Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Fianna Fail came under criticism last week for their perceived lack of advertising spend during the Lisbon Treaty referendum. I think the criticism is unduly harsh, not because of their lack of spend but because additional money would have been wasted. The poor advertising creative behind their campaign, and the Yes Campaign in general, would have meant that the No Campaign would still have won the referendum so arguing over the spend is pointless.

I’ve worked with a number of organisations over the years who have spent varying amounts of money on advertising. Unlike some other PR commentators, I do believe that advertising can be effective. It gives you scale and the platform to repeat your message consistently. If your message has no appeal then it doesn’t matter if you spend 100k like Fianna Fail or a million like Libertas. As Government officials even admitted, Libertas kept their messaging simple and focused on three areas - tax harmonisation, the loss of Ireland’s EU commissioner and neutrality. Questions deserved to be asked about Libertas’ funding given that the group spent more than the three main political parties combined on advertising, but doesn’t have to be as transparent as the political parties about the sources of their funding. But as I’ve said before the Yes Campaign should have waited until after the election before questioning the funding, instead of wasting valuable minutes of airtime debating it in the runup to the referendum.