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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

PoliticsSeptember 11, 2023

An advertising veteran judges the political party websites

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Policies schmolicies, what about their tone?

We’ve probably all heard about the policies of the main players in the election, but these alone are not what we choose to vote on, even if we think we should. Often a key determinant of persuasion is “tone” – that unsaid bit of the message that actually often says the most.

After many years in advertising it is fair to say that the biggest single learning anyone can make is that tone generally trumps logic. 

When, some time ago, my insightful creative bosses at Saatchi’s put great music tracks next to wonderful animal footage for Telecom ads, it produced a loved tone that words and rational thinking could never convey. Telecom itself might not have been loved, but its ads were. And they worked in portraying the right tone and getting people calling.

Tone is vital and plays to our instincts. For example, an entertaining tone is generally preferable to a preachy one. Tone, pure and simple, is why, back in the day, I preferred David Lange over Robert Muldoon despite not being aligned to either political party. Lange seemed more fun.

So the tone that each of the political parties is setting is crucial. It’s the unstated part of their offering that says a lot about who they are and what they want for Aotearoa.

In pursuit of their tones, I looked through the parties’ websites. This is what I thought of them. 

National

Bland photos, go-to sans serif typeface, vanilla words, laid out a bit like the FMG annual report. Conservative and pretty boring. The tone does not seem visionary. Perhaps ‘predictable’ is what people want from National. If so, they read their market well in their tone. Getting us all ‘back on track’ is classic opposition tonal stuff. The trouble is we don’t really know what our track is these days. National’s tone feels by the book (‘leader with baby’ photo, tick), safe and designed not to offend.

Labour

Labour’s tone is all smiles from the leader but slightly excuse-y. 

“In it for you” is a four word, non-committal jumble. And the ‘inherited problems’ message is a hard one to push after a term or two. Labour are trying to portray a feeling of success and momentum, of confidence in their own abilities, but it is subdued. It is not “We smashed it NZ! You’d be mad to change!” which it surely would be if they felt more sure of their achievements. 

No doubt their tenure has been affected by consequential global events, but their tone and language are still uninspiring. Labour doesn’t throw me a big vision to love – their tone can be almost snippy at times; it doesn’t uplift or entertain me.

Imagery-wise, photos and video of real people would help lure me in, because warmth doesn’t emanate from the red graphics they use. It just feels a bit check-list. They’re not selling the Labour sizzle.

Act

Not much of a fun tone to be gleaned here either, despite the somewhat violent clash of colours and the team photo that feels a bit ‘real estate agents billboard’.

So much, it seems, needs to change in my world – at least according to this website. 

It’s blunt stuff. The messaging can read as axe-grindy and soulless. But it is unambiguous. They are trying to rationalise me into submission, but I want seduction. I want to feel part of a greater, more positive whole. But that’s clearly not the tone Act is going for with its website.

Te Pāti Māori

The tone is straightforward. It’s righteous, impatient, unrepentant but ultimately somewhat uninviting. The colours and graphic treatment of the landing page help give it a Barbara Kruger-esque sense of urgency and political angst. 

It is not surprising that Te Pāti Māori’s online platform looks and feels this way given their political platform, and it perhaps doesn’t feel so uninviting to their current followers. But again, seduction is hard to find. The tone is determined, not endearing. The website is text-dense and could benefit from some more imagery, photos and video. 

The Green Party

It’s hard to present global environmental disasters in a positive tone, I grant you. 

But still, the tone of the Greens’ website is a case of “when opportunity knocked, they were in the bath”. The world climate is conspiring entirely with the party’s environmental beliefs. “The time is now” (shout out to Moloko) is their central call, yet their delivery fails to encapsulate that sense of urgency. How about a live feed of global environmental disasters running on one side of the website?

Large parts of the Greens website are a bit stock photography meets Powerpoint 101. The words say ‘vision’, but the tone is mundane. The policy language is hardly punchy either. It just feels like another Greens campaign, much like the last one. Motion graphics, moving imagery, music, topicality – all these things can populate websites reasonably easily these days, adding energy, emotion and momentum. But not here. I remain ungrabbed.

New Zealand First

‘Common sense’ is a phrase NZ First uses quite a lot, and who can argue with that? Their site is straightforward, unfussy and, again, dull. To their credit, the site may lack a visionary landing page statement but at least it has an unambiguous call to action for the time-poor: party vote NZ First (a messaging decision which actually is common sense.) Of course its imagery is leader-focused, and the flag behind Winston Peters adds a slightly presidential aura. 

They’re committed to ‘forgotten New Zealanders’, but I can’t remember exactly who we’ve forgotten. In essence, I don’t feel I’m being invited to join a forward-looking movement, I feel I’m being invited to join a hunt for yesterday.

So that’s how the party websites feel to me. Of course others will feel differently and clearly many factors influence how we perceive tone. 

But the question I’m left with is this: Which one exudes a tone that communicates vision, hope, energy, optimism, compassion, unity and more, well, fun?

Of the main players, sadly the answer is none of them. All are straight, sans-serif, slightly pious and lacking in energy. They’ve defaulted to playing it safe. 

So does any party have an appealing tone? I had hoped it would be the Legalise Cannabis Party. If any party should be having fun, surely it’s the one dedicated to smoking weed. But have you seen their website

John Plimmer is a former executive creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand

Keep going!
An Act public meeting in Kerikeri (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)
An Act public meeting in Kerikeri (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

PoliticsSeptember 11, 2023

The Act roadshow rolls into Northland

An Act public meeting in Kerikeri (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)
An Act public meeting in Kerikeri (Photo: Stewart Sowman-Lund)

What happens when David Seymour isn’t fronting an Act public meeting? Stewart Sowman-Lund heads to Kerikeri to find out.

For six years, David Seymour was the sole representative of the Act Party in parliament. But since 2020, he’s had nine friends alongside him. Many will have failed to register in the minds of the average voter, in part a result of the party having a surprisingly well-controlled caucus, but also perhaps because Seymour has continued to outshine his team. 

Now, as polling consistently shows Act’s caucus will balloon even more come October 14, and with the potential for a handful to make it around the cabinet table, the party has set out on a nationwide pre-election tour. Many of the events will feature Seymour. But at some, like in Kerikeri this past weekend, the party’s leader was nowhere to be seen aside from on the side of the party’s massive bus (dubbed “Big Pinky”) parked out front of the local sports centre. 

In part, as Act MPs have told me, not having Seymour at every single event gives voters a chance to understand that the party is no longer solely a one-man party. It’s an opportunity to get fresher faces in front of voters and showcase the breadth of talent lying further down the list – a list that has in recent weeks seen five mysterious departures, including of one person who had compared vaccine mandates to Nazi concentration camps.

The Kerikeri stop on the Road to Real Change tour was fronted by two of Act’s current caucus – Mark Cameron and Simon Court. Both are almost certain to be returned to parliament for a second term, placed at seventh and eighth on the list. Cameron, dubbed the party’s “authentic voice for rural New Zealand”, has been one of Act’s higher-performing MPs over the past term of parliament, though recently faced scrutiny over re-emerged remarks he made on Twitter before he became an MP, including misogynistic slurs directed at Jacinda Ardern and enthusiastic championing of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. (As to why he hadn’t deleted the old account, he admitted to me recently that he’d simply forgotten his password.) Court, a former civil engineer, is the party’s infrastructure and transport spokesperson. 

About 50 people had turned out to hear from the two MPs, which based on the number of empty seats was about two-thirds of the anticipated crowd. In a 30-minute presentation, the pair tackled the three Cs of Act’s election year plan: co-governance, crime and the cost of living. These are “pretty much the key issues that come up all the time”, said Cameron, asking the crowd for a show of hands regarding concern about co-governance. Nearly every hand goes up. “Oh gracious me,” he said.

“I will not apologise for this… I am bloody proud to be a New Zealander. The fact you are here and concerned about co-governance and the division in society speaks to the fact that you are proud,” Cameron said. “How is it so that we have a government that seems to divide us more every day based on who our ancestors were?”

Cameron took aim at the “nonsense” at what he described as preferential treatment in healthcare for Māori and the fact many pieces of legislation have embedded obligations to the Treaty of Waitangi. He lambasted the confusion over the formerly named Three Waters reforms and the Te Mana o te Wai freshwater regulations. “This is not that we have aversion to cultural sensitivity but the fact that at every turn there are more and more Treaty obligations embedded in legislation that further divides New Zealand,” he said, with Court later decrying what he called “vague spiritual concepts” contained within legislation. Under Act, he said, “that’ll be gone”.

David Seymour and his candidates celebrate on election night in 2020 (Photo: Getty Images)

On crime, Court said there was a growing sense that it was out of control. He cited the actions of gangs during the Covid lockdowns, saying they paraded through the streets while others were prevented from even leaving their homes. Labour had “emptied the jails”, incentivising a “massive crime wave” and a sense that consequences were non-existent. Some healthcare workers were scared even walking back to their cars after dark, he said. “When they look out at the dark void between the front of the hospital and the carpark where their car is parked, they’re worried about how they’re going to get there and whether they’re going to get there safely.”

There were murmurs of support and a light round of applause as Court pledged to reinstate the three strikes legislation and get tougher on youth crime. “Some people believe this sounds harsh, but what Act would do is subject these young, repeat offenders to electronic monitoring – and that means an ankle bracelet,” said Court. “It sounds harsh, but we need to know where these young people are. They also need to know that we know where they are.”

Wrapping up his address, Court briefly turned to the election campaign. “Any small donation would help because the big parties are going to be given millions of dollars of taxpayer money to advertise back to you about how great they are at running the country,” Court had told the crowd. “We don’t get that money.” True, it may not millions, but Act will receive over $300,000 for its election campaign and has already amassed a sizeable war chest of public donations. There were Eftpos machines set up on tables by the exit for anyone wishing to donate on the spot.

The question and answer session largely avoided the key topics that had been set up by Court and Cameron. One person asked whether it was true that the number of bureaucrats and consultants had skyrocketed in Wellington since 2017. Court reiterated Act’s pledge to scrap certain “demographic” ministries, though opted not to mention Guy Fawkes, and cited recent headlines about a $40,000 leaving party at the Ministry for Pacific Peoples. One woman audibly groaned “good God” while another simply put her head in her hands. 

Simon Court speaks during the Act Party election campaign launch in 2020 (Photo: Greg Bowker/Getty Images)

On transport, one person questioned how the state of the roads could be so bad given the cost of road user charges and fuel excise. “If you don’t start fixing the roads up in Northland, we’ll start going back to the horse and cart,” another said. Court advocated for a new method of road revenue collection through electronic road pricing, though some in the audience were heard whispering about the number of drivers in Northland who were on the road illegally and may evade the system.

“We’re going to have to change the way road revenue is collected and that means we’re going to have to move wholly from fuel taxes and RUCs to road pricing. If I don’t pay my fees, my licence gets suspended,” said Court, prompting someone from the crowd to say “what licence?” and another to say “what rego?” 

When the conversation finally turned to the upcoming election, an audience member questioned what bottom lines Act would be taking into negotiations with National. The party has so far refused to say much about its election commitments beyond priority areas. Both Court and Cameron stayed on message, even without David Seymour in the room. Aside from a referendum on co-governance, which has not been supported by National, the party had no fixed bottom line policies.

“We are not going to go down that rabbit hole just yet and there’s a reason for it,” said Cameron. “If we set ourselves up and say this is what we are categorically not going to do and this is what we are going to do… invariably what happens is we are sitting here in three years’ time wondering why the audience only has half a dozen people in it because we haven’t managed to make all these false promises come true.”

Court added: “Line by line, the bottom line thing – we won’t be engaging in that.”

The meeting wrapped up after about an hour and a half. A small crowd stayed to put their questions directly to the MPs, while volunteers handed out policy pamphlets. There were some murmurs that the MPs had done a good job hosting the meeting, while others expressed concern that questions hadn’t been answered adequately. Another was heard worrying whether it was worth voting for Act if the party wouldn’t be the largest party in the next government.

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