Written By: - Date published: 4:54 pm, July 10th, 2008 - 21 comments
After reading Steve’s post this morning mocking ANZ National for putting out confused National Party talking points dressed up as research, a reader was inspired to send us this:
Written By: - Date published: 9:22 pm, July 8th, 2008 - 76 comments
Has anyone else noticed John Key’s absence from the media in the last few days? I finally clicked to it while listening to RNZ this morning when we heard yet another “a spokesperson for John Key’s office says” comment. This is a pretty standard technique from the Crosby Textor hand book. I like to call […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:13 am, July 8th, 2008 - 24 comments
Let’s look at some of the issues National has hit and run on. They were all you heard from the Nats for a while and then they were dropped when their marketing usefulness wore off. “Power crisis” – dropped in June when it started to rain “After-tax incomes” – Dropped in May, after the Budget, […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:53 am, July 7th, 2008 - 60 comments
The information being leaked to Nicky Hager is obviously coming from well-placed sources inside National The idea of hacking is farcical (Lyndon Hood mocks it beautifully). In the Hollow Men, Hager refers to his sources as ‘six senior National figures’, in the SST article he talks of ‘staffers’ being concerned about the actions of Crosby/Textor. […]
Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, July 6th, 2008 - 27 comments
Ruth Laugesen’s got a piece in the SST today entitled “How National’s spin doctors operate“. She points out that Crosby/Textor’s methods, contrary to the opinion of many other journalists here, do differ from what are considered standard focus group and polling methodologies. Auckland University political studies senior lecturer Jennifer Lees-Marshment suggests that C/T are different […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:01 am, July 4th, 2008 - 67 comments
In four separate interviews this week, John Key used more or less exactly the same line to divert from questions on his use of Crosby/Textor: ‘I’m the Leader of the party and I’ll set the tone of the campaign. And it will be a positive, ambitious, outlooking campaign because that fits with my personality‘ OK, everyone can […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:41 am, July 3rd, 2008 - 31 comments
Let’s go back to the heart of this story: it is not about push-polling or whatever, this is about how Brand Key has been purpose-built by a company world-renowned for its secretive, anti-democratic practices. Crosby/Textor are not just some consultants like parties might use to assist policy development. They have built our image of Key […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:21 am, July 2nd, 2008 - 62 comments
Crosby/Textor, an outfit renowned for its anti-democratic, secretive practices, has built the public image of John Key (Brand Key) from the ground up. That’s why Key is seen as ‘nice’ but people, including National supporters, say they don’t know what he stands for and can’t say why he would a good PM. That’s why he […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 pm, July 1st, 2008 - 67 comments
John Key has his round of five interviews tomorrow morning (Breakfast, Sunrise, ZB, KiwiFM, bFM) and will undoubtedly face questions on his use of Crosby/Textor. So, what line will C/T have him parrot repeatedly? He’s already trying “I get most of my advice from the public” (weak) and the more aggressive “I’m going to set […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, July 1st, 2008 - 33 comments
I wish some journo would ask Key whether Crosby/Textor helped him with lines on how to handle questions about his using them – they must have a standard set they give their clients. Would Key really have thought of this one himself: John Key says the vast bulk of advice he takes is from the […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:46 am, July 1st, 2008 - 39 comments
Former National Party MP Marilyn Waring wrote in the introduction to The Hollow Men: I must admit to a sense of anticipated despair about the treatment [the book] might receive… The focus may be on looking for and condemning the leakers as opposed to scrutinising an appallingly mendacious political campaign. This has been precisely the […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:30 am, July 1st, 2008 - 39 comments
It comes as no surprise that Brand Key has been a Crosby/Textor project from Day 1. The hit and run, the bait and switch, the cake and eat it, the shoot the messenger, the misdirection, the dog-whistle, wedge politics, the outright lie – these are all elements of the classic Crosby Textor strategy that have […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, June 30th, 2008 - 33 comments
There’s a standard formula that Crosby/Textor has its clients use when damaging information comes out. a) refuse to engage. The most senior public response to the revelation that Brand Key has been created by exactly the same people who ran Brash’s divisive, racist campaign in 2005 has come from Key’s chief of staff. No politician […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, June 29th, 2008 - 122 comments
Nicky Hager’s piece in today’s Sunday Star Times has confirmed what we all suspected: Crosby Textor are the creators of Brand Key. For those of you unfamiliar with CT, they’re known as the dirtiest and most driven political PR firm in the game. CT specialises in dog-whistle racism, attack politics and pretty much every aspect […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:44 am, June 27th, 2008 - 66 comments
There’s a technique that sits at the heart of conjuring tricks called misdirection the act of drawing attention away from the trick itself. You all know how it works: the conjurer will flourish a brightly coloured handkerchief in one hand, while the trick is quietly taking place unnoticed in the other. The same thing happens […]
Written By: - Date published: 1:55 pm, June 25th, 2008 - 10 comments
I’ve noticed a new trend in the right’s spin lately (apart from their wholesale theft of campaign scripts) – the ‘have your cake and eat it’ trick. This tactic is basically a response to legislation or policy they don’t like but they know they can’t be seen to be against. So what they do is […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:11 am, June 24th, 2008 - 15 comments
I was having a look through some old campaign PR yesterday and found this gem: It seems John Key ripped off more than just Coldplay when he made his DVD.
Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, June 18th, 2008 - 40 comments
I put a comment on one of Steve’s posts a few days ago and he suggested I put it up as a post so here goes: National have been playing a hit and run public relations game for a few years now. It’s not a bad strategy for an opposition as the news-cycle moves so […]
Written By: - Date published: 6:11 pm, June 11th, 2008 - 48 comments
The New Zealand Herald’s latest anti-Labour beatup took an unfortunate twist this afternoon. Having spent the best part of a day making hay over Labour being caught, er, using stock photography in a flyer, the Herald was over the moon to discover the offending image had also been used by Kevin Rudd’s Australian Labor Party […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, June 10th, 2008 - 35 comments
Every now and then a ‘commentator’ pops up who is so hilariously incompetent you don’t know whether to ignore them or mock them. In Bernard Hickey‘s case, it’s been the former because the man’s work is so bad – his numbers don’t add up half the time, his understanding of economics would have had my […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, June 10th, 2008 - 38 comments
A National line that is doing the rounds goes that if National wins more votes than Labour but can’t govern alone it would be undemocratic for a Labour-led coalition to form the next government. After all, in this scenario, National has won more votes than anyone else, so it should be the government, right? Wrong. […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:11 pm, June 9th, 2008 - 180 comments
‘Hardworking kiwis’ is National’s new ‘mainstream New Zealanders’. Referenced by Key ad nauseam, it is the population at which National purports to target it’s policies. As with ‘mainstream New Zealanders’, ‘hardworking kiwis’ has a inherently divisive implicit message: ‘not everyone is a hardworking kiwi’. The term creates an ‘other’; a type of person in this […]
Written By: - Date published: 4:51 pm, June 8th, 2008 - 81 comments
We got this in from the ‘sod and we like it so here’s the guest post we swore we’d never give him (taking the piss out of Ian Wishart didn’t count). ‘Sod, don’t let it go to your head. Brand Key, or the cultural logic of late capitalism in NZ politics Like others I have […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, June 4th, 2008 - 4 comments
Last night on the Daily Show Jon Stewart interviewed Scott McClellan, the former White House press secretary who has come out and accused the Bush administration of a “culture of deception” and of maintaining a “permanent campaign approach” to governing rather than making the best choices. It’s a good interview that provides an interesting insight […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:49 pm, May 28th, 2008 - 34 comments
Hear that sound? It’s Judith Collins banging the sickness beneficiaries drum again. Fresh from a sensationalist report on the front page of the Dom today, Collins is demanding the Government and the Department of Work & Income: “admit they are failing beneficiaries and failing doctors because Labour is more focused on pushing people on to […]
Written By: - Date published: 11:24 am, May 24th, 2008 - 62 comments
Key’s best trick is to answer questions with impressive or technical sounding assertions that stop the line of questioning but don’t actually tell us anything. When he does that, interviewers need to push him to explain himself. Here’s a few paraphrased examples from the last couple of week: Q. ‘What don’t you like about the […]
Written By: - Date published: 10:12 am, May 21st, 2008 - 56 comments
Well it’s Budget day tomorrow and we’ve got our man Steve Pierson going to the lock-up so we can get you a good ol’ Standardista analysis ASAP. But while we don’t know what’s going to be in the Budget we can take a fair guess at what National’s response will be. So we’ve decided to […]
Written By: - Date published: 2:10 pm, May 16th, 2008 - 43 comments
If you’ve been reading Bill Ralston’s columns in the Herald on Sunday over the last few months you’ll have noticed how they’ve started to read more and more like long-form National Party press releases. To date I’d put it down to pure laziness – after all, why would you bother coming up with an original […]
Written By: - Date published: 5:57 pm, May 14th, 2008 - 14 comments
Who would have thought? Murray McCully as The Penguin. Hat tip: onegoodmove
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, May 6th, 2008 - 54 comments
This morning’s performace on breakfast TV by Paul Henry was a disgrace. His complete lack of objectivity on the rail and ferry buy-back was even more biased and partisan than we have come to expect from him. Despite Guyon Espiner’s best efforts to provide some objective analysis of the government’s decision, Henry simply shouted about […]
Written By: - Date published: 9:51 am, May 6th, 2008 - 84 comments
Here’s the first par of National’s release on the rail deal: National Party Leader John Key says at a time when householders are struggling to pay the weekly bills, Helen Clark’s decision to spend the thick end of a billion dollars to buy back the rail rolling stock does not make any sense. Here’s Fran […]
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