Written By: - Date published: 5:46 pm, March 10th, 2010 - 115 comments
Categories: labour, polls, spin -
Tags: friendly advice
I see the latest Roy Morgan is out and with it we’re seeing no change for Labour. To a certain extent that’s to be expected as this government is only a year and a half old and there’s still a residual media honeymoon. Which means Labour should be thinking more about maintaining a hard grind than being troubled by the polls.
The problem is they haven’t even got everything lined up for the hard grind. The “many not the few” narrative could have become a foundation for their positioning strategy like I suggested they needed nearly a year ago but instead they’ve treated it like a nice single hit that has now been passed on for the next clever idea.
My advice to Labour is that opposition is not about a whole string of clever tactics but about settling on the right frames and then doggedly applying them to a dozen stories a day.
They also need to realise that one good hit a week isn’t enough when you can clear two news-cycles in a single day. It’s like I said about the “many not the few” speech back in January:
They got a good hit in, the trick now is not to get too clever with the message and to keep the hammer down.
But there has been a distinct lack of focus. In fact someone asked me today what Labour stands for and I couldn’t tell them.
All I can do is repeat the advice I gave Labour back in July of last year (when it was already looking too late for the 2011 election):
You need three negative values you want associated with National (for example: arrogant, ‘out of touch’, corrupt
)
You need three positive values you want associated with Labour (for example: democracy, justice, vision).
Pick them using focus groups (for god’s sake don’t use UMR they seem to think they are strategists rather than just pollsters). Do not think you’re clever enough to second guess the voters by coming up with your own ideas of what they think.
Take the three best performing values for describing each party. This is your communications strategy.
Create a short list of plain synonyms for each value (put the actual value at the top of the list)
These are your key lines for the next two and a half years. (Note: key lines are not research points and they are not 10 pages long).
Have your chief of staff (get a chief of staff), press secs, researchers and anyone else in a campaign advisory role meet each morning to discuss the day’s news agenda. Chair the meeting aggressively.
If your day’s plan is to attack National do so within the framework of one or more of your three values.
If your day’s plan is to boost Labour make sure you do so within the framework of your positive values.
Use your key lines constantly. Make sure every release/attack in the house/interview you do includes these words.
Rinse and repeat. And remember that simple, clear and repetitive is what you need. Don’t try to be clever.
See what I did there? I took what I had already said and I said it again. It’s that easy.
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pk
You are talking like Sticky Hide. He says it is racist to ask for assured places on boards etc for Maori and PI. As he is one of the creme de la creme he can spout that off with aplomb. He knows all the flash words. But its a bit like horse racing starts. Some will be handicapped to equal them out, perhaps because their jockey is too light.
In this country you can say all are equal (or think that everyone has the same opportunities) but no – and when you start further back in the race it is hard to get a place. So people to advance, sometimes need to be considered specially to ensure they can reach equality.
I never saw any Maori elected to the board of the public schools that my children went to. I knew one to be a good candidate, the other was a chap with a ponytail – he had no chance. Working professionals or their wives got elected in the main and the same bias will apply on local boards in Auckland. There should be some guaranteed seats, and in the others they can join in the scramble for election.
Choice link Bill and clearly indicative of our future path towards private run prisons and 3 strike laws. Just replace black America with brown NZ
“But you are continually saying here how you require different treatment based on your background.”
not background…CULTURE and yes. Treat us as you have treated your good selves since y’all frst set foot in polynesian territory, with your own culturally biased systems and initiatives. Re empower and resource us to implement our own culturally biased systems and initiatives. You owe us that much !
The left and the right have always been treating themselves as better than us no matter who is in power, while helping yourselves to all the treats and treaties of our cultures yet giving nothing back except tokenism and welfare dependency.
And here’s the thing Key has over Goff. He can talk to polynesians inclusive of maori without coming across as condescending or patronising.
captcha : chaos
We (Europeans) can’t even organise ourselves to take into account our own different cultures. It’s a mistake to view all Europeans as of the same culture though easy to see how that can happen.
If we can’t manage that it’s difficult to see how we can manage to share with others of even more disparate cultures.
Personally I’m quite comfortable with a political system for instance with a even number of Maori and general seats – joint governance in a partnership situation. Seems to me to be a much more equitable arrangement given that for New Zealand the treaty was not in any way with a nation that had been conquered or defeated in battle. The growth of general seats over time has clearly dis-enfranchised Maori in the political system. The alternative to have all general seats would more than likely just be further loss of political power for Maori.
It is no doubt a challenge for all cultures to work out what to hold on to and what to let go of as the world changes around them. While sometimes I do think that some people want to keep their culture as it was in a fixed point in time, as if it would not ever change I’m quite confident that most cultures given real power and resource to determine their own destiny can adapt quite nicely.