Conservatives commit to full £18m for election push
The Conservatives have confirmed they will spend all of the £18m they are entitled to on their General Election marketing campaign this year.
Last week, the opposition party launched a £500,000 nationwide outdoor advertising campaign, which featured a giant image of party leader David Cameron alongside a pledge which read ‘We can’t go on like this. I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.’ Party officials later admitted that the image had been “touched up”.
Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Cameron confirmed the party planned to spend £18m – the legal limit on election campaigning, in the run up to this year’s general election, which is widely tipped to take place on 6 May.
The Tories work with agency Euro RSCG. Officials in charge of overseeing ads incude communications director Andy Coulson, former Saatchi & Saatchi executive Steve Hilton who heads strategy for the party, and Anna-Maren Ashford, the party’s head of marketing and brand management.
Labour’s general election campaign spend is widely rumoured to be much less than the Tories amid fears the party could emerge from the campaign bankrupt.
Last year, The Conservatives unveiled a poster campaign that showed Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling with the hair and clothes of X-Factor favourites John and Edward. The Tories also became the first UK political party to advertise on Twitter.
