How Clive grew: Palmer’s election advertising strategy
The big man from Queensland has certainly grown his brand in the lead-up to Saturday’s federal election, and Edge’s Nicole Gardner says it’s all thanks to Byron Sharp.
There’s nothing like a hotly contested federal election to boost ad sales. No matter where we’ve sourced our news in the past month, from TV to newspaper, digital to radio, we’ve been slammed with political advertising, content, messages and yes, even video games.
How brands grow: The Clive Palmer edition
Leading this trend is Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. By 12am Thursday, it is anticipated that Clive has invested close to $60m to get his message out there and that’s just the ATL ballpark.
Looking at Clive’s communications strategy, it would seem he has wholeheartedly bought into the philosophy of How Brands Grow, the seminal book by Byron Sharp. Sharp’s fundamental tenet is based on the concept of physical and mental availability, and consumers’ capacity to absorb a brand’s message. It seems that Clive has taken notes.
Nothing cerebral about what Clive’s done. You throw $60m at all available media channels and you’ll grow your brand, too!
You may be right – but still a revelation to a lot of marketers. Standard brief at the moment appears to be: “Our brand needs to be famous/iconic, but we have almost no media budget. Can we do that McWhopper thing but – not in a way that will scare our board”.
Isn’t growth the point?
Clive Palmer’s strategy is Byron Blunt. Brute force advertising.
Can’t help thinking we are missing something here. This article is a bit like saying “5 things brands could learn from Hitler and the Nazis party”. I don’t care how much Clive Palmer spends or how he does it when the messaging is so worrying. Do we really want to herald a dumb down Trump wanna be in any way?
We’re not missing anything – it’s not an endorsement, its an analysis of a political campaign marketing strategy. You can analyse a strategy without endorsing its content. I would say there are 5 things that marketers could learn from the Nazi party – that doesn’t mean we endorse its content. I don’t like Coke – I think I can learn from them.
Some bozo said: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”.
@Rosscoe – have you actually read Sharp’s “How Brands Grow”?
Viewing Palmer’s campaign through the lens of Sharp’s work is a worthwhile exercise.
Instead of invalidating any comparative analysis, Palmer’s $60m spend corresponds with a key implication of Sharp’s tenets: when it comes to media spend, go hard or go home.
While most ad-land folk will undoubtedly envy his budget and be horrified by his “creative”, Palmer’s brand strategy is highly effective.
Shame he’s not making advertising great again
Gummo, not to rain on your parade but we can’t judge how “great” he’s making advertising until we see the result. If he wins a majority and becomes PM then his advertising was truly great.
It will be interesting to see what his Cost Per Acquisition will be… three seats at that budget is a $20M CPA.
Oof.
It is possible that Palmer will not win a seat in the senate. So we will see if you CAN just buy votes very soon. However what his campaign has done is swung a wrecking ball through the reputation of Bill Shorten by consistently and relentlessly attacking him. If you are saying a successful strategy is to knock out the leading brand, can you do it with lies as he has done? Lies do not apply in a political campaign but if someone were to apply Palmer’s strategy and attack say Coca Cola, like Palmer’s campaign has done to Shorten, they would be in the courts faster than you can say ‘Clive Palmer for the senate’.
Well, here we are.. he successfully destroyed labor.
This is the election that will change everything.
There’s the “underground” campaigns – Doctors, Real Estate Agents and others running their specialised email campaigns along with some Employers (“if Labor wins I don’t know how many of you I can keep employing…”)
The rise of Independents (not just Phelps and Steggle but more widely) with strong, organised grass-roots support.
The first campaign where GetUp! has fully flexed its muscles with more volunteers than the other parties combined.
And the money. Aah, the money.
The Libs will be watching Wentworth without Malcolm’s $1,75m, but there’s also the rise of Social Media campaigns – directly impacting MSM in the future.
Most important. Campaign Directors will be asking for bigger budgets “give us $100M” and some groups (possibly including Parties) will be advocating election expenditure be severely curtailed. (“we must never allow a Party to buy their way in”).
This debate will continue for some time.
There is already legislation around allowable expenditure, clearly ineffective.
I’ve never read an article that so succinctly captures the banality of Byron Sharp.
I really hope marketers aren’t learning too much from this. “Just spend more money and hammer bullshit slogans” is hardly where the profession should be heading.
All data we have suggests his campaign has been highly ineffective in shifting perceptions whatsoever. Obviously the ultimate proof will be how many seats he’s able to pick up, but from what we’ve seen so far what he’s doing isn’t working.
Perhaps a good case study on why Sharp’s methodology just doesn’t work in 2019 (or does, as stated, the results aren’t in yet), with consumers over-saturated with messaging and highly cynical of advertising in general.
As others have said above, there are also a lot of more modern, personalised marketing efforts going on this election campaign under the surface – will be interesting to see whether spray & pray still beats target & entice.
I would argue Palmer scored low results in the election because he DIDN’T follow the Sharp approach. The real problem is people think HBG is all about mass advertising and blunt force when it’s a lot more nuanced than that.
And the Palmer results in this election show he didn’t apply the approach at all and its been a costly exercise if the goal was representation in parliament.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing Ben. Agree that HBG is likely more nuanced, but it would seem that the core premise is mental and physical availability and targeting to everyone with a vote, which was a resounding fail in this instance. I’d love it if you could unpack the nuance UAP missed. Also, do you work at Ehrenberg-Bass Institute or just a fan of HBG? Would be great to hear an informed outline of where UAP got it wrong, even if in hindsight.
Palmer’s overarching strategy was a complete “stitch up” of the Australian people and our democratic processes. Spend $50M+ on advertising, place a candidate in every electorate, create grabbing headline “policies”, generate fear amongst vulnerable demographic groups and the clincher was the preference deal with the LNP……..his sole purpose was to ensure the LNP retained power to protct his own interests and smooth the way for his $6B+ mining projects in the Galillee Basin……well done Clive you fooled a lot of us but not all!
The yellow was inescapable. It was a graffiti target but maybe that was recognition too? He had great differentiation. Impossible to mistake his form for anyone but Aussie John. Oh hang on.. wrong big boofy guy. But anyway, it totes worked. And Rupert was getting some of the money online so there’s an upside: we’ll get tax dollars out of Clive…. Hang on.. Rupert probably has a Caymans line on his ad revenue. Oh well.
So, here we are after the election and time to look at the ROI.
Hmmm. Nil.
Still, grew the brand, I’m aware of it now, just didn’t buy it.
It may be post-hoc rationalised logic (ie bullshit) but Clive said he was happy. As an ex – JoH flak he might well be, because he sucked a protest vote out and then shipped it back into the LNP.
What stands out head and shoulders is he drove other ads off papers and tv and billboards. He outbid. Sometimes it’s not brand recognition, it’s brand displacement.
Palmer achieved everything he wanted from his election advertising.
he helped ensure a Coalition win and he did it by not having to enter Parliament himself. he couldn’t be happier.
What a bloody waist of $$$.
What’s large very and now politically unimportant?
An irrelephant.
Bye Clive: strategy matters, execution too. Double fail.