However, Hendry, perhaps surprisingly given his communications background as a former executive of the PR firm Ogilvy, subscribes to a more direct model of political advertising effectiveness."They either reinforce impressions or they stop people and cause them to say 'I didn't know that'. At this point in the electoral cycle people are making up their minds so people are more open to persuasion and ideas," he says.This may, however, have more to do with his feeling that the media, especially the press, is increasingly destructive in its coverage of politics. They invite people to say 'Yes I do agree with that but I didn't know the Tories thought that as well'," says Hendry.Most advertising experts take the view that political posters work, not directly, but by setting an agenda which is picked up by the media and then amplified back to the electorate. The ads created by Immediate Sales, a subsidiary of the chairman's agency M&C Saatchi, use the old salesman's trick of getting people into the rhythm of saying "yes" before making their pitch.So the posters contain largely anodyne observations that few could disagree with, such as "How hard is it to keep a hospital clean?" and "What's wrong with a little discipline in schools?" "They are an attempt to build bridges to the electorate.

05/11 - 08/11 Obtain UFC Tickets playing in Consol Energy Center, MGM Grand Garden Arena. UFC is playing in Pittsburgh, Las Vegas and Philadelphia. UFC tickets

05/11 - 06/11 Acquire Ultimate Fighting Championship Tickets playing in Bourbon Street Ballroom, Bowery Ballroom. Ultimate Fighting Championship is playing in Baltimore, New York and Normal. Ultimate Fighting Championship tickets

06/11 Attain Celine Dion Tickets playing in Caesars Palace. Celine Dion is playing in Las Vegas. Celine Dion tickets

The key target group will be lapsed Tories in their thirties and forties who voted for Major in 1992, Blair in 1997, and abstained last time round. "They live in modern housing developments in outlying suburban areas.

They are successful professionals with two incomes that give them a nice holiday, two cars and an expectation that their children will to go to university. Despite this, they really don't like the Government," says Hendry.The first overtures to what sounds suspiciously like 1997's Mondeo Man are visible in the batch of posters launched early this year. Now they would like to get rid of the Government but they will be fussy who they vote for."In other words, in a three-way fight, it is not enough for voters to dislike the Government, the Conservatives need to offer positive reasons to vote for them. It certainly didn't inspire anyone to go out and vote."The Tories may be on the back foot, but there is a key difference between this and the 1997 election, he argues.

"Then people simply wanted to get rid of us and they didn't care who they voted for to do it. A negative campaign added to the disaffection and switch-off from politics. By that token Labour, in the early stages at least, has left the Conservatives for dead. When it comes to fighting a general election, the prevailing wisdom in adland is that the publicity generated by a campaign is as important as the campaign itself.