Political marketing expert fooled by English ads

Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, October 29th, 2009 - 9 comments
Categories: bill english, Media - Tags: , , ,

If you thought TVNZ’s promo ad for its Plain English series looked like an ad for the National Party you’re not alone. Seems the ad is so faithful to the political advertising genre that it even had a political marketing expert fooled.

Here’s Dr Clare Robinson on her reaction to seeing the ad:

“When I saw it in the weekend I was completely confused because it was so much like a National Party political ad, especially the ad they had featuring Bill English in 2002,” Dr Robinson said.

“My first thought was National must have somehow found a way of getting around the election broadcasting rules to be able to advertise outside of campaign time.”

She was shocked when she realised it was a TVNZ ad.

“I thought what on earth is going on? Why is TVNZ using a political advertising format to market one of its shows? I was very confused”…

‘It just seemed a very unbalanced way of approaching this sort of promotion and meaning that all the emphasis went on to the National Party perspective on the economy and no one else’s.’

The fact that the ad was scripted and shot in the form of a political advertisement is the real giveaway here. TVNZ’s claim that there’s “nothing political” about the ad just doesn’t hold water, because as Lew points out in the comments:

This is a form which has been finely tuned and crafted over half a century to serve a very specific set of purposes — it’s a complex and very challenging medium where every frame, every word, every note is loaded up with as much subtle meaning as possible. With apologies to Tolkien, one does not just walk into political advertising.

TVNZ’s pro-National leadership and the Minister’s office knew exactly what they were doing here, they even consulted over the script. Heads should roll over this gross abuse of public trust.

9 comments on “Political marketing expert fooled by English ads ”

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  1. tc 1
    29 October 2009 at 12:16 pm

    Break out the wet bus tickets and blame someone way down the foodchain within TVNZ…..if it ever comes to that.
    Gov’t bark, TVNZ heel…….it’s so arrogant and obvious, Muldoon would be proud.
    Lets watch the ‘authorities’ fizz and bluster/huffy puffy….recall this is the organisation that considers Police 10-7 as meeting Maori content requirements.

  2. Pascal's bookie 2
    29 October 2009 at 12:18 pm

    Have we been told what parts of the script were ‘incorrect’ and needed ‘correcting’ by English’s peeps?

    That would an interesting thing to look at.

  3. Lew 3
    29 October 2009 at 12:23 pm

    Bookie, I think that was parts of the program script rather than the ad script.

    They’ve certainly succeeded in promoting their show; sure will be interesting to watch, though perhaps not for the reasons they might have expected.

    L

    • Pascal's bookie 3.1
      29 October 2009 at 12:31 pm

      Bookie, I think that was parts of the program script rather than the ad script.

      Ta.

      Sounds like Political Correctness gone mad to me.

      No problem if they were confirming quotes or whatevs, but that’s not what it sounds like they were doing to me.
      They’ve certainly succeeded in promoting their show; sure will be interesting to watch, though perhaps not for the reasons they might have expected.

      yep.

  4. toad 4
    29 October 2009 at 12:31 pm

    This has the pungent odour of Mark Textor all around it.

  5. tc 5
    29 October 2009 at 1:45 pm

    Correct Toad but unlike Oz I hope this is a single term gov’t as those tactics kept an extremely lacklustre John Howard gov’t in power 2 terms longer than even die hard Liberals expected due to their effectiveness coupled with a very ordinary Labor party led by hawke era ministers amongst others as the post Keating void was huge.
    Take note Labor NZ….pull your head out of your ideology or history may repeat…..Rudd’s quite a nasty piece of work but with a massive approval rating, despite the way he chews through staff whereas nice guys finish….last Phil.

  6. rod 6
    29 October 2009 at 5:04 pm

    Let’s face it, TVNZ is riddled with National Party sycophants, poodles and lackeys, always was and always will be. Get used to it folks, there’s plenty more of this stuff coming to a TV near you. TVNZ is New Zealand’s Fox News, except ours. is tax payer funded. How do they get away with it?

    • gitmo 6.1
      29 October 2009 at 5:10 pm

      This is almost exactly the same comment I read on kiwiblog a couple of years back except replace National with Labour………… I would humbly suggest the hacks at TVNZ don’t give a flying who is in power as long as they’re living large on taxpayer money.