the political marketing moment politics now in canada and the usa
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The Political Marketing Moment
Politics Now in Canada and the USA
What It Is: Political Marketing
Market orientation
Product development
Branding/position/segmentation
Voter as consumer
Why Political Marketing ? Explains the way in which parties and other
political entities behave
In response to social and technological change.
It fits the consumerist values we have
It fits the lifestyles people have
And It is easier to figure out how to reach the right
people and what those people are concerned about than it has been
Reaching the right people is the trick
The current moment is one of niche narrowcasting, lifestyle communities and discussions within segments
To Be Clear Advertising is a key part of marketing but not all
of it.
Marketing includes the overall strategy to design and sell the product.
Including paid and earned media but a lot more.
Meaning The product or offering is the party’s candidates,
manifesto and emotions
The position is the space that the product holds in the customer’s mind
The brand is the visual and emotive representation of the product to the audience
Providing an Incentive For political entities to market themselves and
their wares much as do other entities.
In this, they reflect the society, the technology and the politics in which they exist as much as they shape that.
This is a global phenomenon, not just happening in North America or the United States. See for Example Lees-Marshment 2011.
Consultants and partisans learn from each other on a cross-national basis
Examples John Howard’s “Aussie Battlers” used in Canada
by the Conservative Party to describe some of its audiences
The third way used in the USA, Canada and the UK by Clinton, Chretien and Blair respectively.
“Hope and Change” became very popular globally after 2008.
The Commonsense Revolution has been launched in multiple places around the globe.
Thus Understanding the audience and the
marketplace become vital to building an effective political marketing campaign.
A great deal of emphasis on polls and focus groups.
To determine effective visuals, language, narrative and policy priorities
And what works with which audiences.
Because Much more noise than in the past . Reaching the
right audience is more difficult than it once was.
Many more channels. The proliferation of new distribution channels makes hitting the right targets more difficult than in the past.
Citizens have longer commutes and work hours than once was the case.
I can opt out of the political nation and join Leafs nation or build my world around family/work more easily than in the past. Less social connection
Social DisconnectionThe party as a membership organization is in
trouble across North America
More independents pay less attention means that marketing in general and branding in particular increase in importance
They are key tools to build voter awareness of candidates and platforms
CDN parties always have a marketing imperative that their US counterparts don’t: they have to sell memberships.
And The dominant values of the age are consumerist.
The public expects packages, promotion and significant choice in everything else.
When did consumerism become our values ? Gradually, during the last century.
As Nimijean has argued, the politics of the age are neo-liberal meaning that fights are over means not ends.
Brand battles sharpen distinctions and generate interest.
One Way To Think of All This
An ongoing conversation between an organization and its audience targets that includes a campaign and beyond.
Loyalty isn’t build all at once. It can take a while of showing people why what was promised works as advertised, that those promises made were kept and that taking a next step would be a good thing to do.
The idea of a campaign is to have a plan about that conversation
That Includes Products
Personality
Positioning
Brand
Communications Plan
Audience Targets
Product Definition Politics is about definition in a couple of ways
Define yourself
Define your opponent
Personality Both in terms of the party leader and
In terms of the brand
Party Leader/FaceInextricably linked with the brand in Canada.
This is the same in the USA when a party occupies the White House but is more nebulous for the opposition party.
Personality Can also sell the leader as being like average
people
Both CDN and USA political parties sometimes do this and they sometimes sell other personal traits about the leader like attending an Ivy League University or being a business owner.
Or sell values such as empathy or strength.
Meaning Campaigns talk about themselves
Campaigns talk about their opponents
Opponents talk about themselves
Opponents talk about their rivals.
In the USA, this strategic grid has four spaces and in Canada it can have four but also up to ten.
The Political Equivalent Of educating the consumer about what the
offering is on a given party’s side
Versus the offerings of rivals.
One difference is that the battle is more existential than over market share a lot of the time in politics but
In a multi-party system like Canada’s, it can be over market share as well.
Positioning What space do you want occupy in the mind of
the consumer ?
Generally, somewhere nearer the center is better in politics but the marketing challenge is
The center can shift and political types can’t shift with it all the time if they want to retain overall authenticity.
Authenticity – the perception of being what one says one is in marketing.
The Brand The total user experience with the product
according to Zyman
The image, slogan, music and values supporting a product.
The brand needs to fit the product’s features and benefits but also resonate with its target audience.
In The USA USA Republicans have used the
Reagan/Conservative brand since 1980 as one
Plus the Lincoln heritage has merged with the Reagan/Conservative one
And the elephant is still around
As is an emphasis on tradition
Reagan Heritage
The Elephant
Tea Party Flag
All of which More or less work together to build a narrative
that is visually and emotively coherent
Put the Republican Party in a specific place in the mind of the prospect
Provide a specific set of emotions and understandings to the audience targets
The Democrats The Dems are much more muddied. Sometimes
it is Obama, sometimes it has been the Congressional leadership but it isn’t consistent and this is why their messaging isn’t consistent.
Either
Or The Kicking Donkey
The First One Clearly ties to Obama
But also looks like a target as one wag put it and
What happens if Obama loses ?
The Second One Ties to the Democrats’ heritage.
They’re called the Donkeys
The donkey logo has serious equity
Changing to the newer logo visually throws all this away but it clarifies that the D’s are the party of Obama
And There are still individual Obama logos selling
him not the party
This is far less coherent narratively and visually than what the Republicans have done but they’ve also been doing it for longer
Thus, the muddling of the Democratic Brand continues
The 2012 Version
Canadian Parties Use the logo as a key part of the brand
And are aware that they are doing so.
Conservative
New Democrats
Liberal
ColorsAbsolutely own their colors consciously.
This is different from the USA in which the media imposes more color discipline than do the parties.
Fonts can also send messages but the fonts have changed over time here.
Visuals A picture really is worth a thousand words
The visuals associated with a brand can be the key vehicle through which its contents get distributed.
Example I
Example II
Example III
Example IV
Slogans Can be a key conduit to transfer the brand value
proposition
Two Canadian examples: “Forward Together” Ontario Liberals and “Here For Canada” Conservative Party of Canada
Two US: “ Change We Can Believe In” and “Together We Can”
Key US/Canada Difference Canadian Parties are more limited in the heat
they can put in their brand/ads
They cover this in other parts of the ads
US parties can be much hotter visually and in the verbiage than can their Canadian counterparts because
Emotions As Westin has shown in the US case, much of
the way people experience politics is emotional not analytically.
The emotions that similar ideological parties work with around the globe seem the same.
Thus, the emotions that a party can work with in a specific setting are limited by what the audience will respond to.
Audiences
Things that might work well in a federal election might not work so well in a provincial one because the audience demography is different.
In the era of niche narrowcasting, the emotions that might activate one group could outrage another.
Examples Ontario Provincial Election 2011
Conservative Party of Canada campaign 2011
New Democratic Party campaign 2011
Channels Both USA and CDN parties freight train their
paid and earned media
The USA parties have a less regulated electronic media that they can use as well.
For Republicans: Fox News and talk radio
For Democrats MSNBC, a smaller talk radio segment and social media
Canada Prominence is given to TV coverage and paid
electronic media
The talk radio is more regulated
The value of social media was debated within parties.
There is Sun TV but that’s as much branded infotainment as it is a part of a partisan distribution system.
The distribution system seems smaller and more diffuse here.
Audience Targets The goal is to reach the right audience and turn
it out for both USA parties for example.
This is called segmentation and it is possible because of the proliferation of instruments that collect data about us.
And digging deeper than that, by looking at all of the things that a consumer purchases a political marketer can build a profile of the most likely consumers for the product.
EG: For Both USA Parties The goal is to turn out specific audience
segments in big numbers.
Dems- visible minorities, younger voters, blue collar workers
Repubs-evangelicals, marrieds, and professionals
This means there’s no point for these parties spending a lot of time chasing voters they won’t probably win or campaigning in places that won’t produce wins
Segmentation Gets A Bad Name
Because it doesn’t seem inclusive. Hint: It isn’t but it is really efficient in terms of voter targeting
And from the marketing and rational actor perspectives the goal is to win not just to engage in civic education
With limited resources and the rich veins of data, targeting becomes a logical thing to do.
Combined With Targeting – spending a lot of time try to court
specific segments of the electorate.
Audience targets will see and hear a lot from a political marketer. Other audiences will see and hear almost nothing.
Targeting also means a marketer can have a customer hierarchy in which better customers get more attention, lesser get less and the worst get fired.
Political Parties In the USA clearly do this things and
The R’s started doing them earlier meaning they received an advantage for early adoption and
The R’s did them more accurately for a longer period of time meaning that they had better identified the audience and received an advantage as a result of that as well.
The D’s were later and less accurate and lost as a result. Only when they got better did they start to win again.
Audience Participation Which parties in Canada do you think are
segmenting and targeting most effectively and why ?
Marketed Politics makes parties
Seek to converse with the audience
Seek to find new databases, metrics and analytical techniques to understand the audience
Seek to test everything before scaling it
All of This Means Political Marketing’s negative impact on civic
disengagement is probably overstated
It can be a key tool to encourage people to take an interest in the world in which we have now
A lot of what goes on in the USA and Canada is similar but it is also market specific.
Thank You For a wonderful semester
For letting me into a great department and a wonderful new program in political management
For letting me ask a ton of questions
For giving me your help and your insights.
Questions ?
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