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Bingo & beer. Just how much damage has Grant Shapps' ad done to his party?

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So ridiculous, it would have been rejected as a plotline in 'The Thick Of It'. That's not (or not necessarily) my opinion, it comes from the creators of 'The Thick Of It' and it refers to the 'advertisement' placed on Twitter by Grant Shapps, Conservative Party Chairman and MP for Welwyn Hatfield, last night.

His actions followed the budget speech delivered by George Osborne to Parliament, yesterday. When one considers the savage cuts made to public services, and the privatisation of swathes of the NHS, the budget was pretty tame stuff. Perhaps that's why, for some bizarre reason, the coalition made great play of halving the tax on profits from bingo halls. It's also unclear what possessed Mr. Shapps in the hours after Osborne sat down, but he obviously felt it his duty to press the point home. So he created (or had someone make) an ad reading:

’Budget 2014 cuts bingo & beer tax helping hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy.' Adding, 'RT to spread the word.’

On the face of it, these are pretty unassuming, inoffensive words. But placed in context, they represent a PR and political minefield. Maybe Shapps couldn't see the context as he was smack bang in the middle of it. Or maybe he's just not that bright.

 

'This sort of clunker has only been a political peril in recent years.'


You don't need to be a PR guru or political strategist to spot the Tory party's problem with image. Even the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, thinks the bias towards old Etonians in cabinet positions is a bit much. Essentially, most people perceive the  government to be a plaything of multi-millionaire posh boys, with little understanding of the ways of ordinary folk. Whether or not this is the case, it's an unhelpful impression when an election is looming. Behind the scenes, communications wonks at Tory Central Office have surely been working their socks off to counter the image. This close to 2015, there is undoubtedly a carefully plotted and scheduled strategy to endear the party to the electorate. And Grant Shapps has set back their efforts by going rogue.

This sort of clunker has only been a political peril in recent years. As little as a decade ago, a party chairman wouldn't have had a clue how to build and publish an advertisement. Indeed, there would have been an expensive advertising agency retained for that very purpose, creating a very controlled, mediated and narrow channel to the audience. Ah! How the coalition must long for those simpler times. For now, any hot-headed senior politician with a wonky bee in his or her bonnet can pump the contents of their head to an enormous audience in an instant. It's quite a hazard.
 
Reading the 17 word text of Grant's ad again, I think it's one word doing all the damage. 'Bingo', 'beer' and 'hard-working' are all contentious. But the real villain is 'they'. By deployed that modest syllable, Shapps is confirming everybody's worst fears. Here's an administration so distant, they say, so encased in its ivory tower, it imagines the citizenry crave nothing more than some light gambling and a flagon of ale, once they leave the mill for the day.

I'm not suggesting the use of 'we' would have made the whole communication more acceptable, but I think it may have removed its barb.

This, of course, is why public communication is such a precarious activity. Everything prepared for publication should be viewed objectively and with a cool head. As many a Twitter user has discovered, failing to this can open a number of barrels of very fat worms. Fortunately for the Conservative Party Chairman, social media is so accessible, these things tend to flare brightly but fade quickly. He may have added fuel to a fire his masters desperately wish to extinguish, but the actual ad will soon be forgotten.

That said, whatever Shapps has been doing today, it's a safe bet it involved saying 'Sorry' more than once. 


Magnus Shaw is a copywriter, consultant and blogger

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