Campaign triumph gives SPD no guarantee at polls

Germany's opposition Social Democrats (SPD) this week unveiled a new poster featuring three of Dr Helmut Kohl's most senior allies, each looking murderous and clutching a saw.

"This is how secure the candidate Helmut Kohl is," reads the caption, a reference to persistent calls from within the Chancellor's own ranks for him to retire soon, even if he wins this month's federal election.

The Social Democrats' campaign co-ordinator, Mr Matthias Machnig, admits that the poster is unlikely to attract many new voters. Its purpose is to reassure the party's own supporters that last Sunday's Bavarian state election, which Dr Kohl's allies won handsomely, would not blow the opposition campaign off course. "It tells our people, no matter what happens, we have an answer in the drawer," Mr Machnig said.

German elections have traditionally been somewhat stiff affairs, long on detailed speeches and short on campaign razzmatazz. Dr Kohl's Christian Democrats (CDU) attracted stern criticism in 1969 for distributing balloons at party rallies. The SPD was reluctant to follow suit, arguing that politics should not be marketed like toothpaste.

There is no place for such lofty sentiments in today's SPD, which has mounted a spectacular, American-style campaign for this election, spending twice as much on advertising as the CDU.

The party's advertising agency has been marketing the SPD like any other brand, using soft-focus photography to create a mood but avoiding clear political statements. German television stations carry political advertising and the SPD commercials are almost indistinguishable from those selling coffee, washing powder or banking services.

The party has an advantage in its candidate for chancellor, the media-friendly Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, Mr Gerhard Schroder. Until this week, posters showed Mr Schroder in moody black and white, beneath one of his more anodyne quotes. The new posters, in colour, show him smiling under the slogan "Germany needs a new chancellor".

The sophistication of the SPD campaign has left the CDU gasping, and even smaller parties, such as the Greens and the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism, look slicker than Dr Kohl's party.

Part of the problem is that the Chancellor insists on making all important campaign decisions him self, insisting that he should be at the centre of all party advertising.

Dr Kohl's wife, Hannelore, chose which photographs of the Chancellor were used during the 1994 campaign. This time, the Chancellor is pictured before a blurred crowd, a hand concealing his sagging, aged chin, below the slogan "World Class for Germany".

The SPD has clearly won the media battle already, but that is no guarantee that it will triumph at the election on September 27th. Bavaria's Prime Minister, Mr Edmund Stoiber, won Sunday's state election after a campaign consisting almost entirely of two-hour speeches, packed with detail and delivered in village beer tents.

Other Germans often sneer that the clocks run differently in Bavaria. The Bavarians agree, but they claim that at election time at least they run better.