PR, Politics And The Upcoming Election

PR clearly plays a huge part in politics and has done increasingly over the last 20 years. At the same time as it has, in many cases, become so important to political parties as to actually form the very basis of those parties (a position argued well by Adam Curtis in The Century Of The Self, regarding Clinton’s and Blair’s election strategies), it has also come under increased scrutiny from the public, to which programmes such as The Thick Of It and Bremner Bird & Fortune play testament. It’s interesting to note that Brown is married to a PR woman, and that Cameron himself is an ex-PR professional and that their advisors, especially those who put together manifestos, are predominantly PR people. These facts have been viewed with mixed feelings by the public.


When I was training for a brief time in advertising, the classic text books would always make the point that the product has to live up to the message. If you’re advertising the best cakes in town, they’d better be very good cakes, or customers will have an instant turn off. The same is true of PR. Your clients’ messages about their environmental work, or green credentials, should bear up to analysis, or the whole things will blow up in their faces when Dispatches broadcasts an expose.


The same can’t be said of political parties, however, which are very unlikely to live up to their hype once elected. For all their promises that everything will be amazingly better, the best the general public can really hope for is an overall improvement in most areas that affect them, rather than the opposite. The fact that an opposition party has very little overview of the inner workings of government departments means that any manifesto can’t be taken too seriously until they have their feet under the table and a general grasp of the realities. The public are wise to this, which is why over-statement and grandiose claims are treated with suspicion, while realistic reserve is appreciated (look at Vince Cable, playing the ‘everyman’ to good effect on the Chancellors’ Debate).


However, what all of the parties are yet to do is come clean about how difficult things will really be post-election, instead concentrating on the usual give-aways and tax breaks, giving YOU the ability to sack your MP, putting the YOU back in YOUnited Kingdom. To a certain degree that have hinted at the big task ahead, and hinted at where money will be saved, but the whole debate is still couched in the idea that tax hike will be staved off and that there will be ways to avoid the ‘medicine’.


Some would argue this is a valid PR tactic, that winning the election by whatever method necessary is the most important thing, arriving on a wave of fickle support from a public that takes decisions based on sound-bites and TV performances. Once in office, one can then start the heavy-weight political work that would be too hard for the pubic to swallow. After all, that’s what you expect your competitors to do, so you will do it too. But this means that whoever comes to power will be unpopular very quickly as they start imposing the inevitable taxes (NI or VAT) and swinging the axe madly across the public sector.


Surely a better PR campaign would have been to manage expectations properly as well as promoting the benefits of your manifesto? Gaining power is one thing, staying in power is another, and the strategic plan for that has to start before you are elected. Certainly, the opposition will try to use the fear of cuts and taxes to their advantage, but the public is wise enough to see when they are not proposing a genuine alternative. The public know there will be no magic pot of gold at the end of the election rainbow.


A deft handling of the issues is what real PR is all about and what skilled PR professionals thrive on. It can also create a very firm case for a new government to be elected. Sometimes, honesty really is the best policy, and the public need to be given more credit for its comprehension. With government more exposed that its ever been, the same smokescreens of giveaways are no longer good enough.