How Gordon wanted the brains behind Dove adverts to boost HIS image

Ogilvy UK, one of Britain's leading advertising companies, rejected an approach by Downing Street to make Mr Brown more attractive because it did not want to upset its other brands - which include Dove beauty products, Omo soap powder, Ford cars and American Express.

The snub came after a senior Ogilvy executive, Paul Eden, had a secret meeting at Downing Street a week ago with one of Mr Brown's new recruits from the advertising world, his director of political strategy David Muir.

Glamorous: Girls in a Dove advert, one of the brands on the books of Oglivy UK

Mr Muir, who worked for Ogilvy UK and subsequently its parent company, advertising giant WPP, until he moved to No10 earlier this year, asked Mr Eden to carry out new focus-group research for Mr Brown.

The aim was to find out why Mr Brown and his policies were proving so unpopular with voters and to improve his record low ratings.

Ogilvy UK is owned by the American-based company Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, which handles publicity for celebrities including Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck, Reese Witherspoon and Bridget Jones star Renee Zellweger.

It also owns the OgilvyOne marketing agency whose brands include Omo, Persil, Sunsilk shampoo, Flora and Vaseline.

Mr Eden is one of the advertising whizzkids credited for new focus-group methods using 'field brand innovation', known in the trade as FBI. It involves new techniques including 'embedding' researchers in housing estates and even people's homes to find out why they buy certain goods.

Experts say the technique can produce markedly different and much more accurate results than conventional surveys. The idea of using such methods to work out why people like or dislike a political leader has not been tried before.

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Mr Eden recently described the benefits of using the FBI method, saying: 'It's not a question of getting different results to more traditional forms of research, it's about getting more of what you want and better quality of information. It's also a good way of tackling sensitive issues.'

Slipping image: Brown wants to know why people don't warm to him

The Ogilvy meeting at No10 follows growing criticism of Mr Brown's current pollster, Deborah Mattinson, who is blamed for failing to give him clear advice.

'Downing Street feels that Ms Mattinson is good at detailed figures but has not produced a clear picture or image of what the PM is trying to achieve,' said a source. 'They want to find out what it is that the Government is doing that people don't like and in particular why people have not warmed to the PM. They are alarmed by the fall in his ratings and know time is running out to get back on track for the General Election.

'Ogilvy felt it was not a good time to get involved politically - and the money was small beer to them.'

The disclosure that Mr Brown is trying to sign up a new advertising agency would appear to fly in the face of his pledge to abandon the 'spin-obsessed' style of Tony Blair.

In the past six months Mr Brown has spent more than a third of a million pounds recruiting a small army of advisers from the advertising and media world to improve his image.

He signed up Brunswick PR firm boss Stephen Carter as his new No10 chief of staff. He was joined by Mr Muir from WPP, Nick Stace from consumer magazine Which?, ex-radio station boss Mark Flanagan to run the No10 website and former BBC producer Nicola Burdett to organise Mr Brown's photo opportunities.

Explaining why Ogilvy UK had turned down the approach by Mr Brown, company chairman Gary Leih said last night: 'It is Ogilvy's policy not to work with political parties or politicians because it divides the client base.'

Labour sources say Mr Muir plans to ask other advertising firms to bid to carry out the research, which will be paid for by the Labour Party, not the taxpayers.