How Palmer's $60 million 'epic fail' worked wonders for the Coalition
In mid-2018, nestled on the corner of Norton St and Marion St in Leichhardt – in one of the safest Labor seats in the country, held by Anthony Albanese – passersby were subjected to a giant-sized billboard of Clive Palmer backed by the now infamously associated colour yellow and somewhat lifted slogan Make Australia Great.
It didn't take long for the residents of what was once known as Little Italy in Sydney's inner west to express their feelings for the controversial businessman. The super-sized Clive was half torn off, hanging down onto the footpath not long after.
The ad – part of more than $60 million Palmer spent trying to get himself back into Parliament – served as an omen for the eccentric billionaire's election campaign. It failed, but cast a long shadow.
Often referred to as Australian politics' version of US President Donald Trump – brash, egotistical and with a mixed business record – voters didn't go down the American path despite being bombarded with this ad – and thousands more – for months.
They seem to have only served to remind voters of their dislike for the billionaire.
Clive Palmer's United Australia Party targeted the Labor Party. Louise Kennerley
The ad budget – which dwarfed that of the Labor Party and the Coalition – paid for Trump-esque slogans and big promises. But it lacked any real detail of how the policies of Palmer's United Australia Party would work, or how Palmer planned to work with a ruling government.
But, there's no denying that Palmer's advertising is the reason he was even in the race, and he had a major impact on the outcome of the election thanks to preference deals with the Coalition in Queensland.
Throughout the campaign, Palmer's United Australia Party bombarded Australians with ads across TV, radio, print, digital, social media and outdoor in metropolitan and regional areas.
"David Mattingly used to say ‘nothing kills a bad product quicker than good advertising’," PHD Australia chief executive Mark Coad says.
"It shows money can’t buy you love. I take a lot of comfort from the fact that you can’t buy your way into our democracy. I think that’s something we should value highly."
The advertising blitz – where Palmer painted himself as an anti-politician Aussie battler – failed to convince voters, who have a long memory of the 65-year-old's troubling track record in and out of Parliament.
Marketing is a complicated beast and advertising is just one component of that
— Ben Willee, Spinach Advertising
Palmer for years dodged paying back $70 million owed to workers at his Queensland Nickel refinery – although he pledged to pay them during the election campaign – following its $300 million collapse in 2016.
Palmer turned up to just 54 per cent of parliamentary votes during his last stint in Canberra, and notably fell asleep during a session in the House of Representatives.
Spinach Advertising general manager Ben Willee says effective political advertising is run is conjunction with multiple other aspects, including door-knocking, consultation and genuinely being a part of the community, which Palmer's UAP failed in.
"We have deep relationships with brands, and we have deep relationships with political parties, those relationships are very multi-layered," he says.
"You cannot buy your way into parliament. Marketing is a complicated beast and advertising is just one component of that."
Clive Palmer spent big but voters didn't rush to the UAP. AAP
However, Palmer did notably have an impact on the election, helping the Coalition to its surprise victory via his preferences in Queensland. Labor failed to gain any headway in Queensland thanks in part to Palmer and One Nation's preferences flowing to the Coalition.
The UAP splashed a good chunk of its advertising budget on undermining the Labor Party by attacking Bill Shorten with a series of Shifty Shorten jibes. It pushed a message of fear around the former union leader's election and an attack on hip pockets with "an extra trillion dollars of taxes & costs".
"Your feeling brain is going to trump your thinking brain almost every day of the week. Great advertising doesn’t give you a rational message, it primes you to feel a certain way. He primed people to feel that the risk of change was way too great," DDB Sydney managing director of strategy and innovation Leif Stromnes says.
"Even if people didn’t explicitly take out his message as in 'vote United Australia Party' ... the sheer weight of advertising impacted people’s perceptions of Labor in a very negative fashion.
"We will probably look back on this and say $60 million didn’t buy him a seat, and that’s an epic fail, but I would strongly argue he was the most effective lobbying group for the Liberal Party."
Great advertising doesn’t give you a rational message, it primes you to feel a certain way
— Leif Stromnes, DDB
According to Streem media monitoring, Palmer was the third most spoken about candidate of the entire election campaign with just under 11,000 media item mentions from April 11 to May 15, nearly double that of One Nation's Pauline Hanson. Yet it was only a bit over a quarter of the mentions Shorten and Scott Morrison received.
Of the stories mentioning Palmer, 20.9 per cent spoke about Queensland Nickel, 37 per cent about preference deals and 16.8 per cent mentioned his ad spend. Palmer's most heavily quoted topics were Queensland Nickel and Labor or Bill Shorten.
Ad execs reckon Palmer's attacks on Bill Shorten hurt the Labor Leader. Alex Ellinghausen
"Did he ever expect to win? Absolutely not. I think he did expect to win a seat. I think he will be quietly disappointed with that," Stromnes says.
"He had absolutely no policies, he had nothing to say, it was about attacking Labor. It fed into the whole narrative – it’s super risky to go with a big change agenda. Fear is a very powerful emotion and he leveraged that very well, and the Liberals have benefited."
M&C Saatchi Australia group managing director Russell Hopson says the same kind of demagogic figuresexist in the United States, Britain and Europe. However, by comparison Australia has high standards of living spread across income levels, which has led to fewer disaffected voters.
"Someone like Clive Palmer comes along and goes ‘well, we’re all f**ked’ ... it’s interesting in the end the country voted quite conservatively, rather than that knee-jerk reaction," Hopson says.
"In the case of Brexit, where the country had been going through austerity for years, people were grasping for a change agent that they knew almost certainly was going to give them a worse outcome, Australia is so far from that."
Hopson says Australians weren't fooled by a fundamentally negative message that the country wasn't doing well and Palmer's messaging via his ads had very little substance.
"In the end, the techniques he used can only go so far, you’ve got to have something to say," he says.
"Australia has it’s problems, absolutely, but I think the general standard of living is so high. In the end when people have reached the polls and said ‘better the devil you know, we’re not doing so bad, let’s vote for stability’."
