Tag Archives: pitchcoach

When words are not enough!

The second of the debates confirmed they are here to stay and that they have changed forever old-style political campaigning. Although all three are stomping the country, wives in hand (Brown and Cameron), speaking in this photogenic ward, or school or factory, the impact of these staged news events is diminished.

Newspapers are finding it hard to cope with this marginalising of their role. Their forte has been the ‘forensic’ dissection of the prepared speeches, reporting, and embellishing, to the whim of their editors/publishers. Assessments of debates that we have all seen, and judged already, can make them look stupid. Take these two headlines on Friday morning.

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It is not just political bias that is the issue. It is the nature of these live debates and the way we the viewers are responding to them. The papers are devoting acres of newsprint to tell us their views on how the candidates did. Who said precisely what on this, that or the other policy. Who said it right. Who said it wrong.

The trouble is we have already decided who won and we are not deciding on who said what and on the content in isolation.

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If we were responding to the words on their own Cameron could well be winning. And on radio Brown, who has a reassuring warm tone, could be ahead. (As was Nixon against Kennedy). Unfortunately for both it is Clegg who “by force of his televisual appeal is making political realignment a genuine possibility.”(Times)

However hard they try Cameron and Brown cannot as Clegg does “look directly into the camera and connect viscerally to people’s desires.” (MOS)

Instead, what they both do is talk at rather than talk to the voters. Not so appealing!

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The TV debates. (10) Be yourself!

This is the tenth and final lesson for our plucky contestants as they face up to the three-part reality show series starting on Thursday. It may be stating the obvious but being yourself can easily get lost in the deluge of ‘debate-prep’, the dry-run rehearsals and the gaggle of Obama consultants.

Imagine absorbing advice from someone who:

“Showed Obama how to look smart without looking smug, how to look compassionate without being condescending, how to shed the appearance of being self-involved and arrogant and how to knit his brows and look as if he was concentrating intently as a question was asked before changing his facial expression and relaxing the slight frown into a smile as he came up with the answer”.

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Then imagine endless rehearsals in front of cameras with, for example Alistair Cambell playing the part of David Cameron or a Jeremy Hunt, rumoured to be better than the real thing, playing the part of Nick Clegg.

Then imagine the ‘relentless revision’ on argument, counter argument and rebuff all against the research-led concept of not merely having to perform well against your rivals but having to perform against expectations. Cameron apparently will be judged by a higher standard than his fellow debators.

Then throw in the nerves that will be jangling, even for these well prepared and seasoned tv performers, as they meet in open combat for the first time and where one slip-up can lead to the fatal thumbs down from the baying viewers. Now try being yourself. gladiators1

Yet this is what will count. Not the words but the ease and the naturalness of the body language. As veteran American broadcaster Jim Lehrer said in the Observer:

“A person is a person is a person. You are who you are and that comes out in debates.”

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The TV debates. (9) Choose the right tie.

The dry-run of the also-rans, Ask the Chancellors, took place last week. As anticipated it was dull and dreary. The equivalent of the ‘procurement police’ saw to that with a strictly observed 76-point code, answers time-limited, and the audience banned from clapping or jeering, not that there was much to provoke either.

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AA Gill, in typically ascerbic mode, said that “In the end it was all about the tie. As much time will have gone in getting the look right as the content. The look is as important as anything they have to say. They know the voters won’t be able to differentiate between them”.

Our three PM reality show contenders know this. They are well aware of the Nixon factor and are preparing accordingly with numerous coaches and advisers focusing in on look, style and tone of performance.

In one guise or another they each have a “saatchi” (see last post) to stiffen up their attitude. They each have wives, all of whom would be more attractive performers in this male-dominated show, to advise on how to make the emotional connection.

Certainly two have called in people who did it for Obama. One gives lessons on “how to sit, how to stand, how to gesture, how to pause”. Another, helping intonation, gets his pupil to say a seven word sentence seven times, each time emphasising a different word. Imagine Gordon practising …..

All this effort may seem faintly ridiculous as a way of deciding our future but the fact is most close pitch decisions, political or business, come down to “A sort of gut instinct. A feeling. It’s not what you say, it’s what you look like saying it”.

Who will chose the ties? After the negative reactions to Sam’s dressed down Dave and Sarah’s casual Gordie, it will probably be the focus groups.

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The TV debates. (8) The Saatchi factor.

But which variant?

The one and only genuine “original” is no more. That was the one where one relatively small agency was inspired by the talents of Maurice (now a peer of the realm) Charles (artoholic and author) Tim Bell (also a peer) and Martin Sorrell (a knight and tv pundit).

SINGLEMINDED

It was an agency whose compelling creative work was always rooted in a singleminded proposition. This was at the heart of a poster that only appeared on a dozen sites and yet remains the most talked about, most influential political advertisement ever. “Labour isn’t working”.

This is the magic dust David Cameron is wishing for with his late call to M&C Saatchi, hoping that their approach of “brutal simplicity” will give him a much needed boost pre-debates (and election)

BRUTAL SIMPLICITY

The posters are certainly brutal. They reinforce an aspect of Cameron which is already strong, his Brown-attack mode. They wont up his charm quotient where he is increasingly reliant on GlamSam and now MamSam, (so lucky that the vampish pictures were discovered in that attic before the pregnant ones).

Saatchi & Saatchi have an even tougher task with Gordon. They describe themselves as The Lovemarks company creating emotional connections with consumers/voters. The difficulty they face is that the product is too often exposed in a not altogether lovable way.

LOVEMARKS

The appearance on the Piers Morgan show did more than any ad campaign could to make him a little more lovable but in reality it is Sarah who is the lovemark, making the emotional connection for ‘my husband, my hero’. If she could introduce him at the debates his confidence would soar and the lovable, or is it loved, Gordon might shine.

Probably at this stage the most any poster can do, like Sarah, is make Gordon feel better about himself.

Nick Clegg, rumoured to have an ex-Saatchi luminary behind the scenes, is doing okay and will probably shade the debates without any advertising support. If he wants some, he need look no further than Team Saatchi. Conceived by “original” Saatchi, and born during the painful divorce, the agency has thrived.

BIG IDEAS

In a recent survey of clients, Team Saatchi came top (alongside Saatchi & Saatchi, with M&C fourth) and their positioning as “The boutique agency that delivers big ideas” seems spot on for Clegg. He has an easy performance manner, unlike his rivals, but a few more big ideas would not go amiss.

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The TV debate. (7) Beware vampires!

As the debates draw near, all three of the so-called secret weapons are mounting a full frontal attack. The front cover of Private Eye, in a nice parody of Reader’s Wives, shows all three strutting their stuff, Saucy Sarah, Sexy Sam and The Other One.

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Each has raised their game this week. A two pager in ES magazine eulogising Sarah Brown describes her as ‘ the most formidable Prime Minister’s wife in living memory’. Not to be outdone ‘vampish GlamCam’ sprawls seductively across pages of the MoS, Mail and Telegraph in a twelve year old fashion shoot conveniently ‘discovered’ in an attic.

Even the stylish Myriam Gonzalez, who backs her husband Clegg in a ‘middling sort of way’, has succumbed to appearing on television where she warns of the danger of a candidate’s wife putting together “a sugar-coated image of yourself , in the hope that it brings you votes.”

She makes a good point. But for the candidates there is a bigger danger. They are all making one of the commonest mistakes made in any presentation where the stakes are high. It’s the one where props created to aid communication become crutches that distract. Often dubbed “vampire visuals”.

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Right now vampires in books, movies and television programmes are enjoying popularity our candidates can only dream of. The same goes for these political vampires.

And we know what vampires do to their mates………

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