The Conservative Party’s print electoral advert ‘Start Saving’ has scored a flat 1 star, even when taking into account the party’s own voters, according to System 1’s latest effectiveness rankings.
The advert shows a red piggy bank on a white background with the text “If you think Labour will win, start saving”.
It scored 1 star across a national representative sample, Labour voters, Conservative voters, other voters and the “undecideds”, suggesting that the Tories are falling behind at attracting the voters they need to appeal to the most.
Meanwhile, Labour’s ‘It’s Time for Change’ scored 2 stars across the nation, but scored an “exceptional” 5.1 among Labour voters.
To conduct the testing, System 1 analysed the emotional responses of UK voters when asked about leading politicians from the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Reform and Green Party.
The results revealed that the PM generates the least amount of happiness amongst UK politicians (16%) and the highest amount of negativity (50%). This is compared to 23% happiness and 28% negativity for Starmer.
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It also found that the cult of Boris Johnson appears to be living on, with the former PM generating the same amount of happiness (23%) as every other candidate, including Rishi Sunak (16%), Nigel Farage (19%) and Keir Starmer (23%).
Angela Rayner (54%) and Keir Starmer (44%) have the highest scores for neutrality amongst politicians, suggesting that they may be seen as a bland (albeit potentially safe) bet among voters.
“Our testing shows the Tories are in serious trouble across the board. Not only are they failing to inspire the must-win cohort of floating voters, but their “Start Saving” creative fell completely flat even amongst their own supporters,” said System 1 marketing director Nick Williamson.
“The controversial ‘winner’ of our testing is Boris. Is yet another Boris comeback on the cards? Surely not. But it’s clear his brand still burns brightly, as he generates more happiness among decided and undecided voters than both the unpopular PM and bland PM-in-waiting,” he continued.
Across almost every metric, our Test Your Brand research indicates the Tories would most likely be performing considerably better with their maverick former leader at the helm.”
