Michael Koziol March 29, 2013
Stressing its successes won't be enough for Labor to convince voters.
Illustration: Judy Green
Marketing and advertising types like to consider themselves clever enough to sell ice to Eskimos. But as marketing challenges go, the old idiom almost pales in comparison to the gargantuan task facing Labor's strategists and spin doctors ahead of the September election.
After the spectacle of last week, which the Prime Minister called ''appalling'', just how do you convince Australians to sign up for another three years?
It's a terrifying brief.
It should be a textbook government campaign, says Jane Caro, creative director of Jara Consulting, promoting Labor's achievements and vision while tactically attacking the opposition.
''There's an old advertising belief that governments have to sell on fear and oppositions have to sell on hope,'' she says.
''I'd be doing big ads which had pictures of Cyprus and rioters in Greece, saying, 'Australia - 21 years of growth brought to you by the ALP'. I'd certainly be touting those kinds of achievements.''
The basic premise for any government, she adds is: better the devil you know. As a loosely progressive party, Labor should emphasise its perceived strengths in education, health, social justice and climate change. The challenge for Labor lies in winning the kitchen table battle rather than the big picture, says Dan Gregory, chief executive of (the aptly-named) The Impossible Institute.
''Most people vote for selfish reasons, nobody votes for the good of Australia,'' Gregory says. ''We vote for what's going to put the most money in our pocket at the end of the year … no one actually gives a monkey's about the 'economy'.''
The government needed to communicate like former prime minister Bob Hawke. Today's Labor ministers were failing the likeability test, a much more important driver of voter behaviour than policy.
''I travel around the country on a plane every day, I talk to taxi drivers every day - no one talks policy,'' Gregory says. ''It's about the leadership challenge, have they screwed up, is Tony a dick, and is Julia arrogant? That's where the conversation is.''
For Gregory, the perception of arrogance is the attribute Labor most needs to address before the election.
''I would be engineering a campaign that made [Gillard] look like someone who is willing to listen, willing to hear voices from outside her own opinion. The way she has positioned herself is, it's my way or the highway, and I will bully you to get my way.
''I would get her into conversations to people within the media, and actually show her having conversations and listening to people, as opposed to the usual 30-second sound bite.''
This contradicts the strategy chosen by Wayne Swan and other senior ministers to portray Gillard as ''tough''. Caro says Labor's communication strategy has been problematic because it tries to use a resilient personality to mask policy timidity.
''This urge to placate, to not offend anybody, to not get any group up in arms, which has ended up with them looking like they don't stand for anything. ''You want to communicate something? You've got to be seen to stand for something. She's tough, but she's not courageous,'' she says.
Dan Gregory has a solution; he would have Gillard announce three strong principles that underline her beliefs. ''I'd have her come out and say, 'If you don't believe A, B and C, vote for the other guy'. I'd be that straight. Because it tells us what she values, and it would show that she's not just about winning.''
When it came to the question of dealing with last week's aborted leadership coup, the marketers were divided. Some felt it was better to ignore it and focus on issues of greater substance.
''You accept that it happened and you move on,'' says Robyn Martin, who has led many corporate branding campaigns. ''The more that you declare she's the leader, the more people think that it's not true.''
But others believe glossing over the ramifications of losing so much ministerial talent in one swoop is impossible.
''They have to deal with it head on,'' Gregory says. ''I think they've actually got to give people hope that she hasn't ditched all the senior players and got a bunch of juniors running the country.''
Industry veteran and head of Catalyst International John Skinner says there is no conventional brand campaign that matches the level of difficulty facing Labor. He believes only a dramatic repositioning - similar to British New Labour in 1997 - could hope to save the ALP at the next election. But that sort of seismic shift is easier said than done.
''It is very, very hard to change positioning very quickly,'' he advises. ''People become very entrenched, and more so in this case because many of them have actually stopped listening to any new input.''
It would also require a significant improvement in the government's communication and the removal of its poor performs, Skinner says.
''Wayne Swan is a terrible communicator. It doesn't matter how well the economy is going - the way he talks about it, people either don't understand or they don't believe him or they don't care.''
Skinner says the relentless focus on Tony Abbott is also a failure of strategy, because it doesn't allow the government to demonstrate vision. Still, every marketer interviewed expects the government to run an especially negative campaign against him.
One senior creative, who wished to remain anonymous, thought the situation demanded an all-or-nothing approach. ''The only option they've got is to attack Tony Abbott and remind everyone all the silly things he's said,'' he says. ''I would do an ad that said, basically, 'Labor: Can it get any worse?' It starts off looking like an anti-Labor ad. But then you cut to a picture of Tony Abbott and you say, 'Absolutely'.''
