Federal Government to spend $47.2m marketing the election and changes to Senate voting
The Federal Government will spend $47.2m promoting the upcoming July 2 election and new changes to Senate rules, government documents show.
The AusTender website documents reveal that Dentsu Mitchell, which holds the master media account for all Federal Government spending, was awarded the Australian Election Commission (AEC) contract for the media buy for Senate education and Federal Election.
Ahead of the upcoming Federal poll the AEC has been heavily promoting both the need for young people to enrol and also the government’s recent changes to the ways of voting in the Upper House.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0BN6GNkDTY
The boost in government spending combined with advertising from Labor and the Coalition is expected to boost the ad market in May and June.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday promised that if returned the Coalition would ensure there was a plebiscite on gay marriage by year’s end, raising the potential of an additional boost to government spending if it wins the election and goes ahead with its proposal.
Among the agencies doing the creative work on the AEC campaign are BMF, the agency behind the Power of Paper campaign designed to educate voters on Senate voting changes.
Is the spend effective from an industry view point?
Rudd did a similar thing on the cusp of Auspol 2013, pumping 50 million into legacy media on an anti-boat campaign. Newspapers all over the country were running full pages telling regional and suburban Australians they wouldn’t be settled here if they came by boat.
From an outside perspective this kind of behaviour looks like a bribe, or welfare, or both.
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