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| Sunday, 27 June 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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A postscript on the elections by The Sentinel Post Box, the new house magazine of Phoenix Ogilwy has an interesting comment - a postscript, on the media campaigns of major political parties at the last General Elections. While stating that the UPFA's neat, precise, focused campaign captured the voter's imagination and worked, it says the UNP had forgotten focus, single-mindedness, objectivity, precision and targeting - the nitty gritty of effective advertising. Post Box has not failed to drive in some home truths. It says " In 2004, the UNP, which has a reputation for conducting professional and well orchestrated campaigns in the past, added a new phrase to political communication in this country, dinapatha na ganeemak ( translatable as "screwing it up on a daily basis"). It ensured the party's crusade was an absolute disaster. The Party succumbed to self-inflicted wounds. Commenting on the UNP' s campaign to market peace, it says: "Placing some affluent looking teenagers or showing a denim-clad farmer touting the virtues of peace in a paddy field are obviously poor selections of image and metaphor." While admitting that the JVP's on-the-ground and on -the-wall campaign was brilliantly executed, Post Box says that "you can't hope to counter a foe as formidable as the JVP with a malli-hari-malli type of campaign." It says the UNP campaign portrayed the youth as a set whose only ambition was to own a mobile telephone. " The campaigners did not realise that the youth have far more profound and thoughtful expectations," it comments. If its criticism of the UNP campaign was harsh, harsher still was its critique of the campaign managers: "Recently Irvin Weerakkody is reported to have told UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, referring to those who handled the party campaign were like vultures feeding on a carcass." Coming from a former campaign manager this seems to be the unkindest cut! Post Box is full of praise for the JHU campaign too. "The brilliancy of the JHU campaign was its ability to link the message with the expectations and aspirations of a particular constituency," it comments. |
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