The National Party has been forced to make a few rugby analogies in recent days as it deals with the fallout from Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics. But it’s used a rowing analogy in its new TVC to try and show Kiwis it’s a smooth, well-oiled, economic machine that’s taking the country in the right direction and that its opponents are bumbling idiots.
For the past two elections, The Green Party’s messaging has been what national campaign director Ben Youdan calls “aspirational”. That’s worked very well, with its vote going from five percent to 11 percent in 2011, making it by far the fastest growing party. But for the 2014 election it’s getting slightly more confrontational, juxtaposing images of open-cast mines, oil spills, Auckland gridlock and poor children with its positive—and protective—campaign slogan of ‘Love New Zealand’.
As in 2011, government once again handed out $3.28 million dollars to the various political parties. But while the spoils remained same, the number of recipients increased from 11 to 17 political parties for this year’s allocation. The question now, however, is what the parties plan to spend the money on, and what they hope to acheive through their pre-election campaigns. So, in an effort to find out a little bit more about Labour’s promotional moves, we sent a few questions to the party’s campaign manager David Talbot. Here’s what he had to say.
Facebook has revealed a series of insights on how the Kiwi political parties are doing in the lead up to the 2014 general election. And given that 1.8 million Kiwis log in to Facebook on a daily basis and that ‘election’ was the second-most commonly used phrase on the site in 2013 (only bettered by Pope Francis), the social media channel is becoming an increasingly important space for politicians to share their policies—or general vitriol—with potential voters.