POLITICAL ADVERTISING IN THE UNITED

POLITICAL ADVERTISING IN THE UNITED
KINGDOM
Political advertising, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, was pioneered
in the US and has reached its highest level of sophistication there. But the
techniques, styles and formats described above have been exported to other
liberal democracies in which the media play an equally central cultural role.
In the UK, as already noted, paid political advertising on television is
prohibited (though not advertising in the press, the cinema or on billboards).
The 2003 Communications Act also prohibits advertising on TV and radio
by any non-party political organisations, defined as any group whose main
aim is ‘to influence public opinion on a matter of controversy’. This includes
trade unions, campaigning organisations such as Amnesty, and animal rights
organisations. Despite the onset of new technologies, and challenges to the
prohibition under Article Ten of the European Convention on Human
Rights, it remains in force.
Legislation notwithstanding, ‘party political broadcasts’ can easily be
viewed as advertising, given that, in them, ‘the source controls the message’
(Johnson and Elebash, 1986, p. 303) and that, increasingly, professional
advertising and marketing agencies are employed by the parties to make them.
As was the case in America, British political advertising predates broadcasting, with parties utilising print and other media to disseminate campaign
messages from the nineteenth century. As in the US, it emerged as a major
element of the political process only with the spread of television as a mass
medium in the 1950s. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, professional advertising and
marketing techniques were first adopted in Britain by the party of capitalism,
the Conservatives. For reasons which we shall examine later (see pp. 108–
14), the Labour Party, though initially enthusiastic about the use of television
as a political marketing tool, spent most of the period between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s resisting the appeal of professional image-makers,
a factor which may well have contributed to their gradual decline as a party
during this period.
The Tories, on the other hand, began to employ television advertising as
early as 1955, having noted the success of Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign and
the role of advertising in it. Early Conservative broadcasts were, according
to the typology introduced in the previous section, ‘primitive’, depicting the
COMMUNICATING POLITICS
100
government of Harold Macmillan in obviously staged ‘spontaneous discussion’ about the successes of their term in office. Like the ‘Eisenhower
Answers America’ spots, these were pioneering but essentially flawed advertisements, the understandable product of unfamiliarity with a new medium.
In Michael Cockerell’s view, the first ‘television election’ was that of 1955,
when the Tories hired Roland Gillard as their media adviser, ushering in a
period of professionalism in their political advertising which the Labour
Party completely failed to match (1988). The 1955 campaign included a
powerful broadcast starring Harold Macmillan articulating Britain’s
continuing role as a force for peace and progress in the world. In 1959 the
Conservatives became the first British party to hire a commercial advertising
company to run its campaign. Colman, Prentice and Varley were paid
£250,000 for a campaign which directly targeted the young, affluent,
working-class electorate on whom the Tories then depended for the retention
of political power. For the first time, argues Cockerell, advertising was used
‘to promote the Party and its leaders like a commercial product’ (ibid., p. 66).
The Conservatives won the 1959 election, but lost the 1964 campaign,
despite the best efforts of Colman, Prentice and Varley, against the
background of a party deeply divided and demoralised by the Profumo affair
and other scandals. In 1969, as another election loomed, the agency of
Davidson, Pearce, Barry, and Tuck Inc., introduced target marketingfor the
Tories, and the subsequent general election of 1970 witnessed the most
media-conscious campaign ever in Britain. As Cockerell puts it, ‘the Tories
attempted to use the techniques and idioms of television with which viewers
were most familiar. They . . . employed all the most sophisticated modern
means of persuasion and marketing that the advertising industry had
devised . . . [as a result] the Tories succeeded in increasing the marginal
propensity to buy among the voters’ (ibid., p. 169) and won the election.
One advertisement used the visual and narrative style associated with ITV’s
popular and authoritative News at Tenprogramme. Another played with the
conventions of commercial advertising, depicting a housewife ‘fed up’ with
the old brand – Labour – and willing to try the new, Conservative, product.
Despite its successful use of political advertising in 1970 the Conservative
government led by Edward Heath became publicly associated with severe
economic and industrial problems, such as the miners’ strike and the threeday week, leading to its defeat in the general election of 1974. In 1976 Heath
was replaced as leader by Margaret Thatcher, who continued the Tories’
pioneering approach to political advertising with the appointment of Saatchi
and Saatchi to run the 1979 election campaign.
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
ADVERTISING
101
‘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
COMMUNICATING POLITICS
102
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 indepth 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-véritécategory of political advertising
discussed above, in that it took Major back to his ‘roots’ in Brixton, London,
showing him visiting and talking with ‘ordinary peo

Hasil (Bahasa Indonesia) 1:

IKLAN POLITIK DI AMERIKARAYAPolitik iklan, seperti yang dicatatkan di awal bab ini, dirintisdi Amerika Serikat dan telah mencapai tingkat tertinggi kecanggihan ada. Tetapiteknik, gaya dan format yang dijelaskan di atas telah diekspor ke laindemokrasi liberal di mana media memainkan peran budaya sama pusat.Di Inggris, sebagaimana telah disebutkan, iklan politik yang dibayar di televisi adalahdilarang (meskipun bukan iklan di tekan, bioskop atau papan Berita).Komunikasi yang Act 2003 juga melarang iklan di TV dan radiooleh setiap organisasi non-partai politik, didefinisikan sebagai kelompok utama yangTujuannya adalah ' untuk mempengaruhi pendapat umum pada masalah kontroversi'. Ini termasukSerikat buruh, kampanye organisasi seperti amnesti dan hak-hak hewanorganisasi. Meskipun awal teknologi baru, dan tantangan untukmenurut Pasal 10 dari Konvensi Eropa tentang manusiaHak-hak, tetap berlaku.Undang-undang meskipun, 'partai politik siaran' dapat dengan mudahdilihat sebagai iklan, mengingat bahwa, dalam mereka, 'sumber kontrol pesan'(Johnson dan Elebash, 1986, MS 303) dan bahwa, semakin, profesionalperiklanan dan pemasaran lembaga dipekerjakan oleh para pihak untuk membuat mereka.Seperti yang terjadi di Amerika, iklan politik Inggris mendahului penyiaran, dengan pihak-pihak yang memanfaatkan cetak dan media lainnya untuk menyebarluaskan kampanyemessages from the nineteenth century. As in the US, it emerged as a majorelement of the political process only with the spread of television as a massmedium in the 1950s. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, professional advertising andmarketing techniques were first adopted in Britain by the party of capitalism,the Conservatives. For reasons which we shall examine later (see pp. 108–14), the Labour Party, though initially enthusiastic about the use of televisionas a political marketing tool, spent most of the period between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s resisting the appeal of professional image-makers,a factor which may well have contributed to their gradual decline as a partyduring this period.The Tories, on the other hand, began to employ television advertising asearly as 1955, having noted the success of Eisenhower’s 1952 campaign andthe role of advertising in it. Early Conservative broadcasts were, accordingto the typology introduced in the previous section, ‘primitive’, depicting theCOMMUNICATING POLITICS100government of Harold Macmillan in obviously staged ‘spontaneous discussion’ about the successes of their term in office. Like the ‘EisenhowerAnswers America’ spots, these were pioneering but essentially flawed advertisements, the understandable product of unfamiliarity with a new medium.In Michael Cockerell’s view, the first ‘television election’ was that of 1955,when the Tories hired Roland Gillard as their media adviser, ushering in aperiod of professionalism in their political advertising which the LabourParty completely failed to match (1988). The 1955 campaign included apowerful broadcast starring Harold Macmillan articulating Britain’scontinuing role as a force for peace and progress in the world. In 1959 theConservatives became the first British party to hire a commercial advertisingcompany to run its campaign. Colman, Prentice and Varley were paid£250,000 for a campaign which directly targeted the young, affluent,working-class electorate on whom the Tories then depended for the retentionof political power. For the first time, argues Cockerell, advertising was used‘to promote the Party and its leaders like a commercial product’ (ibid., p. 66).The Conservatives won the 1959 election, but lost the 1964 campaign,despite the best efforts of Colman, Prentice and Varley, against thebackground of a party deeply divided and demoralised by the Profumo affairand other scandals. In 1969, as another election loomed, the agency ofDavidson, Pearce, Barry, and Tuck Inc., introduced target marketingfor theTories, and the subsequent general election of 1970 witnessed the mostmedia-conscious campaign ever in Britain. As Cockerell puts it, ‘the Toriesattempted to use the techniques and idioms of television with which viewerswere most familiar. They . . . employed all the most sophisticated modernmeans of persuasion and marketing that the advertising industry haddevised . . . [as a result] the Tories succeeded in increasing the marginalpropensity to buy among the voters’ (ibid., p. 169) and won the election.One advertisement used the visual and narrative style associated with ITV’spopular and authoritative News at Tenprogramme. Another played with theconventions of commercial advertising, depicting a housewife ‘fed up’ withthe old brand – Labour – and willing to try the new, Conservative, product.Despite its successful use of political advertising in 1970 the Conservativegovernment led by Edward Heath became publicly associated with severeeconomic and industrial problems, such as the miners’ strike and the threeday week, leading to its defeat in the general election of 1974. In 1976 Heathwas replaced as leader by Margaret Thatcher, who continued the Tories’pioneering approach to political advertising with the appointment of Saatchiand Saatchi to run the 1979 election campaign.By 1983 the Conservatives had employed a full-time Director ofMarketing, Chris Lawson, who worked with Saatchi and Saatchi to designa campaign which relied to a greater extent than ever before on US-stylevalue research and ‘psychographics’ of the kind described above in connection with Ronald Reagan’s campaigns. Johnson and Elebash note thatADVERTISING101‘during the pre-election months, the Conservatives were conducting focuskelompok-kelompok politik kata dan ungkapan ' (1986, ms. 301). Menulis Cockerellbahwa sepanjang tahun sebelumnya ' Saatchi dan Saatchi telah terlibat dalam"kualitatif" penelitian tentang sikap pemilih. Mereka survei mengungkapkannostalgia kuat imperialisme, hemat, tugas, dan kerja keras yang menimpalidengan Perdana Menteri keyakinan (1988, halaman 278). Sekembalinya dia dariFalkland pasca perang Humas Wisata Margaret Thatcher ' didukung"Victoria nilai" ', perlu untuk kembali ke yang didukung banyakIklan Tories'. Seperti Ivan Fallon telah dijelaskan dalam biografinya tentangSaatchis, kampanye 1983 mereka adalah berdasarkan apa account EksekutifTim Bell disebut' sikap emosional yang muncul ketika orang-orang biasa membahaspolitik. Ada jam diskusi tentang menemukan yang tepatnada, yang harus 'hangat, percaya diri, memecah-belah dan menarik',dan analisis apa semua tujuan ini benar-benar berarti. AdaPenelitian kuantitatif dan kualitatif, banyak pembicaraan tentang ' arahpenelitian ', 'daerah binaan', bagaimana untuk menarik perempuan pemilih, terampilpekerja, dan banyak lagi.(1988, p. 157)Dalam kampanye pemilihan umum tahun 1987, pendekatan yang sama diadopsi,dengan Saatchi dan Saatchi lagi menghasilkan PEBs. Saat ini, kualitatifriset pasar menunjukkan keinginan yang populer untuk gambar lebih 'peduli' padaBagian dari Margaret Thatcher dan pemerintahannya. Menjelang 1987, Selain itu, sebagaiBagian selanjutnya menjelaskan, Partai Buruh telah bergabung dalam profesionalpermainan pemasaran, menyediakan konservatif, untuk pertama kalinya, dengan seriuspersaingan dalam elemen iklan kampanye. Antarasiaran yang disiapkan oleh Saatchi dan Saatchi adalah satu menggambarkan PerdanaMenteri dalam 'penatua stateswoman' mode, bepergian ke Uni Soviet (sepertimasih adalah), pertemuan dan 'melakukan bisnis' dengan Gorbachev, menjadi fêted danmemuja di jalan-jalan Moskow, dan mengakhiri (dengan implikasi) dingin Perang.Dalam lima tahun antara kemenangan telak Tories' tahun 1987 danpemilihan umum tahun 1992, banyak yang berubah dalam partai. Paling penting,Margaret Thatcher digulingkan sebagai Perdana Menteri oleh pembangkang dalampartainya sendiri, akan digantikan oleh John Major, tokoh politik dari jelasgambar yang berbeda dan kepribadian. Perubahan kepemimpinan sehingga diperlukanperubahan dalam strategi komunikasi, sehingga pemerintah yang telahdi kantor selama tiga belas tahun bisa mengklaim untuk menawarkan sesuatu yang baru. Pada tahun 1991Ketua Partai Chris Patten kembali dilantik Saatchi dan Saatchi untuk menanganikampanye mendatang, dalam upaya untuk ' membangun kembali suasana kreatif1978 dan 1979' (Butler dan Kavanagh, 1992, ms. 35). Perusahaan dimanfaatkanKOMUNIKASI POLITIK102metode penelitian kualitatif dan hasil dari Richard Wirthlin, yang memilikitelah berkonsultasi secara luas setelah kegagalan dirasakan kampanye 1987.Wirthlinclaimed that, although voters’ preferences on personalities andpolicies fluctuated, values were more stable; if the Party couldunderstand and, to some extent, shape those values, then it wouldbe much better placed to develop an effective communicationstrategy. The research required time-consuming and expensive indepth interviews . . . [and] suggested that the most important valueswhich 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 theConservatives an advertising campaign which emphasised the party’sreputation for being strong in economic management, while avoidingLabour’s chosen ground of social issues. Labour’s alleged ‘tax and spend’plans became the subject of the successful ‘Tax Bombshell’ poster of January1992 (see Figure 6.2), a theme returned to in posters and advertisementsduring the election campaign itself.The most memorable Conservative advertisement of the 1992 campaignwas directed by John Schlesinger, and presented a personal profile of JohnMajor. The profile fits into the cinéma-véritécategory of political advertisingdiscussed above, in that it took Major back to his ‘roots’ in Brixton, London,showing him visiting and talking with ‘ordinary peo