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Political marketing – vive la
différence!
Andrew Lock and Phil Harris
Faculty of Management and Business,
The Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Introduction
The explicit use of techniques in politics which we would now describe as
marketing dates back at least to 1920 in Britain (Wring, 1994). Since the Saatchi
and Saatchi poster – “Labour isn’t working” – it has become commonplace to
speak of political marketing, and many marketers have come to believe that
there is a direct transference of their concepts and tools to the political arena. To
an extent this has been true, but there are a number of key differences between
conventional product and service marketing settings, and the political choice
process and how it may be influenced. These have received little, if any,
attention in the literature to date. In addition, while the subject is beginning to
develop some taxonomic frameworks, there has been a dearth of published
work measuring and predicting the effect of political advertising and other
communication tools.
In this paper, we consider the differences between political and mainstream
marketing and suggest some areas in which we believe that marketers may
learn from the political science literature. At this stage we confine our analysis
and most of our examples to mainland British politics.
Differences between political and product or service marketing
Political marketing is concerned with communicating with party members,
media and prospective sources of funding as well as the electorate. Its multiple
audiences mean that it has a great deal in common with marketing for public
and non-profit organizations, see Kotler and Andreasen (1991) and Lovelock
and Weinberg (1984). Its parallel objectives relating to members, funding and
votes do not have exact equivalents in most mainstream marketing situations.
We identify the seven following significant areas in which political marketing is
different:
(1) For any one election, all voters make their choices on the same day (with
trivial exceptions such as postal and proxy votes). There are almost no
purchasing decisions with this characteristic and certainly none which
affect as large a number of people. Thus while there are similarities
between opinion polls and tracking measures of brand shares, the latter
are aggregations of real purchasing decisions as opposed to the
essentially hypothetical questions of the former.
European Journal of Marketing,
Vol. 30 No. 10/11, 1996, pp. 14-24.
© MCB University Press, 0309-0566
Received June 1996
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(2) While some might argue that there are long-term individual costs or
regret (in the economist’s sense) in electoral choices, the fact that there is
no price directly or indirectly attached to voting or the choice of party
sharply differentiates it from a purchase. Despite being normally
constrained to making only one valid choice, the conventional utilitymaximizing
framework subject to budget constraints fits electoral choice
poorly and the link to personal outcomes subsequently is at best tenuous.
(3) Although the actual act of voting may not have a price attached to it,
apart from emigrating, a voter has to live with the collective choice, even
though it might not have been his or her own preference. This shows the
sharp distinction between public choice issues and consumer markets.
(4) Winner takes all in the UK first past the post election, whether in an
individual constituency or across a general election. The nearest
business equivalent would be bidding to run the National Lottery and
the monopoly it grants.
(5) The political party or candidate is a complex intangible product which
the voter cannot unbundle. As a consequence most voters have to judge
on the overall packaged concept or message. Apart from general
economic self-interest, it appears that single issue voting has in the past
had a minor effect on the overall outcome of British elections. We argue
that, while there are other complex products or services which
consumers are unable to unbundle, the range of concepts and issues in
the political bundle distinguish it from such situations. Furthermore, in
the case of complex product or service choice, consumers are usually able
to change their minds, albeit at a cost, if they believe that they have made
a mistake. Voters have to wait until the next election.
(6) While there may be means of influencing the direction of a local or
national party (with clear parallels with conventional product
modifications or brand extensions), the possibility of introducing a new
brand in the form of a new party is relatively remote – witness the short
but eventful life of the SDP. A recent European example is the Forza Italia
movement of Silvio Berlusconi, although the recent denouement may
discourage other media moguls from attempting to emulate it. Apart
from communism in the past, international brands do not really exist and
there seems little immediate prospect of cross-border parties even in the
EU, although we recognize that parties have been able to form
transnational groupings in the European Parliament since its formation.
(7) In most marketing situations, brand leaders tend to stay in front. In the
UK, while governments may win successive elections, there seems to be
an increasing trend for them to fall behind in opinion polls between
elections. This is of course connected with the fact that governments
have to make difficult and sometimes unpopular decisions, particularly
when choosing between controlling expenditure and raising taxes. This
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cycle may well become more accentuated as it appears that
governments’ borrowing capabilities are becoming increasingly
constrained by financial markets.
These key differences between electoral choice and conventional purchase
choice settings have received little if any coverage to date. It is suggested here
that they present distinct marketing challenges, both in theory and in practice
which, have not been addressed systematically. As a consequence political
marketing is at a “craft” stage, without the formal underpinnings required for
the development of an applicable technology. The assumption that there is a
direct transferability of marketing theory and applications seems to us to be
questionable. Scammell (1995) shows the way in which opinion polling and
marketing influenced the development of policy and electoral strategy in the
Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, though the
discussion of the topic offers limited insights of a theoretical nature beyond the
exemplification of what a marketer might describe as a positioning strategy. We
also observe that this specific example occurred at a period when the
positioning strategy of the Labour Party might have been seen to be driven by
very different considerations. The implications for political marketing
strategies when both parties are driven by similar considerations do not appear
to have been addressed from a theoretical perspective in the literature.
The consequences of the differences identified above are first that political
marketing as a discipline has to develop its own frameworks adapting those
from the core marketing literature, and, second, that it has to develop its own
predictive and prescriptive models if it is to inform and influence political action.
We are also able to report a challenge to the belief of the transferability from
another quarter, though not everyone will be entirely convinced by the
argument underpinning the judgment. In the 1996 Irish High Court Appeal
Case hearing against the Yes vote in the Divorce Referendum, a major issue was
the impact of the last four weeks’ advertising campaign by the Irish
Government on the outcome of the vote and whether such activity could have
influenced the result. There is very little evidence on the impact and evaluation
of political advertising on voting intention and the propensity to turn out and
vote in a particular way. An exception is Rothschild (1978), which is now dated.
It focused on television and did not cover other electoral communication
methods (in Eire the regional press appears to have significant influence).
Interestingly in the High Court Case, the three judges (see Irish Independent,
1996 and Irish Times, 1996) ruled out evidence from a marketing
communications evaluation specialist that advertising could be used to
influence decision making (voting decisions) on the grounds that there could be
no conceivable link between influencing voters on a moral issue and using the
same tactics in consumer markets to buy a particular brand. This has
interesting implications for political marketing and the measurement of its
effects, though we suspect that marketers would find the argument hard to
accept.
Political
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vive la
différence!
17
The political brand image
In (5) above, we argue that as voters are unable to unbundle the electoral
product offering, the vast majority therefore choose on the basis of the overall
political package, concept or image. Typically in consumer markets, consumers
have remarkably homogeneous perceptions of product characteristics, even if
their relative preferences vary (Holbrook, 1995). Beyond very broad
generalizations, voter perceptions of party characteristics can be blurred, as can
be seen by the work of Rentoul et al. (1995) who studied voter perceptions of the
parties in the 1992 election campaign and found that knowledge of specific
policies is low. We deal with the awareness issues in the next section. Here we
are concerned with the reasons for these blurred political images, in comparison
with heavily promoted brands.
Political parties are coalitions with diffuse power bases to a much greater
extent than are commercial organizations (Blondel, 1974). A clear spectrum of
opinion within a party is readily visible to voters (q.v. the “Eurosceptics” in the
Conservative Party). While the party leader has a considerable influence on the
direction of party policy, the determination of a party’s positioning on an issue
such as the European Union is not necessarily driven by a rational analysis of
the optimal electoral strategy, much as the leader might wish it to be. Even in
office, the complexity of modern government leaves the Prime Minister with
limited influence over individual ministries. We thus arrive at the apparent
paradox that a party leader is at the core of its brand image, while his or her
ability to influence its policy direction is constrained by the need to construct a
series of informal coalitions.
The use of the party leader as a central theme in political communication,
was largely imported from the USA, the early home of modern political
marketing (Maarek, 1995; Newman, 1994). In the UK this has been reinforced by
the televising of Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons and
the increasing focus on the party leader (Kavanagh, 1995; Scammell, 1995).
However, the question of its actual centrality to perception or expressed
preference is more difficult to dissect. While a leader in a parliamentary
democracy may be more or less popular than the party in opinion polls,
evidence suggests that voters’ views of what parties stand for in general terms
remain remarkably stable and that their perceptions of their relative financial
well being and security determine much of actual voting behaviour. It is worth
noting that people appear to recall the Saatchi and Saatchi advertising in the
1979 general election much better than any projection of Margaret Thatcher’s
image, whose reconstruction came subsequently (McNair, 1995).
At the simplest level, the brand is the party name. The name becomes
attached as a brand to a wide variety of different “products”, beyond the
national party and party leader noted above. Individual candidates, local
parties, councils, social organizations (e.g. Conservative Clubs), and the party
manifesto all carry the party name. Apart from the manifesto, the leader or the
national party’s ability to control the presentation of these products bearing the
party name is constrained to a greater extent than a commercial organization
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with a number of outlets. Combined with the complexity of the political bundle
and the nature of the bargaining process by which this emerges, this
multiplicity of semi-controlled uses of the brand at different levels is at the root
of the fuzziness of brand images.
Some attempt has been made in the UK to create symbols or logos designed
to convey the party image (e.g. Labour’s Red Rose, the Conservatives’ Torch of
Freedom and the Liberal Democrats’ Bird of Liberty). However, while these are
renewed or renovated more frequently, their use in front of the general public is
largely confined to the party conference and press conference backdrops,
election leaflets, and a limited use in poster advertising (though rarely as the
main image).
Negative aspects of image in political marketing should not be ignored.
Media exposure of political figures and political issues is high, although very
little of this exposure is purchased. However, surveys of awareness of political
figures apart from leaders consistently show remarkably low proportions of
voters able to name more than a handful. Elector awareness of political leaders
does not show up particularly well against, say, that for Heinz Baked Beans
(Nossiter et al., 1995). It might be argued that a significantly higher proportion
of paid for, and therefore controlled and planned, media coverage would
increase awareness and reduce the fuzziness of voter perceptions. We do not
believe that the evidence from party political broadcasts, which are apparently
made with professional marketing guidance, offers much support for this
proposition (Tait, 1995).
Voter and especially youth disillusionment with parties and politicians has
grown markedly and presents a distinct contrast with brand marketing. While
brands may have low awareness, very rarely do they evoke strong negative
reactions (are BNFL, Lada, Skoda, or Yorkshire Water exceptions in the UK?).
Even when a party wins a general election, the proportion of voters holding
strong negative views of the party and the leader remains high by normal
marketing standards.
The decline of parties
For major mainstream parties, the overriding objective is to attract voters, win
elections and hold power. One might adduce other objectives such as
maintaining a broad ideological or relative political positioning, but over longer
time periods these appear to be quite flexible.
In order to achieve the principal objective, however, apart from appealing to
electors as a whole, parties need to attract and retain members and funding,
whether from individuals or from companies, unions or other organizations.
The needs for funding are relatively obvious, but parties also need members for
a wide variety of political activities including those related to basic electoral
mechanics and campaigning. Membership numbers may act as a substitute for
funding, both in running elections and activities between elections, and in
providing a loyal base for word-of-mouth communication with the broad mass
of electors. Seyd and Whiteley (1992) show that levels of membership and
Political
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activism of Labour members in constituencies in the 1987 and 1992 general
elections had a direct impact on whether results improved or not.
Since the Second World War membership of political parties has declined
markedly in Britain (Ware, 1995). One has to be cautious with quoted figures as
it is not always clear that they relate to fully-paid up members and the
Conservative Party did not publish figures regularly. Butler and Butler (1986)
suggest that the maximum level of Tory membership was about 2.8 million in
1953, dropping to about 1.5 million in 1975 and 1.2 million for the period 1982-
1984. Butler and Butler’s figures for Labour Party membership show a peak of
individual membership of just over one million in 1952-1953 (with just over five
million affiliated Trade Union members), declining to 295,000 in 1983 (though
Trade Union members had increased to 6.1 million). There has apparently been
a recent upturn in Labour Party membership, but it is too early to say whether
it is the reversal of the long-term trend. The profile of Conservative Party
membership is increasingly ageing (Whiteley et al., 1994).
This has several effects. In quite a number of constituencies, membership of
one or more parties has declined to levels where they are effectively dormant.
As member numbers decline, constituency parties are increasingly vulnerable
to being taken over by specific sectional interests (c.f. the past influence of
Militant in a number of constituency Labour parties). Even national
organizations become vulnerable as numbers decline. The Young Conservatives
have declined to less than 1,000 members. The Federation of Conservative
Students has been disbanded because its attitudes and behaviour became
embarrassing to the party leadership (Whiteley et al., 1994, p. 44). More
generally, the links between the parties and the broader community have tended
to decline. Fewer voters identify closely with a particular party or know people
who belong to one. This decline in identification works the other way as well.
The messages required to communicate with members has tended to diverge
from those which will convince the core of voters. A distinction should be drawn
between this view of a personal linkage and broad electoral brand loyalty. It has
been widely assumed that traditional party allegiances are declining and that
voters are becoming more ready to switch, and there has been some empirical
evidence to support this view. However, Heath et al. (1995) present evidence on
class-party relationships updated with results from the 1992 UK general
election which suggests that there is not a general trend of weakening classparty
relationships.
Political marketing’s influence on marketing
Opinion polls carried out by market research agencies have been a familiar
feature of the post-war political scene. While they represent a source of income
in themselves, they have also been an opportunity for agencies to increase
potential commercial clients’ awareness and to construct databases for
corporate exploitation. For those whose estimates are closest to actual election
results, it appears that there are commercial gains. When they all “get it wrong”,
as with the 1992 election, there is much soul searching (Whybrow, 1995).
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Political opinion polls have helped drive improvements in research
technique. The intellectual origins of Acorn or Mosaic can be traced back to
analyses developed to improve stratification methods for opinion poll samples.
In a similar vein, we can point to the seminal importance of the work by Mass
Observation in assessing the public mood in the Second World War for the
Government in the subsequent development of social and marketing research.
Interestingly it was Gallup’s first associate in Britain, Dr Henry Durant, who
both carried out the first forecast for a by-election result in West Fulham in 1938
and was involved in polling population attitudes throughout the war.
What can marketing learn from political science?
Political processes play an important role in many marketing situations,
particularly business to business ones. Harris and Lock (1996) analysed the
growth of political lobbying in the UK and have argued that coverage in the
marketing and strategy literature is woefully lacking. Similar concepts are
readily applicable to organizational selling processes across the spectrum of
marketing settings. There is also now an extensive negotiation literature (see,
for example, Fisher and Ury, 1986; and Raiffa, 1982), largely developed from
political situations, which is readily transferable to business and marketing. In
addition the growing literature on pressure groups, interest groups and policy
networks (Grant, 1955; Richardson, 1993; Smith, 1993) outlines much which is
useful in accessing decision making and buying behaviour, and offers insights
and potential analytical tools for those trying to formulate understanding in
areas of strategic and marketing management.
The nature and boundaries of political marketing
Few papers on political marketing attempt to define the field or to delineate its
boundaries. Even Butler and Collins (1994), a seminal work in political
marketing from a marketing perspective, seem to shy away from a clear
definition, despite a most influential discussion of its structural characteristics.
Political scientists have generally used the term political marketing in the
context of political communications in the immediate pre-election period. (We
note, however, the similarity of Himmelweit et al.’s (1985) representation of
voting behaviour to marketing views of consumer behaviour.) One exception is
Harrop (1990) who picks up Kotler and Armstrong’s (1989) definition that
marketing involves facilitating exchanges between an organization and its
environment. This links with exchange and relationship perspectives on
marketing (see for example, Axelsson and Easton, 1992; or Bagozzi, 1975). A
simple exchange view of marketing shows exchanges as a sort of black box
between the firm and its environment (notably customers), with government
(and other regulatory agencies) as a third node, essentially setting the rules of
the game. The reason for noting the governmental/regulatory dimension to
exchange theories of marketing is to observe that we cannot treat government
as a disinterested or exogeneous component in an exchange perspective on
political marketing, as government politicians play a significant role in political
Political
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marketing exchanges, and control of government is the key objective in political
processes. Regulation of political marketing thus becomes much more part of
the exchanges themselves than in traditional commercial marketing settings.
Exploration of the way in which electoral law emerged and emerges in such a
setting is an interesting direction for further research, although beyond the
scope of this paper.
The importance of regulation and deregulation as a driving force in political
exchanges as opposed to the regulation of the political process is, as we have
argued elsewhere (Harris and Lock, 1996), an area which has not received
enough attention in either the political science or marketing literature. If you
can influence politicians via the plethora of pressure groups, think tanks, policy
networks and lobbying to change the shape and characteristics of markets then
it has major strategic implications for those researching in marketing. The
methods of privatization and subsequent regulation of utilities in the UK
present a good example of this.
The exchange perspective appears to us to have a great deal to offer as a
working definition of political marketing. Having noted the changed role of
government, as the third participant in exchange processes, we change the
organization as the key actor in commercial marketing to the political entity.
Similarly, while the consumer is the key figure in the environment for the firm,
the voter becomes the central environmental element for the political entity.
Why, however, do we use the somewhat opaque term “political entity”? While
the party often appears the central initiator of action that is recognizably
marketing in politics, this initiation is also undertaken by individual politicians,
notably as candidates, by pressure groups and by those affected by political
actions, which includes firms and individuals. Thus the politician and the party
can be both the initiator and recipient of marketing exchanges in a different
relationship from that between seller and purchaser.
We note that the exchange definition is a very broad one. It is arguably
capable of subsuming everything that is conventionally regarded as political
science. To separate out political marketing, we have to focus on the insights
into and questions about political phenomena that marketing perspectives can
generate. It could well be that all political phenomena may be analysed from
such perspectives. This does not mean, however, that there are not other
dimensions of these phenomena which may be explored from a basis in other
disciplines, nor does it mean political marketing as a discipline generates a
complete set of insights, prescriptions and predictions from those
characteristics which are addressed by it.
Our working definition of political marketing is, therefore, as a discipline, the
study of the processes of exchanges between political entities and their
environment and among themselves, with particular reference to the
positioning of those entities and their communications. Government and the
legislature exist both as exogeneous regulators of these processes and as
entities within them. As an activity, it is concerned with strategies for
positioning and communications, and the methods through which these
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strategies may be realized, including the search for information into attitudes,
awareness and response of target audiences.
We are concerned to stress the importance of comparative analysis in the
development of political marketing in the future There is still relatively little
work in political marketing comparing the development of the activity and its
impact across different international settings and different political systems
and structures (for some examples of what has been done see Kaid and HoltzBacha,
1995; Maarek, 1995 and O’Shaughnessy, 1990). This paucity of work
means that it is very difficult to draw general conclusions about political
marketing, as it is usually very difficult to disentangle the national/localspecific
contribution to observed outcomes. Furthermore, it presents problems
in predicting the impact of actions or events which have occurred in one
national setting if they are transferred to another.
Ethics and political marketing
The emergence of political marketing has evoked a number of interesting
responses. One is a somewhat atavistic longing for the good old days when
politics was about real issues, before the soundbite, the spin doctor and the
marketing message. Unfortunately for those steeped in such nostalgia, such
images of an innocent political past are more myth than reality (see for example,
Harrop’s conclusions, 1990). Despite this the political science literature clearly
exhibits an ambivalence towards political marketing as a phenomenon and a subdiscipline,
with concern being expressed that ethics are rarely covered explicitly
in key marketing and service marketing texts, though this is less true than it was.
On the other side of the fence, marketers and advertisers working on
consumer products often express surprise (and a little disgust or contempt) at
what they see as political parties getting away with misrepresentations in
advertisements and party political broadcasts which they feel would fall foul of
advertising standards watchdogs and media regulatory bodies, they related to
conventional products and services. Party political broadcasts in the UK do not
have the same regulatory restrictions placed on them, perhaps because they are
allocated and regulated by the politicians themselves.
It is clear that there are widespread concerns about ethics in political
marketing. Mainstream marketing in most developed economies exists within a
world of product and advertising regulation with professional codes of conduct.
Within these frameworks, ethical issues do not loom large because the
frameworks largely preclude practices which most marketers, advertisers or
market researchers would find unacceptable. Political marketing messages
appear less constrained, and it is often left to individuals, agencies or
companies to determine which parties or causes they are prepared to work for
and the means or messages they are willing to deploy to those ends.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that the term is comparatively recent, political marketing is far
from being a new phenomenon. The emergence of television and other new
Political
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vive la
différence!
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media have made it more obvious and the decline in party membership has
accentuated the importance of two-way communication between party and
voter. The conceptual development of political marketing is still in its infancy
and much work has focused on the narrow setting of the immediate build-up to
elections. We argue that models and theories of political marketing have to cover
all actors and entities in political and governmental processes and suggest that
exchange theory can provide a most useful vehicle for exposition and analysis.
We have endeavoured to show that political marketing is sufficiently
different from mainstream marketing for direct transference of techniques and
solutions to be less obvious than is often assumed, though marketing
perspectives and analytical methods clearly have considerable applicability.
The acceptance of the validity and impact of marketing techniques in the
political and legal arenas is still limited as can be seen from the example of the
Irish Divorce Referendum Case. Dare we say it “that the jury is still out” and
that as we move into the more qualitative political science arena for the
marketing discipline there are still more questions than answers. We have noted
the potential for conflict between the roles of government and legislature as
regulators of, and participants in, political processes. We do not believe that
ethical concerns about political marketing phenomena (as distinct from sleaze)
will diminish, but forecast that there will be increasing pressure for some form
of regulation, no matter how difficult this is to achieve in an increasingly
internationalizing world. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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