Bad move, Labour
Once again, the Labour Party has failed to read its target audience correctly – does it even know what a target audience is? – and to assess the pros and cons of a particular public relations tactic.
Let’s forget the overall strategy, because there clearly isn’t one.
By launching this first in its series of electoral billboards – does Joseph know something the prime minister doesn’t? – Labour has missed the mark, and badly.
Perhaps Labour’s consultants can be forgiven for failing to read the zeitgeist.
Very few people have that particular skill and surprisingly, they all seem to vote Nationalist.
But Labour does have access to Malta Today’s polls, which for all we know are actually the Labour Party’s polls. Had its consultants read them properly, they would have seen – even if they couldn’t pick it up by using their powers of observation – that there has been a total public-opinion backlash against difficult MPs like Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Franco Debono and Jesmond Mugliett, more so now that their spiritual leader, the prisoner of Brussels, is hawking a power station to the Labour Party and saying it isn’t for the multi-million commission.
This backlash of anger and irritation, this cheap and money-grubbing behaviour by his erstwhile rival, has translated into a fresh wave of support for Lawrence Gonzi. The most common reaction among Nationalist supporters to Franco Debono’s behaviour is “miskin, x’qeghdin jaghmulu l-Gonzi. Imisshom jisthu.”
Don’t bother with the readers’ comments on timesofmalta.com. Those are written by people who vote Labour anyway, which means that their opinion about Franco Debono counts not at all for electoral purposes. They’re in the bag already, have been there since birth and will stay there until death.
I’m afraid I’m going to have to give the Labour Party some more professional advice, because they clearly are not getting it anywhere else.
And let’s face it, when the party is led by a Super One hack, Saviour Balzan’s defence lawyer and a summa cum laude law graduate who can’t pronounce ‘task’ and who thinks that King Kong climbed to the top of the Empire Station, then it’s unfair to expect what they can’t deliver.
That billboard works only if people who habitually vote Nationalist are really upset at the prime minister and blame Franco Debono’s defiance on him.
But in this equation, people’s anger is not focussed on the prime minister. It is focussed on Franco Debono. They don’t blame the prime minister for Franco Debono. They blame themselves, because they elected him to parliament as their representative, in exactly the same way that I and several thousand others blame ourselves for Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (divorce or no divorce).
Some more free advice, and they didn’t need me to tell them this because it should be obvious to anyone with a grown-up knowledge of human nature, and particularly that sort of human nature.
If Labour’s magnificent leaders and its sorry army of out-of-touch consultants like Godfrey Grima think that this billboard will fuel Franco Debono’s self-aggrandisement and narcissism, encouraging him to cause more trouble for the prime minister and perhaps even bring down the government, they are wrong.
It will make him feel like an object of ridicule, and to a narcissist, nothing is more deleterious. And so it will have the opposite effect of that intended, by pushing Debono back into the fold because he is, above all, an approval-seeker and it’s not the Labour Party’s approval he wants.
There is another reason why that billboard is not going to work for Labour: Malta is a literal society. Irony and understatement are misunderstood. Sentences with more than one punctuation mark are confusing. If you put an icecream on a billboard for a company selling refrigerators, to signify chill, people will think you’re selling ice creams. Not all people, of course not, but certainly enough to undermine your project.
Billboards are not advertisements in magazines which are read by a clearly defined target audience. They are for general consumption, and have to be easily understood by the man on the Arriva omnibus.
So if you put Franco Debono’s face on a blue billboard with the GonziPN logo that is so recognisable from the last election, most people – and yes, in this case I do mean most – will just assume it’s another PN billboard and that the Nationalist Party is doing this to keep Franco Debono happy and voting with the government by stooping to conquer and massaging his ego in public.
They will not assume that it is a Labour billboard. The others will react as I explained above.
And this is quite apart from the fact that the only people who know what Franco Debono looks like are those who follow the news religiously. So another swathe of people will have no idea who that is on the billboard.
And finally, there is one last reason why this billboard is going to backfire. It makes the Labour Party look like even bigger idiots than they do already.
At this point, all the Nationalist Party has to do is put up its own billboards, featuring a pair of giant tusks, and it’s sorted for the next few weeks.
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I’m curious – what is they really meant to say? This looks like the sort of prank bored students might get up to.
You’re so right! Exactly how I feel.
Never mind the zeitgeist.
For the PL’s information, genuine PN supporters, like myself, define Debono and others of his ilk as scabs (trade union language) and rats (in lay terms).
This is, in correct English, exactly what we think they are.
Isn’t it a PN billboard?
Who is the intended target? The only ones ‘getting it’ will be the PL fanatics who were fooled into thinking Götterdämmerung was upon the Gonzi administration. The same ones who were bitter that Debono did not bring the government down on the Gatt vote of confidence.
The floaters will be angry at the hoodwink of having one party issuing billboards in the name of another, the PN supporters will realise the game is on, and as for the Primadonnas – the fat lady is singing.
This is a suicidal chess move. From what we know of PL electioneering, it will not be the last.
[Daphne – This blog owes its existence to the Labour Party’s suicidal chess moves and ridiculous campaign tactics in the last general election. There was so much I wanted to talk about that my Thursday and Sunday columns were not enough.]
My answer for Debono’s statement on that bill board is Johnny il-Kawboy’s… “U ZGUUR!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Gw8me4w9M&feature=related
Today that poster has been removed.
It is actually great PN propaganda. Well done Labour.
http://www.azzopardinicky.com/2011/12/disjointed-pack-of-fools.html
The billboard message needs “working out”. Which, of course, for that reason alone means that it is a failure, and even worse, because the intended message (I’m assuming it is what you are assuming it is!!) is all wrong – then it is impossible to work out, i.e. arrive at the intended conclusion, because it is not logical.
Looking at the billboard, and blanking out what you have written, I confess to being totally lost.
Many people misunderstand and misinterpret very simple messages, let alone cryptic ones.
Keep it up Labour!
Remember “The only way is up, Labour”?
I couldn’t agree more.
There are a couple of books on psychology in communications that are obviously missing from the library at the Mile End, that is, if there is one.
Dr (sic!) Tuks Fors does not have a summa cum laude. Hekk kien jonqos marelli!
[Daphne – Oh yes, magna. I wonder how he pronounces that.]
God only knows! But as long as he splashes his classification on his firm’s letterheads, his tuks is done.
When you wrote, phonetically, the words Anglu utters in public, I sometimes thought you were exaggerating.
Today I happened to listen to one of his (written) speeches and I concluded that someone writes them for him, because he confused a lot of words and had to correct his speech each time.
Or, “chi non capisce la propia scrittura è un asino di natura”
Lately I heard minister Dolores Cristina delivering a ten-minute apolitical speech, off the cuff and without notes to hand.
One of Labour’s most brilliant strategists, with the English of a Ukrainian stripper:
http://www.azzopardinicky.com/2011/12/pack-up-and-go-home.html
Here’s another bad move by Labour, as summed up so aptly by Jason Azzopardi this evening:
“Dr Azzopardi said such a request left him breathless. The PL had first let Australia Hall fall into ruin, in breach of contract conditions, and then it was quoting the same contract and demanding the return of the former Freedom Press property.
It appeared, he said, that the party’s view on the administration of public property had not changed since the 1980s” ( http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111207/local/pl-criticised-for-seeking-return-of-freedom-press-instead-of-australia-hall.397293 )
U iva, Franco Debono ma kellux ghalfejn joqghod iwahhal il-billboards biex jghidilna li b’Gonzi mohhok mistrieh.
Min jaf kemm kien kommoss meta ra wiccu mcappas ma’ billboard, Stalin-style. L-ego gigantesk tieghu fl-ahhar gie sodisfatt.
Actually, my first reaction was that it was a PN sop to Debono’s ego.
Absolutely. The next move will surely be the renaming of a certain piece of ceramic art to “Il-Monument ta’ Franco.”
Baxxter, Il-Linfa ta’ Franco.
Before I even actually started to read the article I said il-ahwa x-billbord ghamlu fuq Franco Debono il PN. I would have said the same driving past it.
http://www.sargas.no/images/stories/site_images/logo.png
B’Joseph Mohh John Dalli mistrieh.
Do I recall that once upon a time when Labour were in power, they had decided to use the face of a fisherman (from the south-kif jghidu)) on their elections billboards, and the man in question took them to court because they could not do so without his permission…..and won…………?
So Franco, do your bit, mate.
Ara veru kieku jkollok tgħasarhom kollha f’daqqa ma toħrogx qalziet ta’ taħt wieħed. Aħseb u ara ħsieb tajjeb jew oriġinali.
Either you did it again Daphne, or Franco Debono threatened to sue them, though sarcasm is hard to be proven in court.
After your comment was published that poster was removed.
[Daphne – Or maybe when they saw it in the full light of day, rather than on the computer screen, they realised what a stupid move it was. Franco Debono is just an MP.]
Your ability to read society is uncanny.
I have felt the two distinct feelings you outlined in your post.
Firstly, I was driving by the billboard in Floriana and I spotted it and, for a moment, I wondered whose it was. Then I remembered that it had replaced that billboard where Joseph looks likes he’s thinking about his next meal (or next fu**) with “Gonzi jaghmillek id-domandi u Joseph jaghtik is-soluzzjonijiet” (something to that effect) and at that moment, I felt enraged that Franco Debono is undermining the PM and my next thought was: damn Franco Debono, undermining the only politican in Malta currently worth his salt).
So, what did the billboard do on people whose votes the PL needs (people like me)? It made me a stauncher supporter of what I perceive as being a good, solid politician who has had one hell of year from which he emerged relatively unscathed.
Anyway, the next 18 months will be extremely interesting – though most probably, they are no longer 18 months.
“Actually, my first reaction was that it was a PN sop to Debono’s ego.”Ciccio 2011.
It was one of my thoughts as well but only extremely fleetingly
Just for you Daphne: keep these blogs coming. They REALLY (and I’m not exaggerating) help me keep my sanity and I need sanity in the thirteen-18 months to come.
So, thank you and please really keep these blogs coming. I’m sort of addicted – I even read them when I travel.
Basta bil-campaign manager li jifhem f’kollox.
I would go slow on thinking that Franco Debono is not seeking the attention of his Labour peers.
Sitting in Parliament’s strangers’ gallery, I’ve often seen Jose, Inspector Tuks Gadget and a horde of other Labour MPs crossing the floor to engage in lengthy “cross-party” discussions with him over the past two years.
I do not think that his efforts are uncoordinated with those of the LP.
Driving into work yesterday morning, I thought, hmm PN have started their electoral campaign and they are showing all and sundry that, despite some differences of opinion, they are still one team. I thought it was quite clever really.
Let us for a moment consider Franco as an excitable young MP, willing to put himself on the line in the name of what he considers a just cause:
This billboard doesn’t say much about Labour’s take on politics does it? More like an admission that the PN provides constructive opposition itself.
I’m pretty sure he’s not at all pleased with their cynicism, and given that a full size billboard isn’t some individual’s message on Facebook, he can’t ignore Labour’s collective attitude anymore.
Franco Debono is not young. He is middle-aged.
There’s another of those posters just off the bypass opposite Mater Dei hospital. At least, it was there until yesterday night.
It wasn’t there by four fifteen.
My mistake: the one near Mater Die Hospital is still there.
There is another billboard further up the road, which I mistook for Franco’s PL/PN billboard.
I really pity Franco: he’s being used, abused and ridiculed all over the island with that PL poster. Probably he will learn from his mistakes.
‘If Labour’s magnificent leaders and its sorry army of out-of-touch consultants like Godfrey Grima think that this billboard will fuel Franco Debono’s self-aggrandisement and narcissism, encouraging him to cause more trouble for the prime minister and perhaps even bring down the government, they are wrong.’
This didn’t work out, did it? Franco is right in what he’s doing today, but he’s totally going about it the wrong way.