This administration continues to think that it can run the country simply by coming out with meaningless hype and buzz words.

Right now, there is an advertising campaign running in the print media that is promoting Vision 2015. So far it has shown us a smiling woman and child to promote health, and a teacher in a classroom who professes to “touch the future”.

According to the government website, there are five more sectors to go which will probably be given this same glossy, shiny treatment: finance, IT, tourism, manufacturing industry and Gozo. The choice of slogan for Vision 2015 is intriguing, if not slightly accusing, in tone: “Make it happen”.

Gulp. Is that being addressed to me, I wondered. Am I the one who is supposed to be making all these wonderful strides in excellence happen? If so, I had better get cracking because (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) there’s plenty of work to be done.

You see, the problem with these kind of snazzy marketing campaigns, with their glib catchphrases and bright, airbrushed posters, is that they have a nasty habit of coming right back and biting you in the posterior.

Remember “Brand Malta” and all the fuss made at the time because this “branding” of Malta was going to inject new life into our tourism industry? The branding exercise was launched in 2006 by the Malta Tourism Authority with the kind of hoopla we’ve come to expect. But despite a lot of money being thrown at the campaign, it just fell flat on its face. What was worse for the person who conceived the idea (a foreign consultant who was paid a hefty fee) was that any time anything went wrong in the country, letters to the press and online comments inevitably and sarcastically ended their complaint with “Brand Malta, yeah right”. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is now being used as a textbook example of how badly a marketing idea can backfire.

The icing on the cake was when I did a search on the MTA website and I got the following prophetic reply: “There are no results for Brand Malta. Please try again.” Ouch.

I can sell you anything

Over the years, it has become clear that this government has come to rely heavily on marketing and PR to push its ideas through, which is great news for those in this line of work, but bad news for taxpayers who see their money being frittered away on billboards, leaflets and other forms of advertising. It has become the norm for policy makers to try to sell their ‘product’ to the voter in the same way that an advertising agency tries to sell you a new brand of shampoo. Concoct an image, create a feel-good factor that people will want to buy into, and, viola, you’ve got them in the palm of your hand.

Election campaigns, of course, are a marketing executive’s dream and this is where those who come up with catchy slogans come into their own. On the other hand, the temptation to make fun of these slogans is too great, especially when what is being promised and reality are worlds apart.

Just look at what’s happened to British Conservative leader David Cameron’s election poster campaign, which has adopted the slogan “We can’t go on like this”. A website called mydavidcameron.com has been set up spoofing the entire thing, using the same carefully Photo Shopped image of an earnest-looking Cameron with various hilarious statements added to the slogan.

Similarly, the Vision 2015 campaign is just begging to be parodied, not only because it’s so cheesy, but also because of the bare-faced cheek of its intrinsic message. Here is the government asking us to look ahead to this mystical “vision” of a perfect Malta in five years’ time, while most of us are looking around us and saying, “Hey, here’s an idea, how about you do something about the Malta we are living in right now?”

You have to hand it to them, though. The Nationalists seem to have a knack for presenting these kinds of projects with the flair and pizzazz of someone who has just arrived on the scene, for all the world as if someone else has been in the driving seat this whole time.

Because if you think about it, by projecting our minds into the future in this way, it gives you a kind of warm, fuzzy feeling of excited anticipation; the feeling that something is going to happen; that, yes, it’s all systems go!

But hang on a minute. Haven’t we been hearing this kind of rhetoric for years now? So, shouldn’t something concrete about education, health, tourism and so on, already be happening or, better still, have already happened? This vision they are selling us of a futuristic Malta where everything works with the precision of a Swiss clock is so dazzling that it is easy to be momentarily blinded by the fact that this same administration has had plenty of time to achieve perfection and excellence.

But as I’ve already said, this administration has its PR spiel down to a fine art. When it’s not building castles in the air about what it plans to do in the future, it’s wasting (our) taxes lecturing us about its achievements.

Not everyone is being fooled, though. Apparently some households have been receiving thick, glossy colour booklets from the Office of the Prime Minister about all the work that has been done over the past year, prompting some people to question whether it wouldn’t have been wiser to save both the money and the environment instead of publishing what really amounts to blatant propaganda.

Popeville

Which brings me to the Pope’s visit.

I’m really glad to see that most people haven’t been taken in by the recent flurry of activity and all those freshly planted pretty flowers lining our potholes – I mean, our roads – that have just had a fresh coat of papal tarmac. On the contrary, most comments seem to indicate a new level of cynicism directed at a government that is literally taking us for a ride on the Popemobile. The message we are getting is that we who live here don’t deserve to have a nice-looking country all year round – it’s only being done because of Pope Benedict.

It’s as if a superficial Malta is being manufactured overnight. I feel like I’m living in that perfect, artificially created town in The Truman Show, where everyone pretends to be living normally but is actually being taped for a live reality show, with the occasional smile to the camera while holding up cereal boxes in strategic product placement.

In our case, “Malta” is being spruced up and given a fresh coat of paint simply because the Pope is coming with an entourage of foreign press. Now, we don’t want them to think that we live in a shabby, rundown country, do we? We want to make a good impression, so let’s just patch things up here and there and give him the illusion that everything is top notch as he drives from Point A to Point B. Who cares if the hastily done-up roads won’t last (according to engineers quoted this week) and the flowers won’t be replaced, once they shrivel up and die? Apparently, and inexplicably, money is no longer a problem.

And they say miracles don’t happen.

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