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Lawrence: Gillard needs ‘very intelligent’ marketing strategy to combat Abbott

Neil LawrenceThe man behind Labor’s successful 2007-election campaign said Julia Gillard needs an “intelligent” marketing strategy if she wants to win September’s federal election.

Neil Lawrence, CEO of Lawrence Creative Strategy and architect of the ‘Kevin 07’ campaign, told the Mumbrella360 Conference Labor should market Gillard as “tougher” and “smarter” than the Opposition leader.

“I also think there is a sense in the population that she’s smarter than Abbott. She’s a tough woman,” said Lawrence.

“I’d be looking somewhere around a narrative that says the world continues to be a very uncertain place, Australia continues to be a small island nation, and Australia is always fragile. We need leadership that is very intelligent, that has a track record, and is tough enough to see us through tough times,” he said.

Lawrence said the current government’s brand has become too synonymous with unions.

“The Labor party’s great problem at the moment, culturally, is that it’s turned itself into a culture of the union movement. It’s retreated from a winnable position,” said Lawrence.

Despite a more effective social media presence, Lawrence said Labor has no “movement” to appeal to.

“Social media amplifies grassroots movements, and that’s what happened in the States. There’s no grassroots movement here,” he said.

“I think the strengths of Gillard you would emphasise is that this government has achieved a lot of reform under very difficult circumstances – a minority Government is not easy for anybody, and this one has been particularly difficult.”

Lawrence said there’s logic to Labor’s strategy of announcing the election so far out from September.

“The hope of going very early – seven months before the election – was that Tony Abbott would be exposed in a long campaign because he wasn’t bright enough, and hadn’t thought out his policies, but that hasn’t happened yet,” he said.

“The conservative side are a very, very tight political machine, and they’re running a small target strategy. They’re keeping ‘the government is the story, Julia is the story,’ and that’s how they’d like to keep it until they walk into the government.”

 Sam Buckingham-Jones 

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