Page 124 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page 103

ADVERTISING
the qualitative research methods and results of Richard Wirthlin, who had
been consulted extensively after the perceived failures of the 1987 campaign.
Wirthlin

claimed that, although voters’ preferences on personalities and
policies fluctuated, values were more stable; if the Party could
understand and, to some extent, shape those values, then it would
be much better placed to develop an effective communication
strategy. The research required time-consuming and expensive in-
depth interviews . . . [and] suggested that the most important values
which the electorate sought in parties were, in order: 1. Hope; 2.
Security; 3. Peace of Mind.
(Ibid., p. 36)

On the basis of these findings Saatchi and Saatchi developed for the
Conservatives an advertising campaign which emphasised the party’s
reputation for being strong in economic management, while avoiding
Labour’s chosen ground of social issues. Labour’s alleged ‘tax and spend’
plans became the subject of the successful ‘Tax Bombshell’ poster of January
1992 (see Figure 6.2), a theme returned to in posters and advertisements
during the election campaign itself.
The most memorable Conservative advertisement of the 1992 campaign
was directed by John Schlesinger, and presented a personal profile of John
Major. The profile fits into the cinéma-vérité category of political advertising
discussed above, in that it took Major back to his ‘roots’ in Brixton, London,
showing him visiting and talking with ‘ordinary people’ on the streets and at
the market. In one scene, he wonders ‘spontaneously’ if his old house will
still be standing. ‘It is!’, he says poignantly, as the prime ministerial car drives
up. ‘It is!’. It was later revealed that the scene had been rehearsed and the
area secured well in advance of Major’s arrival, but the broadcast succeeded
for many in conveying Major’s lower-middle-class social origins to an
audience widely perceived to be fed up with thirteen years of Margaret
Thatcher’s haughty grandeur.
The Conservatives’ advertising in the run-up to, and during, the 1997
campaign was less successful. As was noted in Chapter 3 above, the effects
of political advertising are determined not by content alone, but also by the
environmental context within which a political message is sent and received.
Between 1992 and 1997, much had changed in British politics. The Labour
Party had renewed itself under the leadership of Tony Blair, while the Tories
had been damaged by media-fuelled perceptions (reasonably accurate) of
moral and financial sleaze on the one hand, and internal division over policy
on European union on the other. As a result, when they attempted to reprise
the ‘Labour’s tax bombshell’ theme which had played so well in 1992 (with

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