National’s billboard botch-up

I spent a couple of hours driving from Auckland to Whangarei last Friday towards the end of a whistle-stop visit home. I’d been paying close attention to the various party billboards over the week and on balance had already given the billboard battle to Labour – despite early missteps.

I know a lot of bloggers got off on the National billboard campaign, contributing new ideas and such, and they also got the thumbs up from AUT lecturer Dave Bibby. But, at the risk of being a lone dissenter, as I was heading north I became more and more convinced their entire approach is misconceived.

Both major parties are using attack ads. There aren’t any punches being pulled on either side. However, one side, Labour, barely even acknowledges the other as a valid alternative while National has devoted half of each of its billboards to advertising its competition.

The National billboards not only sign over half of their space to Labour branding, they also carry a picture of Helen Clark. At first this seemed reasonable – if you are going to attack you have to show who you are attacking. But more and more as the miles (sorry, kilometres) slipped away it began to dawn on me how wrong this was.

In the first few days of a campaign people read the billboards but pretty soon they become background noise. When you are driving, they are always background noise. I had to keep reminding myself whose ads the National billboards were. Who were they advertising again?

The Labour billboards are not universally good. Some are effective and some aren’t. But what they do have in common is not conceding one inch (sorry, centimetre) of space to advertising National. No National colour, no picture of Don Brash. You are never in any doubt whose ads they are with each ending with the simple message: “You are better off with Labour”.

When I arrived in Whangarei the Northern Advocate was talking about Helen Clark’s recent visit. It was just after she appeared to have claimed the initiative by promising zero per cent student loans. Up north she was promising more surprises.

I have to say, too, that I heard the phrase “transformation leadership” being applied to Don Brash while I was over there. That would be fair enough, if he did more than promise tax cuts. There’s nothing very transformational about promising tax cuts when that’s exactly what everybody expects from both him and from National.

It’s more of the same.

For now, the parties are pretty much neck and neck. There’s a lot of policy yet to come and a long way to go in the campaign. But so far National has been predictable. They need to start surprising.