COMMENT Whatever the outcome of GE13, it does not excuse the case of bad advertising making its rounds. They say a bad ad does more harm than good. A message obviously lost on Rapp KL, the international agency behind the BN ads that attack the opposition in The Star .  

A major backlash came in the form of an online petition, started by Kevin Bathman in Sydney, who incidentally worked at Rapp DDB Malaysia before. The petition has attracted over 2,600 signatures to date.

NONE A regional advertising industry publisher reported: “Like The Star , ad agency Rapp KL links back to MCA as it is part of the Foetus Group, which also includes Naga DDB, Milk PR, Beyond Events and Vizeum Media Services.”

Foetus Group chairperson Vincent Lee is also executive deputy chairperson of Star Publications (M) Bhd.  

While The Star today reasoned why they turned down ads from the DAP, citing the Advertising Standards Authority of Malaysia (ASAM) guidelines, they seem to have conveniently side-stepped issues about the BN ads running in their own paper on a daily basis.

Is the fact that the president of ASAM, Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir, who is clearly The Star -friendly the reason they are off his radar?

Today’s full colour ad on page five lists a barrage of reasons how PAS-led state governments have already implemented hudud-type rulings.

In a shameless show of how it legitimises its own dubious reporting, most of the reasons listed were taken from articles that ran in their own newspaper!

I will only touch on the first reason, ie. Sunday being declared a work day in Kelantan. Well, as far as I can remember, Kelantan and Terengganu have always observed Friday and Saturday as their weekend holiday.

So what’s new?

Karim Raslan, one of our very few credible political journalists once said, “If we don’t give the mainstream papers the chance to cover local issues boldly, readership will plunge even further and the papers would be totally useless as a communication tool. A medium is only as good as the trust people place in it.”

BN has spent over RM160 million in advertising expenditure (adex) in first three months this year and in March alone, the PM’s Office spent RM73 million on ads according to Nielsen Media Research. This clearly makes it the most expensive general election ever in terms of adex. 

Papers having a bull run

Every paper seems to be having a bull run with theSun , a limited-pages paper, with almost six full-page ads today alone.

The Malaysian Advertisers’ Association’s (MAA) forecasts that the pre-and-post periods of the upcoming general elections is set to fuel the adex growth for 2013.

At the recent MAA’s AGM, president  Khoo Kar Khoon said those advertisers who steered their campaigns away from the glare of the elections would roll them out in the second half of the year.

According to an on-going Malaysian Pre-Election survey by EnSurvey, Pakatan Rakyat have a slight edge over Barisan National (BN) on favourability.  

The Live survey which has almost 500 respondents consists of 64 percent Malays, 32 percent Chinese, 4 percent Indians and others, nationwide.  

As much as 77 percent claimed they are going to vote in this coming general election. When asked if the caretaker Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak had done a good job in the last five years, 46.29 percent agreed, 35.87 percent said no, and 17.84 percent said they have no idea.   

The top five key areas seven out of 10 Malaysians want the next government to focus on are economy, education, standard of living, corruption and the crime rate.

In the meantime, in the battlefront town of Gelang Patah returning officer Md Fauzi Ahmad has told DAP to pull down their billboards because the messages contained elements of hatred which could cause hostilities.

He cited Malaysian Elections Offences Act (1954), section 4A (1):  Any person who, before, during or after an election, directly or indirectly, by himself or by any other person on his behalf, does any act or makes any statement with a view or with a tendency to promote feelings of ill-will, discontent or hostility between persons of the same race or different races or of the same class or different classes of the population of Malaysia in order to induce any elector or voter to vote or refrain from voting at an election or to procure or endeavour to procure the election of any person shall be liable, on conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or to a fine not exceeding ten thousand ringgit or to both such imprisonment and fine.

I think Md Fauzi needs to read page five of The Star today and tell us if the ad is compliant with the Malaysian Elections Offences Act (1954), section 4A (1). Because the ad clearly attempts to fester hatred among the people towards PAS.

Adbuster is a senior advertising industry executive who prefers to be anonymous.