Across the whole of the Government, there is a danger that because Cabinet ministers know what Labour has done and know what it plans to do, they ignore the need to paint the bigger picture for voters.
Somehow Labour's dry announcements about funding have to be translated into something people find meaningful in their daily lives.
To borrow the phraseology of American psychologist Drew Weston, Labour is not making an "emotional connection" with voters.
The party could well go into the election campaign with a truck-load of rational, innovative and highly workable policies, few of which voters can connect with in the way they connected with Key's promise of boot camps for young offenders.
That promise struck a chord, partly because Key kept the concept sufficiently vague so that people could read whatever they wanted into it.
Labour's response is to pooh-pooh such populism, arguing that voters want substance and Key personally and National collectively have done nothing so far to suggest they have it.
But Labour must find a way of connecting with voters and capturing their imagination. This is going to be difficult, given Clark's technocratic style.
Labour is also having to combat the notion pushed by National that, having had nine years in power, it has had sufficient time to fix the country's problems.
Labour may well go into the campaign feeling it has an excellent product to sell.
But it will come to nothing if voters feel no empathy with its new policies. No amount of spin-doctoring or additional communications staff can change that.
