It is fascinating to watch how the race to become ABTA chairman is starting to resemble a US presidential election campaign.
With John McEwan and Daniele Broccoli striving to canvass industry votes, both are turning to modern campaigning techniques in the hope of victory.
In the past decade or so, many politicians – and let’s remember that the ABTA election is indeed political, with a small ‘p’ – have woken up to the power of PR and direct marketing.
This has been driven by ex-journalists such as Alastair Campbell (Tony Blair’s aide) and Andy Coulson (David Cameron), as well as pollsters such as Philip Gould (Blair) and Mark Penn (Clinton adviser).
So as well as the candidates creating their own websites (votejohnmcewan.co.uk and votebroccoli.co.uk), they are targeting voters via a combination of new and old media.
Both have done the basic PR work. However, Broccoli, who positions himself as the ‘small independent guy’, is also calling agents directly from his own shop.
This is a ‘man of the people’-type tactic for the younger candidate (43), who claims he will be ‘more approachable’ than previous holders of the post, previously known as president.
McEwan (62), who positions himself as the ‘heavyweight’ candidate, is even emulating Barack Obama in his use of social media such as Twitter (although, at the time of writing, he had made only 11 tweets in the past week).
McEwan is also clearly leveraging what he sees as superior experience, by quoting endorsements from some of the biggest names in the industry.
McEwan was last week forced to refute accusations – from ‘sources linked to Broccoli’s campaign’ – that any ABTA chief could not also be the boss of a major consortium (McEwan is chief executive of Advantage).
What next? Live TV debates? Trips to town centres and the kissing of babies?
No, on June 10 it will be the most energetic, coherent and all-encompassing marketing campaign that will win out. But, in the interest of members, let’s hope their respective policies also play a major role.