Dutton’s Downfall

Where did Dutton go wrong with the media? 850 words won’t be enough to explain. Here’s a quick summary.

If your media spokesperson is unlikable, that’s a big problem. Luckily companies can change their CEO’s and spokes people, the coalition was stuck with Peter Dutton.

When we’re dealing with CEO’s who are poor media performers, we advise that they stick to writing comms, and avoid interviews. That way we’re putting our best foot forward.

Unfortunately for the coalition, Dutton lacked charisma, passion, personality, and consistent messaging. As a result, he was clean bowled.

Smiling is essential to relax audiences and relax yourself. Dutton never smiled. We never saw him happy. We never saw the full range of his emotions. That’s a big personal branding problem because audiences don’t get to know you, little own like or trust you.

There is a big difference between the written word and the spoken word. Let’s say you loved Dutton’s policies; you were better off reading them than hearing them.

Good Talent in the press will show us all of themselves, they won’t try to hide in plain sight.

Dutton was essentially defensive, afraid of making errors, defending himself and repeating polices. An AI deep fake could do that. He missed the fact that TV is a very personal medium, you get talk to people one on one and showing that your’re human is all the difference when it comes to winning people over.

A quick brand SWOT analayis would have shown that Dutton was weak on charisma. He should have focused on making himself likable first and selling his policies second.

He did give an excellent concession speech though. Leadership is judged by your behaviour at your lowest ebb. After being comprehensively smashed nationally and losing his own seat Dutton showed the country, he is truly gracious.

He congratulated Albanese and told him that his mother, now passed, would be proud of him. He did the same with his successful opponent in his former seat of Dickson, acknowledging her personal, tragic family loss.

Flanked by his wife and two sons he held it together and took full responsibility for the political spanking.

It was his best moment of the campaign.