Wellington (well, Whitby) advertising person John Ansell — he who created the effective and still-much recalled Iwi/Kiwi billboards from our 2005 election campaign — has started a blog about, yes, advertising.
It is actually very good, and non-partisan even with his articles about the billboards from the current election campaign, in which he demonstrates that the Greens’ “vote for me” billboard featuring a primary school girl was the same as his then own advertising firm produced for the first school board of trustees election in 1988.
My understanding is that no party wanted to avail itself of John’s talents this election. He did some work briefly for Act which then abandoned him. He worked on Labour radio campaigns at the 1987 and 1993 elections, too.
22 Comments
October 12, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Well, I don’t know that I’d want something as cynical and dishonest as the iwi/kiwi billboard on my CV, either. This billboard implied that Labour had given the beaches away to iwi – an outrageous misrepresentation of the Foreshore and Seabed act which sought to protect the foreshore and seabed for ‘all New Zealanders’ – in other words, Kiwis.
I did enjoy John’s critiques of the various party billboards though.
October 12, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Thanks Carol (sort of
).
Please understand, it’s hard to spell out a whole policy on a billboard.
What Iwi/Kiwi was getting at was that there were a lot of fishhooks still in the Foreshore and Seabed legislation that most Kiwis would be disturbed about.
Those people could see that the more radical Maori were mad at Labour for not giving them even more.
Labour knew disgruntled pakeha would derive comfort from this, and National needed to jolt them out of their complacency.
From their point of view, the implication of Beaches/Iwi/Kiwi was true: Labour were leaning more to the Maori side than the New Zealand side.
Any ad or comment around that tinderbox issue gets you branded a racist, and that hurts. But it comes with the territory.
Poneke: thanks for calling my comments non-partisan.
I do need to correct your understanding of my departure from political advertising though.
Actually, two parties wanted to avail themselves of my services.
In 2006, I was working in the National leader’s office, but resigned the same day Don Brash did out of loyalty.
About six months later, John Key’s chief of staff Wayne Eagleson saw me speaking to a forum about simplifying public policy and invited me back to meet John. I accepted and started working there again.
I like John, appreciate his political skills, and at that stage couldn’t see any other party making much headway against Labour.
Then I got a phone call from Roger Douglas saying he was coming back to ACT and would I work for him?
This changed everything for me, as I’ve always been quite open about my admiration for Roger’s courage in the 80s. I said yes on the spot and the Nats were very good about it.
I enjoyed working for ACT, and wrote the 20 point plan leaflet, some speeches, the slogan, and other campaign material (which I don’t know if they’ll use or not).
But I knew that to be successful in rebranding them, I’d need a mandate to rein in some of the freer spirits in the party and impose some not-negotiable branding rules.
Of course, this kind of central planning doesn’t exactly come naturally to free marketeers, and my mandate never came.
Since I was determined to create a great campaign or none at all, I reluctantly opted for none.
Having said that, ACT’s no worse than any other party I’ve worked for, is infinitely better in terms of policies that will benefit New Zealand, and I very much hope they do well.
October 13, 2008 at 1:16 am
Crikey! Please, tell me you aren’t trying to say that you wanted their policies to fit their advertising.
October 13, 2008 at 7:44 am
“Labour were leaning more to the Maori side than the New Zealand side.”
See, even when you explain yourself you can’t avoid setting up “Maori” in opposition to “New Zealand”.
I’m with Carol. Those billboards exploited racist sentiment. You may feel honestly that’s not what you intended, but it’s still what you did.
October 13, 2008 at 8:08 am
Perhaps we should ask Winston for an opinion about iwi/kiwi? Afterall he is the master of exploiting racism and bigotry for political gain.
And fully supported, nay, totally protected by Labour!
Given this protection Labour obviously agrees with his views.
October 13, 2008 at 8:22 am
Once you’re able to see “Maori” and “New Zealand” as simply brands to be hyped or denigrated you’ve moved beyond mundane morality.
While I wish Mr. Ansell luck with his blog, in a field where you’re only as good as your last job there are few things as stale as the glory-days reminiscences of over-the-hill media folks.
October 13, 2008 at 8:34 am
“Once you’re able to see “Maori” and “New Zealand” as simply brands to be hyped or denigrated you’ve moved beyond mundane morality.”
Dude! The guy’s in _advertising_. He could turn earwax into a brand if he wanted too.
October 13, 2008 at 9:46 am
John, I couldn’t quite follow your logic in explaining iwi/kiwi, but thanks for the reply anyway.
What do you make of ACT’s billboards? Our neighbourhood derived a great deal of amusement from the heroic mis-spellings .. “Zero tolerence for crime’! ‘The Emmisions Trading Scheme will ruin New Zealand’. I couldn’t decide if it was clever and postmodern or they simply couldn’t afford a spell checker.
October 13, 2008 at 10:20 am
Well obviously Carol, in an ideal orthographical market, spellings should compete freely allowing the best ones to win. You are simply clinging to woolly leftist beliefs in your foolish desire for a state-enforced spelling system. I suppose you and your Marxist mates will want so-called “correct” spelling to be taught in schools next.
October 13, 2008 at 10:25 am
The offending phrases have been quietly replaced with the correct spelling now – must have been the invisible hand of the market!
October 13, 2008 at 12:12 pm
John, I think you could be missing the point about the iwi/kiwi billboards. I appreciate that in your industry quickly conveying brand identity is the the goal, however it seems to me that the objections to your billboard is that the message was false. That the matter wasn’t/isn’t binary and to characterise it as such is deceptive. Therefore as effective as it might have been, it remains dishonest.
October 13, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Poneke, do you genuinely think `Vote for me (to stay poor)’ or `At least he lied through his own teeth’ are non-partisan?
I mean, I love propaganda as much as the next guy, and I think it’s great that one of NZ’s exponents in the field is blogging. But let’s not pretend it’s something it’s not.
L
October 13, 2008 at 11:03 pm
I don’t think Poneke was referring to those ones, Lew, but rather the Star-Times review.
You guys remind me of Brian Edwards, who once told me that “Iwi” means Maori and “Kiwi” means all other New Zealanders.
I’ll say again what I said to him: Kiwi means all New Zealanders, including iwi.
And “New Zealand” is not in opposition to Maori, it includes Maori.
Kiwi is inclusive. Iwi is exclusive.
It should be possible to raise legitimate racial issues without being labelled racist. In that case, I supported the ACT position, which was to let the courts decide.
It should also be possible to air rational objections to the Emissions Trading Scheme without being labelled a ‘climate change denier’.
To quarantine such issues from debate is in my view rather sinister.
Deborah: no, I just wanted to do justice to their policies, which I think are excellent. From what Carol is saying about the misspellings, my concern about the free spirits seems to be justified.
When it comes to branding, you lefties are dead right: central planning is crucial!
October 14, 2008 at 9:39 am
John: Well, I agree that your Nat/Green billboard review was entirely even-handed.
On the matter of iwi/kiwi – iwi is no less inclusive; it means `people’ or `folk’. Those of us whose ancestors didn’t come by waka from Hawaiki are `tau iwi’. It’s reasonable to reject the use of that foreign term and insist on being called something else – but by the same token it’s reasonable for others to reject the foreign term `kiwi’ and use their own term.
Ultimately this is the root of the iwi/kiwi misunderstanding that billboard exploited – people think iwi means Māori. It doesn’t.
L
October 14, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Yeah, that’s fair though I’d've thought that if you wanted to avoid simplistic lables, you’d avoid polarising the debate?
October 16, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Those 2005 billboards were excellent, but the use of the Kiwi/Iwi billboard was a step too far, a mistake – it may have excited the base, but it helped put off the swinging voters who were sensitive to the Labour attack-line that National would be too divisive. National made the mistake of feeding rather than counteracting its negatives. It was the decision in that last week by swinging voters that lost it for National.
October 16, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I tend to agree Psmith.
I thought Brash’s pronouncements that Labour voters weren’t mainstream was a similar significant error. Moreso because I suspect Brash is far more liberal than his leadership of National reflected – my conclusion is that he was getting very poor advice.
October 17, 2008 at 7:59 am
A blog entry peppered with phrases like “Green eco-hoax policies”, “loony lefties”, and the oh-so-subtle “he’s a master politician. He wants to win. He knows how to win. He is winning. And he will win.”
Mm, yes, non-partisan indeed.
October 17, 2008 at 7:32 pm
That’s a very dishonest post Joey and you know it.
I’m clearly partisan. I spelled that out in the first few words.
But my analysis of the quality of the Green and National ads was non-partisan.
You can be both, you know.
Your outrageous cherry-picking-for-your-own-purposes left out my saying that Key is unencumbered by strong principles.
Do you think that’s meant to be flattering?
Oh and Paul: what lost it for National was Labour illegally spending taxpayers’ money running their best ads in the last week.
All those ones about ‘You can’t trust them’ worked to switch 1% of people from National to Labour.
(30% of people made up their minds in the last week, and Labour changed those minds with stolen money.)
You’ll find a way of defending that, as you do, but that election was stolen.
The Iwi/Kiwi billboard, much as you guys don’t like it, was the most popular of the lot in focus groups of floating voters.
And the Brash Orewa speech was applauded by over 90% of the population, completely wrong-footing the media.
Why?
Because at last, people were allowed to say what they were thinking: that the racial pendulum had swung too far in this country and needed to swing back a bit.
They were certainly not saying that genuine Maori grievances should not be addressed fairly.
No one thinks that, as far as I’m aware, much as you might like to imagine all right wingers are rednecks.
October 19, 2008 at 9:37 am
If most people interpret the “Iwi/Kiwi” billboard as meaning “Maori/Pakeha”, and if it has to be explained that, no, actually “Kiwi” is referring to all New Zealanders, then surely this means the billboard has failed in getting its core message across.
If its intended meaning isn’t the obvious first meaning someone sees at a glance, then the billboard hasn’t done the job.
October 19, 2008 at 5:03 pm
If most people interpret the “Iwi/Kiwi” billboard as meaning “Maori/Pakeha”, and if it has to be explained that, no, actually “Kiwi” is referring to all New Zealanders, then surely this means the billboard has failed in getting its core message across.
I always took that billboard to mean “Maori/Pakeha” and I think it is disingenouous to claim it means “Iwi/All New Zealanders.”
For much of the past three decades, the term “all New Zealanders” was, to me, a euphemism for “Pakeha” or actually, “white people.” Whenever you heard or saw the words “all New Zealanders” used, you could replace them with “white people” or “Pakeha” and see the implied meaning.
That’s changed in the past decade, thank goodness.
I still think those billboards were very effective from an advertising viewpoint and I think most of us could see through them.
You don’t have to support the message to see the effectiveness, especially compared with the yawn-inducing advertising of all the parties this election.
October 19, 2008 at 8:40 pm
You could argue, though, that they weren’t effective because National didn’t get elected that election.
Or perhaps they were too effective in revealing National’s divisive stance that time!