Agencies lining up to pitch for Nice contracts

Advertising and Marketing: The advertising contract for the Nice Treaty referendum is likely to be the biggest new business pitch this summer. The Referendum Commission will have around €3 million to spend on the communications campaign and more than half of that will be spent on advertising, writes Bernice Harrison.

AThe business cannot be put out to pitch until the Commission is formed, which could be as early as July. There was a feeling during the abortion referendum in March that the timeframe for communicating the message to voters was too short, and that is not a problem the Government will want to encounter this time around.

For that referendum, McConnells Advertising had just over a week to come up with a major multimedia campaign, which ran for just 13 days before voting day. Some €1.8 million was spent on a mixture of televison, radio and press advertising out of a total budget of €3 million. Much of the rest was spent on other communications including direct mail.

The Referendum Commission has identified only one major problem with that campaign - the timeframe. "We got a lot of positive feedback from that campaign in terms of content and approach," says Mr Tom Morgan, secretary of the Referendum Commission, "People felt it clarified a difficult message and we felt that the budget was adequate. What we were short of was time."

The lack of time was also identified as a major problem during the previous Nice Treaty referendum. Then, the Commission was established on April 17th, 2001, the advertising agency Irish International was appointed at the start of May and voting day was June 7th.

Irish International had a particularly difficult job. Three issues were voted on and part of the brief was not just to explain the issues but also to put forward various for and against arguments. This led to a particularly dull, wordy advertising campaign with a high "switch-off" factor.

The Referendum Act of 2001 has taken the "arguments" section out of the brief so, while the Nice Treaty will still take some explaining, it should be a clearer message. The Act has broadened the brief to include encouraging people to vote. Whether that will be run as a separate campaign, which seems likely, has yet to be decided.

If the Commission is formed in July and the referendum is held at the end of October, lack of time should not be a factor in communicating the message. It is unlikely, however, to mean there will be enough time to put the advertising account out for open tender.

Even if there was time, there is a feeling in the Commission that few Irish advertising agencies would be able to handle a communications campaign of the required size and complexity and that an open tender, which for other Government accounts has resulted in as many as 20 entries, would simply be a waste of time.

For the abortion referendum, only three agencies were invited to pitch for the lucrative business - Irish International, DDFH&B and McConnells. This caused some resentment in the industry among agencies that would have welcomed a chance to pitch in the normal way - particularly for a piece of Government business.

With new business pitches now thin on the ground due to the downturn in the advertising industry, a similar invitation-only system this time around is likely to cause further resentment.

However, with the Nice Treaty already established as a contentious issue, there will be other referendum-related business. IBEC, the employer's body, has already been talking to agencies with a view to appointing one to handle a "Vote Yes" campaign.