The story of the Improbable Life of Max Bulstrode-Palmer will continue in next week’s Diary of a Baby Boomer.
I guess it is not surprising that with a general election in the offing that we should expect to be bombarded with messages from the various parties and wannabe MPs urging us to vote for them. I was reflecting on how things have moved on over the decades.
As a retired adman, I hung my up copy of BRAD (British Rates and Data, the essential tool for determining newspaper and magazine ad costs), some years ago; however, I despair at the lack of wit and insight in today’s broadcast advertising. Commercials for Cadbury’s Smash, Hamlet cigars, VW, Heineken and Levi jeans were just a few that made us smile and take notice of brands. They were creative and entertaining.
This got me pondering the changes that have revolutionised the way we consume media. The internet, social media and the proliferation of TV channels, and podcasts were still a blink in the eyes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. When Margaret Thatcher was elected as PM, she was helped along by the smugness of the incumbent Labour PM, Jim Callaghan, he of “The Winter of Discontent” fame. Crisis, what crisis? was his catch phrase, as he returned from an overseas trip to be greeted by most of the UK’s workforce on strike. But Thatcher’s rise was also aided by the Saatchi brothers inspired advertising campaigns that cleverly encapsulated some of the core issues facing the country at the time.
Today, as a pensioner voter located in the Yorkshire Dales, I have yet to receive any political party canvassing me on the doorstep. I live in Rishi Sunak’s constituency, that is until election day, as much to my annoyance the constituency boundaries have just been moved. Count Binface is standing against Rishi in Richmond and Northallerton and I had planned on voting for him as I am, like many other voters, disillusioned by all the blandness and lack of vision of the main party candidates. Count Binface managed to garner 24,000 votes in the London Mayoral election, ahead of some fringe right wing parties. As part of his manifesto he wants all CEOs of water companies to bathe in their nearest river and to create a Yorkshire Pudding Day as a national holiday. Count Binface sounds the right sort of person to be leading Broken Britain. But alas I will find to find another candidate in the new Thirsk and Malton constituency to be the recipient of my vote. I have yet to assess the candidates, although yesterday, I did receive a flyer from the Reform party. The candidates name was so small, and Nigel Farage’s image so large, I thought they haven’t found a suitable lunatic to come forward.
As a light TV viewer I must have missed the usual party political broadcasts and I am so fed up of the radio and TV debates that I no longer follow them. In fact, I am more interested in what is going on in the US and the turmoil in France. Both results are more likely to affect my lifestyle than more of the same from Mr Dull, Kier Starmer. His manifesto looks more right wing than the late conservative PM, Ted Heath, if anyone can remember him.
The pundits say that social media is the key to persuading floating voters and the young, but TikTok is not on my agenda although X, Facebook, and Instagram are. I am pleased to say no-one is pushing messages out to me. They must think I am irrelevant or dead, but I still have a vote and could go Green, Open-Toed Leather Sandals or Nutter, rather than the traditional parties. In times past I would have been targeted with direct mail, 48 sheet posters, TV and press ads but these seemed to be noticeably absent. Perhaps subliminal messages are being sent to me via AI generated comms direct into my computer, hence my enthusiasm for Count Binface, who also claims to have intergalactic origins.
Whatever way in which you receive communications it would seem we would have to expect the unexpected. Perhaps vans will tour the villages near me with the candidates standing on duckboards urging us to vote by bellowing into a handheld loudspeaker as in days of old? If they were issuing us with free ice creams it would likely have more affect on the choice of candidate for us floating voters. I should suggest this to Count Binface. Who knows, I could become his communication adviser, take up a new role as his personal SPAD. I could even be persuaded to come out of retirement.
Watch this space.
Ahhhh!
I think you might be on to something there. Watch out or someone will steal your idea for free ice creams 🙄