Early poll puts squeeze on Elector-Man

By IRENE CHAPPLE

The flexible orange creature known affectionately as Elector-Man has been pushed into overtime by the calling of an early election.

The Electoral Enrolment Centre's campaign was scheduled to run towards November, but Elector-Man's activities have now been condensed and, in some cases, dropped.

His appearances on television will increase, but some planned niche-targeting is likely to fall into the too-hard basket.

The centre launched the $2 million campaign last month, and its website gathered almost 300,000 hits in May.

National manager Murray Wicks calls the figures promising.

The campaign has been innovative, advertising for the first time on internet sites.

Wide-reach sites such as XtraMSN and nzherald.co.nz contain banner advertising, and so do niche sites such as www.ratemyride.co.nz - a boy racers' site - and www.biggie.co.nz - for the clubbing fraternity.

The Hotmail site also carries banner advertising, which appears only to those who have registered their account in New Zealand.

The foray into internet advertising has cost $100,000, but may capture the interest of the young, who are traditionally lax about enrolment.

Other niche areas include ethnic groups such as Maori, Pacific Islanders and Asians, but John Schofield, of the Internet Bureau, which placed the online advertising, says the net lacks ethnic-specific sites.

Online ethnic advertising is likely to remain unused this election, along with tactics deemed to take too much time.

Wicks says enrolment campaigns are notoriously difficult because of the wide range of targeted audience.

Elector-Man was chosen for its asexual, non-racial neutrality - although it does have a man's voice.

"$2 million [for an enrolment campaign] might seem like a lot," says Wicks, "but with 2.8 million people of votable age, that's less than a $1 a person."

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