Despite wealth, success, the acclaim of their colleagues, and a permanent reservation at Lutéce, there are some advertising men who feel that their talents have been insufficiently recognized. It’s all very well to be on intimate terms with the chairman of Spandex International or Allied Biscuits, but they, in the end, are just businessmen. Outside their own environment, they are anonymous and, frankly, rather dull. There must be other, more stimulating people somewhere who would jump at the chance of working with a total communications expert, a legendary manipulator who almost single-handedly changed the face of the Condom Marketing Board. His skills should be put to greater and more public-spirited use, and where better than in the bright glare of politics?
But definitely not as a politician (long hours, low pay, miserable expenses)—no, the spot we’re looking for is that of the éminence grise, the image doctor, the sage who advises nationally known men and women what to say and how to say it and not to pick their noses on television. Consultant to the nation’s leaders! Now there’s a worthy climax to a glittering career; in England, it can even lead to a knighthood.
Politics and advertising have a great deal in common. Both occupations have their quota of avid self-promoters who understand the refinements of the verbal nuance (or “weaseling,” as it’s sometimes called). Other shared characteristics include a fondness for knocking copy to discredit the competition, a passion for research surveys, a willingness to change horses in midstream if a faster and more expedient saddle offers itself, a keen appetite for meetings, and an even keener appetite for the trappings of importance. Altogether, it promises to be a rare and fruitful meeting of minds and ambitions.
The politician as client poses some interesting problems, most of which stem from the fact that in this case—very unusual in advertising—the client is also the product, and frequently the product is extremely badly packaged. The clothes look as though they’ve been rescued from a fire sale, there is an unfortunate jowliness around the chops (and we all know how television will add at least another five unflattering pounds), the teeth are crooked and dingy, and the hairstyle—good grief, that hairstyle!—could only have been achieved with a lawn mower and a can of acrylic spray. When looked at objectively, through the eyes of the image doctor, the raw material needs a drastic overhaul.
Objectivity needs to be exercised with some delicacy because we are treading on some thin-shelled eggs. The self-perception of politicians is rarely less than flattering, and to be told that the carefully cultivated public face is an unattractive mess might ruin the client/agency relationship before it has had a chance to get established. How simple it would be if we could just dispatch the budding President to the art department to be repackaged; unfortunately, the process has to be carried out little by little, one tactful step at a time.
It would be a virtually impossible task except for the political ambitions of the client, which are so consuming that the occasional humiliating dent to the self-esteem can be justified as the necessary means to a glorious end. This is the tie that binds, and the image doctor knows it. All he has to do is to contain his impatience and deal with the various imperfections as diplomatically as he can. Today the hair, tomorrow the teeth.
Appearance, in all its details, is perhaps the most straightforward part of marketing a politician. Good haircuts and clothes, and if necessary a little dieting and cosmetic dentistry, are not difficult to arrange. The other adjustments that need to be made, since they involve changing habits developed over many years, are more complex. They can be classified, for the sake of the strategy document, under the headings of technique and content.
Technique
The product thinks he is a good public speaker; more that than, he considers himself an orator, a master of the inspirational speech, capable of setting his audience alight on any subject from the threats posed to the nation’s health by contaminated hamburgers to creeping development around Tuxedo Park. Give him any burning issue and he will expound on it with barely a pause for breath, at great length.
The difficulty here is that the rhetoric, when listened to with the critical ear of the image doctor, is a matted tangle of circumlocution, hedging, and repetition, and while repetition is often desirable in advertising, the other two mannerisms certainly aren’t. Brevity and clarity are what we’re after, something that will fit into a thirty-second spot or onto a poster, but years of waffling can’t be eradicated overnight. In any case, as the product keeps saying, the issues here are too complicated to be explained in two or three glib sentences.
Well, the rascal’s going to have to learn, because we in the advertising business know how difficult it is to get one simple thought into the public skull, let alone a whole mass of qualifications and escape clauses. The habits of a political lifetime will have to be modified. Keep it clear and keep it short.
Content
But keep what clear? Of all the available topics, there are always a few favorites that can be guaranteed vote-getters if a popular point of view can be memorably expressed, if you can take it and make it your own. This is the core of the campaign—what the product stands for—and to make sure there aren’t any hasty and ill-judged mistakes, it is usually necessary to send an expedition to rummage down among the grassroots and commune with the anonymous but influential consultant who is known as the man in the street.
He is regarded with mixed feelings by the advertising business because of his unpredictable nature. He has been known to miss the point of some damn clever campaigns, claiming that he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. He is suspected of harboring a certain mistrust of advertising, which he sometimes feels is trying to persuade him to buy something he doesn’t want, and yet—according to him—he’s far too wily to be influenced by it. The other mugs may fall for it but not him.
Nevertheless, he is flattered to be consulted, and once in a while he will be worth his weight in questionnaires because he will occasionally give his blessing to an advertising proposition. And when he does, the agency wheels him in as the definitive salesman. The man in the street thinks it’s great! Who are we to argue with the voice of the public?
In the case of political advertising, there is also what might be called in inbuilt negative factor that must be taken into account when analyzing research: If anything, the man in the street distrusts politicians even more than he distrusts advertising. But where he can cast his vote for one or none of a dozen or more brands of margarine, his voting choice here is limited to two or three possibilities, and civic duty requires him to vote for one of them. So vote he does, with enthusiasm or indifference, in a very restricted field.
The arguments against political advertising are usually confined to discussions about the oversimplification of an enormously complicated subject—what I would do if I was running the country—and there is no doubt that advertising has helped some mediocre men and women to squeak into office because of their ability to look sincere and intelligent for a few minutes in front of the cameras. A plausible fool has a greater chance of being elected than a more worthy candidate who is not as accomplished at self-presentation. But politics have probably always been like that; modern methods just make it more apparent.
It’s easy enough to see why politicians are attracted to agencies, and it’s understandable that some agency people are attracted, ideologically or for the base hope of future reward, to politicians. For most of the people in the agency, however, working on a political account is something of a trial. Every day is a crisis. The work has to be done instantly, and is changed constantly in response to polls or the latest pronouncements of competitors. The client is even more of an egomaniac than the chairman of Tissues International. And there is the ticklish question of individual political beliefs. It is inconceivable that every member of the agency would vote the same way in an election; and yet, unless a separate group of volunteers is set up, some people will find themselves working for a candidate they’d rather see deported than elected.
But for the top man, the ace communicator with his vital role to play in forging the nation’s destiny, it is sheer heaven. There he is, in the studio with the candidate, in the radio car with the candidate, up and down the country and in and out of Westminster or Washington with the candidate, maybe even photographed for the national press with (or three paces behind) the candidate. Peripheral fame! It was never like this with the Condom Marketing Board, and it’s heady, addictive stuff.
That side of it is rarely admitted. The official reasons for taking on a politician as a client are (for the press release) a conviction that the country would be a better place if the candidate was elected and (for the board meeting) the prospect of patronage if the campaign is successful. The agency that helps a politician into high office is very well placed when it comes to pitching for government business.
There is only one juicier plum for the image doctor, but unfortunately there is nothing much he can do about it in the way of speculative presentations or exploratory lunches. All he can hope for is that one day, one wonderful day, the client will realize that something needs to be done and that he is the man to do it. And when the call comes, as it might quite easily do, we will be able to see the traces of burned rubber all the way from the agency to the Buckingham Palace car park.