The non-commercial break

By the time you read this, I hope that we have a clearly empowered government rather than the committee-based world of a hung parliament. The global recession aside, so much of the economic deficit is caused by systemic bureaucracy, something that would only be accentuated by a lack of decisiveness at the very top table.

A government coalition threatens to be as ineffective as many of the global brand management committees that rule our marketing lives.

Everybody has a say, but nobody is truly empowered to run the brand. The electorate appears to have inadvertently voted for such a flawed business model.

This has undoubtedly been the election where the brave new world of marketing communications came of age. The marketing industry has always been a major player at election time, but the former battleground of poster advertising and leafleting has now been upstaged by a full-blown marketing mix battle from live televised debate to YouTube and sophisticated digital CRM.

“Politicians have embraced the new digital world more seamlessly than many brand managers.”

As I write this, David Cameron has just in fact texted me reminding me to vote. Nice of him to follow up only hours after William Hague wrote to me by email. In my capacity as interested marketer, I signed up with all the major parties to get a first-hand look at their campaigns. As far as integrated communications planning goes, there has been some world class output.

Politicians have embraced the new digital world more seamlessly than many brand managers out there. Our industry would do well to recognise much of this work when the awards season comes around.

As for the channel brand I chose to watch on election night? Rather like the FA Cup Final, the traditionalist in me veered towards the BBC, but as Sky pointed out, it was making its own piece of election history by broadcasting live in HD.

However, the swingometer already confuses the hell out of me and I am not convinced that things were really any clearer in HD.

Perhaps next time round we shall all be wearing 3D glasses and only voting by text message. Votes cost £1.50 per SMS with proceeds going towards the deficit. Voters from Ireland, Wales and Scotland shall be charged the international rate and those voting for a hung parliament shall be charged double to cover extra meeting costs.

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