Remember this from 1997

Selling politics to the people



A Tory advert from the 1997 campaign. But did it help the party?

By BBC Political Correspondent Tim Franks
They were two of the most potent advertising images of recent times.

She was on billboards across the country, overjoyed and in her underwear. He was also on billboards across the country, smouldering and half in shadow.

She was Eva Herzigova declaring "Hello Boys", selling Wonderbras. He was Tony Blair, "looking presidential and sexy" according to one of his key advisers, and selling himself before the last election.

But how far do the two worlds of advertising and politics overlap?






Lord Bell: Negative advertising works

In one sense they are very different. The rules of the British Advertising Authority state that "advertisers should not unfairly attack or discredit other businesses or their products".
That, of course, is precisely what political advertising does.

Knocking copy

Lord Bell, chairman of Britain's largest puiblic relations firm Bell Pottinger, has been involved in Conservative advertising campaigns for the last 25 years.

He says that whatever Labour's claims in the run-up to the last election that it wanted to leave negative campaigning behind, the party couldn't escape the truth.

"The only evidence is that negative advertising works", he says. "It's difficult to think of 'Britain deserves Better'" - one of Labour's key slogans on billboards in 1997 - "as anything other than knocking copy."

But in another way, selling politics is like selling soap powder. You need to be prepared to grab attention in whatever way you can and to bang on ad nauseam about your product.

Now Labour and the Tories have appointed two ad agencies with reputations for being creative and a little bit naughty.

Publicity through controversy






Alex Salmond targeted as a teletubbie

Labour has chosen TBWA, the agency responsible for those iconic Wonderbra ads; the Tories have gone for Yellow M, a much smaller outfit, which is only just now setting up an office in London.
Yellow M first came to prominence two years ago during the Scottish Parliament elections for the Scottish Parliament.

The agency's job was to sell a Conservative Party that had fallen to new depths at the general election the year before.

The firm gained a reputation with a series of high-profile stunts. At a press conference they showed a poster of the leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, as "Laa-Laa" -- one of the characters from the children's show "Teletubbies".

Underneath was the slogan: "He's living in Scot-laa-laa-land".

Maybe unwittingly, Yellow M had failed to ask permission to use the Teletubbies image and so had to withdraw the advert within hours. But the publicity had been gained and the damage to the SNP leader wrought.

At the moment, though, neither Yellow M nor TBWA want to discuss their work in progress with the Tories and Labour. Party insiders talk of "creative tensions". More bluntly, they say that some of the ideas which the ad men and women are coming up with are only making them cringe.