Advertising and the Election

2010 Election

It would have been a bitter pill to swallow, in the wake of our turbulent economic crisis, to find the powers that be had spent millions on advertising fees to promote their party in the quest to govern this country. Thankfully the leaders, especially Brown had the sense not to.

For the three UK Advertising Agencies appointed to peddle each party, a baptism of fire ensued. It is often a few weeks, sometimes months, for the strategic briefing of an ad campaign to turn into the creative execution. For this election it was required within a matter of hours, overnight sometimes, to rewrite messages and tweak ads already lined up to run. The modern digital world moves at such a pace that it is possible (and sometimes vital) to reconfigure entire strategies overnight, reacting to the media frenzy and party oppositions day by day.

The recent election has been hailed as the Social Media Election. With tiny budgets, the evolution of social media has played a huge role. Allowing each party to work hard building relationships with the voters via social media opportunities along with email marketing to amplify their party policies and keep in touch with the voter.

Opinions are split on how much more effective social media has been for each party opposed to the traditional poster sites and press ads of yester year. One strong argument is that it is the real people within these realms that have had the most influence, rather than the parties themselves. From high brow intellects to youthful pop stars; it will be difficult to quantify how much impact their tweets and profiles have had in swaying the public with their unrestricted and transparent opinions posted on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the run up to the next election and monitor how each UK Advertising Agent will strategise the campaign; will the emphasis be on Modern Social Media or Traditional Press Media?