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By
Paul
Schemm
Egypt’s first-ever
presidential campaign opened dramatically for the ruling National Democratic
Party (NDP) with a speech by the president at the recently built Al Azhar
Park. Designed and laid out by the Aga Khan foundation, the park perches
majestically on the edge of the city on a former landfill, overlooking
the minarets of medieval Cairo. The president gave his speech to a crowd
of dignitaries and a few thousand young supporters decked out in “Mubarak
2005” t-shirts and baseball caps, merrily waving their signs and
cheering at any excuse. After the president had finished and left with
his entourage, people slowly began to get up from their seats. Suddenly,
the large video screens in the park went blank and there was the sound
of shots. The screens lit up with scenes of people running, panicking
and knocking over their chairs as a young Hosni Mubarak, dressed in an
ornate military uniform, was hustled away by bodyguards. And then there
was the briefest glimpse of Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s former president,
fallen.
The crowd stood in shock as rarely seen scenes from the 24-year-old national
trauma of Sadat’s assassination were suddenly replayed before their
eyes. Soon, though, the images on the TV screens melted into more comforting
scenes of a young Mubarak taking charge of a traumatized nation and steering
it on towards future greatness. The film was not just about the president’s
achievements, however. There also were touching personal exchanges where
the president’s wife, Suzanne, recalled first meeting her husband
at the Heliopolis Club or the time the president wept because his weighty
responsibilities kept him from traveling with his sick son.
“It was a hit, it was a major success!” enthused Mohammed
Kamal, the media coordinator for the NDP’s slick advertising campaign
during the presidential election. The 15-minute infomercial, entitled
Citizen and Leader went on to play several more times on both
local television and satellite networks. “It resonated very well
with people, because it showed this image, the human side of the president
as one of the people, but at the same time he is a leader who can lead
the nation and take decisive measures,” Kamal said. “I think
those are the two main messages: He is a leader, but also human.”
In fact, Citizen and Leader was only one of the many media productions
the NDP created for the campaign in an effort to remake the president’s
image. There also were a number of shorter commercials highlighting other
aspects of the president’s campaign message and a number of music
video clips (the latter produced by the Ministry of Information)—In
all of them, Mubarak was presented as a man of the people, a strong, paternal,
and protective leader, but also a man in touch with Egyptians.
For a change, however, the president did not monopolize the nation’s
TV networks during the elections period, though he still dominated them.
In the past, parliamentary candidates had no access to the broadcast media
and instead just spread their message with cloth banners and leaflets.
In 2000, some candidates tried handing out videotapes to supporters containing
their campaign messages. When it came to picking their president however,
Egyptians chose their leaders through a simple yes-or-no referendum every
six years. “Campaigning” was characterized by a massive media
onslaught telling everyone to vote “yes” for the incumbent,
with only a few brave opposition newspapers calling for a “no”
vote. Now, for the first time, Egyptians witnessed the unprecedented sight
of presidential challengers airing political advertisements of their own
on state television. The new presidential election law originally had
banned political advertising, but the ban subsequently was struck down
by the constitutional court. Opposition candidates also were granted a
fixed, daily allotment of free time on the terrestrial networks covering
their campaigns
In general, all the campaigns displayed a level of media awareness that
was light-years ahead of the last round of national elections. The NDP
had an army of articulate workers calling up journalists and monitoring
the media, while both Al Ghad and Al Wafd had active media departments
albeit on a smaller scale. Ultimately, the amount of money a campaign
had determined the quality and frequency of the campaign advertisements.
Here, as in most things, the NDP dominated the field. In the case of the
competition between the two major opposition parties Al Ghad and Al Wafd
for second place, however, it was the lesser-funded Al Ghad with fewer
ads that prevailed, suggesting that an engaging candidate and plenty of
real campaigning remain important deciding factors in the contest.
The NDP Juggernaut
From its dramatic start at Azhar Park, the entire election campaign appeared
to be an opportunity for the reformist wing of the ruling party to show
its stuff. Certainly in the weeks following the election, including at
the party conference at the end of September, the influence of the younger
members, gathered around Mubarak’s son Gamal, appeared total. While
Gamal Mubarak was never officially described as the campaign manager,
he clearly was a major moving force, appearing at every campaign rally,
though rarely close enough to the president to appear in the same photo
frame, as frustrated photojournalists often noted.
The NDP’s campaign itself bore all the hallmarks of a more worldly
and refined sensitivity to global standards of electioneering. “Gamal
Mubarak has his own personal sensibility of how it works in the West,”
observed S. Abdallah Schleifer, TBS senior editor and professor emeritus
of Mass Communications and Journalism at the American University in Cairo.
“The staff running the campaign is very sophisticated and has experience
working in the West … They consciously set out to run what you could
call an American-style campaign.”
Certainly, the new style was much more sophisticated and savvy than the
campaigning strategy back in the days of the referendum, when the campaign
was the responsibility of the Ministry of Information, then headed by
party stalwart Safwat al-Sherif. As Kamal explained, the old ways just
would not have worked in the new environment of multiple candidates. “Other
people were competing for the minds and hearts and votes of Egyptians,”
he said. “It would have been very awkward to run a multi-candidate
election using the methods of the referendum.”
The party turned outside for media expertise and hired a professional
Egyptian advertising company, Animation, to produce its television commercials,
as well as print and billboard advertisements. “But of course we
gave them the political guidelines,” Kamal said. Unlike campaigns
in the past that focused on print or billboard advertisements, the vast
majority of the NDP’s advertising budget went to (very expensive)
television ads, Kamal said. The party’s ads appeared primarily on
the main Egyptian terrestrial Channels 1 and 2, and Dream TV, a popular
privately owned Egyptian satellite channel. In an interesting contrast,
the Wafd Party, which supposedly had the same LE10 million campaign budget
as the NDP, put most of advertising resources into print ads in the national
dailies.
Presidential advertising had a dry run, in a way, back in April, when
Mubarak sat down with media mogul Emad Eddin Adeeb for a seven-hour “fireside
chat” that was broadcast over three days on national television.
Directed by Lenin el-Ramle, one of the most commercially successful directors
in Egypt, the interview discussed the high points of Mubarak’s career
as well as giving a glimpse of the president’s human side.
The Citizen and Leader biopic mentioned above, by up-and-coming
director Marwan Hamid, followed the same pattern, albeit in a much more
succinct manner. Other ads followed a more targeted approach, focusing
on specific aspects of the president’s platform. One focused on
the president’s achievements in the course of his 24-year-reign,
another gave examples of his leadership abilities during times of crisis.
This ad, in particular, played on people’s fears of instability
by showing a series of images of regional crises and violence, juxtaposed
with the firm hand and steady leadership of the president in Egypt. The
final ad, one often shown during campaign rallies, featured the new image
of the president created for the campaign—the same image of him
that appeared on a series of large billboards under the slogan, “leadership
crossing into the future.”
In this ad, “The president was pictured in a smart but fashionable
shirt and tie sitting at a desk on which was an elegant writing pad and
that most essential of all corporate accessories, the Mont Blanc pen,”
observed Dina Ezzat and Shaden Sheab in the 18 August edition of Al
Ahram Weekly. In the course of the television commercial, he took
that same pen and wrote down on the pad all the campaign commitments he
was making to the Egyptian people, against a backdrop of idealized images
of peasants, workers and homemakers. According to Kamal, these themes
and messages were tested and refined through polling and focus groups.
The professionalism of the NDP’s media campaign inadvertently was
highlighted in contrast to the thousands of freelance pro-Mubarak advertisements
that sprung up around the country in the last days of the campaign. These
banners were very similar to those that festooned the city during the
1999 presidential referendum and weren’t constrained by the careful
image-making of the new NDP. Using older images of the president showing
him in the dark “dictator” sunglasses and heavy suits or untouched
recent photos carrying the web of wrinkles that have etched themselves
on the president’s face over the last 20 years, these posters were
commissioned by supportive businessmen and stood in stark contrast to
the officially approved material. One overzealous business owner put up
an awkward, ill-proportioned statue of Mubarak in the neighborhood of
Imbaba that was later removed when it recieved unwelcome media attention.
Al Wafd: Rebirth
of the Leader
Egypt’s oldest existing political party, the Wafd, made a last-minute
decision to contest the presidential election, but their advertising campaign
was one of the contest’s most creative. Burdened with an uncharismatic
candidate, 71-year-old Noman Gomaa, the Wafd went farther than any other
party in turning its back on the traditional street rallies and parades,
instead opting for a campaign that was almost entirely media-based. While
the NDP held almost daily rallies as Mubarak gave speeches across the
country, and Ayman Nour of the Al Ghad party held 21 rallies in 19 days
of campaigning, the Wafd Party held only six rallies. Instead, the party’s
LE10 million war chest went entirely to fund a media campaign, which appeared
mostly on the pages of the major semi-official dailies. Wafd Vice President
Mahmoud Abaza explained that right from the start, the party made the
strategic decision to limit the number of rallies and go for an “unprecedented”
media campaign. The idea made sense at the time, since early on in the
campaign, Gomaa lost his voice during rallies and then twice made disparaging
(and vulgar) comments about people in the crowd in front of an open mike.
Gomaa’s face, however, did feature heavily in both the print and
TV campaign ads. Analysts described these ads as an attempt to present
him as the party’s historic leader reborn. With an outstretched
pointing finger under the slogan “Let’s Really Change Egypt,”
Gomaa was supposed to call to mind the national hero Saad Zaghloul, the
father of the 1919 revolution. The party’s television commercial
featured Gomaa sitting at his ornate desk in his office, talking about
how it is time that Egypt sees political change. As the camera pans around
him, he calls on voters to “elect me and make me accountable for
whatever I do.” The commercial ends with his promise to make a change.
But as journalism professor and TBS senior editor Hussein Amin observed,
it was not a very convincing message. “People wanted to see more,”
he said.
In fact, it was in their print campaign that the Wafd Party really shone,
producing a series of full-page ads that Magdy Mehanna, a columnist for
the independent daily Al Masry Al Youm, called “highly
skilled and extraordinarily intelligent.” Designed by a Cairo University
professor of mass communication, the campaign used as its slogan “itkhanna”
or literally “we are suffocating.” The message was that Egyptians
were fed up and couldn’t take it anymore. The opening ad featured
a series of photos of frustrated Egyptians and detailed common complaints
such as poor education, the terrible job market and the deteriorating
health service. The ads were sufficiently controversial for the major
state-owned dailies to refuse to carry them initially—until the
government itself had to step in and allow them to be run.
Throughout the campaign period, the ads appeared as stunningly expensive
double page inserts in national dailies like Al Ahram, listing
a different series of popular complaints, including issues not addressed
by the president’s campaign, such as corruption. Accompanying these
ads would be the standard, smiling shot of Gomaa. Towards the end of the
campaign period, the print ads changed again, this time presenting the
proposed solutions of the Wafd party and its promises if elected. The
party also managed to put a number of billboards and posters up around
town, though party members allege that these often were torn down by ruling
party supporters. Anecdotal evidence suggests that, at the very least,
these commercials increased people’s awareness about the Wafd party,
which, despite its long history, had not been a very high profile party
in the last few years.
Al Ghad: The
Enthusiastic Upstart
If the Wafd campaign was long on commercials and short on public appearances,
the campaign of the newly established Ghad Party was the exact opposite.
Gamila Ismail, the campaign’s media coordinator and wife of presidential
candidate Ayman Nour, said at the beginning of the campaign that the party
simply couldn’t afford a major advertising campaign with a budget
of only around LE1.5 million. However, the party did manage to get a number
of impressive billboards up around the city, including one visible from
the 6th of October flyover in Cairo, one of the crowded city’s main
commuter arteries. Ayman Nour’s penthouse home in Zamalek also was
host to a huge banner that overlooked a main bridge across the Nile. For
the most part though, around the rest of the city and in the countryside,
pro-Mubarak and even the occasional pro-Gomaa banner, swamped Nour’s
signs.
Ismail explained that with only around LE200,000 of the campaign’s
budget earmarked for broadcast advertising—and a minute on national
television running between LE6,000-10,000—the decision was made
not to rely too much on advertising. That said, Ismail did develop a television
commercial for the campaign that emphasized Nour’s youth and vigor
in contrast to his opponents. The ad was sung to the catchy tune “Raise
Your Vote,” taken from a song by popstar Mohammed Mounir. The commercial
shows Nour mixing with people, in the streets and on the campaign trail,
and stresses the campaign message of hope for a better tomorrow. “It
was very good and it appealed to a lot of segments of the population,
of course, because of the popularity of Mohammed Mounir and there is also
the promise of tomorrow,” Amin said. “It’s very appealing
and very powerful, especially for the youth.”
Few people saw the ad, however, and not just because the campaign couldn’t
afford to run it, but because at the last minute a copyright dispute erupted
with Mounir over the use of his song. Though the lyrics of Mounir’s
“Raise Your Voice” from Youssef Chahine’s film The
Destiny had been changed and someone else was singing the song, the
two were unmistakably the same song and it had been used without the singer’s
permission. Mounir, who was once known for his daring lyrics and oppositional
stances to the government, issued a complaint and the advertisement was
held up while the whole matter was resolved. Ismail and the Ghad Party
alleged it was all part of the government interference intended on hobbling
their campaign.
Advertising
Effectiveness?
It is difficult to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of
the NDP’s media campaign from its candidate’s lopsided 88.6
percent victory, since the win can be attributed to a whole host of political,
historical and structural factors unrelated to its advertising campaign.
Still, the NDP did, by most assessments, produce the most professional
and attractive media products. The ads and commercials presented a coherent
message that resonated with Mubarak’s supporters—namely his
leadership, reliability and experience.
What can be gleaned from the contest is the stunningly bad performance
of the Wafd Party, which took only 2.5 percent of the vote compared to
nearly three times that much for the underfunded Al Ghad campaign. At
first glance, this outcome appears to fly in the face of conventional
wisdom gleaned from Western election campaigns—that big budgets
and plentiful advertising can win a campaign. It appears, however, that
clever print ad campaign aside, the Wafd Party failed to galvanize voters.
“I guess it was because of the poor campaign that was not really
designed to appeal to different segments of the population,” said
Amin, adding that their television commercial wasn’t very exciting.
“In my opinion this setting of Noman Gomaa sitting at a very luxurious
desk just talking—he’s considered as elite and not really
touching base with average Egyptians and their concerns.”
The strength of the Wafd’s ad campaign was its newspaper inserts,
which, in a society that is only 50 percent literate, perhaps did not
reach enough people. The NDP’s Kamal noted that his party made a
conscious decision to eschew print advertising, and that may have been
a wise strategy. “We didn’t want to do that, we thought that
it’s not effective at all,” he said.
There is also the simple fact that the Wafd Party campaign had to include
their candidate in the ads and they simply did not have a very appealing
product to sell. For those wanting change, Gomaa did not seem sufficiently
different from the incumbent to be an attractive choice.
The successes of the Ghad campaign came despite their sparse advertising
campaign and probably had much to do with the indefatigable, charismatic
nature of their candidate who criss-crossed the country in the course
of his campaign and at the very least, made sure he was on the television
news every night. Aside from Mubarak, Nour was the candidate with the
most name recognition, though not necessarily of the positive kind, due
to previous run-ins with the government. During the election, he was facing
charges for forging the signatures needed to establish his party in the
first place. While much of this coverage tarnished him in the eyes of
the public, it did set him apart as a clear challenger to the status quo—something
emphasized by his youth and vigor.
In the end, none of the candidates’ campaigns succeeded in defeating
the biggest challenger to the whole system: voter apathy. More than three
quarters of registered voters didn’t bother to cast their vote,
though it is true the amount could have been lower without the various
media campaigns. A higher turnout was expected in the parliamentary elections,
which did not have the same aura of a foregone conclusion as the presidential
contests. Television advertising, however, did not play such a large role
in these contests due to the lower spending ceiling (LE70,000) and the
lesser means of the individual candidates.
While the presidential contest of 2005 was never much in doubt and the
outcome seemed little different from the referendums of yesteryear, the
event did have major significance for the Egyptian political scene. Never
before had the Egyptians been exposed to such a vigorous election campaign.
Television advertising was a key aspect of this change, especially since
the airwaves had long been the exclusive domain of the ruling party. For
the first time, the television was turned into a potential tool of the
opposition—one which with time and experience (and more funding)
they may learn to wield with more skill.
Paul Schemm is a reporter for Agence France
Press who divides his time between Cairo and Baghdad. He has worked
as a freelance journalist covering Egyptian politics in Cairo for the
past seven years and served as news editor of Cairo magazine
and editor of the Cairo Times.
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