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Kate Hawkesby: Labour wasting their money on brand polishing

Author
Kate Hawkesby,
Publish Date
Wed, 18 Jul 2018, 7:38AM
Why are they spending all this money when Jacinda and her baby are all they need? (Photo / NZ Herald)

Kate Hawkesby: Labour wasting their money on brand polishing

Author
Kate Hawkesby,
Publish Date
Wed, 18 Jul 2018, 7:38AM

I see the Labour Party is bringing in consultants to polish its “brand”.

It’s undergoing an image ‘check up’ to revamp internal communications by making them 'crisper'.

On top of this, MP’s are participating in workshops run by these consultants, and although exact costs aren’t known, it’s thought to be expensive.

It will be. In my experience, consultants always are.

It’s not cheap to have people from groovy named outfits with catchy slogans, come in and tell you everything you’re doing wrong and how you should fix it.

Working at TVNZ for 12 years I lived through the rotating door of many consultants over the years. Any time an ‘image‘ or ‘branding’ exercise was being undertaken, (which seemed like every five minutes), a new round of consultants would be dragged in.

Usually from far flung places like the States, and sometimes with TV experience, and sometimes none at all. Such is the joy of the consultant. It’s an elaborately vague title to encapsulate all things, experience in a particular field seemingly not necessary.

We would endure lengthy workshop sessions in the studio with a super extroverted American beaming at us from behind the camera and instructing us to read the autocue “without reading it!” She would wildly gesture with her arms for us to “smile with your eyes!”

I think that must've been during the phase where they were trying to make the news more friendly (American style), and right before the phase where it went BBC serious again, after complaints the newsreaders seemed too happy.

Basically, the new consultants come in and undo everything the old consultants did, and so the pattern goes.

But back to the Labour party. The outfit they’ve hired specializes in ‘gender intelligence’.

Which, in case you have no idea what that catchy slogan means, is either about understanding, celebrating and engaging women. How that’s going to be reflected in a crisper letterhead and font is beyond me, but then I’m not a consultant.

I’m not sure if you noticed but the Labour party changed its tone last year to a fresher ‘Jacinda red’ and dumped its fern logo in 2014. 

I would’ve thought the biggest and most comprehensive brand refresh for Labour came when they dumped a flailing Andrew Little and his ‘fresh approach’ campaign, and brought in Jacinda and her ‘Let’s do this’. Her subsequent elevation to feminist icon by becoming PM, having a baby and returning to work would be all the action the party needed surely?

So it’s baffling as to why they’ve brought in image and branding consultants because I would’ve thought brand Labour is red hot right now.

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