A drive around the streets of Gaborone distinguishes this year as an election year but better still an election of unparalleled publicity campaigns. Billboards of smiling faces clutter the streets. They cling to lampposts. They stand above roads with their giant slogans. It is a new era of publicity and image-infused politics, and perhaps it is not a pretty sight.
Advertising and politics have had a lasting, albeit controversial, relationship since time immemorial. Some theoreticians have blamed advertising with its catchphrases and sound bites for the mistrust citizens of countries like Australia and United States have for the political process. Before the president of the United States of America presents a speech, image-makers, speechwriters, make-up artists, colour matching experts, hair stylists and voice coaches all work together to help him present the best speech.
Even during the course of the speech if it is on TV, lighting directors, art directors and other technicians and artists in the image making business have to work to make sure the president does not only look and sound the way he is supposed to sound, but that his speech means what it is supposed to mean.
This means the democratic process becomes just another show and thus loses that honesty about it. In other words, politics cannot hope to simply use advertising without advertising using politics.
“Of course,” says Robert Samuelson of The Washington Post, “the marketing revolution poses profound questions about politics and democracy. One paradox is that as politics became marketing, people treated it that way. Arguably, cynicism increased. Voters became more dismissive of political rhetoric and ignored TV spots. Candidates and parties have to advertise more for the same effect.”
Is this where our country and democracy is headed? Botswana Democratic Party’s executive secretary Botsalo Ntuane, whose party recently launched an elaborate publicity campaign, thinks otherwise. “To our party, advertising is all about increasing reach. We are reaching out to all those people who would never be interested in politics in the first place,” he explains.
He sees billboards and other media as a way to put the party out into the public’s eye and thereby arouse the interest of people who would never be interested in it.
“If you take the example of the youth, for example, these people would never listen to RB1 where political discussions take place. They would rather be at the nightclub listening to music than be at political rallies,” he adds. Otsweletse Moupo, president of the Botswana National Front, thinks advertising has a role in political discourse although he stresses the importance of a more personalised approach such as door-to-door campaigns. “But even the billboard should be about the party’s image and position on issues. The party is the most important,” he says.
He says Botswana National Front is against personality advertising, which elevates the person above the Party. Both Ntuane and Dumelang Saleshando of the Botswana Congress Party also agree that advertising has to be about the party.
However, Ntuane adds that their campaign will give both the candidate and the party equal visibility because he sees both the candidate’s presence and the party as working hand in hand. Moupo blames the disillusionment with the political process in the western world on the politics of personalities.
“If you look at what is happening in the United States, a lot of people feel that the parties in the running are not really fundamentally different. And because those parties are so similar, the difference has to be manufactured through cosmetic differences,” he says.
The new politics of image is, indeed, upon us. In the United States, television technology brought with it such issues as whether a presidential candidate is better looking than his opponent. One of the presidents whose image worked for him was the photogenic former US President John F Kennedy.
When asked whether he thought he could have won the 1960 presidential elections if it had not been for the famous debates on TV in which he appeared alongside a more cosmetically challenged Richard Nixon, Kennedy said “no”.
Nixon had underestimated the value of image in the more media intensive democratic dispensation. He had arrived at the TV studio wearing an ill-fitting shirt and had refused to wear make-up to smoothen his rough skin, whereas Kennedy appeared “tan, confident and looking so fit”. In fact, the candidates had been so similar as far as issues were concerned that those who had heard the debate on radio thought Nixon was the better candidate.
But TV technology helped the better-looking candidate into the presidency. Speculation is that the BDP will soon be taking its publicity campaign to television on Btv.
At a cost of around P1000 per 30-second slot on prime time, television is not for the tight-fisted. And therein lies the other problem with advertising in politics; only the moneyed get a chance to get their image known and their point of view heard.
While Ntuane promises a country “painted red” and making “every citizen within eyesight of our party’s symbol and colours wherever he or she is”, the opposition is lamenting their limited funds.
“We cannot compete with the Botswana Democratic Party when it comes to adverts. These guys can afford billboards that cost P50 000 each,” explains Moupo.
Saleshando explains BCP would have wanted to be a bit more visible but cannot afford it. “Of course, we will step up our publicity campaign in a few weeks time to push the party brand,” he adds.
Now that politics has added such terms as “brands” to its vocabulary it is impossible to imagine politics staying the same. Experience has shown that with more advertising comes more “spin-doctoring” and more public distrust of the political process.
It remains to be seen whether this will be true for this country. What is obvious is that advertising with all its virtues and vices, is upon the political landscape of this country. As the famous saying goes, “Smile. You are on camera”.
