Telling the time for Trumpton

Trumpton as seen on TV in the 1960s

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) is making most of the political headlines in Britain at the moment.  UKIP's party leader, Nigel Farage, is rarely out of the news and the party is threatening to change the political landscape at the UK's 2015 General Election.

Despite the party's reputation for being stuck in the past, UKIP members are said to be active users of social media.  And because of their extreme views they are often the targets of satire and parody online.

One recent example is the Twitter account @Trumpton_UKIP which purports to be the social media outlet for UKIP in Trumpton, a place which many voters will remember from childhood.  On children's television in the 1960s and 1970s, Trumpton was a small, quintessentially English town where everything was as it might have been in the 1940s.  Trumpton had no crime, no ethnic minorities, no dissent.  @Trumpton_UKIP sets the fictional series in the present, where the Mayor and Town Clerk have defected to UKIP: the site brings a stream of topical tweets gently satirising Britain's fastest growing political party.

However, the site has come to the notice of the UKIP High Command, and their MEP David Coburn warned supporters not to be taken in by it.  For good measure he claimed to taking steps to have @Trumpton_UKIP closed down by Twitter, even suggesting that he might take legal action.

As we have noted in this blog, the principles of psychological reactance kick in when something we have previously enjoyed is about to be taken away from us.  That may be the case here, but given the fact that hardly anyone knew about @UKIP_Trumpton, the comparison is better made with advertising that was designed to be banned.  The masters of this back in the 1990s were EasyJet, while PaddyPower have taken over in the 21st century.  The attendant publicity surrounding calls for an advertising band were exploited by the companies involved to increase awareness and boost the brands.

The same seems to have happened with @UKIP_Trumpton, as Coburn's calls for a ban were picked up by The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Financial Times and The Independent. UKIP are said to have suffered a sense of humour bypass.  More amusingly, perhaps, is that a little known satirical site had its rating boosted, and within a couple of days of the publicity had a larger following on Twitter than Coburn himself.


Update, 10 December.  Conservative, Labour, BNP, LibDem and Green parties now have Trumpton branches. This place is shaping up to be the virtual battleground for the UK 2015 elections.

Death becomes them: Musicians and psychological reactance

Psychological reactance comes into play when something which audiences are used to enjoying is taken away.  An extreme version of this is death, often said to be a great career move for out-of-fashion artists.

The Charlie Parker 'brand' is nowhere near
as strong as Elvis's.  Picture: Life Magazine

Paul Simon (still very much alive) has a song about this, on his 1983 album Hearts and Bones.  The Late Great Johnny Ace tells the story of how an obscure musician's career is boosted by his sad death.  The song goes on to refer to the shooting of John Lennon, and perfectly describes the whole
phenomenon of longing for something once it has passed.

Well not quite.  When painters die, their work invariably becomes more valuable: simply put, there will be no more pictures.  But in the case of recorded music death is merely the gateway to a whole new posthumous career.

Forbes Magazine has produced an annual report on top earning dead musicians for some years now, and their chart for 2014 is now available online.  Michael Jackson may have passed away in 2009, but this didn't stop him releasing a new album Xscape in May.  Elvis left us 37 years ago but his estate is still taking in the money through his back catalogue, merchandise and through tourism. You can even follow Elvis on Twitter.  Spooky.  Meanwhile the Bob Marley brand continues to be extended with new ranges of Marley foods, lifestyle products and clothing.  Marley died in 1981 but still speaks to us through the miracle of social media.

Each of these musicians is arguably more successful in death than they were in their lifetimes.  Their passing triggered grief among their loyal fans, while the media attention helped to bring their music to the notice of  much wider audiences worldwide.  At the same time the managers responsible for the late musicians were quick to identify the commercial potential in the short term, and to manage the 'brands' in the longer term.

Death is not a universal panacea though.  Most of jazz musicians lived and died in obscurity, and while there have been attempts to revive 'brands' such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, there has been nothing on the scale of what happened to Elvis, Jackson and Marley. US audiences can order their Miles Davis T-shirts and other merchandise: in Europe we just get offered the music.

Death: Please don't try this at home, folks.

Complete rubbish: long running, low budget, high impact

Here's a campaign that has been running for years, yet can still generate headlines.

The 'offender' is the charity Keep Britain Tidy.  This organisation has been going for nearly 60 years and receives government funding for its campaigns to keep litter off the streets of Britain.  Keep Britain Tidy not only promotes its message, but it commissions research to help it understand what causes the problem in the first place.

The campaign targeted young people with sexual innuendo in the headlines
(pictures from the Daily Mail)

Back in 2002 the organisation found that a problem area was younger people: they didn't respond to conventional appeals either in terms of advertising or enforcement.  Keep Britain Tidy decided to target this audience with humour in advertising. A series of posters and beer mats were produced and these were placed in pubs and clubs frequented by young people.

The campaign uses slogans charged with sexual innuendo which gain impact by being combined with often incongruous images.

The low budget campaign is given regular boosts by what I call third party ostensible demarketing.   The creative execution mirrored other media popular with this age group - for example greetings cards with similar 'retro' photography combined with risque slogans.

In 2005 the posters were criticised by academics for being "lazy" and by the Christian Voice group for being "cheap, tacky and horrible".    Four years later they were back in the mainstream media for the same reasons: this time the complainants were the Plain English Society, whose grumbles brought a low key campaign into national prominence in the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.  These newspapers and campaign groups seem to represent what I call 'taste guardians' in Bradley & Blythe (2013).

Given the careful targeting of the material it is unlikely that the Plain English Campaign's elderly director had encountered the posters herself.  And as the Keep Britain Tidy spokesman commented, they had been around for years.

Despite the outrage and offence that this campaign can generate, I can find no instance of it being referred to the Advertising Standards Authority during its ten year run.


Sources

• WalesOnline (May 20, 2005) Sex sells - 'but we're simply taking it too far', WalesOnline
• Daily Telegraph (Sept 19, 2009), Keep Britain Tidy campaign should 'bin the filth', say campaigners, Daily Telegraph
• Daily Mail (Sept 19, 2009), Litter charity Keep Britain Tidy told to bin its 'filthy' sexual innuendo posters aimed at young people, Daily Mail

UKIP Calypso: Experience Pays

Earlier this week (20 October), former BBC Radio 1 DJ Mike Read released a song titled "UKIP Third Party Ostensible Demarketing'.  What this clumsy term describes is the process where a product's sales are boosted by carefully managing calls to have it banned.

The 'album cover': picture from The Independent

Calypso".  Read said that the song was a harmless piece of fun, something in a long tradition of political satire.  But within hours two things were happening: firstly the song started climbing rapidly in the download charts at iTunes and Amazon; and secondly it was being castigated by media figures and politicians for being racist.  This looks like a classic case of what I call '

Perhaps this is too hard a judgement on Mike Read.  Today (22 October) he is all over the media apologizing if the song has caused offence, and reiterating that it was only a bit of fun. Perhaps: Read had first performed it at the UKIP party conference in October.  Earlier the UKIP leader Nigel Farage had been urging his supporters to buy the song with a view to getting it to Number One in the charts. A contrite Mike Read, though, said he had asked his record company to withdraw the track.

At the time of writing UKIP Calypso was still on sale on iTunes and on Amazon.  It was still available the next day.  So is Mike Read being disingenuous?  He should know better than most about the power of ostensible demarketing.  In 1984 Read as a DJ on BBC Radio 1 was largely responsible for getting an unknown Liverpool band's debut single to Number One.  He had objected to what he regarded as sexually explicit lyrics and refused to play the track.  The band was Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the song, Relax, stayed at Number One for 5 weeks.

Does Mike Read still have the winning touch?  On the basis of the first week, possibly not.  UKIP Calypso entered the charts at number 21, although this position was obtained before the announcement was made that the track was going to be withdrawn.  In the meantime, though, the controversy is keeping the piece in the news.  Provocation can be a powerful selling tool.


*** Update, 27 November.  UKIP Calypso  entered UK charts at number 43.  It had been removed from sale on iTunes some time on 24 November, while Amazon removed the track the following day. ***


Sources

• Official Charts Company, 22/10/2014, UKIP Calypso sits outside Top 20 on midweek Official Chart Update, http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/ukip-calypso-sits-outside-top-20-on-midweek-official-chart-update-3228/
• Grundy, Gareth (11 June 2011), Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Relax 'banned' by the BBC, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jun/11/frankie-hollywood-banned-bbc
• Mason, Rowena (20 October 2014), Get Mike Read’s Ukip calypso song to number one, urges Nigel Farage, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/20/ukip-calypso-song-number-one-nigel-farage-mike-read
• Plunkett, John (22 October 2014), Ukip calypso song should be withdrawn, says repentant Mike Read, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/22/ukip-calypso-song-mike-read-radio-1