Ban pointless party broadcasts and bring in quick-shot commercials

MY SON starred in a Labour Party political broadcast when he was two years old and has been threatening to sue ever since. He had no great ideological objections to participation. He just resents having done it for free.

His big moment came in the final shot of the broadcast, when he came struggling up a darkened staircase in a tunnel and emerged, beaming, into bright sunlight, symbolising the bright future for his generation offered by the party if it achieved power. But, in reality, he was demonstrating what you can do on a small budget if you have a handy toddler to exploit and the weather is good.

Having made party political broadcasts, sometimes on teeny budgets, sometimes on large budgets for Labour, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil (and other groups during referenda campaigns) you would expect me to love the genre, if it could be so called. In fact, I believe they should be banned. Banned now, before the next general election.

Party political broadcasts are a weird pointless testimony to fear of advertising. Somewhere in the Irish body politic lurks a belief that advertising is dangerous, and that if political parties were allowed to place commercials on TV and radio, the richest (think Fianna Fáil) would outspend everybody else and sweep to power, all by themselves, forever and ever with a 30-seat majority, thereby putting Michael McDowell permanently up a ladder clutching his P45.

This is not a scenario Fianna Fáil would dislike, but it rather misses the point of the ‘Guinness Light’ experience. Guinness, before it Diageo’d itself, spent millions on producing TV ads that arrived on air sounding as impressive as the last trump. Drums rolled. An apocalyptic voice announced: “They said it couldn’t be done.” This was followed by orgasmic guff claiming that “it” HAD been done. Skinny stout now existed.

They then spent a fortune airing the commercials in every ad break every night, rendering national awareness of skinny stout inescapable. Big spending on concept, production values and placement alike. The fact that you haven’t recently quaffed a Guinness Light proves that not even the biggest spend and the highest production values can make someone buy what they don’t want to buy. The Irish pint-drinker was not interested in a light version of the black stuff. Full stop.

It also ignores the fact that — occasionally — the cheapest ads with the poorest production values can make a product walk off the shelves. In the US at the moment, network TV programmes are interspersed with ad breaks featuring what has to be the worst TV commercial ever made. It’s so bad, all the ad agencies have been happy to confirm they had nothing to do with it: the manufacturer made it in-house. In-house, in this case, seems to mean that the manufacturer grabbed a passing female, stuck her in front of a green wall, handed her what looks like a Pritt-stick, and said: “Rub that across your forehead again and again while the camera rolls.”

Having filmed her glueing her forehead in a mesmerised way, they then put her in front of a microphone and told her to say “HEAD ON. Apply directly to the forehead,” three times in exactly the same tone of voice each time.

That’s it. That’s the ad.

The first time you see it, you think it’s a mistake. The second time, you realise it isn’t. The third time, you begin to wonder what the hell the Pritt-stick DOES to the woman, and, of course, you remember the slogan.

It’s difficult to forget something so simple when it’s so frequently belted into your brain.

The sales of the product (an herbal over-the-counter concoction aimed at curing headaches) have rocketed. While a small number of discriminating viewers may consciously refuse to be manipulated by a God-awful ad — barking on about the method of applying a product the purpose of which is not clear and of which they’ve never heard up to now — the majority of viewers seem happy to be barked at and bored into buying the thing. The ad has even generated rap parodies of its awfulness.

All of which goes to show that the money spent on an ad is not necessarily what makes it effective, and that even the poorest political party, with a bit of wit and creativity, could glide past the richest if both were to get into advertising.

POLICY purists in each political party, however, shy away from ads, believing the greater length provided by the party political broadcast affords a better opportunity to express the complex subtleties of their offering. It doesn’t. It never has. It never will. But they are nonetheless threatened by the “dumbing down” possibility presented by the 20-second ad.

Paul Waldman, the American political analyst, rightly says that reaching the section of the electorate who “have neither the time nor the inclination to assess each issue in endless detail” requires ideas that can be expressed in simple terms — as happens in TV and radio commercials.

“This is not to say ideas must be dumbed down,” Waldman points out. “There is an enormous difference between the simple and the simplistic, and some of the most powerful statements in history were expressed simply. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’ is a simple idea, simply expressed.”

Anyway, most party political broadcasts are pretty dumb to start with.

Party politicals don’t attract much attention from campaign managers who, for the most part, simply hope the PPB won’t cause any controversies. The broadcasts, accordingly, fall back on the tried-and-untrue habits of PPB production. Like: ‘get the leader out there on the street and get people to mill around him and tell him their problems’.

The last time Fianna Fáil tried this, the results were unintentionally funny, because that was the election when Bertie Ahern sprinted everywhere. In every townland they put him in, he took off like a bullet down the main street. Anybody who wanted to mill around him and tell him their problems needed to harpoon him first.

Milling whingers around a leader is wrongly assumed to demonstrate the drawing power of the leader’s character while demonstrating their listening skills. Sometimes, for variety, the leader gets dragged away from the milling whingers to undergo an interview of jellied softness, inviting them to explain to the camera just how wonderful they, their party and their policies are. (Occasionally, this variation goes the other way: the whingers get dragged away from the leader to tell the camera how much faith they have in them.) If the policy nerds get their hands on a PPB, they shove in graphic sections about GNP, GDP, national indebtedness and other important data, the very thought of which brings out that distinctive pat-pat-pat gesture as the viewer gropes for the remote control.

And this is in some way virtuous? This is an improvement on a 20 or 30-second ad? It isn’t. And a change is long overdue. Bring on the commercials.