Page 127 - An Introduction to Political Communication Second Edition

AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

By 1983 the Conservatives had employed a full-time Director of
Marketing, Chris Lawson, who worked with Saatchi and Saatchi
to design a campaign which relied to a greater extent than ever
before on US-style value research and ‘psychographics’ of the kind
described above in connection with Ronald Reagan’s campaigns.
Johnson and Elebash note that ‘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. Amongst 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 Gorbachov, being fêted
and adored on the streets of Moscow, and ending (by implication)
the Cold War.

110