinforced perceptions of the Labour leader as weak. It didn’t feel Presidential and it only begged the question of how Alex Salmond would have handled it. He probably would have bought them all a sandwich and recruited the protestors for the SNP campaign in a five-minute salvo of charisma. The spectre of Salmond was conspicuous even in its absence.

To make matters worse, Iain Gray followed that up four days later with an exclusive interview in The Times, stating “I don't think this election is about personalities.” He was described as “not the most electrifying figure” and having a “passing resemblance” to Alasdair Darling. His credentials, principles and passion were not questioned, but even the media was giving him PR advice – “he just needs to find a way to project them”, said The Times.

This central Personality Problem was also exacerbated by Scottish Labour’s strategy of shifting messaging from criticising the Westminster coalition to raising the threat of independence and going toe-to-toe with the SNP. The media reacted to the shift by suggesting the party was panicking, didn’t have a handle on its own campaign, was worried about Alex Salmond’s momentum. In short, planned or not, the decision to shift tack halfway through only emphasised the lack of a simple campaign narrative for voters to latch onto. It didn’t help anyone to understand what Scottish Labour stands for, and without a strong leader to fall back on, the campaign lacked impact.

Scottish Conservatives

A truly rambunctious Annabel Goldie hit her peak the day before polling day by stating: “I'll have Alex by the short and curlies if there's any of his nonsense.” This feisty, straight-talking approach won the Scottish Conservatives leader much praise and in turn a platform to position her party as Scotland’s insurance policy. The Scottish Conservatives understood the value of a strong personality at the helm and pushed Annabel Goldie, the good-natured matron of Scottish politics, as the front of their campaign at every turn. Of course, this approach didn’t successfully overcome the party’s wider goal of appealing to the masses – the Scottish Conservatives have yet to find the formula that will convince Scottish voters that the Tories should govern in Scotland.

Scottish Liberal Democrats

In my first draft of this note I forgot to mention Tavish Scott altogether, which goes some way to encapsulating how the Lib Dems managed the personality politics in this campaign. The Scottish Liberal Democrats faced an impossible position, with their role in the increasingly unpopular coalition Government in Westminster causing the Scottish party all sorts of reputational problems. The strange conflict here is that Tavish Scott actually secured a large amount of media exposure, and has done for some time now. But as the SNP in particular looked to capitalise on Lib Dem u-turns, with guarantees on free higher education and commitments to NHS spending, over time it became impossible for the Scottish Lib Dems to divorce themselves from Westminster and Nick Clegg in particular.