Tuesday night on the Lib Dem fringe saw a little more light shed on the Liberal Democrat election campaign.

At fringe meeting supported by the Advertising Association on the recent general election campaign, Robert Bean, head of the Lib Dem ad agency "Banc", cast a little light on the party's aims and methods in its attempts to use advertising to increase public support.

Bean said he viewed branding as "the new communications force" in industry and commerce and said his company had won the Liberal Democrat campaign account by aiming to build up the party's brand image.

The Liberal Democrats had been an under-exploited brand, he said, adding that there had been the opportunity to "exploit it a bit more". However, he made clear that branding can only be successful if it "builds on the truth".

Bean argued that the party was driven by values rather than dogma and the advertising campaign during the election had sought to build on this. He said party chiefs had made clear they wanted their campaign to focus on public services, and had been right to do so.

He said the advertising also sought to introduce an "unknown character" called Charles Kennedy. This could be seen in the advertising poster with the slogan "I jump on injustice not bandwagons" alongside a picture of Kennedy. It sought to introduce Kennedy and present him in "slightly sterner fashion" explained Bean.

The campaign slogan, "A real chance for real change", had also been crafted to emphasise that the party was moving beyond the left/right agenda.

The ad boss revealed, unsurprisingly, that the party had used focus groups to examine public opinion and had found that despite a feeling of widespread economic prosperity many felt that society lacked a "community spirit" and wanted a "caring society" - findings that were taken into account when crafting the Lib Dem election message.

A poster showing a map of Britain with large areas highlighted in yellow with the slogan "If you thought we could win in your area, this is how you would vote" was deliberately run both at the start of the campaign to raise awareness and at the end when Kennedy had become more established and the concept made more sense.

Referring to the campaigns of other parties, Bean said he found it "astonishing" that Labour had seemingly taken so long to focus on the issues of schools and hospitals, leaving it to the last 10 days when "they seemed to wake up" to the fact that these were the key issues for voters. He added that the Conservative campaign, switching between the issues of asylum, Europe and tax cuts, lacked clarity and gave a confused message that didn't tackle the key concerns of voters.

Commenting on the 59 per cent turnout at the polls, Bean said the situation could be compared to a market in decline. The products on offer - parties, policies and leaders - should be examined, rather than blaming the voters, he argued.

On the role of the internet in the voting, Bean said casting votes electronically would be unlikely to raise turnout. "The problem is not access to voting, it's the will to vote," he said.

Discussing the role of the internet in the campaign, Bean added that it was useful for sending a message direct to an individual, but lacked the sense of a "shared experience" that the advertising industry had found important in other media, such as the commercial break in the old ITV News at Ten.