"It's the Swedish, stupid" - the secret behind the electoral success of Henrik Lax
Communications professionals plan parties' EU campaigns from scratch
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By Laura Pekonen
When US President Bill Clinton was planning his election campaign, his aide James Carville wrote a slogan on a wall that was later to become a legend: "It’s the economy, stupid".
Carville was one of Clinton’s spin doctors - a campaign aide whose job it was to formulate Clinton’s message and make sure it was understood by the voters.
However, America is not the only place in the world that has spin doctors.
"Before my third Parliamentary campaign I thought of what my message could be. My advisor Kim Nyberg asked if I was a complete idiot, for not remembering what I had always said: "Det ska vara roligt at tala svenska I Finland" ("It should be fun to speak Swedish in Finland"), says MP Henrik Lax.
The basic message, "Det är svenska, idiot" ("It’s the Swedish, stupid") proved to be a winner for the Swedish People’s Party candidate.
In the campaign for the European Parliament, all parties are relying on the help of advertising professionals. Advertising agencies often do much more than just producing adverts: they train the candidates, design web sites, think about party images, focus groups, and the strategies of competitors, and even work with the party to fine-tune the political messages.
Lax is one of the few individual candidates to have a spin doctor of his own. It was as an executive of the industrial company Tampella that he met Nyberg, who is now working for the communications company Hill & Knowlton. Nyberg has helped Lax get his message into order in five elections.
"People are still coming to me to say that they have tried the recipes of my first campaign", Lax says, showing his campaign advertisement from 1987.
The cover has the words "Lax recept" ("Lax recipe") containing, among other things, a recipe for Henrik’s juniper-steamed salmon ("lax" is Swedish for salmon).
"The idea was Nyberg’s", Lax smiles.
According to Lax it is important for a candidate and the advertisers to know each other’s thinking.
"The basic message comes from me, and the job of the professional is to think how it is to be turned into a slogan in a way that gets through to the public. I do not interfere with the visual side in the choice of pictures; I trust my aides and my wife more than myself."
It is also Nyberg’s job to think about Lax’s campaign appearances (a trip to the city of Kotka combined with a visit to a Swedish-language school), what newspapers his advertisements should appear in (Lax’s budget will not allow for television advertising), and where Lax should bring up the various campaign issues on the EU (it’s not a good idea to show the whole deck cards at once).
Lax also often calls Nyberg before an interview.
"On a busy campaign day I don’t have enough time to watch the news, and he keeps me up to date on what to comment on and when."
However, Lax emphasises that the candidate always has the final say.
Things look different in the eyes of the ad-man.
"There is no sense doing a campaign that you can’t believe in yourself. Politicians often want to solve all of the problems in the world. Development aid and the Third World are certainly important, but nobody ever won an election with them", says CEO Juha Louhivuori.
Louhivuori has worked on campaigns for the Centre Party since 1987. As he sees it, a communications specialist would do well to keep politics at a distance, in order to be able to look at issues through the eyes of the voter.
Louhivuori himself is married to Centre Party vice chairwoman Mari Kiviniemi, but does not talk about campaigns every day at home.
"To sense feelings, this guy will go to the bars of Eastern Helsinki. I predicted the victory of Tony Halme already many months in advance. It was told to me in bars where a medium-strength beer cost less than 20 markka."
Louhivuori compares the process of preparing for an election campaign to that of writing a play. The first drafts might be ready already a year in advance.
"Campaigns by political parties are like TV shows that compete for attention: Joe Millionaire vs. Survivor.
For instance, during last spring’s Parliamentary election campaign, the television advertisements of the Centre Party were deliberately shot on videotape, so that they would look ordinary, as if they had been produced by the party office, rather than by an advertising agency.
"When you’re in opposition, you have to create the image that the government parties have been softened by power", Louhivuori explains.
One way to get the upper hand is to simply avoid the worst mistakes. It is not a good idea to focus on issues in the campaign that divide the people. For instance, Lax was in favour of the civil union law for homosexual couples, and supported nuclear power, but does not emphasise them in the campaign for the European Parliament elections.
Professional help is not cheap: Lax is paying the agency about EUR 11,000. However, without professional assistance, it is difficult to stand out.
"Unless you are Jörn Donner", Lax says.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 30.4.2004
LAURA PEKONEN / Helsingin Sanomat
laura.pekonen@hs.fi
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| 4.5.2004 - THIS WEEK |
 "It's the Swedish, stupid" - the secret behind the electoral success of Henrik Lax |
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