Proceso de Orden de compra

Appointed in 1995, Conservative Party Chairman Brian Mawhinney seemed to have made a strong start to the role by immediately appointing M&C Saatchi to run the party’s election

campaign. Maurice and Charles Saatchi had formed M&C following a shareholders’ revolt at

Saatchi & Saatchi, the company they founded in 1970 and which had enjoyed a close relationship with the Conservatives since before the 1979 election. Indeed, before the

29

Gould, The Unfinished Revolution, pp. 326-329. 30

Gould, The Unfinished Revolution, p. 345. 31

Gould, The Unfinished Revolution, p. 345. 32

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Conservatives could appoint M & C they had to buy out Saatchi & Saatchi’s contract with the

party for £1 million.33 _{The move demonstrated the party}’s faith in Maurice’s ability to help

them win elections. Mawhinney placed similar faith in other old hands too, bringing in Tim

Bell, another figure associated with the party’s success in the 1980s, to advise on the

campaign.34

While this team may have won elections before, the Conservatives and their opposition were now very different beasts. Conservative posters produced between 1979-92 were premised on a clear binary separation between Conservative and Labour over important policy issues. For example, the 1983 poster FOOT PUMP. [Figure 5.2] attacked Labour’s economic policy

(while also satirising its leader Michael Foot’s oratorical style) which unlike the Conservatives’ placed job creation before price stability. Fiscal ‘irresponsibility’ was one

way of attacking Labour, that the party was ‘weak’ on defence another. The 1987 poster

LABOUR’S POLICY ON ARMS. [Figure 5.3], which mocked its commitment to unilateral

nuclear disarmament, being a case in point. Labour’s stance on these and many other issues had, however, changed since these posters had been produced. The Conservatives were now faced with an opposition in much closer accord with the majority of public opinion and their own position. Indeed, one of the main rationales for ‘New’ Labour was to demonstrate that Labour had completely changed since the 1980s.35

By 1997, many key voters believed that Labour had been transformed under Blair, neutralising established avenues of Conservative attack. The party’s response to ‘New’

Labour’s success was uncertain and contradictory, mainly because its leaders could not agree what ‘New’ Labour actually was. Maurice Saatchi believed that as the public had accepted a

change in the party, so should the Conservatives and react accordingly. Yet the Chancellor Kenneth Clarke thought the party had not changed at all; while Major argued that while Blair

might embody the ‘New’, the rest of the organisation remained ‘old’.36

Such uncertainty revealed itself in the Conservative party’s posters. The slogan ‘New Labour

New Danger’ first appeared in July 1996 and was illustrated with a set of disembodied eyes

peering out from behind a curtain and a purse, suggesting that something dark and menacing

33

Campaign, 3 November 1995. 34

A. Seldon, Major a political life (London: 1997) pp. 615-616.

35 _{S. Fielding, The Labour Party continuity and change in the making of ‘New’ Labour (Basingstoke: 2003) pp.} 96-97; Wring, The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party, pp. 124-126.

36

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lay under the ‘New’ exterior. However, when in August 1996, Mawhinney, Bell and Charles

Saatchi decided to reuse the eyes in a newspaper advert they moved from one interpretation

of ‘New’ Labour to another. By giving Blair demon eyes ‘New Labour New Danger’ [Figure

5.1] went from a nuanced attack on the party to a visceral personal attack on Blair. Given

Blair’s public popularity it remained a bold decision to turn on him, the Conservatives had

attacked Labour’s strongest rather than weakest link. As Danny Finkelstein the party’s Head of Research stated, the slogan ‘New Labour New Danger’ was applied inconsistently.37

The decision to move from an attack on the Labour party to a direct attack on Blair was made at the last minute by Mawhinney, Bell and Saatchi, without reference to Major, reportedly to

latter’s annoyance.38 _{It was one example of an often testy relationship between M & C and}

leading Conservatives. While Mawhinney agreed with Saatchi on this occasion, it was widely reported the two did not get on.39 _{Like Labour, the Conservatives wanted to focus group test}

their posters but Saatchi was sceptical of their utility, claiming that the only real test was at the ballot box.40 _{This reflected a wider belief amongst advertising professionals that}

committees did not produce effective creative copy.41Despite Saatchi’s arguments, in March

1997 the party insisted that testing occur before any of its advertising was released.42

M & C were often frustrated by the unwillingness of party leaders’ to take risks. Designs

were vetoed or changed, thereby diluting their original message. Saatchi had intended the poster of a lion weeping a single red tear to be overtly anti-EU in tone, but Europhile Ken Clarke watered down the wording.43 _{The agency had also wanted to mount a more vigorous} attack on Blair, even producing a poster of a grinning Tony Blair with the message, ‘what lies

behind the smile?’. Major however, did not want to personalise the campaign, and vetoed it.44

Given this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Conservative campaign appeared to lurch from one highly criticised poster to another.

37 _{Finkelstein, ‘Why the Conservatives Lost’, p. 14.}

38 _{N. Jones, Campaign 1997, (London: 1997) p.143; For Major’s annoyance see Seldon, Major, p. 665.} 39 _{‘Tories set to split with M & C Saatchi, Campaign, 2}nd

May, 1997; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1997, p. 42.

40

Butler and Kavanagh, General Election of 1997, pp. 42-43. 41

See for example J.Hegarty, Hegarty on Advertising (London: 2011) p. 28. 42_{‘Tearful Tories to vet new ads’, Campaign, 6}

March 1998. 43 _{‘Shattered Tories’, The Observer, 4 May 1997.}

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