Hire an expert, politicians told
The Greens’ attack ad this week mocking Opposition leader Simon Bridges’ accent may have come from a different political camp, but its cringe-worthiness put it very much in the same bucket as the nonsense National served up last year with its “barbecue” ad criticising KiwiBuild.
At least we now know that bad advertising is one unifying force across New Zealand politics today.
Marketing expert Ben Goodale says this is the type of advertising you get when you try to cut corners.
“Sadly, in both cases, it looks like they are just trying to do stuff on the cheap and aren’t getting advice from advertising professionals,” says Goodale, who previously operated the agency JustOne.
“There’s no finesse, and the ads were crass and needed to be buried as quickly as possible.”
Goodale says that if political parties want to create better ads that actually move Kiwis one way or the other, then they need to hand over the tools to someone who knows what they’re doing.
“The political parties need to stop thinking that they are advertising professionals simply because they’ve got a friend who can operate a video camera and can hire a voiceover artist or some cheap talent.
“Both National and the Greens have demonstrated recently that they have no idea how to actually tell a story in an interesting way that doesn’t simply polarise and get shut down.”
Goodale says that the point of an ad agency is also to protect the client and ensure that terrible ideas don’t see the light of day.
“That’s an important part of the role of an ad agency,” he says.
“They take the raw idea of what a client wants to do, polish it up and make it a campaignable idea that captures the hearts and minds of the public.”
Goodale says he struggles to see any discernible strategy with the ads that came out of National and the Greens. “The BBQ one for instance: was it just a rush of blood to the head? And the Greens? Did they even need to go after Simon Bridges? Might they have been better by focusing on how what is proposed is going to make a positive difference — and what that is — as a start to electrifying New Zealand’s car population.”
It’s one thing to steal headlines with crass advertising, but for political parties, you have to question whether it’s worth the effort if all you do is end up alienating large swathes of the voting public.