Give the electorate a choice and stay on message

This week I worked on a blog article for one of our clients, First 100. The piece, providing campaigning advice for our troubled prime minister, reminded me that all successful communications strategies are built on a strong and easily understood message.

From a political perspective, who can ever forget Saatchi and Saatchi's Labour Tax Bomb posters of the 80s? A clear and unambiguous execution of a campaign designed to scare the undecided into voting Tory. On a commercial platform, think Nike and its Just Do It campaign.

The world of advertising has since changed beyond recognition and campaign strategists now have to grapple with a tech-savvy electorate across a broad range of online and traditional media channels. As a consequence, the principle of staying on message has never been more important.

So what about the two main political parties? What messages should they peddle?

My client's advice to Brown and Cameron is to give the electorate an obvious choice by articulating a clear-cut position for each party: stay the course with Gordon or vote for change with Cameron.

The job for Labour is to convince the electorate that now is not the time for change and certainly no time for a novice. From a Tory perspective, Cameron should exploit the perception that the Prime Minister has run out of ideas and for the sake of the country, he has to go.

We, the voters, will decide.

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