It’s small but imperfectly formed and it’s going according to cunning plan

I am not saying that failure on the part of any communications consultancy to get a particular gig turns that consultancy bitter and twisted, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure: if the subsequent campaign goes a bit wobbly at the knees, the opportunity for the losers to crow is only mighty.

Media knock at your door, inviting you to dump on a rival firm — the company that won the account. Of course, you have to dump in a delicate way, lest you be seen as mean-spirited. You mention that you don’t know all the circumstances. You may even praise the shower that got the contract (“highly reputable company”) before kicking them in the whatsits (“but in this particular instance, may have underestimated the importance of”).

The household charge presented an open goal to communications consultancies — like mine — which hadn’t been hired by the Department of the Environment. The central proposition had nobody rooting for it. Small, but imperfectly formed, was the national consensus. Might not, on the face of it, be financially crippling, and yes, there were waivers, but hateful, nonetheless, in already tough times.

A stalking horse into the bargain, designed to find out where we live in order to stick us with even nastier taxes next year.

The opposition was well organised and vocal. A pivotal outrage, frequently expressed, was that the payment system did not involve the post office: Hamlet without the Prince. And the communications… well, what more could any of us uninvolved experts want?

In the last week, it was like a by-election, so it was, with household charge the subject of daily unofficial opinion polls, payment-counting, tallymen and Phil Hogan talking about a late surge. The only thing that wasn’t clear was the quota: the number of payments by which household charge would be deemed to be elected or would be registered as having lost its deposit.

Less than a third of the electorate stumping up and paying their 100 smackers wouldn’t do, but precisely what proportion would do wasn’t established.

It got very confusing there for a while.

Central to the confusion was the comment that “mistakes have been made.” That observation is up there with “but questions remain to be asked” as a method of sounding wise without the need to demonstrate actual wisdom. One of the mistakes was the company printing the leaflets getting into trouble, thereby establishing a hitherto unrecognised visceral need in the Irish psyche: without leaflets, we are lost. Bereft. Confused. Frightened. We wouldn’t know what to be doing with ourselves if someone didn’t pop a leaflet through our letterbox giving us instructions. We would never pay anybody for anything if we didn’t get a printed bill on our doormat. Having been reared on bills, we were being challenged at the core of our being by the very suggestion that we should pay up in their absence. Culturally shocking, it was.

Even more shocking was the cabinet communication around the issue. Bring on the minor key music as Phil Hogan (he’s the guy who has brought height into disrepute and who Morning Ireland introduce as the Minister for Septic Tanks) told the nation that those who didn’t pay would be fined. This was just the nadir. Of course, if we don’t pay our TV licence or our motor tax, we get fined, and if we don’t pay our income tax, we not only get fined but have the Revenue put our names in the papers so our enemies can have a good gloat.

But applying the same rules to the household charge was just plain unacceptable. Threatening, it was. Bullying, even. And that was before Justice Minister Alan Shatter came out and had the nerve to tell us to get a life. Get a life! The very idea.

Fair-mindedness took on a new shape. Commentators on the radio allowed as how a broadcast ad campaign might have been going on, but they, personally, had heard no advertisement. This was not helpful to the ad sales departments in the particular radio stations, which had made a lot of money out of placing the ads on the very programmes on which the commentators (who had failed to hear them) were talking.

If it had been a university debate on the proposition, “That this Government has failed to communicate the household charge to the citizens,” the proposition would have won, hands down.

In hindsight, however, it has to be admitted that more communication was printed and broadcast about the household charge than about any new charge in the history of taxation. Unless you listened exclusively to Lyric FM, you were subjected to a high volume continuous radio tutorial on the damn thing for weeks. And, let’s face it, when, up to this point, did a new tax ever get itself a Late Late Show slot?

In public communications terms, it may have been the most cost-effective campaign ever run in this country, because about 90% of the information was delivered by news and current affairs media without charge.

Add up the money saved by the state and you have to wonder if Phil Hogan and whatever company he hired didn’t have a cunning plan from the start: Get the aggro going and we won’t have to buy a quarter of the ad spaces we’d otherwise have to shell out for.

Every day, the aggro leaped on its horse and rode off in several directions. There was the woman who said the fines wouldn’t be as bad as paying the charge, because they’d be taken directly from her wages. Becoming a passive witness to her own impoverishment was better, in her view, than being an active contributor to a process which would actually cost her less.

Many of those most worked up were worked up about older people who might not have access to the internet and whose preferred method of paying — the post office — wasn’t in the game. I’d lay a bet that the bulk of those who paid early were those over 60. Many of them are super- competent on the internet, for starters. Almost all of them get to hear more radio, ergo more household tax commercials and commentary, than their younger compatriots. The chances are good that it was precisely this cohort that got its act together and paid long before the deadline loomed.

It was said during the campaign that 85% of people pay their TV licence. They would, wouldn’t they? It’s a 50-year-old reflex, based on rolling advertising campaigns and a rake of inspectors.

As we go to press, it looks as if more than 50% of people have paid their Household Charge: a brand new, suddenly-introduced tax supported by no habit of payment comparable with the TV licence reflex.

So the campaign seems to have worked.

Wouldn’t it just drive you nuts?

New words. Old melody. You know that old Bellamy Brothers song? How about a revised version to be used as Phil Hogan’s anthem? “If I said we had a beautiful Household Charge, would you hold it against me?”