hello, I am here really.
A combination of illness and banging my head against my novel have kept me away from LJ land for a couple of weeks, and now I’m back to talk about... politics? Ugh. Don’t worry, I’ll post my long-overdue Game of Thrones reaction post soon. (Long story short: Aidan Gillen plays “sweaty and weird” so well. I love him.)
Anyway...
Because it hit me on a personal level - I work in PR - I remember distinctly how, during the last general election, the Conservatives smugly pledged to cut public sector marketing/communications activity, as if this was something really important that they were doing for the greater good. Arguing in favour of PR is a bit like arguing in favour of estate agents or used car dealerships, but the bottom line is:
If you want people to understand your product, you need to communicate its worth to them. That product might be a new brand of jelly bean, or it might be an important piece of government legislation that you’re struggling to foster public support for. You might claim that marketing doesn’t affect you, but you’re wrong. You just probably turn your nose up at McDonald’s ads, while getting excited over the new iPhone. Both these things were marketed to you; you were just swayed by one but not the other. Marketing works, and it’s important - especially if what you’re marketing is an NHS service that could save a person’s life.
What’s more, communications budgets are a drop in the ocean of government spending. Bill Maher has a nice visual representation of US public spending that’s a huge pile of meat and pasta and processed gunk (representing defence, Medicare/Medicaid, social security), plus a parsley sprig - and it’s the parsley sprig that Republicans keep attacking in the name of stopping spending waste, while leaving the huge bulk of real spending unexamined. Communications/marketing is the UK’s parsley sprig.
Anyway, it was with some satisfaction that I read that the government is, a year later, doing a U-turn on this policy. Quote:
... the number of people ringing the drug abuse support helpline, Frank, had fallen by 22%, that visits to the Smokefree website had fallen by 50% and that the number of people joining the government's lifestyle website was down by two-thirds.
Most worryingly, the report said, there was evidence that "the cessation of marketing activity [had] resulted in declining quit attempts, and subsequent loss of life from smoking-related illness".
Anyway...
Because it hit me on a personal level - I work in PR - I remember distinctly how, during the last general election, the Conservatives smugly pledged to cut public sector marketing/communications activity, as if this was something really important that they were doing for the greater good. Arguing in favour of PR is a bit like arguing in favour of estate agents or used car dealerships, but the bottom line is:
If you want people to understand your product, you need to communicate its worth to them. That product might be a new brand of jelly bean, or it might be an important piece of government legislation that you’re struggling to foster public support for. You might claim that marketing doesn’t affect you, but you’re wrong. You just probably turn your nose up at McDonald’s ads, while getting excited over the new iPhone. Both these things were marketed to you; you were just swayed by one but not the other. Marketing works, and it’s important - especially if what you’re marketing is an NHS service that could save a person’s life.
What’s more, communications budgets are a drop in the ocean of government spending. Bill Maher has a nice visual representation of US public spending that’s a huge pile of meat and pasta and processed gunk (representing defence, Medicare/Medicaid, social security), plus a parsley sprig - and it’s the parsley sprig that Republicans keep attacking in the name of stopping spending waste, while leaving the huge bulk of real spending unexamined. Communications/marketing is the UK’s parsley sprig.
Anyway, it was with some satisfaction that I read that the government is, a year later, doing a U-turn on this policy. Quote:
... the number of people ringing the drug abuse support helpline, Frank, had fallen by 22%, that visits to the Smokefree website had fallen by 50% and that the number of people joining the government's lifestyle website was down by two-thirds.
Most worryingly, the report said, there was evidence that "the cessation of marketing activity [had] resulted in declining quit attempts, and subsequent loss of life from smoking-related illness".