Page 123 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 102

COMMUNICATING POLITICS
‘during the pre-election months, the Conservatives were conducting focus
groups on political words and phraseology’ (1986, p. 301). Cockerell writes
that throughout the previous year ‘Saatchi and Saatchi had been engaged in
“qualitative” research about voters’ attitudes. Their surveys revealed a
powerful nostalgia for imperialism, thrift, duty and hard work which chimed
in with the Prime Minister’s own beliefs’ (1988, p. 278). On her return from
a post-Falklands War public relations tour Margaret Thatcher ‘endorsed
“Victorian values”’, the need for a return to which underpinned much of the
Tories’ advertising. As Ivan Fallon has described it in his biography of the
Saatchis, their 1983 campaign was to be based on what account executive
Tim Bell called

‘the emotional attitudes which emerge when ordinary people discuss
politics’. There were hours of discussion about finding the right
tone, which had to be ‘warm, confident, non-divisive, and exciting’,
and analysis of what all these objectives actually meant. There was
quantitative and qualitative research, much talk about ‘directional
research’, ‘target areas’, how to attract women voters, skilled
workers, and much else.
(1988, p. 157)

In the general election campaign of 1987 the same approach was adopted,
with Saatchi and Saatchi again producing the PEBs. This time, qualitative
market research showed a popular desire for a more ‘caring’ image on the
part of Margaret Thatcher and her government. By 1987, moreover, as the
next section describes, the Labour Party had joined in the professional
marketing game, providing the Conservatives, for the first time, with serious
competition in the advertising elements of the campaign. Among the
broadcasts prepared by Saatchi and Saatchi was one depicting the prime
minister in ‘elder stateswoman’ mode, travelling to the Soviet Union (as it
still was), meeting and ‘doing business’ with Gorbachev, being fêted and
adored on the streets of Moscow, and ending (by implication) the Cold
War.
In the five years between the Tories’ landslide victory of 1987 and the
general election of 1992, much changed within the party. Most importantly,
Margaret Thatcher had been deposed as prime minister by dissidents within
her own party, to be replaced by John Major, a political figure of distinctly
different image and personality. The change of leadership thus required a
change in communication strategy, such that a government which had been
in office for thirteen years could claim to be offering something new. In 1991
party chairman Chris Patten re-appointed Saatchi and Saatchi to handle the
upcoming campaign, in an attempt to ‘rebuild the creative atmosphere of
1978 and 1979’ (Butler and Kavanagh, 1992, p. 35). The company utilised

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