Vote Conservative, but not before you've shopped around a bit

Greetings dear readers. I'm now in Manchester for the Tory party conference after experiencing the highs and lows of Labour last week and am about to head to the secure zone. As well as picking up a fringe guide, I'll no doubt stumble across the mini-shopping mall that is apparently trading in the exhibition hall.

Yes, you read that correctly, 17 retail brands, including Asda and Tesco, have set up temporary stores in the hall. While I can, at a stretch, see the reason for supermarkets having a presence, as buffets become a bit samey after a while, bizarrely retailers such as Harvey Nicks and Carpetright are also there too.

Maybe the brands taking part are doing this in the hope of having some high-profile visitors. If the paps got a shot of Sam Cam in the Asda store it could do wonders for their attempts to appeal to middle-class shoppers. If they can get Dave's wife patting her bottom in homage to their ads then the sky's the limit.

Perhaps once I see the spectacle in its full glory it will all make sense but at the moment it sounds pretty dumb.

It's being talked up as the first time a political party has done anything like this at their annual conference. I'd say there's a good reason for that...

The Sun goes down on the Labour conference

Last night was a strange one, make no mistake. The Labour faithful were in high spirits after Gordon's speech which had something for both the left (abolishing hereditary peers) and the right (a ban on council houses for teen mums) of the party. But later on the news that The Sun had declared its hand for the Tories after 12 years of supporting Labour changed the mood somewhat.

As debates raged verbally in the Grand and Hilton bars, things also erupted in the blogosphere with furious debate taking place over Twitter among those using the #lab09 hashtag.

Twitter tsar Kerry McCarthy attracted howls, well tweets, of derision when she tweeted: 'Labour doesn't need the Sun, we've got Twitter!' For what it's worth I think this is slightly silly but I'd question whether The Sun is still this all-powerful entity that its pompous hacks and suits like to think it is. Yeah it might have contributed to Neil Kinnock's defeat in 1992 but think about the media landscape back then and where we are now. Anyway they simply want to back a winner and one glance at the polls tells you which way the wind is blowing.

But if The Sun's desertion of Labour bothered Culture secretary Ben Bradshaw he wasn't letting on. Not only did he attend last night's News International bash (this is what I'm told - I wanted to crash it but was way off the pace and didn't even know where it was being held!) but way into the early hours of the morning he could be seen belting out an assortment of Oasis, Beatles and Monkees tunes around the piano in the Grand bar.

As he seems a nice enough guy - I met him earlier this week - I'll resist the temptation to make a snide remark. But 'excruciating' and 'painful' were some of the words tweeted out by onlookers.

Advertising bigwigs descend on Brighton, but what about Manchester?

Ad types are out in force here at Brighton. I spotted SSF over-lord Robert Senior surrounded by a gaggle of giggling blondes making their way into the secure zone late last night but before that I also overheard someone from Saatchi & Saatchi having trouble getting into his room at the Thistle where I'm told Labour's ad agency is decamped. I should note that the hapless ad man was extremely polite although he clearly wanted to throw a massive strop.

Then from my perch high in the balcony during Gordon's speech today I spied Karmarama's fragrant Nicola Mendlesohn sat a few seats away from BMB's Trevor Beattie in the front row of one of the blocks near the stage. At the end they even got kisses and handshakes from the PM and Sarah (just to be clear Gordon didn't kiss Trevor) as the M People classic 'Moving on up' blared out.

Will any of the ad-erati be present during Tory leader David Cameron's address to his conference next week? If we see any of Soho's leading lights cheering on Dave then surely he can claim his decontamination project has finally worked.

Marketing hack sees red as FSA chair ducks questions

So today I've been mostly annoying the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which is one of my hobbies if the truth be known.

I attended an event organised by the Co-op and asked Lord Rooker, the newish chair of the FSA, whether traffic light labelling, the FSA's baby, had had its day.

At this point I feel I should point out that I only asked about traffic lights because Jeff, that's Lord Rooker to you, had mentioned them and joked that it was right and proper that cheese should have a red light. 'The issue becomes about portion size and info,' he added.

But hang on a minute, I thought, isn't portion size exactly what traffic lights don't take into account?

So my question from the floor - in a slightly nervy fashion because up until then the event had all been conducted rather amicably - went something like this: 'I'm wondering whether there is any point in pursuing traffic lights. The Tories have said they will scrap them if they get in. Tesco doesn't use them. Europe doesn't like them and most of the big food companies have decided to go down the guideline daily amounts route.' And I aired my cheese thoughts too.

The answer that came back was basically that he wasn't going to answer because there was an ongoing consultation on this subject. Come on Jeff, there's always an FSA consultation on traffic lights. If you never answered a question because of an ongoing labelling consultation you'd never say owt.

Later on a well-placed source told me he had yet to get to grips with his FSA brief. Miaow!

Dirty tricks plot at the Labour conference 2009 revealed here

So am back again at the Labour conference, this time it's at sunny Brighton. I'll actually be going to the Tories as well next week (tectonic plates, shifts of power and all that) but haven't figured out how to change the name and description of my blog to reflect this.

Anyway, just thought I would spread a delicious rumour going around the bars at the moment to which I will make a very tenous marketing link at the end.

Apparently a prominent right-wing blogger had hatched a plot to create havoc during Gordon's speech. The dastardly plan went thus. Blogger secures a stand at conference manned by disgruntled ex-soldiers with model helicopters seemingly meant for use on the said stand. However the real plan for the helicopters is to dive-bomb onto Brown from the balcony bearing subversive slogans.

This was foiled solely because the blogger applied too late to get access for the soldier-types.

The relevance to marketing? Always double-check your exhibitors before allowing them a presence at your conference no matter how desperate you are.

More insights of this calibre tomorrow. Off to the crash the New Statesman party.

Over and out

So that's it for another year.

ITV gave everyone a great send off at its News at Ten party last night. In a nice touch Michael Grade stood on the door welcoming in those lucky enough to secure a ticket. The broadcaster even persuaded Gordon Brown to show up and give a quick speech.

Culture Secretary Andy Burnham was in attendance and on good form, happily chatting away and posing for pictures with star-struck party members who had managed to sneak in alongside the suits. You never know with politicians but when I spoke to Burnham he seemed unconvinced by the case for further restrictions on booze and food advertising. It will be interesting to see if his department can win over sceptical colleagues in the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Thanks for reading. I'll be back next year!

Ads aren't all bad, Gordon

So advertising got a mention in Gordon Brown's speech to conference. For those of you who switched sides after the first five minutes, the Prime Minister said 'there are new pressures on parents - worrying about balancing work and family life but also about advertising aimed straight at their children and what their children are watching or downloading'.

This should send a chill down the spine of marketers. The narrative has changed from a focus on junk food ads to all advertising targeted at children. Despite industry efforts to promote the positive power of advertising the message doesn't seem to be getting through at the top.

Traffic lights go out?

So there you have it. The chairwoman of the Food Standards Agency, Deidre Hutton, has put it on public record that the organisation will stop pushing for the adoption of the traffic light nutritional labelling system if independent research comes out in favour of using guideline daily amounts (GDAs). The story is in this week's magazine and on brandrepublic but I have no idea how to link it in to this blog, so sorry about that.

Anyone following this debate will know that the GDA system is the one favoured by the majority of the food industry and Tesco, while a handful of food brands along with Asda, Sainsbury's and the Co-op have gone down the traffic light route.

At the moment this means that things are a bit of a mess so government is keen to move to a single labelling scheme. Easier said than done, of course. While the efforts of companies such as Kellogg (one of the GDA pioneers which has virtually gone global with the scheme) to get its own way have been well documented, brands which support the other system have been quieter, leaving the campaigning to charities and pressure groups.

However I heard at a session last night that the Co-op has been lobbying government hard behind the scenes for the traffic light system so I doubt the retailer, or a company like McCain which has flagged up its Rustics' green light status through its ads, will drop the system without a fight.

As Hutton spoke about preferring to work in partnership with business rather than enforcing change, a single labelling scheme may still be some way away.

Will Burnham's missus reveal herself?

Bumped into Culture Secretary Andy Burnham earlier this evening on his way to a dinner with ITV boss Michael Grade. Oh to be a fly on the wall around that table. Was product placement the elephant in the room?

Anyway, he told me that his missus - Burnham's word not mine - is a marketer. Providing she is a real marketer, and not a phoney one in the Deborah Meaden mould, this surely bodes well for marketing as she will hopefully bend his ear if he plans anything detrimental to the industry.

Unfortunately he was whisked away by his special advisers before I could find out where she works. If one of the thousands of readers of this blog could let me know that would be great as I'm really quite curious.

YouWhat?

Welcome to my mini-blog from the Labour Party Conference.Over the next couple of days I'll hopefully provide some interesting snippets from sunny Manchester for brandrepublic readers into politics, marketing and communication.

The internet is playing a major role in this year's thrilling race to the White House. From the amount of resources YouTube has thrown at the conference this year, it's clear that the company is pushing for this to happen over here too when we next go to the polls.

It is running four sessions and has a flashy stall in the conference centre all aimed at persuading politicians that the best way to influence voters and engage the all-important 'yoof' is by creating their own channels.

Now I'm all for trying to connect with voters in innovative ways and with the high levels of disaffection in this country with the political process doing nothing is not an option. However I really hope that the delegates flocking to the YouTube events are smart enough to realise that this is far from a panacea.

Boring content is boring content whether it's on the internet, a piece of direct marketing or a party political broadcast on the box.