Discuss about the Political Marketing for Political Parties.
Political Marketing (Baines, 2011) has become the integral function of a political process. Heads of states, politicians, political parties, government departments make use of such marketing approaches to attain their political objectives. Market research is applied to get hold of the requirement of the target audience i.e. the voters that they serve or plan to influence and design their policies accordingly. Voter profiling enables the creation of segments and sub- segments to focus while campaigning. Strategy helps the generation of a political brand to grow and build an image which will create a unique brand positioning in the minds of the voters. There are two aspects of the political marketing i.e. External and Internal. While external marketing focuses on the voters, the internal marketing generates the support and involvement of the party workers.
Political marketing (Baines, 2011) increases student’s employability and compatibility for various jobs and opportunities with organizations. It enables students to grow intellectually and understand the way marketing is applied in the political environment. The student also gains an analytical and a wider perspective of the marketing and politics.
The features of political marketing (Lilleker, & Lees-Marshment, 2009) are similar to the traditional form of marketing. It involves the devising, designing and implementation of programs to attain the goal of increasing the alliance to the party, candidate or a political manifesto within various electoral groups. It is the gross amount of techniques used by political organizations to influence the voters. The market study is similar to that in the commercial field though the characteristics of data vary as it concerns political inclinations of the voters, public impression of the parties and their leaders, voting mindset and peculiar electoral process. Similar to their corporate counterparts the political leaders influence the mindset, feelings, and beliefs of the voters to get their alignment.
Source: Aguirre Garcia M.S. :Marketing en sectores especificos Ediciones Piramide, Madrid. 2000, p.237
Even though we might like to believe that the electorate votes basis the political manifesto (O’Shaughnessy, & Henneberg, 2002) that each candidate puts forward to the public at the time of elections but on the contrary, our actions of voting for a particular candidate is influenced by the marketing campaigns of the political parties. The various strategies used these days by the parties to form the opinion of the voters include talk shows and presentations, Public Relations, door to door campaigning, mailers, leaflets, billboards and extensive use of radio, print and communication.
The first step in starting a political marketing campaign (Budge, Robertson, & Hearl, 2008) is developing a narrative which is basically like a resume of the leader explaining his background, family, culture, personality, beliefs and other traits to help the voters understand whom they are voting. If we go back to the US Presidential election of 2008 the two candidates, namely Barrack Obama and John McCain had contrasting narratives. While Obama claimed to be a political outsider who promised a new and fresh approach in bringing a real change in the country whereas on the other hand, McCain banked on his background as a war veteran who had made sacrifices for his country. These narratives were the basis of the further marketing campaigns of both parties. It should be believable (CAMPBELL, 2005) and the voters should be able to relate to the same and is an extremely import aspect to start a political campaign. It is like creating a branding strategy and very similar to a company or a product branding strategy. In this, the leader or the political party (Wattenberg, 2004) becomes a brand. A very familiar example in the current times is that of Indian Prime Minister Narender Modi (Jaffrelot, 2015) who has become a brand in himself for Bhartiya Janata Party. Even during the state elections, his name is being promoted to fight the party elections.
In the current environment, the strategies(Smith, 2005) employed these days by political parties is social media marketing i.e. use of Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp to reach the masses. With the popularity and advent of digital marketing, a variety of online tools are used to promote the candidates, increase the awareness of issues, asking for votes and seeing opinion on the manifesto of the parties. One of the techniques used by parties to reach the voter base is by creating a Facebook page which allows them to reach a large number of voters by inviting them for events, status updates, messages and communicating the views of the party leaders. Digital media can also be segmented (Scholvin, 2016) to spread different messages to a different set of voters by geography, caste, color or religion. This technique was employed by Donald Trump in the recent Presidential Elections and was seen as the reason for his success. His marketing team had thoroughly researched the needs of voters by geography, blacks vs. whites, American vs. non-Americans and used messages to address each of these segments. Hillary Clinton on the other hand completely failed to use this strategy and even though the media thought that she would win but she failed miserably at the ground level to reach the masses with segmented messages.
Though the Facebook Page allows you access to a large no of voters aligned to the party or a candidate, it does not allow you to expand your reach to others which are effectively done through the use of viral memes and videos of speeches shared through the digital mediums. The political parties create funny videos, jokes, caricatures of their own and opposition leaders to increase awareness of issues and attract the attention of the voters. These were used very effectively by Trump and even by Modi (Jaffrelot, 2015) in their election campaigns.
Another important strategy in political marketing (Lees-Marshment, 2015) is negative campaigning. Winning the elections is all about getting more votes against your opponent which is achieved by either taking positive about oneself or negative about your opponent. It is fairly common to see mudslinging being done by parties on either the beliefs or even the character of the leaders contesting the election. The usual negative campaign is Ads of parties or during rallies, the leaders talking about opponents wrong policies, nefarious past and failures. While this may seem unethical to do but on the other hand if the facts are correct it exposes the real picture of the opponents and their parties which the voters may not be otherwise aware. It becomes an important reason for the change in the mindset as the voting draws near and can completely sway the opinion. In the presidential elections, Hillary Clinton spoke of Trump’s disrespect for women and his adverse remarks against them in various forums which were quickly picked up by the media and tabloids and became a topic of discussion. Negative campaign is launched through Ads on TV and print mediums, political debates and extensive use of social media. However, the negative campaign cannot succeed in isolation unless it is supported by positive campaigns of the party’s beliefs and history.
Even though the younger generation responds better to social media and television (Lange, & Ward, 2004) but still a large population can be reached through the old marketing strategies of direct mail. The Direct Mail involves extensive use of leaflets and brochures which can be hand-delivered to voters through newspapers inserts or distributed in malls, parks, and other hangout locations or even use of direct mailers. Leaflets are used as a micro marketing tool to reach a certain section of the population within a town or city. The leaflets, signboards, hoarding, cutouts and yard signs are the tools which are used in a particular area to influence the voters.
On the other hand, the media platforms like TV, Print, and Radio attract mass voters and are used by political marketers. It is common to see various channels inviting debates from public or calling upon leaders for a face off in open forums to talk about their manifesto and try and impress the voters or viewers. These tools can be used to earn a mass publicity for the leader or the political party.
Political marketing helped Donald Trump (Lees-Marshment, Conley, & Cosgrove, 2014) win the 2016 elections. He devised an “Offer Package” of increase employability and public safety to American citizens. This message was effectively created and delivered to all segments of American voters, who were made to realize the necessity of the above two missing in their lives due to the failures of the successive previous governments. The slogan was loud and clear “Make America Great Again.” So the strategic tool applied here was to create a need and promise to fulfill the same through change. On the other hand his competitors mainly Hillary Clinton could not create such need. He positioned himself as a successful brand and capitalized on his success as a businessman and communicated a direct and consistent appeal to the voters to believe in his ability to reposition America as a successful country. Trump used negative campaigns and showed his competitors in poor light and their inability to create a satisfactory solution for the economic and societal problems of America, and at the same time, he juxtaposed himself as the sole alternative who could bring the much-needed change for the Americans.
References
Baines, P. (2011). Political marketing (1st ed.). London: SAGE.
Budge, I., Robertson, D., & Hearl, D. (2008). Ideology, strategy and party change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
CAMPBELL, J. (2005). The fundamentals in US presidential elections: Public opinion, the economy and incumbency in the 2004 presidential election. Journal Of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties, 15(1), 73-83. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13689880500064619
Jaffrelot, C. (2015). The Modi-centric BJP 2014 election campaign: new techniques and old tactics. Contemporary South Asia, 23(2), 151-166. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09584935.2015.1027662
Lange, B., & Ward, D. (2004). The media and elections. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Lees-Marshment, J. (2015). Political marketing game. [Place of publication not identified]: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lees-Marshment, J., Conley, B., & Cosgrove, K. (2014). Political Marketing in the United States. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis.
Lilleker, D., & Lees-Marshment, J. (2009). Political marketing. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
O’Shaughnessy, N., & Henneberg, S. (2002). The idea of political marketing. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.
Scholvin, S. (2016). Geographical conditions and political outcomes. Comparative Strategy, 35(4), 274-283. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01495933.2016.1222840
Smith, G. (2005). Positioning Political Parties: The 2005 UK General Election. Journal Of Marketing Management, 21(9-10), 1135-1149. https://dx.doi.org/10.1362/026725705775194184
Wattenberg, M. (2004). Elections: Personal Popularity in U.S. Presidential Elections. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 34(1), 143-155. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5705.2004.00040.x
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