He arrived at our office one day and parked up in front of the video. He told us Labour Party leader Mike Moore was an old friend who had asked for his help. All afternoon he sat there – paunchy, imperious, unsmiling, chain-smoking – while we did as he asked, showing him the TV commercials we’d so far produced for the party. It was two weeks out from election day in 1993. There was no discussion, though at times he would talk at us in his Belgian accent. He was given to pronouncements like: “When he was a young politician, I said to him, ‘Mike Moore, you are like Adolf Hitler. The lower class like you, the upper class think they can control you and work with you, the middle class distrust you.’”
Over the next few days, he began to dictate the style and shape of the remainder of the advertising campaign. Some of the changes he called for were major shifts in strategy. The agency team, of which I was creative director, was flabbergasted. Fraser Carson, manager of the ad campaign, went to Moore and protested. “Do what he says,” was Moore’s response. “I’ve known him for a long time. I respect him.”
This late entrant to Labour’s 1993 election effort was Paul Heylen. We all knew the name. The TVNZ Heylen poll was the political poll into which the entire country was tuned at that time, as its results were always first announced on TV One’s 6pm news. A revolutionary in the area of market research, Heylen had no direct experience in advertising or the communications business. What he did have was a conviction that he knew best, especially when it came to politics and the national psyche.
Moore desperately wanted to be elected prime minister in 1993. He lost by the slimmest of margins. For the past 30 years, I’ve never wavered from the belief that if not for Heylen, Moore’s dream would have been realised.
A Frantic, uneven beat
When Fraser Carson invited me to join him at his fledgling agency, Fresco, to work on the Labour advertising campaign in September 1993, I jumped at the chance. I needed the work for one thing, having just returned home after a year away, and this was interesting work. I had been at Colenso when it served as Labour’s ad agency during the 1987 election and had seen firsthand how different, fascinating and challenging political work could be.
Election campaigns crash along to a frantic, uneven beat of their own. The ground is constantly shifting from one week to the next. Many of the usual conventions do not apply and your clients are mostly people with little understanding of how advertising works. At the end of it, there’s the almost quaint resolution of a nationwide vote. The team whose messaging you’ve helped create either wins or loses.
The Labour ad team was small. I did most of the writing. The experienced Baz Hayward, whom Carson and I had both worked alongside at Rialto Advertising, came on board as art director. Carson’s partner (in every sense), Sheridan Bruce, was our media director. The wild card in the pack was writer John Ansell.
It seems hard to imagine now that Ansell, later notorious for the billboards (Iwi/Kiwi, et al) he created for Don Brash’s National Party campaign in 2005 and for publicly getting in behind a number of right-wing causes, was once in the Labour camp. A conservative bent was evident back in 1993, but he was far less politicised. His cleverness and sense of humour as a writer were assets we were happy to have on our side.
The previous election had been a bloodbath for Labour. Just 53 days from polling day, Mike Moore had taken over as prime minister, the third Labour PM in just over a year. The fourth Labour government looked like, and was, a weakened, chaotic administration. It was punished by Kiwi voters accordingly. Jim Bolger led the Nats to a whopping 37-seat majority.
Moore hunkered down as leader of the opposition with Helen Clark as his No 2. It was a period of real economic pain. Unemployment, in particular, spread like a plague. It hit an all-time high of 11.2% in the third quarter of 1991 as factories closed and “downsizing” became a dreaded, well-worn boardroom dictum.
The National government had inherited a tough situation, no question. But Finance Minister Ruth Richardson’s hewing to the course of neoliberal economic reform set by Labour’s Roger Douglas only made it tougher. Her “mother of all budgets” in 1991, in which she drastically cut state spending, deepened the hole into which the country had fallen. It was austerity before austerity.
Health had also emerged as a hot-button issue. The government had established a competitive, quasi-market approach to the provision of health services, which provoked suspicion and debate in the electorate. Helen Clark, Labour’s health spokesperson, exploited this situation skilfully, casting the changes as an attempt to privatise a trusted public institution.
Two months out from polling day, a grim arm-wrestle looked to be looming. After trailing in the polls for much of the parliamentary term, National had received an assist in the form of an improving economy. The Nats came out on top of the September 4, 1993, TVNZ Heylen poll with 39 percentage points, though Labour was close behind on 36 points. The Alliance under Jim Anderton was by now a strong political presence, as was Winston Peters’ newly minted New Zealand First. They both registered 11% support in the poll.
The 1993 election was to be the last of the old first-past-the-post showdowns. The move to the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system of voting we now have was three years away. So, in 1993, a party’s percentage of the overall vote had nothing to do with the outcome. All that mattered was winning seats.
A “Him and Us” thing
At first, the Labour advertising team was under the impression our client was the party’s election strategy committee. This group included the party president, a few Labour stalwarts and several MPs. That impression did not last long. Moore was in constant direct communication with the ad team, often via fax (this was 1993, remember), and it soon became clear he was totally hands-on. Moore wanted the advertising to be a “him and us” thing. He was our client. We settled into an arrangement where Carson would confer with the Labour leader and we would do the work, then show it to Moore, who would share it (or not) with the strategy committee.
Our first task was to come up with a strap- line for the campaign. We wanted this slogan to reference core campaign themes and do so in the matter-of-fact, no-frills tone we would adopt for all our communications. There was a sense the country was in no mood for political cant and/or sugar coating. The line we settled on was: “Jobs. Growth. Health.”
By 1993, what is known as the “presidential-style campaign”, where the party leader is front and centre of most of the messaging, had become part of New Zealand politics. To no one’s surprise, Moore made it clear it was the route he wanted to take. We were fine with that. There was little doubt the National Party would be doing the same.
Back then, election campaigns for the two major parties kicked off with half-hour opening programmes. These were prepared and produced by the parties themselves and broadcast on successive nights at prime time on both TV One and TV3. We put a lot of time and effort into Labour’s opening pitch, giving the programme a doco-like feel. It included old footage of Moore as a young politician addressing protesters, various interviews (one with much-loved Labour grande dame Sonja Davies) and an “issues” section fronted by a bright-eyed Robyn Malcolm (before her career took off on Shortland Street).
Moore, of course, had the starring role. That face of his, with its hungry-sad raccoon eyes, double chin and bad teeth, was a big part of his brand. It wasn’t pretty, but it had a comforting “one of us” relatability that resonated with a lot of New Zealanders. In both the opening and closing minutes of the programme, Moore’s dial took centre stage. The film director, Greg Schmetzer, had the idea of running a video of Moore giving a speech on a TV set and then shooting the image on the screen from close range using 16mm film. The result was striking, a grainy closeup of Moore coming at you like a Kiwi Mt Rushmore. We put some string music underneath his voice. The overall effect was, well, presidential. After seeing it, Moore wondered if we could arrange for cellos to play every time he gave a speech.
When we saw what the other side came up with, we were gleeful. The Nats simply taped Jim Bolger on stage at Wellington’s Michael Fowler Centre speaking to an audience of the party faithful. The Great Helmsman (as Bolger was nicknamed) tried hard to look and sound Kennedy-esque. “Heal the wounds! Light the beacon!” he called out to the quiet, darkened hall. The reviews were close to unanimous: first blood to Labour.
Through the first month, the campaign was evenly fought. We produced some strong, basic TV ads featuring Moore in his shirt sleeves. In them, he would passionately lament the high youth unemployment rate or the lack of support for small business. Then Labour’s policy solution would appear in type on the screen, simultaneously spelt out with a voiceover. We never mentioned the opposition. One of the few times we did was in a full-page press advertisement where the contrast between the two parties was laid out under the headline: “Moore, or less?”
National’s campaign rested heavily on the improving economy. It adopted the slogan “The spirit of recovery”, which I thought was smart and effective. Four weeks from election day, the TVNZ Heylen poll showed the two major parties level with each other.
What might break the deadlock? John Ansell came up with an answer to that question. Both Labour research and our own political noses told us the Bolger government’s key vulnerability was broken promises. Removing the tax surcharge on superannuation, abolishing tertiary fees, maintaining current levels of health funding – these were just some of the election pledges that Bolger defaulted on once the Nats took office.
Ansell prepared a TV ad that we called “Words”. Visually, it was simple: a still black-and-white photo of the prime minister at the lectern captioned “The Right Honourable Jim Bolger”. A gentle ditty started playing in the background, with this the opening verse:
Words that flow just like a river,
Words that tumble just like rain,
Words that change my life forever,
Words that somehow sound the same.
During pauses in the lyrics, Bolger’s promises, spoken by the man himself, rang out one after the other. “The superannuation surcharge – out it must go!”, “I will not touch one cent of the health budget!” and so on. Meanwhile, as the camera slowly zoomed in on Bolger’s eyes, you noticed the two words “Right Honourable” were slowly fading out completely.
It was obviously designed to undermine Bolger and the Nats, yet it was not your usual attack ad. It was too subtle and wry for that. Moore liked it and the fact that it was mostly written and produced by Bolger himself.
We all felt the ad would make waves when we aired it, as well as give the broken-promises issue some deserved prominence. We made the decision to hold it back for the last week of campaign, when voters feel they’ve learnt all there is to learn. It would give Labour a momentum lift going into election day on November 6.
Except the voters never saw it. “If you run that ad, it will be a disaster,” Heylen told us that afternoon in our office. At his command, we binned it and cut new ads, all aimed at making Moore look like a PM in waiting. Of course, they weren’t new at all, just more of the same. What was new was this change in client at such a crucial stage.
Great Innovation
A psychologist by training and an admirer of Sigmund Freud, Belgium-born Josef Paul Heylen arrived in New Zealand in 1968 from South Africa. A book about the apartheid regime, Unfinished Business: South Africa, Apartheid, and Truth, by Terry Bell with Dumisa Buhle Ntsebeza, states that in South Africa, Heylen had been hired to engage in psychological experiments designed to help maintain white rule.
He set up the Heylen Research Centre (HRC) a few years after settling in New Zealand. His great innovation was to bring psychology into market research.
“The whole focus was taking a psychological approach to understanding consumers and how they interact with brands,” says Michael Cook, who was group managing director at HRC in 1993. “He was ahead of his time, and quite brilliant in that respect.”
He was also trouble. “To call him arrogant would be an understatement,” says Cook. “There was also a lot of stuff happening with women – staff members.” In 1979, after a relationship breakdown, Heylen bolted with his two children and a female HRC staffer. He spent time in South America before returning to Belgium. His former partner brought a private prosecution to restore contact with her children and eventually the pair negotiated a settlement over custody.
HRC continued in Heylen’s absence and went from strength to strength. He began returning to New Zealand every couple of years. By 1993, his company in Belgium had collapsed and he was back here for more extended periods.
At the time of the election, Heylen was not involved in the day-to-day running of HRC. He had a fringe role in research and development. Cook wanted it that way, not least because he knew Heylen enjoyed rubbing shoulders with powerful people.
“Although we didn’t know the depth of his involvement with Moore, we were aware he had a relationship with the Labour Party. We created a wall between Heylen and our political polling, which had to be seen as being politically neutral. He was desperate to see the results of the last poll before the ‘93 election, but we wouldn’t show them to him. I didn’t want those results to go to the Labour Party before TVNZ.”
When the results of that last poll were aired six days out from the election, they showed National had gone out to a seven-point lead. “Those poll results were delivered with a ‘Caution: volatile, very volatile’ sign attached,” recalls Cook’s ex-HRC colleague Duncan Stuart. “We could see there was a confused whirlpool of opinion out there.”
On election night, that codicil proved accurate. To form a government, a party needed to win 50 of the 99 seats in the House of Representatives. National won 49, 15 down on where they were pre-election. Labour won 46, while the Alliance and New Zealand First claimed two each. No one could claim victory on the night and “hung parliament” was the evening’s most-repeated phrase. The evening’s most memorable phrase belonged to Bolger when he said on TV: “Bugger the pollsters.”
But with the counting of special votes, the seat of Waitaki flipped from Labour to National, giving the Bolger government another term.
The missed trick
After the election, the political polling staff at HRC did something they’d never done before – they went back to the 1000 people they’d polled just before election day and asked them how they voted. An extraordinary 30% said they changed their minds over the final 24 hours before the election. “Volatile” about sums it up.
Advertising agencies are quick to claim credit when the side for which they’re working wins an election. In reality, it’s rare for ads to play a crucial role. I can think of only two pieces of advertising that could be deemed to be important factors in New Zealand elections over the past 50 years. One is the “Dancing Cossacks” TV ad with its “Reds under the beds” message that helped propel Robert Muldoon and National to victory in 1975. The other is the aforementioned Iwi/Kiwi billboard, a similarly populist play to people’s anxieties, created by John Ansell for National’s 2005 campaign.
I’m convinced the “Words” TV commercial, had it run, would have swung the ‘93 election Labour’s way and now perhaps be part of that group. National Party insiders approached me after the election to ask why we never pushed the “broken promises” button. They knew it was a troublesome fault line running underneath their campaign.
The big mystery is why, when the election was in the balance, did control-freak Moore cede complete control to a man who should never have been allowed near the Labour campaign? Moore had a reputation for flightiness, but this was something else. Carson, who was in daily contact with the Labour leader, maintained that as the race tightened down the final stretch, Moore became noticeably edgy and uptight. A loss of nerve? All I know is that Moore had a card up his sleeve. When the heat came on, he didn’t back himself to play it.
Denouement
Here’s what happened next to this story’s dramatis personae…
Heylen made it clear he wanted to settle permanently in New Zealand and oversee the company that bore his name. After trying and failing to buy Heylen out of HRC, Cook and others quit to start their own company, Focus Research. HRC went into receivership in 1995, and Heylen died in Belgium in 2015.
Less than a month after the election, Moore was ousted as Labour Party leader by Helen Clark. He left Parliament in 1999 to lead the World Trade Organisation. He died in Auckland in 2020.
John Saker is a Wellington-based journalist and author.