National ads hit Tui spot

Steven Joyce

A billboard campaign more suggestive of Tui's successful "Yeah right" beer advertisements than traditional political advertising is National's first crack at the election 2005 campaign.

Last week, the party launched 90 billboards nationally that compare its policies with Labour's in a simple and cheeky way.

Their appearance coincides with National's recent upswing in the polls, which saw the party edge ahead of Labour for the first time since leader Don Brash's Orewa speech in January last year. But National's new campaign manager, Steven Joyce, wasn't prepared to credit the poll result to the advertising.

"It's a bit early to suggest they have had much impact at all yet."

Joyce said it would be hard to connect any poll effect with a particular part of the campaign.

"It's a cumulative effect over the period of the election that's going to be the key."

Still, the billboards have made an early impression, with a senior marketing lecturer at Auckland University of Technology, Dave Bibby, labelling them "brilliant".

"They're simple, to the point, unambiguous and do an outstanding job of cutting through the clutter," he said.

"The big thing is they [National] have clearly positioned themselves now. I think that has been their problem for some time - how to articulate to the man on the street what their point of difference is.

"The billboards do this brilliantly and there's a lot of mileage left in it yet, with possibilities to localise it and spread the topics as they come along."

National had been able to do something similar to the Tui ads with a "Yeah right" response to Labour's policies - and such an association would do the party no harm.

Joyce, the former Radio Works director who joined the party as general manager two years ago after leading a review of its 2002 election campaign, said reaction to the ads had been positive.

"So far, they've done everything in this early stage we could have wanted them to do and more."

The aim was to show National challenging Labour on key issues such as education, health, tax, security and the Treaty of Waitangi.

"The theme of the campaign is to give people a choice between Don and his team and what they want to do to tackle these middle New Zealand issues versus the incumbent."

 

Joyce said all 10 creative executions were simple and literal, but were illustrative of wider issues.

On welfare, it says Labour has cast a "drift net" versus National's offer of a "safety net".

Violent criminals are "out in no time" under Labour compared with National's "do the whole time" message.

And on tax the message is more simply: "tax" versus "cut".

A "loose team" of advertising contractors - none from major agencies - senior party members, Brash and his deputy, Gerry Brownlee, and three other members of caucus had come up with the idea.

A second aim has been to reinforce the strong difference between National and Labour on each of the issues.

"At the end of the day, this election is going to be the oft-quoted two-horse race between National and Labour in terms of who leads the Government," said Joyce.

"The small parties will be involved but it will either be a National-led Government or a Labour-led Government. So it's important we clearly differentiate our position from Labour's."

He won't say how much the billboards are costing but they will be a "sizeable" chunk - although not the biggest - of the party's election advertising spending.

Monthly prices for a 12m by 3m billboard in Auckland - where one-third of the billboards are posted - range from $5000 to as high as $15,000 for premium spots.

Once the election date is set, and the party starts campaigning in earnest, Joyce says voters will see a lot more advertising activity.

"There's quite a lot that's in the pipeline that we're working on, which will make it, from a marketing point of view, a good campaign."