Party campaign slogans draw foreign interest

Steven Joyce

Foreign political parties have shown interest in adapting elements of National's campaign advertising for use overseas, including Australia's Liberal Party.

"There's talk of it being used internationally ... we have had interest from various groups - international conservative groups like the Liberals in Australia," National Party campaign manager Steven Joyce said yesterday.

The campaign's billboards - which helped take National closer to an election win than many were anticipating - were widely heralded as a success and Joyce has been asked to send the slogans used overseas. The creator of the billboard's concept, John Ansell, was also approached about helping in state elections in Australia.

International approval aside, Joyce has one major regret about the campaign. "Several people said our advertising won the day. We're just sorry we didn't quite get the party over the line."

Joyce, who will dissect the campaign at a breakfast function today, said there were a number of elements to the party's strategy.

The first job was to clearly differentiate between National and Labour. "Prior to the billboards, there was debate over whether the Nats were too similar to Labour, or too different."

Timing was crucial. With Labour yet to play its hand on the election date, National had to gain ground in the polls to stave off an early election. "We had to spend some of our ad budget up front," said Joyce. That prompted the billboards.

He also wanted to keep control over the political agenda, by introducing fresh elements like the party's "Taxathon" brochure to keep the focus on National, use humour to get attention, and have a clear vote message: Party vote National: Change the Government".

"The danger is you can get product-focused advertising rather than centring it on the person that's got to consume it, in this case the voter," said Joyce. "You need the advertisers and the marketers around to say: Now you've got to really simplify it."

Where Joyce believes the 2005 campaign differed from previous campaigns was the execution. He deliberately eschewed advertising agencies in favour of a tiny team, and outside contractors. An agency may have wanted to put its own stamp on the campaign, while a small, in-house team reflected the party's views more closely and could move swiftly in reaction to events.

A key member of that team was Ansell, a poet and public speaker who had been a radio advertising specialist.

Ansell said the concept of the billboards was his, but several people made contributions to their content, including National MP Tony Ryall. Ryall was behind the simplest billboard which placed the words Tax over a picture of Helen Clark and Cut over Don Brash.

"I was just determined that people would get a very, very clear distinction between the two parties," said Ansell, who had never before designed a billboard.

He also wanted to make the advertisements bold enough to be as appealing as news. "That was a deliberate effort: there's no point doing advertising if it is going to merge into the background."

He gets irritated by comparisons to the Tui "Yeah, Right" billboard campaign. "I don't know if it's fair to say [the National campaign] is derivative. I think it was a logical response to the gulf between the two parties."

Ansell is also stung by talk of racism over the billboard that read: "Beaches" then put "Iwi" on the Labour side, "Kiwi" on the National side. He said he only had a few words to sell the idea that controversial foreshore and seabed legislation brought in by Labour had to be looked at. "It's not an essay, your audience is hurtling towards it at 100km/h or 180km/h," he said.

Despite talk that the risks taken - such as using a rival party's colour and its leader's picture on the billboards - must have been hard to sell to the party, the only time Ansell was uncertain of his reception was when reading the Telethon-themed television ad to Brash. "There was a long silence and I wasn't sure. Then he resumed breathing and I realised he was convulsed with laughter."