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Jennifer Lees-Marshment

Introduction

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1
Introduction
Political marketing in the 21st century
Jennifer Lees-Marshment

The Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing offers cutting-edge, fresh perspectives on how
politicians, parties and governments can use political marketing to develop a more productive
relationship with the public. Each chapter outlines a different topic, previous research in that area,
presents new research, and then reflects on what works, the impact on politics and democracy
and the way forward for research or practice. The chapters are written by leading and emerging
scholars around the world, ensuring that the content is international in outlook. Aside from the
worth of individual chapters, collectively this produces advice for practitioners, considerations for
academics, and a sense not just of the field’s progress to date but how it may develop in future.
This provides a flagship work in the field that will not only be an accessible introduction to the
field but will set the direction of research in the years to come.
The Handbook was guided by an editorial board whose role was to provide input such as
suggestions for topics and authors, and to review submissions. They were selected because of
particular expertise in a particular area of political marketing, to ensure a broad geographical
spread, and their ability to provide constructive critique:

Dr Ken Cosgrove (Suffolk University, US)

Dr Nigel Jackson (Plymouth University, UK)
Dr Alex Marland (Memorial University, Canada)
Dr Roger Mortimore (Ipsos Mori, UK)
Dr Robin T. Pettitt (Kingston University, UK)
Dr Claire Robinson (Massey University, New Zealand)
Dr Khariah Salwa-Mohktar (USM, Malaysia)
Professor Jesper Strömbäck (Mid-Sweden University, Sweden)

Their expertise spans market research, branding, political parties, political communication,
candidate electioneering, market orientation, journalism, e-marketing, public relations, political
advertising and Asian political marketing. I would like to express my thanks to the board. Not
only did they read and comment on the first draft of the chapters submitted for review, but
their contribution to the framework for the book, the open call for contributions, and their

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Jennifer Lees-Marshment

suggestions of topics and authors contributed significantly to ensuring that the handbook was
groundbreaking, rather than just a summary of previous research.
All chapters in this book went through three processes: submission of an initial outline, the
first draft of the chapter in October 2010, and the second draft at the end of February 2011.
Authors were both invited individually to submit an outline, and to respond to an open
advertisement via Professor Phil Harris’s mailing list and the Political Marketing Group. Initially
over 30 chapters were invited to proceed to first draft, with the overall process resulting in
27 chapters. All chapters were required to follow the set structure, so that the sum of the book
would be greater than the parts. I would like to record my thanks to authors for not only their
hard work but the quality and originality of content, and their appropriate response to review
comments.
I would also like to thank Routledge for the opportunity to edit this handbook, and for
possessing a both practical and intellectual vision that now is the right time not just for a text-
book such as Political Marketing: Principles and Application, but for a new handbook in political
marketing.
The Handbook is divided into five sections (see Figure 1.1). Part I, on understanding the
market, gathering ideas and debate, discusses a range of market research methods, including
polling, focus groups, segmentation, voter selection and targeting, but also deliberation and
co-creation; more importantly, how they are or could be used in politics. Part II, on product
development, branding and strategy, explores market orientation, niche marketing and political
branding. Part III, on internal marketing, considers relationship marketing and direct marketing
to members and volunteers, marketing fundraising, and the role of party officials in political
marketing. Part IV, on communicating and connecting with the public, explores changes in
marketing over time, the branding and positioning of candidates, populism and marketing,
political communication in elections, how leaders can interact with voters, political public
relations, and short- and long-term online relationships. Part V, on government marketing – delivery,

Figure 1.1 Topics in the Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing

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Introduction

policy and leadership, discusses delivering in government, how governments use public opinion
research, the use of marketing by interest groups, branding public policy and making space for
leadership. The concluding chapter sets out new directions in political marketing practice, dis-
cusses political marketing and democracy, and outlines future trends in political marketing
research and practice.

3
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Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing

Jennifer Lees-Marshment

The role of opinion research in setting campaign strategy

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Alexander Braun
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strategy from: Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing Routledge.
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gathering ideas and debate

Understanding the market,
Part I
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2
The role of opinion research in
setting campaign strategy
Alexander Braun

The topic: opinion research-based strategy

Should our candidate focus on healthcare or on education in next week’s televised debate?
Campaigns have to consider and decide myriad such questions every day. This chapter is about
how good campaigns find the right answer to that question.
While the question seems simple and straightforward, answering it immediately requires
answering a host of other questions first. Should the candidate participate in the debate at all?
How will the debate fit with what voters think about the candidate and with the image the
candidate wants to project? Should the debate be used to explain the candidate’s positions or to
point out opponents’ weaknesses?
There is no way a campaign can afford the time to start deliberating about each of these
issues from scratch as they arise. Rather, campaigns rely on a number of assumptions and prior
decisions that all stem from an overall strategy. All decisions in the campaign, from messaging to
scheduling to resource allocation, should be based on a core strategy plan. Such a plan is simply
the blueprint that lays out the route to victory for the campaign, but it can be successful only if
it is based on good information, rather than assumptions. A campaign plan based on instinct and
anecdotal evidence is likely to fail.
That’s why research should play a crucial role in good campaigns. It minimizes guessing and
provides answers necessary for campaigns to effectively create strategies and keep them on track.
Research also raises the alert for possible risks and opportunities, and provides answers to
questions where campaigns simply don’t know or opinions differ. Good campaigns use the
acquired knowledge to develop the right message that reaches the right target though the right
vehicles. This chapter argues that voter research is an indispensible tool for creating an effective
campaign strategy, and explains the different methods and approaches available and how they
can be used most effectively in politics.

Previous research on opinion research-based strategy

Surprisingly, there is relatively little focused academic research on the use of market research in
politics, although its normative impact on politics has been debated significantly (e.g. see Savigny

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Alexander Braun

2008) and it increasingly plays an important role in political marketing models (for example Lees-
Marshment 2001). One reason for that may be that polling is usually one of the most closely
guarded secrets of campaigns and political parties, and as such is generally unavailable for closer
academic scrutiny. There is non-political marketing literature on which we can draw, such as
those who discuss polling in campaigns from the practical perspective (Stonecash 2008; Thurber
and Nelson 1995), work on the methods and science of opinion research (see Fowler 2002;
Schuman 2008), and insider accounts such as Gould (1998) and Morris (1995). One thing all this
literature has in common is agreement on the importance and power of research. For example,
Stonecash notes how without research,

campaigns become guessing games. Campaign managers and supporters are reduced to
speculating and arguing about what is important, but with little basis for assessing where
the race stands, what issues are important, and what strategy they should follow to win a
race. With information, a politician can formulate a plan.
(Stonecash 2008: 11)

Research is used to create the strategy and campaign plan, and as Shea and Burton (2001: 100)
note, ‘polling has become the most efficient means by which campaigns come to understand the
hearts and minds of voters’. This chapter will draw on some of this work, as well as practical
experience, to provide an informed explanation of the different forms and uses of opinion
research.

New research: explaining the utility of opinion research

in strategy development
While research in campaigns is most useful to inform communications and understand who the voters
are, its utility extends well beyond that and can be useful for virtually all aspects of campaigns.

Positioning
The most important part of every campaign strategy, and one where research is indispensible, is
the central positioning of the candidate or party. Positioning is the core rationale that
the candidate will use to convince voters to vote for him or her over opponents. Will the
candidate run mainly on left- or right-wing ideology, on the concept of change, or on a specific
policy issue like immigration? Or will the positioning focus on the candidate’s personal ability to
connect with voters or on their competency?
Knowing answers to these questions is critical, because while voters have views on most
issues, they care meaningfully only about some fraction of them, and base their voting decisions
on even fewer of them. Basing a positioning on a concept that voters agree with but don’t find
particularly relevant to their needs will result in a losing campaign. Similarly, a positioning that
voters care about but don’t find believable when delivered by a particular candidate will not result in
success on election day. Constructing an effective positioning depends on the ability to gauge and
quantify voters’ basic attitudes, and to put them in the right context of the race and candidates.
Good voter polling does exactly that. One of the first areas on which voter research mea-
surement focuses is people’s general disposition and the most basic campaign communications
archetypes. Do voters think that the country and economy are on the right or wrong track? Are
they looking for a change or do they just prefer building on the current course of things?
Are they looking for strong leaders or for candidates who easily connect with regular voters?
These questions provide the broadest framework within which voters might think about the election.

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The role of opinion research

The next area that positioning research covers is the political actors, whether they are indi-
vidual candidates, current politicians, parties, other institutions, or all of the above. What, if
anything, do voters already know and think about the candidate? How does that perception
compare with that of the opponents? What attributes do voters associate with the candidate?
Do they like the leader better than the party, or vice versa? These questions help to narrow
down the possible options for positioning to those that are actually applicable to a given
candidate.
The third area of research focus is the issues. With what are voters satisfied and with what are
they dissatisfied? What issues do voters care about the most? Do they care more about a specific
issue or about the state of politics in general? Do the candidate and opposition have a particular
strength or weakness on some of these issues? These questions help with calibrating the actual
content of the positioning.
It is important to keep in mind that positioning never exists in a vacuum. It will always be
evaluated not only on its own but also in the competitive context of the race. This means that a
candidate’s positioning is not just his own, but is also measured against other candidates’ posi-
tioning concepts, and also has to contend with voters’ general lack of attention to politics. Joel
Bradshaw nicely summarizes the characteristics a good positioning should have (Thurber and
Nelson 1995: 43). It needs to be:

 clear, to be easy to communicate and understand;

 concise, to reach voters in the short time they might pay attention;
 compelling, to have a sense of emotional urgency;
 connected to voters to reflect their needs;
 credible, so that voters believe it; and
 contrasting, to establish difference among candidates.

Since campaigns face the fact that they have limited financial and human resources and lim-
ited time in which to appeal to voters, it is important that they only select one positioning and
stick with it. Also, building a candidate’s image in voters’ minds is a hard task, but changing an
existing one can be even harder. Popkin offers a great analysis of voters’ psychology and why
the first framing of an issue, candidate or race is so important: ‘Narratives are more easily
compiled and are retained longer than facts. Narratives, further, require more negative infor-
mation before they change’ (Popkin 1994: 78). That, of course, doesn’t mean that the narratives
or context of the race cannot change, especially if there is new compelling information. Popkin
specifically highlights that personal information is more powerful in being able to change voters’
views than new information about issues. However, trying to change a candidate’s positioning
halfway through the campaign is always a difficult task.

Messaging architecture
Although there should be just one positioning and that positioning should not change through
the course of the campaign, candidates of course need to speak to a broad range of issues.
Additionally, a positioning can rarely stand on its own and needs to be substantiated by specifics.
Also, various target groups will require different levels of customization of communications, both
in terms of issues and tone of messaging. A good communications strategy will, therefore, be
based on a messaging architecture that prioritizes themes, messages and support points in a way
that accentuates the candidate’s positives and the opponents’ negatives, while laddering up to the
overall positioning.

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Alexander Braun

What this means can be best illustrated on a message house, a diagram that is often used in
corporate marketing for brand positioning of a product or service. On top, as a roof over
everything, is the central positioning statement. It rests on themes, which give positioning more
content and meaning. Themes, in turn, rest on ‘pillars’ of messages, which are concrete state-
ments on a particular topic. Last, messages are backed by support points, which can be very
specific pieces of information, figures or past events that validate the messages. (While there is
general consensus on this theory, different authors might use the terms positioning, theme and
messaging interchangeably.)
Thinking of messaging architecture this way is useful not only because it helps to structure
communications, but also because it gives communication a hierarchy and context. While
candidates will be forced to react to a host of specific issues, they should always strive to con-
nect their communication to a concrete theme. This way their communication will not only
reinforce the overall positioning, but will also put the discussed issue in a context that is favorable
to the candidate, or at least help mitigate its potential negative impact.
The example in Figure 2.1 shows a schematic message house for the Czech Social Democrats
(CSSD) in their 2008 gubernatorial campaign. CSSD was in opposition both on the national
and on the regional level, having no governors in office. Its main opponent, ODS, led a
national government and had 13 out of 14 governors. CSSD was in a tough position because its
little-known candidates didn’t have any strong issues in their favor and were running against
very popular ODS incumbents. CSSD, therefore, made a strategic decision not to run indivi-
dual regional campaigns, but rather to run on a central national positioning. The goal was to
frame the election as an opportunity for voters to send a message to the central government that
they disagreed with controversial new social policy reforms.
The positioning rested on roughly three themes: recently introduced healthcare fees that
were very unpopular; an overall feeling of being left behind among large parts of the popula-
tion; and an emphasis on the connection between governors and their national party. The
theme of healthcare fees was actually so powerful that it needed support from only one simple
message, and the media widely recognized the debate over health fees as a symbol of the elec-
tion. The second and third themes were each supported by several messages, some of which
were positive and some negative. Each message was backed by various support points.

Figure 2.1 Positioning of Czech Social Democrats in 2008 gubernatorial elections

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The role of opinion research

Research was instrumental in developing this communications strategy. The campaign con-
ducted multiple polls that clearly identified high job approval of local governors but low job
approval of the national government and resentment toward the central government’s reforms.
Additionally, healthcare consistently topped the lists of most important issues and voters were
especially riled up about the newly instituted fees. The strategy was developed based on these
research findings and the campaign continued regular polling until the election day to stay on
top of the situation and the campaign strategies of other parties, and to refine CSSD’s messages
and their tone. The success of this approach is evident from the final results: CSSD, which
originally had no governors, won every single gubernatorial seat in the country, as well as
23 out of 27 Senate seats that were in play that year.

Understanding voters’ makeup

No positioning can be successful if it tries to appeal to everyone. Campaigns have limited time
and limited budgets with which to reach voters. Even if this were not the case, candidates could
never be able to come up with a positioning that would both appeal to everyone and at the same
time be compelling enough to move them. Rather, a positioning needs to be targeted only at a
limited group of voters to achieve resource and message efficiency (Faucheux 2002: 141). Failing
to sufficiently narrow down the campaign’s audience will only result in money and resources
being wasted on people who will not end up voting for the candidate, and will dissolve the
strength of the campaign messaging.
The process of targeting begins with the relatively straightforward step of looking at the
broadest universe possible, at all people living in the area where the race takes place. The next
step is to remove from the consideration set those who are and will be ineligible to participate
in the given election. For example, in Estonia all inhabitants of the country can vote in muni-
cipal elections but only those who have Estonian citizenship can vote in national elections.
Since almost one-third of the population is Russian without an Estonian passport, parties appeal
to substantially different audiences depending on the type of election. In the US, too, it is always
important to keep in mind the differences between the general population and registered voters.
Next, the campaign needs to narrow down the audience to only likely voters. Turnout is
one of the key variables in any campaign and always needs to be carefully accounted for in any
strategy. Typically, only about half of registered voters vote in US presidential elections, and
only about one-third in mid-term congressional elections. From the campaign perspective, it is
irrelevant what the other half or two-thirds of registered voters think, since they will not show
up on election day. An effective campaign will therefore only look at the opinions of the one-
half or one-third of voters identified as likely to turn out. The only exception should be if the
campaign believes it can successfully alter the turnout levels, either by increasing turnout among
supporters or depressing turnout among supporters of other candidates.
Eventually, every good campaign will want to divide likely voters into three basic groups:
current supporters, persuadable or ‘swing’ voters, and unreachable voters. Similar to the princi-
ples above, the campaign doesn’t want to waste resources on those voters who will never vote
for the party or candidate no matter what the campaign does or says. As long as there are
enough voters in the base and persuadable groups to make victory possible, effective campaigns
should focus their strategic communications on these two sets of voters. At this point, the
campaign has narrowed down its target audience to maybe 20 percent of the overall population,
which clearly makes campaigning easier, more efficient and more impactful.
Research is indispensible to the process of narrowing down the audiences and figuring out
who they are. Even long-term incumbents can’t be sure that the voters who elected them many

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Alexander Braun

times before have not changed their view of the candidate, come to prioritize different issues,
taken a liking to a new contender, become discouraged from turning out, or simply thinned
out in number until there are no longer enough of them. It is critical that campaigns always
start with assessing the lay of the electoral land, and that they develop their strategies only after
they understand who the key voter groups are and what their size is (see Figure 2.2). That
knowledge will allow the campaign to develop targeted strategic tracks to keep base voters in its
fold and increase turnout among them, and to persuade the largest possible share of swing voters
to become supporters.
Besides measuring size and voting intensity, there are multiple ways in which research can
describe the makeup of these voter blocs. First, target groups can be described through their
geography. Are the base voters located in specific areas or they are spread more or less evenly?
What share of persuadable voters live in large cities versus rural areas? Are there any favorable
trends when looking at different habitat sizes in different regions?
Second, it is essential to get a reading of the demographic information of different
voter groups. The most obvious and common are gender and age. Do supporters tend to be
younger or older? Is there a gender gap? Are there differences when age and gender are com-
bined so that, for example, research might discover great opportunities among middle-aged
women? Depending on the race and country, other demographic criteria might be also
important, such as income, education, ethnicity and race, marital status, children, occupation or
religion.
Third, campaign research needs to go beyond the descriptors of what voters are and also
know who they are by understanding their attitudes and beliefs. What are the most important
issues among our base voters? What do swing voters think about a person who could possibly
endorse the candidate? Where do voters stand on the question of cutting government spending

Figure 2.2 Example of basic voter division (unlikely voters already filtered out)

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The role of opinion research

versus increasing taxes? Of course, it is critical that the campaign fully understands the views of
the voting blocs of all the candidates and parties.
Fourth, it is very useful if the campaign can develop an understanding of the information
sources and media consumption habits of voters. What percentage of current supporters is
online? Where do swing voters get their political information? Which TV network do they
consider most credible?
Fifth, it is helpful if campaigns take steps to understand the values and lifestyles of voting
groups, sometimes referred to as psychographics. Regrettably, many campaigns do not pay suf-
ficient attention to this step. Branding and corporate reputation campaigns have learned that
understanding these ‘softer’ and seemingly unrelated attributes about customers (voters) can
often uncover hidden commonalities and unmet needs that can play a huge role in motivating
people’s purchase intent (voting behavior). Is a significant segment of swing voters afraid to
walk outside after dark? How happy are they in their current careers?
For example, research conducted by Mark Penn for Bill Clinton in the run-up to the 1996
elections found that values were a more powerful predictor of voting behavior than most
demographics. Clinton therefore shifted his focus from more traditional pocketbook issues to
questions of school discipline, tobacco advertising and TV violence. Famously, the president
was also urged into taking an outdoorsy vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to reconnect with
swing voters whose favorite pastime, polling showed, was camping (Morris 1999: 212–38). The
background for these strategy moves was based on a large ‘neuropersonality’ poll, which included a
number of lifestyle and behavior-related questions, as well as a modified Meyers-Briggs classi-
fication module designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the
world and make decisions.
In another race, Mark Penn’s company conducted a unique micro-targeting project for
Michael Bloomberg’s election campaign for mayor of New York City in 2001. Since Bloomberg,
who was running as a Republican, needed to overcome the fact that 70 percent of registered
voters in the city were Democrats, he targeted them based on a combination of demographics,
party affiliation and established attitudes and needs. This resulted in often counterintuitive but
powerful findings where, for example, older, affluent Jewish males on Wall Street and younger,
low-socio-economic status, Hispanic waitresses shared concerns on the effects of terrorism on
their business and income. The campaign therefore sent these seemingly widely different groups
similar communications on Bloomberg’s security plan.
The more detail that campaigns have about their voters, the more targeted and more
effective their communications can be. Since the possible combinations could be endless,
researchers sometimes apply various statistical tools such as cluster or factor analysis to identify
the more pertinent trends and groups. The electorate might eventually be divided into several
segments based on combined information sources such as demographics, lifestyles and stance on
select issues, allowing campaigns to better prioritize and develop more individualized commu-
nications. That said, campaigns must not fail to see the forest for the trees, and must always
understand where segment groups fall on the crucial base/swing/unreachable spectrum (while
statistical exercises will usually produce groups that overlap, in practice campaigns will mostly
need to decide whether a particular group is ‘base’, ‘swing’ or ‘unreachable’ – see Figure 2.3).
The ability to target voters through smaller groups allows a campaign to have better reach
and impact with its communication. At the same time, the law of diminishing returns applies
here. In most cases, the crucial distinctions are in basic demographic or geographic information.
While detailed slicing and dicing of the electorate can sometimes detect a very important trend,
the findings also need to be applicable to large enough groups to be actionable and make a
difference.

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Alexander Braun

Figure 2.3 Example of voter segmentation

Timing and delivery

While the overall positioning should not change as long as the fundamentals of the race stay
consistent, communications and tactics will inevitably evolve throughout any campaign. The
dynamic nature of campaigns requires that candidates constantly update their information and
adjust their ‘lower-level’ communication strategies and tactics depending on the changing
situation. Besides just being reactive, campaigns also want to actively shape the race and therefore
need to have a plan for sequencing and timing their communications.
Once again, research can be very helpful for all this. Let’s say a candidate is accused by an
opponent of accepting a campaign contribution from a businessman of questionable reputation.
Besides a rapid-response reaction, the campaign needs to assess relevance and longer-term
impact of the attack and decide on the best answer to the accusation. It might be that voters
don’t know or care about the issue and that overreacting to the charge would be harmful, but it
could also be that unless the issue is cleared up, the charge will lower turnout intent among the
base voters and therefore the campaign must do all it can to address the issue. Knowing which is
the case is clearly critical for the campaign, and only research can provide a definitive answer.
Research can also indicate how different voter groups react to different possible responses to the
charge.
Conversely, if the candidate gains information, for example, about tax evasion by one of his
or her opponents, research can help with the strategic use of this information. Will voters react
negatively to hearing such accusations? Does the candidate with the information have sufficient
credibility to level the charge? Is it in the candidate’s strategic interest to attack that particular
opponent? Or might it shift the focus of the campaign away from a topic that is more favorable
to the candidate?
Research allows campaigns to understand the impact of new developments, to test different
attacks and possible answers, and to game out scenarios. Rather than making missteps, campaigns

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The role of opinion research

can test different approaches and their effects in the microcosm of voter research before taking
the steps in the real world. This extends beyond crisis communications. For example, it can
include testing different executions of advertising: rather than spending huge sums of money on
advertising that doesn’t work, it is wise for a campaign to test the advertisements first on focus
groups to determine their effectiveness.

Types of research
Campaign research can take many forms. Each form’s usefulness depends on the current needs of
a campaign and how much time is left before election day. Selecting a particular type of research
should never be a mechanical process, and should always be done based on what best advances
the campaign goals at that moment. For example, a candidate considering a run for office clearly
has different research needs than a candidate running neck-and-neck with two other opponents a
few weeks before polling sites open.
Before discussing individual methodologies, it should be noted that there are two strategic
dimensions to any opinion research. First, research is almost always descriptive, meaning that it
provides a current picture of the political landscape. This is valuable for campaigns because it
tells them what the current horse race is, explains who supporters are, who are undecided
voters, what are the most important issues, etc. Often, campaigns are satisfied with just this
dimension, because it supplies them with the crucial pieces of information that campaigns need
to develop their strategy or keep it on track.
However, research can go further and have also a predictive (some might even say pre-
scriptive) dimension. What that means is that campaigns can use research not only to describe
the current situation and be left to interpret it, but also to directly inform them about how best
to move in order to gain advantage. This can include message and slogan testing, gaming out
different scenarios, and testing for the most effective responses to attacks or for voters’ reactions
to changes in communications.
Besides these two strategic dimensions, research is usually classified into two basic methodo-
logical approaches: quantitative and qualitative. As the names indicate, the former deals with
numbers and measurements and the latter strives to shed light on the meaning and context of
issues. While there have been attempts to combine the two approaches (for example, I used a
hybrid approach during the British Labour Party’s 2005 election campaign), the two meth-
odologies generally remain distinct from each other. Campaigns must understand the power and
limitations of both methodologies in order to be able to fully harness the utility of each.

Qualitative research
The most common type of qualitative research by far is focus groups. These are controlled
discussions of usually 8–12 participants selected to either encompass a wide demographic profile
of voters or, conversely, to consist of only participants who fit certain criteria, such as undecided
female voters or voters from swing districts. The discussions are guided by a moderator who
loosely follows a script designed to elicit a broad range of opinions, reactions, emotions and
associations on given topics. The discussions are recorded for analytic purposes and often are
observed by consultants or candidates from behind a one-way mirror.
Other types of qualitative research include dial groups, in which participants turn a knob to
indicate their current satisfaction with a speech or advertisement they are watching. Campaigns
also sometimes opt for ‘jury groups’, which resemble court trials with two sides arguing over an
issue and a jury deciding which argument was stronger. Rarely, campaigns might also employ

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Alexander Braun

one-on-one, in-depth interviews, although this is usually only reserved for elite interviews
rather than ‘average voter’ interviews. Such qualitative exercises can be great in understanding
language and arguments that voters might use on particularly contentious problems. Addition-
ally, as online penetration grows, campaigns increasingly turn towards various online chats as an
easier and cheaper way of conducting qualitative research.
Qualitative research is an often misunderstood and sometimes overrated approach when it
comes to developing strategies. It can be powerful in some situations and ineffective or down-
right misleading in others. Therefore, it is important to recognize both what this type of
research can do and what it can’t do.
First, qualitative research is very useful in situations when campaigns simply don’t know what
to do or are looking for a completely new and untried approach. Because of its open-ended
nature, campaigns can explore new hypotheses at a level of depth and nuance that would be
harder to achieve in a quantitative survey, understand and probe around the context of issues,
and uncover both hidden obstacles and new ideas. This is why focus groups are mostly used in
the beginning of the campaign and when radical new developments arise.
Second, qualitative research is great to comprehensively understand the language and termi-
nology used by various voter groups, as opposed to campaign professionals or other elites. Being
able to understand the issues through the words of voters allows for better and more accessible
communication that takes the proper tone. Third, qualitative research offers the opportunity to
game out scenarios based on a number of positions that could be taken by different sides in a
race, allowing the campaign to drill down to the most salient arguments. Besides suggesting
which way an argument can go, it provides the crucial insight into why voters might react in a
certain way.
The fourth and fifth most important benefits are less immediately tangible. Qualitative
research can help narrow down lists of options that might be too large, and thus generate and
refine content for quantitative research. Additionally, since candidates and consultants tend to live
in a bubble of self-enforcing views and opinions, being able to observe focus groups is often a great
way for the campaign leadership to start thinking differently and get back in touch with voters.
At the same time, qualitative research has severe limitations. First and foremost, it is not
representative of a population as a whole, and campaigns must resist the urge to draw major
conclusions based only on several focus groups. Even if large numbers of focus groups are
conducted across multiple demographics and geographies, they still remain just discussions of
several small groups of people, which never reach the size of a moderately large poll and ‘are
only slightly more reliable than anecdotes’ (Greenberg 2009: 13). They provide insights, flavor
and ideas for testing, but not a measurement of the situation or decision-grade data.
Additionally, focus groups often suffer from ‘groupthink’, a phenomenon where people
adjust their statements to align with those of the majority of the group or with the loudest
participants. In the real world, where voters don’t have to publicly discuss their ideas, those
participants might not change their positions and their opinions. It is therefore important to
keep in mind that the conclusions of the group might be unreflective not only of the overall
population but also even of the participants sitting in the room. To that point, both Warren and
Asher describe how opinions in focus groups often spiral out and end up being more negative
than in reality (Asher 2004: 132; Warren 2003: 207).

Quantitative research
While campaigns might decide not to employ qualitative research without necessarily putting
themselves at a dire disadvantage, no responsible campaign manager could do without quantitative

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The role of opinion research

voter research, or polling. ‘Today’s politicians live and die by polls’ (Warren 2003: 195), and
being able to quantitatively measure voters’ moods is critical for any campaign’s strategy.
Typically, the first poll that campaigns conduct is also the largest and most important one.
The benchmark poll is a comprehensive survey in which many questions are asked of a large
group of respondents sampled to be representative of the overall electorate. It covers a lot: it
describes the makeup of the electorate, gauges voters’ attitudes toward candidates and issues,
tests possible messaging and positioning, and allows for examination of the results by various
demographic and other groups. The results are usually presented to the campaign leadership in
great detail, and the information gleaned from the benchmark is used for nothing less than
developing the overall strategic plan of the campaign, its positioning, targeting and framework
for communications.
An important thing to realize about either type of opinion research – qualitative or quantitative –
is that it provides a snapshot of voters’ minds at a particular time. Since voters’ perceptions
change and react to new developments, campaigns need to regularly update their research
information, which is why they conduct multiple polls throughout the campaign.
After the benchmark poll, subsequent polls are generally designed to contain two parts. One
part keeps re-testing the key metrics, such as the candidate horse race and favorability ratings, to
track and measure any movement that has taken place over the course of the campaign. The
second part contains new questions that the campaign wants answered, whether on past events
or possible future changes. These questions allow campaigns to anticipate emerging key issues
and enable them to develop messages that address these issues as effectively as possible.
Whereas campaigns might conduct these issue polls once every month or two, many cam-
paigns decide to do daily or weekly tracking on the most important questions in the last weeks
of the campaign. As campaign professionals know, the period shortly before election day is
often marked by increased shifts among the electorate, as campaign communications reach
maximum volume and undecided voters start making up their minds. Being able to keep up
with the volatile electorate in the last days of the campaign, and adjust strategy accordingly, can
mean the difference between success and failure. These tracking polls typically have only a few
questions and use rolling averages to keep the base size statistically viable.
Additionally, campaigns can commission message-testing polls that focus specifically on
refining communications. These measure the appeal and believability of different themes and
messages from both the candidate and his or her opponents. Often, these polls employ split-
sampling, a method in which matched halves or thirds of respondents are exposed to different
messages or stimuli, and answers are compared and evaluated. The analysis can consist of simple
rankings of aggregate responses on individual questions, but can also include creating scores that
rate messages on multiple metrics or higher-level statistical analysis where responses are correlated
to key metrics to reveal true derived, rather than stated, effectiveness.
Flash polls are quick, often overnight surveys used to provide an immediate read of the
impact that major or unexpected news has had on the campaign. With the advent of online
polling, campaigns also increasingly use quantitative research to test advertising. Typically,
advertisement testing surveys use a pre/post method in which they benchmark voters’ basic
attitudes, show the execution and get top-of-mind reaction to it, and then re-test the initial key
questions to measure shifts. In this way, advertisements are not only evaluated for likeability but,
more importantly, for their effect on voting intention. Online testing allows for many new
possibilities, such as respondents highlighting the most compelling parts of messaging or advertising,
which was previously only possible through unrepresentative qualitative research.
As powerful as polling is, it of course also has its limits and campaigns are wise to keep them
in mind. Just like in qualitative research, responses can become biased if the questionnaire

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Alexander Braun

doesn’t have good structure or if questions are not worded neutrally. While in qualitative
research a good moderator can try to fix issues with poorly worded questions or interview flow,
no such recourse is possible in fully structured quantitative interviews. The axiom of ‘garbage
in, garbage out’ holds true in polling more than anywhere else.
The basic principle of polling rests on the fact that if a randomly selected sample of voters is
interviewed, those voters will have proportionately the same characteristics and opinions as the
whole universe from which they were chosen. Yet there is, of course, a host of very important
caveats. There is always a margin of error, which grows as the sample gets smaller, and the
principle of sample representativeness works only if the selection is truly random. A number of
other possible problems exist that are beyond the scope of this chapter (see, for example,
Schuman 2008; Fowler 2002). Nevertheless, as long as a poll is conducted by a reputable pollster,
the sample size stays above a certain level (often a minimum of 400 respondents is considered to
be statistically reliable) and the sample composition fits major demographic and geographic
parameters (through quotas or weighting), polling yields surprisingly precise results.

Advice for practitioners

Voter research is a powerful tool but it is important to keep in mind that it is not a panacea that
guarantees victory. Polls are just a tool that can empower campaigns, and if they are not con-
ducted well or if erroneous conclusions are drawn from the results, they can actually mislead.
Good polls should never just end up as mountains of data, but must provide a clear picture and
actionable conclusions. Research that doesn’t advance the campaign strategy is just a waste of
money. Nevertheless, good research is the best method that campaigns have to get the necessary
information for a victorious strategy.
In general, no campaign should start without a benchmark understanding of who the voters
are and what they think; their perceptions of candidates, institutions and issues; the hierarchy of
their pain points; and how this all translates into their voting decisions. A good campaign will
continue to update this knowledge through continued voter research until the election day and
will develop its messaging and targeting based on research. Even when campaigns have a clear
plan, there will be situations when they don’t know how to proceed or unexpected situations
arise, and research is very useful in such situations. Overall, campaigns can use research to
develop or update positioning and messaging, timing, sequencing, intensity and the means of
their communications.

The impact on politics

There is no doubt that research-driven campaigns are becoming more prevalent and that they
have an impact on politics. While it is clear that ‘polling has become the cornerstone of new-style
electioneering’ (Shea and Burton 2001: 100), this type of campaigning is also sometimes criticized
for reducing the focus to only a narrow set of issues and small groups of swing voters, or for
encouraging politicians to follow the moods of the public as opposed to lead them (see Savigny
2008). Although these issues are certainly worth a deep and continuous academic debate, a lot of
the criticism is also misinformed and misplaced.
While research is a powerful campaign tool, it is always up to the individual politicians how
they use it. The reality is that in most cases politicians don’t change their policies based
on research but rather change the way in which they talk about the policies. Their communication
can’t also just be simply aimed at a narrow group of swing voters, but needs to balance enough
appeal to the base not to alienate them and not to mobilize the opposition. Additionally, as

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The role of opinion research

market-oriented parties become more commonplace, they also need to be able to keep delivering
on their promises rather than just focus on short-term gains (see Lees-Marshment 2001: 223).
The fact that research informs politicians about what people think might carry some negative
connotations, but is overall a positive and democratic benefit. Politicians in democracies should
listen to the people and represent their voters. The central question shouldn’t be about research
but about how modern politicians find the right balance between principled leadership and
understanding people’s needs. The good news is that in democracies, the politicians and the
whole system have to undergo regular tests in the form of elections in which voters are the
ultimate judges.

The way forward: the future of research-based strategy

Clearly, research helps to make better campaigns and there should be little doubt that modern
campaigns will use more rather than less research. As more campaigns employ research to inform
their strategies, the pressure to use ever more opinion research to stay competitive increases for all
campaigns. Having advised campaigns on four continents, I have seen that research-based stra-
tegies have an edge over other methods regardless of the region, culture or situation, and that
every year the amount of campaign research worldwide seems to increase.
As such, it is important that politicians and candidates become more informed about the
strengths and weaknesses of voter research and understand how to conduct it properly. On the
academic side, there is a lot of room for further investigation of the impact that research-based
campaigns have both on political practice and on voter behavior. A more detailed academic
analysis of how research-based strategies are actually used in reality would provide a more
informed debate, one that isn’t merely based on outside critiques, and one that would benefit
academics and practitioners alike.

Bibliography
Asher, H. (2004) Polling and the Public. What Every Citizen Should Know, 6th edn, Washington DC: CQ Press.
Faucheux, R.A. (2002) Running for Office. The Strategies, Techniques and Messages Modern Political Candidates
Need to Win Elections, New York: M. Evans & Company.
Fowler, F.J., Jr (2002) Survey Research Methods, 3rd edn, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Gould, P. (1998) The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party, London: Little,
Brown and Co.
Greenberg, S.B. (2009) Dispatches from the War Room: In the Trenches with Five Extraordinary Leaders, New
York: St Martin’s Press.
Lees-Marshment, J. (2001) Political Marketing and British Political Parties: The Party’s just Begun, Manchester
and New York: Manchester University Press.
Morris, D. (1999) Behind the Oval Office, Los Angeles: Renaissance Books.
Popkin, S.L. (1994) The Reasoning Voter. Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns, 2nd edn,
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Savigny, H. (2008) The Problem of Political Marketing, New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Schuman, H. (2008) Method and Meaning in Polls and Surveys, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Shea, D.M. and Burton, M.J. (2001) Campaign Craft: The Strategies, Tactics, and Art of Political Campaign
Management, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Stonecash, J. M. (2008) Political Polling: Strategic Information in Campaigns, 2nd edn, Lanham, MD: Rowman
and Littlefield Publishers.
Thurber, J.E. and Nelson, C.J. (eds) (1995) Campaigns and Elections American Style, Boulder, CO: Westview
Press.
Warren, K.F. (2003) In Defense of Public Opinion Polling, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing

Jennifer Lees-Marshment

Political marketing and segmentation in aging democracies

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3
Political marketing and segmentation
in aging democracies
Scott Davidson and Robert H. Binstock

The topic: segmentation

Developed countries throughout the world are experiencing population aging characterized by
unprecedented national proportions of older persons (see Table 3.1). This phenomenon has
brought to the fore various policy reforms regarding benefits for older persons that have long
been provided by established old-age welfare states (see Kohli and Arza 2010). It has also
increasingly brought the attention of politicians to strategies for marketing themselves to older
voters in the context of both policy decisions and election campaigns.
This chapter focuses on political marketing in aging democracies in the contexts of what we
know about older voters and campaigns to attract them, in the context of the special emphasis
on segmentation within political marketing theory. It begins with a brief exposition regarding
segmentation in political marketing and an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the
‘senior power’ model of voting. It then reviews the recent research literature on segmentation
and marketing, with attention to issues related to older age groups. Next, it presents case studies
of segmenting and marketing to older voters in the US and Britain. There follows a discussion
of the importance of attention to life stages, the life cycle, and concomitant values in marketing
to older populations. Three final sections suggest: first, some implications of this chapter for
practitioners; second, the impact on politics in general of efforts to market to senior voters; and
third, future considerations for those who segment and market politically to older voters.

Previous research on segmentation

Parties and candidates segment the electorate – the process of defining and targeting identified
sub-sections of voters – in their search for competitive advantages over their opponents. Seg-
mentation allows a more efficient allocation of communication resources and is an increasingly
sophisticated dimension to the most basic of campaign objectives – the need to identify target
audiences and then get them out to vote. As such segmentation represents a key element in the
wider adoption of strategic communications and marketing in the campaigns and elections
process, the incorporation of these principles has been recorded and theorized widely (Kavanagh
1995; Baines 1999; Newman 1999; Smith and Hirst 2001; Wring 2005).

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Table 3.1 Percentage of the population aged 65+ in 2009 and 2030

2009 2030

Germany 20.4 27.9

Italy 20.1 26.4
Japan 22.7 31.8
US 12.9 19.3

Source: Vienna Institute of Demography 2010.

Increasingly, campaigns bypass first-order segmentation such as gender and class and con-
centrate on second-order variables such as media habits or lifestyle choices (Butler and Harris
2009). While there may be many different approaches to segmenting a market, Bannon (2004)
identified two overarching approaches. First, a priori, which in this context is the utilization of
prior political intelligence, such as the knowledge that seniors are more likely to vote than
younger voters. This historical intelligence is then combined with cluster analysis techniques
that search for common traits such as behavior or attitudes that are shared by sub-groups, but
may cut across more general demographic categorizations. Within these processes Bannon then
identified four common methods for identifying sub-segments of the electorate:

 Geographic: Voters with similar characteristics tend to congregate in the same geographic
location.
 Demographic: Age, gender and family status are all variables that could indicate potential
political preferences.
 Behavioral: Grouping voters based on their actual actions, such as the benefits they may seek
from a government.
 Psychographic: The development of segments through combining data on lifestyle choices
such as leisure pursuits, media habits, etc., with social attitudes and dispositions towards
candidates and parties.

Mattinson has described how in 2009 the British Labour Party adopted a segmentation pro-
cess that began first with identifying voters who were most likely to swing to or from the party,
and then analyzed the demographics, attitudes and lifestyles of these voters to ascertain who
were the ‘winnable’ or most ‘persuadable’ segments (Mattinson 2010: 16). In the US the parties
are combing their proprietary information in combination with consumer or demographic data
from companies such as Experian or Claritas to refine their segments into smaller units for
micro-targeting (Johnson 2011).
These trends have raised a number of concerns that segmented groups of voters achieve a
privileged status within the political process at the expense of politics representing the public as
a whole. Savigny (2005) argues that segmentation elevates the potential of a minority of voters
to disproportionately influence political actors, and that this process takes place through research
instruments such as focus groups rather than through open public engagement. Lilleker (2005)
has described this process as creating a division between those to whom politics belongs, and
those it has abandoned, and can be responsible for alienating voters, including those who once
considered themselves partisan loyalists.
Demographic trends in combination with the increasing use of segmentation have influenced
the tone and direction of debate on the impact of the growing number of older voters. Implicit
in concerns about ‘the gray peril’ is a ‘senior power’ model for interpreting the politics of aging.
The model rests on the assumption – influenced by traditional economic theory – that older

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persons are likely to vote to preserve or enhance their material self-interests. The model also
assumes: that older people constitute a numerically important proportion of the electorate; that
all or most of them perceive their stakes in old-age benefits similarly (regardless of their diverse
economic and social situations); and that because of material self-interest older people are
homogeneous in political attitudes and voting behavior and will thereby clash sharply with
younger age groups in the electoral process. The senior power model also includes the notion
that interest groups that purport to represent older people are influential forces that can ‘swing’
the votes of older persons and thereby ‘intimidate’ politicians (for example, see Pratt 1976).
Various analysts use different age ranges when defining older voters. US analysts customarily
use those aged 65 and older because 66 is the age at which individuals become eligible for full
retirement benefits under social security and 65 the age for getting Medicare, the national
health insurance program for older people. In contrast, many European analysts include persons
aged in their 50s. This is justified on several grounds. First, people in their 50s start to personally
experience the many manifestations of age discrimination in society, most critically in employ-
ment. Moreover, persons aged 55 and older have reached a stage in their life courses where
they have to consider retirement and ‘old-age’ as issues requiring practical, sometimes urgent,
personal attention. In addition, the family structure of many in their late 50s and early 60s is
likely to include parents who are in their 70s or 80s, heightening awareness among the former
regarding issues involving the quality of health and social care provision for those in later life.
Regardless of which age categories are used, many of the senior power model’s assumptions
regarding older voters are contradicted by the following facts and observations: Although older
persons participate in elections at a higher rate than younger voters, they are not necessarily the
largest age group in the electorate. In the 2008 US presidential election, for example, Americans
aged 45–64 cast 38 percent of the vote and those aged 25–44 accounted for 36 percent, compared
with only 16 percent by people aged 65 and older (Campbell and Binstock 2011). Despite
election campaign efforts to target older voters with ‘senior issues’ and ‘senior desks,’ old-age
benefit issues do not seem to have much impact on their electoral choices; as shown in Figure 3.1,

Figure 3.1 Percent voting for Republican US presidential candidates, by age groups, 1972–2008

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in the last 10 US presidential elections, all age groups except the youngest (aged 18–29) distributed
their votes among candidates in roughly the same proportions.
Old age is only one of many personal characteristics of older people with which they may
identify themselves; there is little reason to expect that a birth cohort – diverse in economic and
social status, labor force participation, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, education, health status,
family status, residential locale, political party attachments and every other characteristic in
society – would suddenly become homogenized in self-interests and political behavior when it
reaches the old-age category.
Candidates are on the ballot, not old-age benefit policies; candidates usually identify them-
selves with their political parties, as well as a broad range of issue positions of which old-age
benefits may be only one of many. Older voters, like all voters, respond to a variety of candi-
date traits, such as their personalities, appearances, career backgrounds, performances and even
religions, ethnicity and race. In the 2008 US presidential election, for instance, all age groups of
whites aged 30 and older voted heavily in favor of John McCain over Barack Obama, in contrast
with African-Americans and Hispanics (Binstock 2009). For fuller discussions and documentation
of these and related matters involving the voting behavior of older persons, see Campbell and
Binstock (2011).
Nonetheless, for several reasons the image of older persons as bloc voters swayed by ‘senior
issues’ persists. First, it helps journalists to reduce the intricate complexities of politics. Second,
and more important, politicians share the widespread perception that there is a huge, monolithic
senior citizen army of voters (Peterson and Somit 1994). This perception is reinforced by the
fact that a great many older citizens are active in making their views known to members of their
legislatures, especially when proposals arise for cutting back old-age benefits (Campbell 2003).
Hence, politicians are wary of ‘waking a sleeping giant’ of angry older voters. They strive to
position themselves in a fashion that they think will appeal to the self-interests of older voters,
and usually take care that their opponents do not gain an advantage in this arena. So even
though older persons do not vote as a bloc, they do have an impact on election campaign
strategies and often lead incumbents to be concerned about how their actions in the governing
process, such as votes in Congress, can be portrayed to older voters in subsequent re-election
campaigns. Third, the image of a senior voting bloc is marketed by the leaders of old age-based
interest groups. These organizations have a strong incentive to inflate perceptions of the voting
power of the constituency for which they purport to speak.
Yet, as Walker concluded in summarizing an overview of political participation and repre-
sentation of older people in European nations, ‘[old] age per se is not a sound basis for political
mobilization’ (Walker 1999: 7). Similarly, regarding US politics, Heclo concluded, ‘The elderly
is really a category created by policy analysts, pension officials, and mechanical models of
interest group politics’ (Heclo 1988: 393).

New research
The quality of the segmentation process will be a key determinant in deciding which campaigns
successfully build bonds of trust with the aging electorate. With seniors aged in their 50s and
older likely to count for approaching, or even exceeding half of turnout in many contests, a
campaign plan that groups together all older voters into one segment is unsophisticated in the
extreme and likely to fail.
The process of segmentation will require parties to adopt a process of ongoing adjustments of
their positioning in order to maximize the benefits of their own perceived strengths as well as
the weaknesses of their opponents. In practical terms, this requires brand adjustments and,

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informed by market research, the selection of issues, images, language and policies to fore-
ground in their campaigning.
The aging electorates of the 21st century will see the continuation of social trends that began
in the previous century, which have combined to increase the levels of voter volatility. Citizens
across all age groups are increasingly disloyal to political brands (Dalton 2002) and more likely
to switch their preferences across first- and second-order elections (Carrubba and Timpone
2005). This decline in partisan allegiances means that campaign managers cannot make the kind
of firm assumptions of voter support based on first-order variables such as class or ethnicity that
were common in the middle of the 20th century. A further challenge to strategists will be
presented by building the capacity to research and understand senior voters as a sub-group of
the electorate because senior cohorts will change profoundly from one general election to the
next. As Butler and Stokes famously noted in 1969, every year millions of voters die and leave
the electorate, millions join the ranks of the retired and millions enter the electorate for the first
time. The electorate as a whole changes every five years, as does the composition of senior
voters, as cohorts join and slowly leave this category. As such, generational replacement can be
argued as a key variable behind social political changes in the electoral market (Hooghe 2004).
The following are examples of where governmental and commercial organizations have
deployed research in order to develop segmentation categories of older people.
In research commissioned by the UK Central Office of Information (Darnton 2005), to assist
in the refinement of their communication with older people, social and market research
knowledge was synthesized to produce a list of key life stages or events that are highly relevant
to the segmentation process. These are listed in Table 3.2.
Snyder (2002) argues that attitudes and opinions will constantly change during a voter’s lifetime,
but that values developed over time through accumulated personal experience and confirmed in
interactions with peers and family members are less likely to change and act as guiding rules
for living and decision-making, and form the basis of personal identity. Snyder’s value-based
segmentation research breaks older voters into eight value ‘portraits’:

 True-blue Believers: good health, fun, faith.

 Hearth and Homemaker: good health, relationships, active in community.
 Fiscal Conservative: worried about financial security and health.
 Intense Individualists: possessions, travel, independence.
 Active Achievers: active, online, intellectual.
 Liberal Loners: healthy, lower income, value social equality.
 In-Charge Intellectuals: intellectual, affluent, physically active.
 Woeful Worriers: lower income, financial security worries, family.

Table 3.2 Life stages

Life stage/event Short description

Finishing work planned retirement seen as a gain, but a loss when forced through redundancy
Bereavement a shock to couples can entail loss of support and identity
Giving up driving considered a major loss of independence
Experiencing crime instils fear and reduces social activity
Experiencing ill health reduced mobility: spending more time in the home
Giving up home widely differing experiences: some feel loss of independence, others benefit
from support

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The Understanding Fifties and Over (UFO) project in 2004 was a collaboration between
media agency OMD and businesses such as the Daily Telegraph newspaper and Peugeot cars. Its
research identified seven segments of older persons based on lifestyle and attitudes in areas such
as media, brands and politics:

 Live Wires: busy, health-conscious, income to spend on holidays and cars.

 Happy and Fulfilled: financially secure, against change.
 Super Troopers: positive outlook, often lost a partner, high TV viewing.
 Rat Race Junkies: still working, but may have financial worries.
 Living Day to Day: low income but interested in buying brands.
 Unfulfilled Dreamers: often with loans or reliant on social security benefits.
 Anchored in the Past: risk-averse, traditional outlooks, lack interest in new trends.

Although all of these approaches represent valuable attempts to go beyond clumsy segmentation
by age alone, it should be noted that there is good evidence to suggest that voters will reject attempts
to target them purely on the basis of their age. Indeed, many seniors actively resent being targeted
because of their age (RHC Advantage 2010). People age at different rates, and a voter’s cognitive
age – how they feel and see themselves – will usually be younger than their chronological age.
They will ignore or actively resist any message that explicitly states you should agree because you are old.
The lesson for political marketers is that segmentation by chronological age alone is unlikely
to gain a competitive edge for their candidates. A more intelligent development of age-related
voter segments based on variables such as life stage, values, generational identities and media
consumption habits will be required to achieve strategic advancement. There will be no easy
short cuts in the process. The necessary research will require financial and time resources to
ultimately develop the ostensibly age-neutral political brands that, nonetheless, resonate strongly
with older voters.
This can be illustrated by two case studies, one in the UK and one in the US.

Case study 1: segmenting and marketing to US older voters

Since John F. Kennedy’s campaign for president in 1960, senior-citizen committees, ‘senior
desks’ and other types of special structures targeting older voters have been established within
US election campaigns (see Binstock and Riemer 1978; Pratt 1976; MacManus 2000). Their aims
are to register older voters, maintain and enhance the allegiance of older voters through the
substance of issue appeals, and then ensure that they turn out to vote. To do this, senior
campaigns promulgate issues intended to appeal to older persons through methods commonly
used to target other voting constituencies – robocalls, email blasts, direct mail, and television and
radio advertisements; letters to the editor; and appearances by the candidate or surrogates before
targeted audiences. Surrogates, typically, are elected officials, celebrities and academics.
Such common efforts to reach out to particular groups of voters have some dimensions that
are special in the case of seniors. One such dimension is that events featuring candidates and
surrogates can be held in a great many venues where retired older voters can be easily targeted
and (unlike non-retired voters) are available as audiences on weekdays. These venues include
senior centers, congregate meal sites, retirement communities, public housing projects for the
elderly, assisted-living facilities, nursing homes, conferences sponsored by old-age organizations,
and the like. One of the reasons that legislators readily agree to government support for senior
centers and congregate meal programs is that these provide pre-assembled, targeted audiences
when candidates are running for re-election.

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Although senior voters have been more difficult to reach through the use of social media in
the past, the percentage of internet users in each new cohort that reaches old-age categories
increases. For example, just over one-fourth of Americans aged 70–75 were online in 2005, but
by 2009 45 percent of that age group was online (Jones and Fox 2009). While instant messa-
ging, social networking and blogging have gained ground as communications tools, the most
popular online activity among older internet users is email. Three-quarters of US users aged 64
and older send and receive email (Jones and Fox 2009).
Another dimension of strategies to target older voters is that some swing states with large
numbers of electoral votes also have a higher proportion of older persons than the national
average. Consequently, campaign efforts there to capture the votes of seniors are potentially
more rewarding than elsewhere. For instance, Florida had 27 electoral votes in 2008 and
25 percent of its voting-age population was aged 65 and older; Pennsylvania had 21 electoral
votes and 23 percent of its voting-age population was in this age range. In contrast, although
22 percent of West Virginia’s voting-age population was aged 65 and over, that state had only
five electoral votes (Project Vote Smart 2010; US Census Bureau 2010).
Still another special dimension of planning strategies is to target senior voters who have distinct
concerns and political leanings. For instance, poor and wealthy older Americans have substantially
different stakes in issues concerning Social Security. Social Security benefits account for
83 percent of income for older persons in the lowest income quintile, while they are only
18 percent for those in the highest quintile (Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related
Statistics 2010). Similarly, in planning campaigns aimed at seniors in specific geographical
locales, it is important to pay attention to differing long-term political attachments of the elders
residing there. Older persons who have migrated to the east coast of Florida to retire, for
example, have preponderantly come from the northeastern states and have Democratic leanings.
Retiree migrants on the west coast of the state are more likely to have come from other, more
Republican-leaning parts of the country.
Although these various strategies and efforts to sway older voters have become standard
practice in US election campaigns, their impact is problematic despite perennial proclamations
by journalists and political consultants (e.g. Penn 2008) that older persons are a pivotal battle-
ground in determining the outcome of elections. In the 2008 US presidential election, for
instance, older voters were the only age group to vote for the loser, John McCain; those aged
60 and older gave him 51 percent of their votes, and those aged 65 and above gave him
53 percent (Binstock 2009).

Case study 2: age and campaigning in Britain – the 2010 general election
Recent general elections have seen noteworthy campaigns where the parties outlined new
policy commitments, sought to frame issues and managed adjustments in their strategic political
positioning and response to an aging electorate.
Over the next 10–15 years, demographic aging in conjunction with higher turnout rates of
older people will translate into a new political geography of Britain, with most parliamentary
seats estimated to possess over half of turnout on polling day coming from voters aged 55 and
over (Davidson 2010). The main parties have responded to the growing significance of older
voters by making clear attempts to set the campaign agenda at the national level. Aging issues have
been framed in order to maximize perceived valence opportunities, although the parties appeared
to lack the tactical sophistication that would be expected in highly segmented communications.
The Labour government entered the 2010 election pledging to introduce free residential
care for older people who had already self-funded for the first two years, and to then roll out

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universal free care at some point after 2015. In contrast, the Conservatives’ policy on social care
limited its extension to those who could elect to make a one-off payment of around £8,000 on
retirement. Policy on social care became the main battleground between the parties in the pre-
campaign exchanges three months before polling day. In this regard, 2010 followed a similar
pattern to the 2005 election, with high-profile clashes on aging issues between the parties
gaining wide media coverage before these issues become submerged by other concerns in the
month before polling day. This was exemplified when the Conservatives published billboard
posters claiming Labour’s potential funding mechanism for universal care would amount to a
‘death tax’, with the strapline ‘now Gordon (Brown) wants £20,000 when you die’. Labour
strategists accused the Conservatives of ‘driving a wrecking ball through attempts to reach cross-
party consensus’ (Wintour 2010). Accordingly, in the melee pre-campaign hopes to establish
cross-party agreement on social care reforms subsided.
The most recent UK elections have demonstrated that the parties now attach strategic
importance to their positioning on aging issues and proactively seek to frame and foreground
the campaign agenda to their perceived advantage. Segmentation suggests strategic sophistication.
However, in essence, and despite the rise of digital media, the British parties were primarily
engaged in exercises of mass communications. Campaign sub-brands aimed at older voters or
other associated tactical initiatives have been so far largely absent. The main focus of localized
segmentation financed by the national parties comes through the extensive use of direct mail.
Both the Conservative and Labour parties used the data management company Experian’s
Mosaic geo-demographic software to organize mail shots to older voters. Local candidates were
able to build relationships with older voters through regular visits to day centers and church
groups that tend to have older users and members. Additionally, information gathered from
doorstep or telephone canvassing would often be used to generate more direct mail. None-
theless, these local efforts were ad hoc, with little to no national coordination, and largely left to
the initiative of individual candidates.
Table 3.3 shows that the Conservative Party was able to win the most seats in 2010 with the
considerable assistance of the large leads over Labour that they enjoyed with older voters.
However, it should also be noted that while the Conservatives enjoyed their largest leads

Table 3.3 How Britain voted 2010

Con Lab LD Oth Con lead Turnout Con Lab LD Turnout Con-Lab
over labour swing

% % % % % change % change % change % change % change % change

All 37 30 24 10 7 65% 4 −6 1 4 5
Gender
Male 38 28 22 12 10 66% 4 −6 0 4 5
Female 36 31 26 8 4 64% 4 −7 3 3 5.5
Age
18–24 30 31 30 9 −2 44% 2 −7 4 7 4.5
25–34 35 30 29 7 4 55% 10 −8 2 6 9
35–44 34 31 26 9 4 66% 7 −10 3 5 8.5
45–54 34 28 26 12 6 69% 3 −7 1 4 5
55–64 38 28 23 12 10 73% −1 −3 1 2 1
65+ 44 31 16 9 13 76% 3 −4 −2 1 3.5

Source: IPSOS/MORI. How Britain voted 2010. Base: 10,211 British adults aged 18+ (of whom 5,927 were ‘absolutely
certain to vote’ or said that they had already voted), interviewed 19 March−5 May 2010.

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amongst seniors, they had only managed to achieve below average swings with this age group;
indeed, with voters aged 55–64, the oldest boomers who were about to retire, their vote share
declined. The results are also contextualized by observing that Labour, in what was a historically
poor result in terms of percentage-of-vote share, scored slightly better with older voters aged
65+ than they did nationally. In fact, Britain’s main party of the left drew almost equal levels of
support from the country’s oldest and youngest voters. In contrast, the Conservatives performed
much better with older voters than they did with younger age groups, a mirror image of the
Liberal Democrats, who draw more of their votes from younger voters and perform relatively
poorly amongst older voters.

Advice for practitioners

The relationship between birth certificates and ballot can be a surprisingly complex variable for
understanding political behavior. Age is simultaneously a fixed chronological value, a relative
concept, a probability indicator of morbidity, and a shared as well as a highly individualized
personal experience. Any given individual’s attitudes and behaviors are likely to be forged by the
dominant influences in childhood, the main political cleavages experienced as a young adult, and
the impact of social trends during the life span. Also important are the cumulative impact of
advantages and disadvantages experienced throughout the life course (Dannefer 2003).
To understand how political strategists can research, create and target segments of older
voters the role of differing generational characteristics and the influence of an individual’s pro-
gress through the life cycle needs to be carefully considered. Historical events or social changes
frequently leave lasting impressions on significant sections of society. Such changes would
include the Second World War, stark economic recessions or social movements such as femin-
ism. A consistent theme in the debates on political generations is the notion that effects that
take place when voters are younger tend to be profound and long-lasting. This is because youth
is seen as a formative period in a person’s life, when they are relatively more open to new ideas
(Mannheim 1952), as opposed to middle-aged and older voters who reflect new experiences
through a much more defined prism of existing views and experiences. However, it would be a
mistake to assume that voters from particular generations hold fixed party political allegiances.
Van der Brug (2010) argues that people do not get ‘stuck in their ways’ in terms of party pre-
ference, but rather there are small but discernible differences in the criteria in how different
generations evaluate parties and candidates.
Political behaviors can also be expected to evolve as the individual leaves home for full-time
education, enters the labor market, develops adult relationships and/or starts new family units,
re-locates into new communities, retires and eventually enters later life. Each successive stage in
the life cycle produces different networks and economic contexts (Norris 2003). So both
younger and older voters will not only be from different generations, but they will also be in
distinctly different life stages. One life cycle effect that sharply differentiates the young and the
old is that the average retired person is on a lower income than the average younger worker in
their 30s who is in full-time employment; the incomes of the retired are also more likely to be
fixed in the form of state or secondary pension payments (Blundell and Tanner 1999; Hills
2006) unless they are adjusted for inflation.

Impact on politics
The increasing practice of segmenting older voters means that political parties and individual
office holders are increasingly conscious during the governing process (not just during election

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Table 3.4 Ten implications for the practitioner

1 The electorate is greying – can you justify Older voters are more likely to vote, pay attention to
to your candidate/party NOT prioritizing campaigns, volunteer or donate. They are increasing as
older voters as a strategy? a proportion of the electorate and in many areas will form
the majority of voters. A strategy that prioritizes young,
rather than older voters will need a compelling logic.
2 Discard all stereotypes and media myths Although older voters are increasingly critical, the
regarding ‘senior power’. senior power model is not a sound basis for campaign
strategy. Older voters do not vote as a bloc, but
significant numbers will respond to clear weaknesses or
strengths in any given candidate.
3 Segmenting by age is the very least you Age may tell you that social security and healthcare are
can do. more likely to matter, but it does not give insights into
the range of political values and opinions among older
voters. Nationally, from election to election, millions on
the electoral roll will die and millions from another
generation will join the ranks of the retired. The senior
vote is always changing.
4 You risk losing out to your competitors if Campaigns that only segment by broad age groups will
they develop stronger insights into increasingly be at a competitive disadvantage to those
seniors. who will invest in building stronger insights and
relationships with seniors. Are you planning to be the
electoral beneficiaries of an aging electorate, or will you
lose out to your more pro-active competitors?
5 Successful segmentation of seniors To generate clusters of older voters for targeting, age
requires a commitment to research and will need to be combined with data on lifestyle, social
will be a process of ongoing discovery. attitudes, local political intelligence, life stage,
generational identities and aspirations for later life.
6 Campaigns that target seniors will need Campaign communications that only appeal on the
to ensure an age-neutral appeal. basis of age are likely to be rejected by your target
voters. Seniors will actively resist any message that
explicitly states that they should agree purely because
they are ‘old’.
7 Digital and social media are providing Older voters remain strong consumers of traditional
increasingly important communication media such as the press and TV, but the fastest rates of
channels to reach senior voters. growth in internet and social media usage are to be
found in older age groups.
8 Understand that the meaning of Voters now retiring helped to forge the consumer
retirement is being transformed. society and are increasingly indiscernible from younger
age groups in terms of the link between consumerism
and identity. Retirement is no longer about
disengagement. Voters hold aspirations that this is a
period to realize goals of personal fulfilment. Your
appeal must go beyond old-age benefits and
concessions.
9 Be aware that seniors, as with other age Another stereotype that needs to be discarded is that of
groups, are increasingly disloyal to political the highly loyal-to-one-party older voter. Seniors may
brands and more likely to switch their be more likely to be partisan supporters of one party,
preferences across local and national but an increasing proportion regularly switch their
elections. votes. For politicians in office delivery on policy and
quality of life issues will matter.
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Table 3.4 (continued)

10 Recognize and address the wide While it is generally true that seniors are better off now
inequalities between different groups of than in the past, older voters are highly diverse and a
older voters. significant proportion will be struggling due to an
interplay of factors such as low income, ill-health,
family bereavement, etc. These will be a significant
proportion of active senior voters and their needs
should be central to your strategy.

campaigns) of the potential reaction of seniors to policy decisions. This goes beyond traditional
concerns with pensions and healthcare and applies to a wider range of policy issues than in
the past.
A sign of the increased importance of older voters may not be evidenced through high-
profile clashes between the parties on senior issues during the last weeks of any given campaign,
but rather through a strategic imperative to ensure before any formal campaign that no valence
opportunity on an aging issue will be presented for exploitation by opponents. A perception
that one party has the best chance of delivering policies that are generally considered by most
older voters to be important, would be highly significant. This strategic imperative is likely to
intensify as the proportion of older voters in the electorate grows.
As society takes on a demographic profile never seen before in human history, segmentation
can help politics understand the needs of this diverse and growing section of older citizens. It
can serve as a tool to open up a dialogue about the meaning of retirement and later life,
negotiating a response to the transformation of older voters from excluded minority to a posi-
tion where politics and government delivers a socially equitable response to the new policy
challenges.
However, the danger remains that segmentation will further exaggerate inequalities
amongst older people, if only the more literate and more active are attended to. Any perceived
disregard of the needs of some sections of older voters as part of a process of privileging others
may result in alienating from future politics significant sections of the senior vote. Seniors cur-
rently show the healthiest levels of civic engagement, but if their participation rates were to fall
towards those of younger voters, this would represent a considerable blow to democratic
legitimacy.
Another threat may come from wilder media narratives about ‘greedy geezers’, ‘selfish
boomers’ and ‘the gray peril’, as they will hamper the tone and quality of public policy debates.
Aging issues such as social care and pensions often require long-term solutions, strong cross-party
consensuses and multi-generational support.

The way forward

All the major democracies are going through a prolonged period of population aging. There will
be an additional 32 million Americans aged 65 and over in the 20 years from 2010 to 2030 (US
Census Bureau 2010). In Britain a large number of parliamentary constituencies will see a
majority of turnout coming from voters aged 55 and over (Davidson 2010). The significance and
potential of voter segmentation for democracies that are now experiencing an age transformation
will not be limited to the application of scientific persuasion and the selling of policy programs.
The normative application of segmentation will see a process of discovery of the political needs

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and aspirations of the aging electorate, and provide the evidence base for the communicative and
policy responses from governments and parties.
It is now a feature of modern campaigns for commentators to proclaim seniors as one of the
pivotal battlegrounds in determining the final outcome. Certainly, it has been the variation in
age-group turnout rates internationally that has accelerated the impact of population aging. For
example, in the UK younger age groups in the 1970s showed lower turnout rates, but in sub-
sequent elections, as they grew older, their turnout increased. However, this trend seems to
have been broken in the 1990s and first-time voters in 2001 maintained their low participation
rates in 2005 (Phelps 2005).
Older people are also more likely to vote, join campaigns and contact elected representatives.
They have high levels of political literacy and are more likely to follow the campaign closely in
the mainstream media. However, as demonstrated in this chapter, the senior power model – and the
overly simplistic rational choice-based predictions of ‘gerontocracy’ (Sinn and Uebelmesser
2002) – hold only limited value and are ultimately flawed. They downplay the diversity of
older voters and falsely assume that they vote as a single bloc that perceives a single shared
economic interest. This model also ignores older voter concerns regarding the prospects for
their own children and grandchildren and how they are divided by hugely varying personal
social and economic circumstances.
That said, it is clear that there are issues that particularly impact on the quality of life for older
voters. If gray voters were to perceive one party to be discernibly stronger, or weaker, on
those issues, this is likely to be significant. Any candidate that performs poorly with seniors is
going to have to do remarkably well with younger age groups to compensate. For strategists
there is a clear choice: to either be the beneficiaries or the victims of long-term demographic
change.
The lesson for political marketers is that segmentation by chronological age is crude and
unlikely to gain a competitive edge for their candidates. A more intelligent development of age-
related voter segments based on variables such as life stage, values, generational identities and
media consumption habits will be required to achieve significant strategic advancement. There
will be no easy short cuts in the process. The necessary research will require financial and time
resources to ultimately develop the ostensibly age-neutral political brands that, nonetheless,
resonate strongly with older voters.

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4
Strategic voter selection
Michael John Burton

The topic: strategic voter selection

Abraham Lincoln and his Whig colleagues had a clear strategy for gathering votes in the run-up
to the 1840 elections. Operatives were instructed:

1st. To divide their county into small districts, and to appoint in each a sub-committee,
whose duty it shall be to make a perfect list of all the voters in their respective districts, and
to ascertain with certainty for whom they will vote … 2nd. It will be the duty of said
sub-committee to keep a CONSTANT WATCH on the DOUBTFUL VOTERS, and
from time to time have them TALKED TO by those IN WHOM THEY HAVE THE
MOST CONFIDENCE, and also to place in their hands such documents as will enlighten
and influence them. 3d. It will also be their duty to report to you, at least once a
month, the progress they are making, and on election days see that every Whig is brought
to the polls.
(Henry et al. 1840: 202)

The Whig strategy, laborious in implementation, would count as state-of-the-art voter

selection for generations.
Shoe-leather duties inevitably gave way to professionalized research. In the late 1980s British
Labour strategists reportedly ‘launched an extensive analysis of the Green Party’s European
election vote, with the aim of improving the targeting of Labour’s own environmental policy
package’ (Hughes 1989). In the early 1990s Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign attended to the
comparative costs of reaching different parts of the US electorate (Kurtz 1992). The following
decade, a US firm called Aristotle International played a role in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential
election, later advertising that it had ‘[d]esigned and deployed a voter turnout system – collecting
and analyzing voter participation in each region and at 250 pre-selected bellwether voting
locales’ (Aristotle International no date a). In 2008 the voter selection operation that backed
Senator Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency was so innovative that it won respect from some
Republicans (see Wayne 2008). Many campaigns still emulate the Whig model with ‘voter ID’

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Strategic voter selection

calls – phoning voters one at a time – but in a contemporary campaign such an effort might be
aided by technologically sophisticated ‘predictive dialers’.
Strategic voter selection is the act of prioritizing members of the voting-eligible population,
as individuals or as groups, in order to guide the allocation of outreach expenditures. Many
campaign organizations select, first, likely supporters who should be mobilized to cast their
ballots, and second, likely voters who should be persuaded to cast their ballots the ‘right way’.
Reaching out to people who are unalterably backing the opposition would be a waste of scarce
resources, and people who will surely cast a supportive vote can safely be ignored. However,
such individuals are outliers. People generally fall somewhere between the poles, so voter
selection procedures may wisely deal in mere probabilities as they seek optimal distributions of
campaign time, money and effort.
Political strategists have resorted to a variety of selection methods. Techniques include the
analysis of demographics and electoral history, along with survey research, and more recently
the use of information-rich voter lists, ‘microtargeting’, and absentee ‘chase’ programs. This
chapter will seek to explain strategic voter selection, both in concept and in practice, and to
discuss implications for democratic politics.

Previous research on strategic voter selection

The core concepts of strategic voter selection were expressed in the 1970s. Daniel M. Gaby and
Merle H. Treusch (1976) detailed the workings of demographic and precinct research, as did
successive versions of a workbook circulated by the National Women’s Education Fund (see 1978).
By the 1980s and 1990s, basic selection methods had essentially become public domain (see Allen
1996; Fishel 1998a; Fishel 1998b). In the 21st century this tradition continues with manuals such
as Catherine Shaw’s popular handbook, The Campaign Manager (Shaw 2010). Hal Malchow,
a leader in the American political consulting industry, has supplemented his authoritative The
New Political Targeting (Malchow 2008) with software that lets readers try the process for
themselves.
The scholarly literature is more sparse, but its findings are instructive. Experimental research
by Joshua D. Clinton and John S. Lapinski (2004) provides modest support for the notion that
the effects of campaign advertising may vary by voter characteristics, a result that suggests the
importance of sending the appropriate message to the appropriate voters. Daron R. Shaw
(2006), a political scientist who helped strategize the George W. Bush campaigns of 2000 and
2004, has found that targeted campaign messaging can have an impact. Bruce Hardy, Chris
Adasiewicz, Kate Kenski and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (2010) have examined the role of targeted
messaging in the 2008 presidential campaign. Early efforts to calculate optimal selection
(e.g. Kramer 1966) have been given contemporary form by Kosuke Imai and Aaron Strauss
(2011). Scholarly research has thus gained traction on the effects of strategic voter selection; still,
much work remains.
Daron Shaw’s analysis merits special attention. Shaw found that state-level electioneering had
a measurable, but small, impact on weekly presidential ‘trial heat’ polls. The minimal nature of
the effect might be a function of the dynamic nature of electoral strategy. The political adver-
saries in that contest were, in effect, counterprogramming each other, reaching out to voters
selected by the other side: ‘[P]ooled time series data’, Shaw says, show that campaign organi-
zations ‘appear to limit campaign effects by matching the opposition’s TV advertising and
appearances’ (Shaw 2006: 138). A favorable shift (actual or anticipated) within a selected
segment can prompt opposition forces to reallocate spending in order to shore up support. For
researchers, this sort of activity can mean that the combined expenditures of electoral

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Michael John Burton

competitors may, to some greater or lesser degree, wash each other out – and the effect of voter
selection might therefore be hard to detect even when it exists.

New research
While practitioners might have a gut-level understanding of strategic voter selection, recent
thinking on the topic has led to a more detailed articulation of underlying principles.

Strategic voter selection in concept

Generally speaking, the efficacy of strategic voter selection is gleaned from its rationale: An
outreach effort that indiscriminately spreads its campaign communications across the electorate
will tend to underperform an outreach effort that masses the same quantum of resources on
segments of the electorate with high proportions of moveable voters; campaign communications
should therefore be directed toward those high-proportion segments. Catherine Shaw distin-
guishes supportive ‘saints’ from oppositional ‘sinners’ – ‘but’, she says, ‘we focus on the third
group, the savables’ (Shaw 2010: 3). Simply stated, strategic voter selection is an effort to break up
the whole and prioritize the parts.

Segmentation and ranking

Segmentation is the process of identifying heterogeneity within the overall population
and carving the electorate into distinct groups that can be ranked according to their electoral
value.
Figure 4.1 represents an un-segmented electorate that is facing, say, a ballot issue. This
notional population comprises YES voters (25 percent), undecided voters (50 percent), and NO
voters (25 percent). Assume this electorate can be partitioned into six mutually exclusive
segments. Differentiation might run along geographic boundaries; demographic characteristics
such as gender, race and ethnicity; party registration; or some other combination of politically
meaningful features. Figure 4.2 represents the same notional electorate as Figure 4.1, but
disaggregated into six discrete segments that range in their proportions of undecideds from
100 percent in the top segment to zero in the bottom.
For a persuasion strategy that seeks to move undecided voters to YES, one approach might
be to rank the segments as shown here. For a get out the vote (‘GOTV’) strategy, segments
having large percentages of supporters who skip elections might be placed on top. Whether
supporters or undecideds or some other group is deemed most desirable, the point of strategic
voter selection is to locate segments of the electorate with high concentrations of the desired
individuals.

Figure 4.1 Notional electorate – unsegmented

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Strategic voter selection

Efficiency and coverage

Assume that each of the six segments holds 1,000 voters, and assume further that the campaign
wants to persuade undecided voters. Mailing postcards to everyone in the electorate would result
in 50 percent of these cards going to the desired voters, the undecideds – recall that half of the
voters have already made up their minds – whereas mailing to the voters in only the top two
segments would result in 1,800 of the 2,000 postcards going to undecideds. In other words,
the narrow effort directed at the top two segments would see 90 percent of those postcards
going to desired voters, improving efficiency by 40 percentage points. Malchow affirms that
efficiency ‘is the most important measurement of the effectiveness of your targeting’ (Malchow
2008: 8).
Enhancing efficiency is important, sometimes critically so. However, fixating on this aspect
of voter selection to the exclusion of all others can amount to a losing strategy. The most
efficient mailing for the electorate represented in Figure 4.2 would have the campaign
restricting its outreach to the top-ranked group, an approach that would offer 100 percent
efficiency; however, such an effort would reach just 1,000 of the 3,000 undecided voters in the
electorate, or 33 percent of the total number of undecideds. Many of the other 2,000
available undecideds might wind up siding with the opposition. Thus, in addition to enhancing
efficiency, a strategist should also ensure proper ‘coverage’ (Malchow 2008: 9). If the campaign
expanded its mailing to the three most efficient groups, it would be contacting 2,400 of
the desired undecideds, achieving 80 percent coverage. While efficiency is a good thing, its

Figure 4.2 Notional electorate – segmented

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Michael John Burton

Figure 4.3 Efficiency versus coverage

ultimate utility is wedded to coverage, and a campaign that calculates efficiency alone might
properly be asked, in Malchow’s words, ‘[H]ow many target voters are you missing?’ (Malchow
2008: 9).
This last point highlights the trade-off between efficiency and coverage, as illustrated in
Figure 4.3. When segments comprise varying proportions of desired voters and are ranked
accordingly, increased coverage will mean decreased efficiency. If the campaign sends postcards
to the top two groups in Figure 4.2, coverage is 60 percent and efficiency is 90 percent.
Reaching out further to the top five groups maximizes coverage but reduces efficiency by 30
percentage points – while every desired voter would be hit, the mailing would incur a higher
cost per desired voter because more undesired voters would be in the mix.

Yield
A standard problem in strategic voter selection is that of optimizing efficiency and coverage in
light of outreach costs – in other words, determining the most advantageous yield scenario. Yield
is the net number of votes returned per unit of expenditure (see Burton and Shea 2010: 88–89;
Green and Gerber 2008: 13). One way to illustrate a winning yield strategy is to, first, assume (for
simplicity) that both sides of the electoral contest will select the same exact segments, and then
second, estimate how far, and in which direction, the moveable voters in a targeted segment will
in fact move. The central question would be: Who will gather how many moveable voters on
election day, and at what cost?
Begin with the notional scenario illustrated above – the 6,000-voter electorate carved into six
equal-sized segments. Assume that the proportion of moveable undecideds can be estimated but
the identities of individual undecideds cannot be determined. If sending one postcard to a voter
costs 25¢, then incorporating that same voter into a 10-postcard mailing program will cost
$2.50. With 3,001 votes being the threshold for victory, recalling that 1,500 sure YES votes are
already ‘in the bank’, it would appear that 1,501 additional votes will be needed for the win.
The difficulty is as follows: If all the undecideds could be personally identified and if each
undecided voter included in a postcard program would be persuaded to vote YES, then the cost
of victory would be equal to the cost of 10 postcards ($2.50) multiplied by the number of
additional votes needed to win (1,501) – and so the cost would be $3,752.50; but because the
identity of the undecideds is unknown, the campaign will have to tolerate some measure of
inefficiency as it seeks adequate coverage.

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Strategic voter selection

Table 4.1 Yield accumulations

Group Desired voters Accumulated Votes gained Accumulated Accumulated cost

(by rank) contacts votes

Base vote 1,500 1,500

1 1,000 1,000 700 2,200 $2,500
2 800 2,000 560 2,760 $5,000
3 600 300 3,060
4 400 200 3,260
5 200 100 3,360
6 0 0 3,360

Yield estimates can help optimize the trade-off between efficiency and coverage. Assume, as
previously mentioned, that 1,500 voters will surely vote YES – call that the ‘base’ vote. Then
add two more assumptions: First, 70 percent of undecided voters included in the postcard
program will swing to YES; and second, undecided voters who are not included will split evenly
between YES and NO. Sending postcards to all the voters in the two top-ranked segments
would be expected to deliver new YES votes as shown in Table 4.1. Fully 700 votes are
gathered from the 1,000 undecideds in the first segment at a cost of $2,500, and another 560
votes come in from the 800 undecideds in the second segment for another $2,500. With the
rest of the segments – the ones populated by smaller shares of undecideds, which are not tar-
geted for mail and therefore are expected to split their undecideds evenly between YES and
NO – the accumulation of YES votes slows considerably. The third segment produces only 300
votes; the fourth segment brings 200; the fifth segment adds only 100 votes; and no new votes
come in from the last segment. The final accumulation envisions success with 3,360 out of
6,000 votes for the price of $5,000 – more than $3,752.50, the price of the ideal campaign, but
far less than the $15,000 cost of reaching out to all 6,000 voters in the electorate. (For a
Bayesian approach, see Imai and Strauss 2011.)

Caveats
Precarious assumptions (such as segment-level movement estimates) go into this sort of analysis,
some or all of which might be wrong. Also, in the real world outreach costs might vary across
segments. If one group of voters is best reached by internet advertisements while another is only
reachable by television commercials, then the comparative value of these segments would seem
to depend on the unequal pricing. Additionally, strategists would want to consider that a piece of
mail will be delivered, not necessarily into the hands of the desired voter, but at the door of an
entire household. Transforming individual-level selection into a household-level mailing demands
its own sort of expertise. Finally, the price of analysis itself must be taken into account. If the
selection process consumes more money for research than it saves in efficiency, then the process
might fail a strict cost-benefit analysis.

Strategic voter selection in practice

A scholar would be hard-pressed to find large numbers of strategists computing efficiency,
coverage and yield, and indeed there are many ways to run a strategic analysis (see Burton and

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Michael John Burton

Shea 2010: 88–91; Fishel 1998a; Fishel 1998b; Malchow 2008; Shaw 2010: 391–409). Calcu-
lations like these merely reconstruct the underlying logic of strategic voter selection – an idealized
vision of reality. Such computations form a set of principles that becomes manifest when stra-
tegists patch together a target list based on demographic analysis, the study of electoral history and
survey research.

Demographic analysis
Segmentation by way of demographic research is one of the best-known methods of voter
selection. If a high proportion of suburban women are not committed to any particular political
party, that segment might be ripe for persuasion. In the US national electorate, black voters are as
a rule loyal to the Democratic Party, but they turn out to vote in comparatively small numbers, so
a Democratic candidate may want to focus its GOTV operation on African Americans.
Demographic segmentation is made possible in the US by scrupulous efforts to learn
about the populace. The US Census Bureau tries to acquire information on all individuals
living in the country, and it publishes aggregate data on the nation, states, counties, cities and
even city blocks. With time and effort, a campaign strategist can use Census data to draw a
revealing portrait of an electorate. These data can be merged with additional information
acquired from economic development agencies, municipal offices and private data firms.
Many demographic characteristics are generally presumed salient, from race to gender to
income to education, and a variety of other factors may be gleaned from research and insight.
Of course, a political strategist using national-level data should remember that district-level
realities can vary drastically. Demography also might be less helpful in a non-partisan contest
(such as an initiative or referendum) or a within-party contest (such as a US primary) where less
might be known about the relationship between demographic characteristics and political
behavior.
Unfortunately, using aggregated data can lead to a difficulty called the ‘ecological inference
problem’ – the idea that the characteristics of a general population accurately represent the
individual members of that population, when perhaps they do not. In one formulation of
the problem, a county showing a median household income of $80,000 might contain few
upper-middle-class voters. It could well be that 45 percent of households are barely hedging
above the poverty line while another 45 percent are supremely wealthy, with just 10 percent in
the middle. A less obvious problem is illustrated by the ‘Red-State, Blue-State’ divide in US politics.
Paradoxically, downscale states tend to vote Republican (‘Red’) while downscale people tend to
vote Democratic (‘Blue’) (Gelman et al. 2008). Believing that individuals look just like the
groups to which they belong is a risky proposition. Nevertheless, analysts may be compelled
from a paucity of individual-level information to discount or deal with the problems attending
ecological inference.

Electoral history
A 1976 campaign manual by Gaby and Treusch advised campaign organizations to view
electoral precincts according to voting age population, number of registered voters, turnout
in general elections, partisanship, gaps between high and low vote-getters within a given
election, and partisan differences across time, the strength of the parties by precinct and
voter turnout in primary elections (Gaby and Treusch 1976: 74–76). Gaby and Treusch
reasoned that:

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Strategic voter selection

If a precinct is classified as highly persuadable, it will then contain a large concentration of

voters who are persuadable. Similarly, if a district has been highly supportive of your party
in the past but has shown low turnouts of voters on election day, we assume that nonvoters
would also be supporters of your party.
(Gaby and Treusch 1976: 74)

The logic of precinct analysis makes sense if neighborhoods are faithful to their political
predispositions. Even as a new family moves into a precinct, it is reasonable to assume that the
incoming household will be similar in political bearing to the one that is leaving; similarly, the
departing family may be transitioning into a new stage of life – say, by marriage, child-rearing
or retirement – and these changes may at the same time be altering that family’s political preferences
as it moves away.
Instructions for precinct selection can be found in numerous electioneering manuals, perhaps
due to the method’s palpable advantages. First, precinct analysis is based on votes actually cast in
elections rather than broad-spectrum demographic characteristics or self-reports from a survey sample.
Second, precinct-based voter selection can save money, as data entry might be relegated to volun-
teers. Third, it can be highly specific. An electorate that contains 200 precincts is rankable into just
as many discrete segments, letting analysts draw fine-grained distinctions among geographic units.
The method has weaknesses, however. In addition to risking ecological inference problems,
precinct analysis can be demanding when boundaries change, forcing strategists to carve up and
reallocate bits of old precincts to represent the new configuration. While historical analysis may
be useful in a two-way partisan race, strategizing a primary election or a ballot issue can be
more challenging. There may be no clear precedent to use as a basis of comparison. In any case,
strategists should look at the politics beneath the numbers. Gaby and Treusch noted that these
kinds of ‘targeting operations … are intended to supplement regular political knowledge, not to
substitute for it’, and strategists are advised to consult ‘a person familiar with the politics of the
area’ (Gaby and Treusch 1976: 70, 74).

Survey research
Campaign strategists look at survey research from a different perspective than, say, the news
media or members of the community at large. For those outside the campaign industry, polling
often serves a human-interest function. Who is ahead today? Which races are most compelling?
For campaign operatives, survey research is commonly employed to address a wider set of
questions. Strategists want to know, for example, which segments of the electorate should be
selected for persuasion or mobilization.
Conventional wisdom holds that the middle ground should be the focus of persuasion, the
idea being that centrist voters are amenable to political messaging. Alternatively, a campaign
might look at how much respondents ‘move’ after hearing the campaign’s argument. Toward
the beginning of a survey, a respondent might be asked, ‘If the election were held today, would
you vote YES, NO, or are you undecided at this time?’ After the answers are recorded, the
respondent might be read a series of arguments, both for and against. Then the respondent
might be queried one more time, ‘Now that you’ve heard more about the issue, I’d like to ask
again: If the election were held today …’ The difference between the results on the first reading
of the ballot question and the second, ‘informed’ ballot shows movement on the issue. Whether
a strategist looks at where voters position themselves or how they might move, the findings of a
campaign poll can help identify persuadable segments of the electorate.

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Michael John Burton

Table 4.2 Survey results – raw responses

Response Upstate Downstate

Dem Unaff. Repub Dem Unaff. Repub

Yes 76 14 28 20 20 22
Undecided 31 29 33 97 100 70
No 13 77 59 3 0 28

Segments can be presented as crosstabulated data. Table 4.2 represents a minimalistic crosstab
for some notional ballot question, showing in raw numbers how the views of upstate and
downstate respondents might be presented. Partisanship seems to make little difference among
downstaters on YES (though it makes a big difference on NO); upstate, however, partisanship is
a strong explainer for YES. Many downstaters seem undecided, particularly Democrats and
unaffiliated voters; most upstaters appear to have made up their minds. A persuasion campaign
that looks for undecideds might be drawn to downstate voters while a prominent Democratic
official hoping to mobilize co-partisans – specifically, the ones who are ready to vote YES –
might want to contact upstate Democrats to make sure they cast their ballots.
Unfortunately, individual columns in a crosstab may contain distressingly small subsamples.
If a survey performed within a large population of 1 million voters includes 720 respondents
(which would be a large number for a ‘benchmark’ poll), the survey’s sampling error for topline
results at 95 percent confidence is typically calculated at about ±3.7 percent. If respondents
are evenly distributed among the table’s six columns (as shown here), then each column will
have 120 respondents, with a reported sampling error of about ±8.9 percent. If the columns are
evenly subdivided by yet another variable (for example, type of community: urban, suburban or
rural), paring column size to 40 respondents, the error might be reported at about ±15.5 per-
cent. Quite often, variables are not so evenly distributed and some columns will hold only a
handful of respondents, making inference to a larger population hazardous. Finally, sampling
error is only one of many problems that might crop up, and a smart consumer of opinion
polls will be mindful of the hurdles facing survey researchers (see Weisberg 2005). (For
an important issue related to the practice of cherry-picking survey results, see Jones et al. 2001.)

Innovations in strategic voter selection

Recent developments in voter selection reflect the increasing power and decreasing cost of
information technology, as seen in the production of information-rich voter lists, microtargeting
and absentee ballot chasing.

Information-rich voter lists

Many US jurisdictions offer lists of registered voters, complete with addresses, ages and voting
histories – not showing which way the individuals voted, of course, but in which elections they voted –
maybe including the political affiliations of those voters. This is valuable data. People who have
cast ballots in two consecutive primary elections might safely be counted as likely voters for an
upcoming general election; someone who voted in the most recent general election, but not in
the primary, may need some reminding. A wise campaign might supplement its basic voter list
with data from fundraising rosters, ‘voter ID’ calls and comments heard on neighborhood walks.

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Campaigns have long maintained ‘house lists’, but in recent years, both major US political
parties have stepped up their efforts to gather individual-level data on members of the electo-
rate. Commercial firms have also been accumulating facts and figures. Aristotle International –
the company that was involved with the Ukrainian election – has advertised that, in addition to
political data, it ‘maintains a list of over 5.4 million voters who hold hunting and fishing
licenses, as well as individuals who subscribe to a wide array of magazine subscriptions including
family, religious, financial, health, culinary and Do-It-Yourself publications’ (Aristotle International
no date b).

Microtargeting
In the 1980s some Republican operatives were linking consumer information to their datasets
and, as the years passed, the party refined its techniques and kept up with technological devel-
opments. In 2003, following a senior strategist’s PowerPoint presentation (title: ‘Standard
Precinct Targeting versus Micro-Targeting’), the party redoubled its efforts. By looking at a wide
range of characteristics it was found that:

In fifteen battleground states, there were some 5 million ‘suspect Republicans’ (likely to
vote [Republican] if properly motivated), 6.7 million ‘unreliable Republicans’ (people who
like the [Republican] brand but are infrequent voters), and 2 million ‘registration targets’
(likely Republicans who are not registered to vote).
(Sosnik, Dowd and Fournier 2006: 41)

This analysis showed far more potential supporters than did traditional methods. A decision
was quickly made to invest $3 million in a ground-breaking microtargeting program (Sosnik
et al. 2006: 41).
Microtargeting techniques are by and large proprietary, and they surely differ, but Ken
Strasma of Strategic Telemetry has provided a functional definition:

Micro-targeting works by taking whatever individual-level information is available (e.g.,

IDs, contributor information, vote history) and combining it with demographic, geo-
graphic and marketing data about those individuals to build statistical models that predict
the attitudes and behaviors of voters for whom that individual-level information is not
known.
(Strasma no date)

The general idea is to collect information about the electorate and then attempt to profile
voters (and prospective voters) in terms of their likelihoods to cast a ballot and to be supportive.
This task might be aided by high-end algorithms. With mounting quantities of information
becoming available, computational power increasing and targeting operations gaining experi-
ence with complex modeling procedures, it is reasonable to suppose that microtargeting will
soon become a standard fixture of down-ballot political campaigns.

Absentee chase programs

Some US states have begun instituting absentee ballot (‘AB’) or vote-by-mail (‘VBM’) programs;
likewise, some allow for early voting (‘EV’) in ordinary voting booths for a few weeks prior to

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election day. If local boards of elections publish the names of voters who have requested absentee
ballots – some US jurisdictions do exactly that – then early voting offers a new marketing
opportunity. When a ballot request is reported, the campaign can rush literature into the mail.
The voter might receive the ballot and a campaign flyer on the very same day, as if, from the
voter’s point of view, by magic. Moreover, people who have already voted might be struck from
mailing lists, preserving campaign cash for better use elsewhere. Such efforts can be labor-
intensive. While some reports are available online, ready to merge into the campaign’s database,
others demand considerable processing.
Chasing ballots combines the oft-conflicting ideals of high efficiency and broad coverage.
A campaign is able to send its message at the moment when many voters are in ‘buy mode’,
hitting every selected voter who requests a ballot. ‘The importance of running an AB chase
program’, according to Michael Beach of Targeted Victory, ‘is only going to increase as more
states make AB/EV an easier option and more voters grow accustomed to casting their ballots
that way’. Likewise, says Beach, the data required for a chase program is becoming more and
more obtainable: ‘If you look at a state like Nevada that has had significant AB/EV voting in
the past you will see that they have made great strides in producing clean files on a daily basis
and posting them directly to their web site’ (personal communication).

Advice for practitioners

The guiding steps of an ideal voter selection procedure can be stated simply:

 Disaggregate the electorate into politically meaningful segments.

 Estimate the benefit of reaching each segment.
 Estimate the cost of reaching each segment.
 Then find the most cost-effective means of accumulating enough votes to win the election.

In the abstract, each step flows smartly, one to the next, and maybe the arithmetic can be
done by hand. Still, politics being the art of the possible, it is not clear that a single, parsimonious
method exists to handle every voter-selection problem.
In some jurisdictions, privacy considerations might preclude the use of otherwise valuable
individual-level data. For some campaigns, survey research might be prohibitively expensive. In
any event, the efficiencies gained from a selection procedure may or may not justify the costs of
running the procedure itself, and the value of such an endeavor might not become clear until
after all the ballots have been cast, if then. Trade-offs abound. Given the variety of data sce-
narios and strategic conditions that a strategist could possibly confront, it might be true that
selection procedures should be custom-tailored for each electoral contest – though customized
solutions may themselves bring overhead costs that a campaign is unable to afford.
The upshot is that ‘what works’ remains an open question. To say that strategists should
disaggregate electorates and optimize expenditures sidesteps the need for concrete advice;
however, getting too deep into specifics implies that an overarching solution might endure the
shifting sands of electoral politics.

Impact on politics: strategic voter selection and democracy

Strategic voter selection procedures have been developed not to promote a national conversation,
but to win elections. Increasing a campaign’s operational efficiency often means excluding large

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Strategic voter selection

numbers of voters from political communications. If this effort results in narrow outreach pro-
grams directed toward unrepresentative fragments of the electorate, pulling communications
away from the vast bulk of the citizenry, then any benefit to the overall political conversation
would seem little more than an unintended consequence.
Critics of strategic voter selection can find support in Heather Savigny’s discussion of recent
campaigns in the UK. Savigny notes that ‘new’ Labour has been concentrating its efforts on
small segments of that electorate (Savigny 2008: 52–60). In 1997 the party gave its attention to
‘Tory switchers’, and this sort of narrow-gauge selection continued in 2001 with ‘Operation
Turnout’, which ‘targeted weak and wavering Labour voters’ (ibid.: 55, 60). In 2005 Labour
used advanced databasing to select target groups from among dozens of electoral segments
(ibid.: 59). Writes Savigny, ‘The practice of marketing in campaigning suggests that rather than
the demands of the polity being at the centre of the political process, it was the voters whose
votes mattered to the election outcome’ (ibid.: 59). Further, if voter segmentation prompts a
left-leaning party to look more like its right-leaning competitor by targeting groups like Tory-
switchers, then one may reasonably conclude that some degree of voter choice has been lost in
the bargain (ibid.: 56).
Strategic voter selection might therefore deepen the feeling that candidates are being sold like
breakfast cereal. A commercial product needs only a small market share to gain an honorable
profit, so tightly focused advertising is unproblematic from a business perspective. However,
with political campaigns, which participate in a struggle that purports to confer some kind of
public mandate, selective outreach might prompt well-meaning citizens to conclude once and
for all that the electoral process lacks authenticity.
It is conceivable that treating voters like data points could depress turnout or could otherwise
erode the legitimizing role of elections. Another way to understand voter segmentation, how-
ever, would be to view targeted outreach as a means of smoothing over gaps in participation.
The ideal selection model ignores voters who have already made up their minds and opts for
those who would put campaign-generated information to good use. In contrast, reaching out to
an entire electorate would likely result in fewer resources directed toward moveable voters –
less GOTV outreach to under-motivated citizens, less political information to the undecideds.
Indeed, if one’s own partisans start to drift, smart selection could plausibly locate these voters so
that they can be motivated once again.
All of which is to suggest that new methods of voter selection do not settle ongoing debates
about campaigns and democracy; they merely throw important questions into sharper relief.
Matters become even more complicated with the rise of new channels of communication that
allow citizens neglected by a campaign’s selection procedure to engage with like-minded indi-
viduals in the blogosphere, to post comments regarding web-published news stories, and to find
information on official campaign websites, in social media and through micro-blogs. If the rise
of new-style campaigning in the 1960s and 1970s, which soon spread professionalized campaign
management practices around the globe, had the effect of motivating a debate over the participatory
nature of elections that has yet to be resolved (Burton and Shea 2010: 215–19), then ongoing
refinements to political marketing are unlikely to settle larger disputes about democratic governance.

The way forward: future research into voter selection

Decades of political research have gone toward studying voter behavior, with a great deal of
attention being paid to the ways in which members of certain groups arrive at their respective
decisions. Some of this work relates to strategic voter selection. Scholars have demonstrated
cutting-edge segmentation techniques (Green and Kern 2010; Imai and Strauss 2011; Murray and

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Scime 2010) and they have analyzed controlled field experiments in ways that suggest practical
applications (Arceneaux and Nickerson 2009; Green and Kern 2010). However, questions
remain. Is demographically based voter selection superior to geographically based or survey-based
voter selection? How might these dimensions of an electorate be combined? Considering the
price of research and the savings putatively gained from efficiency, which voter selection pro-
cedures tend to be most useful? Which demographic segments show meaningful distinctions over
time and across jurisdictions, and which are more local and time-bound, restricted to certain
campaigns and candidates?
These questions are hard to answer, partly owing to the close-held nature of the methods
used in political campaigns, partly because scientific experimentation generally requires that a
control group be left out (and campaign organizations do not always like to leave promising
voters ‘untreated’), but also because political campaigns are ever-changing. The practice of
electioneering is under relentless pressure to evolve. Any electoral system that is free and fair
invites strategic innovation, and major developments such as the introduction of microtargeting
tend to change the way campaigns are run. The study of political campaigns must therefore
appreciate the dynamism of a political world constituted by an ‘upward spiral of measure,
countermeasure, and counter-countermeasure, in which new strategies give rise to new electoral
environments, and vice versa’ (Burton and Shea 2003: 10).
What has not changed is the ultimate goal of campaign strategy – winning elections – and the
subordinate requirement of winning those elections on budget. At least as far back as Lincoln’s
time, campaign organizations have seen the path to victory in the perfect list, the talking to, the
constant watch and the effort to get supporters out to vote. Nineteenth-century operatives used
the tactics available to them, however quaint those tactics would later appear. The methods
now emerging in the political marketplace have merely extended a time-honored logic to the
information, expertise and technologies that have become available to campaign strategists in
the new millennium.

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5
Government public opinion
research and consultation
Experiences in deliberative marketing
Mathias König and Wolfgang König

The topic: the deliberative marketing approach

Political marketing can help governments and political parties to respond to the specific needs of
the citizens and avoid superficial or undifferentiated protest, but rather than just conducting
market research, another form of consultation or dialogue is through a deliberative political
marketing process. The intelligent involvement of citizens in political decision-making processes
can also increase the effectiveness of governance. The multifaceted knowledge of citizens is an
additional resource that should be utilized. This idea is based on the concept of communicative
action (Habermas 1984) respondent deliberative democracy (Habermas 1996: 287–328) and rests
upon the argument that through the participation of the public and the citizens in political
processes, it becomes possible to make better decisions and thus also to communicate them more
easily. Not only from a philosophical standpoint, but also directly from practice-oriented
administrative science there have been efforts to increase citizen participation in administrative
politics and decision-making at least since the discussions of New Public Management and
Good Governance (Scott 2003: 55–69). After all, what is striven for is an increasingly efficient
constitutional and citizen-friendly administrative practice and that is dependent upon democratic
quality and legitimacy (Dahl 1994). From the viewpoint of political marketing, deliberative
communicative processes represent new forms of dialogue and marketing. Furthermore, deliberative
political marketing can develop beyond a technique to a form of governance.

Previous research on deliberative political marketing

In political marketing literature, few studies have linked deliberation to marketing, other
than Lees-Marshment and Winter (2009), Henneberg et al. (2009), and Lees-Marshment
(2011). Lees-Marshment and Winter pointed out that political marketing is associated with
deliberative democracy and so deliberative politics may therefore offer greater insight into how
governments can consult the public and make that consultation more worthwhile (Lees-Marshment
2009: 282).

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Henneberg et al. (2009) point to terminological inexactitudes and difficulties when it comes
to the delineation of ‘political marketing’, ‘political management’ and ‘political communica-
tion’. From a democratic-theoretical perspective, the concept of political marketing runs the
risk of appearing like a discursive instrument of power to be used for the achievement of short-
term political goals, e.g., during elections. However, from the very same point of view a more
positive conception may be adopted, i.e., political marketing as an opportunity to establish and
maintain a trustful relationship between voters on the one hand and political parties and
administration on the other. To practicians, and hence realists, the truth lies somewhere in
between. Thus, Henneberg et al. (2009: 165–88) subdivide ‘political marketing’ into three
practical concepts:

 selling-oriented political marketing management (PMM);

 instrumentally oriented PMM; and
 relational PMM.

A selling-oriented approach ‘puts an ideology or conviction first’, whereas ‘instrumentally-

oriented PMM is focused on a deep understanding of primary stakeholders’. However, a rela-
tional approach ‘also incorporates the interests of stakeholders who are not direct exchange
partners and assesses the trade-offs between short-term and long-term effects’ (Henneberg et al.
2009: 171–72).
From a democratic-theoretical perspective, the strategic use of political marketing instruments
seems closely linked to the logic of Joseph Schumpeter’s ‘competitive elitism’. According to
Schumpeter, democracy is a procedure for the selection of elites by means of regular elections.
Thus, his theory is based on the assumption that it is not the citizens who rule, but the elites.
However, the term ‘elite’ has positive connotations in Schumpeter’s approach, and from his
point of view political marketing can be understood as management by and through elites.
Hence, political marketing is predominantly perceived as an instrument. At the same time,
arguments from the theory of deliberative democracy are gaining more and more significance
within the context of political marketing. Whoever wants to win elections nowadays must win
the ‘political marketing game’. That means that politicians:

need to offer responsive leadership that responds to but does not just follow public
opinion; authentic reflectiveness that shows genuine considerations of different demands
but does not change positions without justification. Furthermore, they need to move
towards a partnership relationship with the public where both citizens and government
work together to find solutions.
(Lees-Marshment 2011: 209)

Lees-Marshment’s (2011) new theory of a partnership democracy argues that market analysis
needs to become more deliberative and even form an institution in its own right.
The political decision-makers and leaders who must decide upon a strategy are still a central
factor. ‘They need to balance leading and following the public …’ (Lees-Marshment 2011: 213).
If one understands politicians as a brand (Lees-Marshment 2011: 213), the decision on the kind
and manner of the chosen political marketing then is a key element of the brand. Accordingly,
the level of deliberation of the chosen political marketing is a key element of the brand.
Thus, deliberative market analysis is ‘the new system of voter input in politics’ (Lees-Marshment
2011: 220).

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Mathias König and Wolfgang König

However, the idea to link political marketing and deliberation needs further development
and application. First, it is important to make the link between political marketing and delib-
erative politics. Habermas explained a key factor of deliberative politics and communication:
‘The communication circulation in the public sphere is especially vulnerable to the selective
pressure of social inertia; the influence thus generated, however, can be converted into political
procedure and penetrates the constitutionally organized political system in general’ (Habermas
1996: 327). Second, although much of the literature has discussed the need for politicians to
become market-oriented, even if a politician wanted to meet the wishes of the voters, it is
always possible that he or she will fail. Therefore, a market orientation cannot ensure a long-
term relationship, because the voters are addressed as customers and not as citizens. Customers
expect a good product, and will switch producers if the product is deficient. Empowered citi-
zens, however, can understand why and how political decisions were made, and so failures do
not destroy a long-term relationship. ‘Parties should not treat voters solely as consumers, but as
both consumers and citizens’ (Lees-Marshment 2008: 12). In order to emphasize the citizen
perspective, a new form of marketing is necessary, namely deliberative marketing, which would
enable the circulation of communication in the public sphere.

New research on deliberative political marketing

Elite discussion of deliberative marketing: President Obama and the

EU Commission
The focus shift in political marketing became evident in the Obama campaign. The chief
campaign manager for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign in the US, David Plouffe,
pointed out that the so-called grassroots focus is the key to success. ‘There is no more effective
courier for a message than people who believe in it and have authentically embraced it’
(Plouffe 2009: 379). The grassroots approach makes campaigners less like foot soldiers and more
like the passionate minutemen of the American Revolution because the campaign creates a user-
generated brand culture (Bryant 2008). This made it possible to connect with voters on a different
level. The internet has proven to be of great value here. The further development of political
marketing is reflected in the Open Government initiative:

On his first day in Office, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and
Open Government, ushering in a new era of open and accountable government meant to
bridge the gap between the American people and their government:

The Administration is reducing the influence of special interests by writing new ethics rules
that prevent lobbyists from coming to work in government or sitting on its advisory
boards.

The Administration is tracking how government uses the money with which the people
have entrusted it with easy-to-understand websites like recovery.gov, USASpending.gov,
and IT.usaspending.gov.

The Administration is empowering the public – through greater openness and new
technologies – to influence the decisions that affect their lives.
(White House Open Government Initiative no date)

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Government public opinion research

This initiative is predominantly implemented through the internet. One example is the
website Data.gov. Data.gov enables the public to participate in government and deliberate on
political issues by providing downloadable federal datasets to build applications, conduct analyses
and perform research. The site also allows the communication between citizens and administration.
‘The site will continue to improve based on feedback, comments, and recommendations from
the public and therefore we encourage individuals to suggest datasets they’d like to see, rate and
comment on current datasets, and suggest ways to improve the site’ (Data.gov no date). The
internet allows citizens to become active participants and opens the opportunity for a more
robust, sustainable level of involvement of citizens in the governance of their society (Benkler
2008: 53). The cost structure of the internet enables the creation of a deliberative arena through
political marketing. These arenas will be increasingly important because people always want
more things to decide. ‘For it’s clear we’re living in a new age, where millions of people can
participate directly in governance and policy making, not just in ratifying the results on Election
Day’ (Fine et al. 2008: 1).
One reason for Obama’s latest crisis can be seen in the fact that his government did not
succeed in the institutionalization of deliberative political marketing, which has led to the loss of
the communicative impetus that had accompanied his election campaign. What Obama’s case
shows is the necessity to employ deliberative marketing not only as a way to short-term success,
but as a philosophy in itself. The constituents know if they are dealing only with a simple
technique or with an authentic and credible philosophy. When used solely as a technique,
deliberative political marketing may evoke exaggerated expectations on the part of the constituents
and thus lead to a spiral of disappointment with the government.
In Europe there is a dawning realization that deliberative political marketing needs to
become an inherent part of European governance. In its White Paper on European Govern-
ance, the European Union (EU) Commission aims to help reinforce the culture of consultation
and dialogue in the EU. The democratic institutions and the representatives of the people, at
both national and European levels, must try to connect Europe with its citizens (Commission of
the European Communities 2001: 3).

The Commission believes that the processes of administration and policy-making must be
visible to the outside world if they are to be understood and have credibility. This is particularly
true of the consultation process, which acts as the primary interface with interests in society.
(Commission of the European Communities 2002: 17)

Extensive consultation should take place in all political arenas. In this context, good con-
sultation serves a dual purpose by helping to improve the quality of the policy outcome, while
at the same time increasing the involvement of interested parties and the public at large.
A further advantage is that transparent and coherent consultation processes run by the Com-
mission do not only allow the general public to be more involved, they also give the legislature
greater power to scrutinize the Commission’s activities (Commission of the European Com-
munities 2002). The intention of the so-called ‘European Citizens’ Initiative’ (ECI), enacted in
December 2010, is to push citizen involvement. A central element of the ECI is the political
and legal institutionalization of a new instrument of deliberative marketing, the opportunities
and benefits of which are known. That is, the public is mobilized while being well aware of the
fact that although the results are not binding, they will definitely help produce political pressure:

The ECI will introduce a whole new form of participatory democracy to the EU. It is a
major step forward in the democratic life of the Union. It’s a concrete example of bringing

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Mathias König and Wolfgang König

Europe closer to its citizens. And it will foster a cross border debate about what we are
doing in Brussels and thus contribute, we hope, to the development of a real European
public space …
(Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President for Inter-institutional Relations
and Administration)

Implementation of deliberation: examples of citizens’ juries

The precursor to the European Citizens’ Initiative was the European Citizens’ Consultations,
which represent the only EU-wide deliberation until the introduction of the ECI in 2012. The
first transnational, EU-wide citizens’ juries, namely the European Citizens’ Consultations, serve as
the first case study. These were established in order to increase the involvement of citizens after
the failed referenda on the EU Constitution, and at the same time to boost the support of the general
public for the EU project. The European Citizens’ Consultations have been awarded several PR prizes.
In the second case, a citizens’ jury (Planungszelle in German) is utilized in the framework of a
controversial communal and general administrative reform in Germany, in addition to two other
forms of deliberative communication. This had great impact on citizens. Figure 5.1 illustrates
the ‘change dynamics’ of the attitudes (beliefs) of the participants as assessed in the examined
procedure in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Figure 5.1 summarizes the results from six Planungszellen. It becomes clear that citizens’ beliefs
change through the procedure. They demand in particular the support of voluntary work by
citizens and gain trust in the political process of the reform. Transparency and knowledge

Figure 5.1 Changes in ratings of statements concerning reforms in the course of the planning
procedure (Planungszelle) (N=140)

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improve the most; from the viewpoint of political marketing this result should be interesting for
further research. Changes and possible mergers of cities and communities in the state (Land) of
Rhineland-Palatinate are the issue here. Such reforms have previously failed in other German
states because of poor political marketing, among other things. For the example of Rhineland-
Palatinate, its own extensive qualitative and quantitative data is available on the basis of which it
is possible to formulate conclusions concerning the success of deliberative political marketing
beyond the citizens’ jury. The main result is that in general as participation increases, so does the
satisfaction of the citizens. In any case, it is clear that in principle there is a need for reform.
Citizens who are in further participation in the Reform process show interest (Sarcinelli et al.
2009: 2).
A look at Japan shows that a citizens’ jury can also proceed bottom-up. In Japan, citizens
discuss with experts and representatives from the administration and policy, enforced by non-
governmental organizations. This shiminto-gikai1 promotes interest in the political process and
contributes to changes in Japanese public culture previously characterized by the rejection of
politics in Japan (Shinoto 2009: 18).
Due to their global utilization in the meantime, citizens’ juries are well suited to serve as an
empirical case (see Table 5.1). This empirical finding makes clear that the deliberative marketing
phenomenon should be explored from the perspective of governance theory.

Deliberative marketing and governance

Governance theory addresses the further development of political institutions, national-global
linkages and transnational public-private cooperation (Kooiman 2003: 5), and thus can be linked
to deliberative political marketing. Stoker notes how ‘theoretical work on governance reflects the
interest of the social science community in a shifting pattern in styles of governing’ (Stoker 1998: 17).
It is all about ‘new patterns of interaction’, that is, new ‘interactive’ forms of governance between
actors from government, society and economy to observe and explain. ‘These new patterns are
apparently aimed at discovering other ways of coping with new problems or of creating new
possibilities for governing’ (Kooiman 1994: 1). Governance is a theory about the changing ways
of governing, and governance is understood as an interaction of or with society. However, the
impact of change in the relationship of rulers to the ruled has not been adequately explored

Table 5.1 Deliberative political marketing and the citizens’ jury

USA EU Japan Rhineland-Palatinate

(Germany)

Name Citizens’ jury ‘European Citizens Shiminto-gikai Planungszelle

Consultation’
Organized by + - + +++
administration
Media campaign + +++ - +++
Organized by +++ +++ +++ +++
non-governmental
organizations
administration
Administrative input ++ + +++ +++
Problem formulation/ National, state Transnational Local State and local
Solution proposals and local

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Mathias König and Wolfgang König

Figure 5.2 Governance focused market-orientated party (MOP+G)

(Kooiman 1994: 249). Governance can explore how elites develop their own ideas and use
different instruments and measures to achieve their goals (Kooiman 2003: 10), and how new
methods and modes can create socio-political interaction including problem solving (Kooiman
2003: 133).
Governance can also be concerned with the citizen-state relationship and include both more
participation and ‘extra-formal democracy’ (Heinrich et al. 2010: 9). Communitarianism and
deliberative democracy are two accepted forms of democracy which try to create the smallest
possible decision arenas, as these have a low threshold to get citizens involved in decision-
making (Pierre and Peters 2000: 148). Citizens are no longer just taxpayers and consumers
of public services but participate in the production of public services and contribute to the
welfare of society (Bouckaert 1994: 157). It is about the joint development of solutions.
Dialogue involves communication, argumentation, deliberation, persuasion and choice
(Pekonen 1994: 217).
Thus, given the increased use of deliberative marketing, we can put forward a new theory
of ‘governance-oriented deliberative political marketing’. ‘Market-oriented party’ (MOP) can
adopt a governance perspective (MOP+G), with deliberative marketing playing a central
role. ‘Deliberative governance arenas’ allow institutional space for the deliberation process (see
Figure 5.2).
These deliberative governance arenas also allow the inclusion of different components of
knowledge. According to van Buuren, this increases the success of collaborative governance.
Fact-finding and framing are the essential ingredients (van Buuren 2009: 230–32).
However, each level of government will be different, of course. The following matrix
(see Table 5.2) illustrates the interrelated elements of different kinds of deliberative gover-
nance arenas and deliberative political marketing in the decision-making process. In an ideal
world, elites would choose the activities that that are most appropriate for the respective
partnership.

Advice for practitioners: success factors for deliberative

political marketing
The following steps represent the key factors in realizing deliberative political marketing:

The ability of deliberative governance

The first step is to check if there is something to decide and to deliberate. If not, then deliberative
political marketing is not helpful.
Designate the responsible leader: The second step is to identify and to name the leader or
leaders who are responsible for the deliberative marketing process. At this point it is necessary to
clarify the strategic significance of deliberative political marketing for the party.

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Table 5.2 Overview of different deliberative governance arenas in the context of the process of political decision-making

Deliberative political Variations of deliberative governance arenas in the context

marketing focus of the steps in the political decision making process

Agenda setting Drafting Decision Implementation Monitoring Reformulation

Partnership Work group or Co-drafting Joint decision- Strategic Work groups or Work groups or
committee making partnerships committee committee
Co-decision
making
Dialogue Hearings and Hearings and Q&A Open plenary Capacity building Work groups or Seminars and
public forums panels or committee seminars committee deliberative forums
Citizens’ forums Expert seminars sessions Training seminars
and future councils Multi-stakeholder
Key government committees and
contact advisory bodies
Consultation Petitioning Hearings and Q&A Open plenary Events, conferences, Feedback Conferences or
Consultation online panels or committee forums, seminars mechanisms meetings
or other techniques Expert seminars sessions Online consultation
Multi-stakeholder
committees and
advisory bodies
Information Easy and open Open and free access Campaigning Open access to Open access to Open access to
information access to policy documents and lobbying information information information
Research campaigning Website for key Website for Evidence gathering
and lobbying documents information access Evaluations
Website for Campaigns and E-mail alerts Research studies
key documents lobbying FAQ
Web casts Public tendering
Research input procedures
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Mathias König and Wolfgang König

Choose the right deliberative governance arena wisely: The third step is to identify the most
useful deliberative governance arena in the context of the decision-making process and the
strategic goals. The ‘Matrix of Civil Participation’ in Conference of INGOs of the Council of
Europe (2009: 17) is useful for this step.
Check the deliberative political marketing focus: The fourth step is to ensure that the chosen
deliberative governance arena is in line with the strategy of the party.
What happens with the results? The fifth step focuses on the output. In planning the deliberative
marketing strategy, it is essential to know which steps will be taken after the results of the delib-
eration have been obtained. This is also important for the people who deliberate because they
want to know if the time they are investing in a deliberative governance arena is worthwhile.
Design the deliberative marketing communication: The sixth step is to design and choose
marketing instruments that are useful for implementing the specific form of deliberative governance
by considering the outcomes and impacts.
Use the deliberative governance arena as a marketing event: The seventh step is to use the
communicative power of the deliberative governance arena. Voters and party members can be
mobilized to deliberate and find collaborative solutions which give new perspectives for political
solutions. This fact is particularly interesting for the media because new perspectives may collide
with established ways of thinking

Conflicting results
Challenge for leadership: Dealing with conflicting results is the greatest challenge for leadership in
deliberative political marketing. At this step the importance of step 2 becomes clear, because that
is where personal accountability and responsibility for ensuring and monitoring outcomes are
determined.

Communicate your decision

The final step is to communicate the decision wisely. This is one of the most challenging tasks in
deliberative political marketing. The decision (especially when there are conflicting results) must
be transparent and comprehensible, so the stakeholders can understand why the leader prefers a
different solution.
A lifecycle approach: Steps one to nine can be considered a lifecycle model when deliberative
political marketing is used continuously over time.

Deliberative political marketing: a governance philosophy

Under a holistic perspective, deliberative political marketing must be seen as a governance
philosophy for market-oriented parties, so that they will be able to handle the problem of
complexity.

Impact on politics: deliberative political marketing and leadership

The market-orientation model is a valuable heuristic guideline, but no party can be ‘truly’
market-oriented (Temple 2010: 274–75). The concept of market orientation is not just about
following the market demands, but using market intelligence (Lees-Marshment et al. 2010: 295).
Deliberative marketing, however, may make it work more effectively if it is integrated into a new

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Government public opinion research

leadership style whereby policy-makers or parties must align marketing intelligence with gov-
ernance. The consequence for political leaders or marketing managers is that they find themselves
in the middle of a new kind of strategic collaboration for which they need respective skills.
Collaboration-related competencies include the ability to work productively both within
and outside of hierarchy and to act deliberatively and strategically (Norris-Tirrell and Clay 2010a:
2–10). They also should attend carefully to the development of the collaboration’s structure,
focusing on the rules of deliberative governance and the political decision-making process
(Norris-Tirrell and Clay 2010b: 36). The existence of a champion or highly visible and well-
known leader or leadership group helps citizens to join or to engage in deliberative governance
arenas (Clay and Norris-Tirrell 2010: 64). Voters must trust governments to deal with the
unexpected as well as the expected, and a party or government will be more highly regarded
when it is seen as being responsive to public opinion. However, in the long term it is necessary to
develop leadership systems because leaders will someday leave the organization. Thus, operational
guidelines should encompass leadership development programs so that future leaders can
acquire experience in key roles before stepping up to higher positions (Norris-Tirrell and
Clay 2010c: 81). Consequently, deliberative political marketing needs to undergo a transfor-
mation from a mere idea to an entire philosophy. If deliberative political marketing is
accepted and applied within the federal institutional system, then it will become part of the
logic of the political culture. This will lead to a new form of trust in the citizen–leader
relationship.

The way forward

There is a growing awareness of the need for participation to be valued in democratic systems.
This has implications for policy-making and decision-making, in that participation and multi-
perspectives are the ingredients for a more informed debate over policy issues and the basis for the
analysis of policy options (White 2002: 158–59). Through deliberative governance arenas,
policy-makers get the whole system into one room which could result in creative solutions for a
particular issue that are quantitatively different from solutions found by a small group. The use of
such processes could activate citizens and strengthen their faith in democratic processes. The
following practical criteria must be considered on a permanent basis:

 Reasonable time frame: This is necessary in order to increase the willingness of the individual
to invest time in common interests.
 Partnership: Cooperation with the participants on a level playing field.
 Intrinsic motivation: Ensuring that participants motivate themselves.
 Personal interest/self-interest: The topic must interest the citizen and appear meaningful.
 Plausibility: Easy comprehensibility of the processes from the beginning until the end.
 Integrative aspects: Integration of diversity to make use of its potentials.

Exactly to attain these quality criteria, deliberative marketing analyses are necessary. The next
steps in research are to learn about how to work with large groups in deliberative governance
arenas and apply the results in order to optimize deliberative marketing, because constant
combining and adapting will be necessary to produce the most powerful dynamic of methods of
deliberative governance arenas (Carson and Hartz-Karp 2005: 135) and deliberative political
marketing. The challenge is to build decision-making processes in which participatory action is
possible with a fully engaged leadership or leadership group that accurately reflects the diverse
views and values and can still make effective decisions (Murell 2000: 811–12).

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Mathias König and Wolfgang König

Note
1 The concept consists of shimin (citizen), to-gi (discourse) and kai (discussion).

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6
Co-creating the future
Roy Langmaid

The topic: co-creation as a market research tool

Market research is a crucial part of political marketing, but is commonly thought of in terms of
standard tools such as polls and focus groups. This chapter explores a more innovative method,
co-creation, which uses a range of techniques that involve the user, or voter, in creating the
solution to the problem, rather than simply voicing their demands and issues. This is more
realistic because so many of our desires emerge and take shape as we become more fully aware of
both external circumstances and inner motives.
Standard market research draws on the human potential movement in psychology in sup-
porting the idea that rather than controlling the vicissitudes of desire, we should instead cele-
brate them and through goods and services find ways to indulge them. Politics, albeit possibly
without realising it, adopted this idea of a voter as an individual customer who may exchange
his vote and his taxes for the rewards of the goods and services that he covets rather than a
citizen who votes out of duty and obligation or to maintain the status quo. Correspondingly
political parties began to be referred to as brands (the Tory brand, the New Labour brand) and
marketed in similar fashion.
Focus groups in particular had proved extremely successful in the sphere of commercial
marketing – particularly in uncovering unmet needs and pathways to their fulfilment. This
chapter criticises focus groups and puts forward an alternative method which addresses many of
the weaknesses of market research in politics: co-creation. Co-creation takes more time to
explore an issue and uses more creative and effective methods. It holds the potential to provide
higher-quality information which will be more valuable to politicians and thus offers a new
direction in market intelligence that political marketing needs to embrace.

Previous research on co-creation

Political marketing has not discussed co-creation, with debate focusing on focus groups (see
Savigny 2007, 2008; Wring 2007) and polling. The rare exception is Scammell (2008), who
wrote about the work of Promise in using methods such as role-play to create a reconnection
strategy for Tony Blair towards the end of his office. This chapter puts forward an original

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Roy Langmaid

perspective, drawing on practitioner experience in both business and politics to explain the
technique of co-creation. There are now several books that discuss relevant topics such as
creativity, collaborative creativity and crowd sourcing (see Csikszentmihalyi 1996, Amabile 1996
and Sternberg 1999 on creativity; and Langmaid and Andrews 2003, Johansson 2004, Shirky
2008, Putnam et al. 2003, Howe 2008, Earls 2009, Leadbeater 2008, Surowiecki 2004 and
Sawyer 2007 on collaborative creativity). This work is not to be confused with deliberative
inquiry, which shares some of the elements of co-creation but lacks the core component – the
creation of a micro-culture that allows for free expression of vulnerability, together with hidden,
selfish or aggressive desires. The next section will explain the background to co-creation, the
concept and methods, and illustrate it using the example of the work done for Tony Blair when
he was the British prime minister.

The road to co-creation: realising the limitations of the focus group

The personal experience of more than 2,000 focus groups had pointed to some major problems
with the method. The key insight was not that focus groups are not useful – for many things they
are – but that in an era when diversity, modernity, competition for resources and the impact of
globalisation and mediated communication were mushrooming, you could no longer rely on this
kind of ‘small talk’ setting to generate any level of authenticity, depth of contact or reflexivity
within the group. Reflexivity – or self-awareness – has become an increasingly important aspect
of modern identities in that these are not derived solely from the traditions of parents or the
indigenous culture.
Co-creation moves beyond the focus group and uses a more creative reflective and produc-
tive methodology that aims to reduce many of the weaknesses in the focus group method. If we
summarise those now, they are:

 Time: the standard focus group has eight participants and lasts for 90 minutes. Without
pauses, given a perfectly efficient Q&A and counting the facilitator or moderator as a ninth
member, that gives 10 minutes to each person. What kind of depth can you expect in these
circumstances?
 The size of the problem: if the issue under discussion is which of three opening mechanisms
you might prefer for a new sauce bottle, 10 minutes is adequate, even luxurious. However,
if you are gathered to talk about your life, your family, education, welfare, the evolution of
our society or almost any topic that is complex, how can 10 minutes give you anything but
a superficial exploration?
 The nature of the invitation: most focus groups are recruited anonymously with no prior
information on the topic or the structure of the group. People show up without any prior
contemplation.
 Group dynamics: most people in the group have this one, main, question in their heads
through which all of their answers are filtered: ‘What will they think of me if I say that?’
There are lots of minor variations here: someone who hasn’t spoken for 10 minutes will
be driven to speak because, ‘If I don’t say something everyone will think I’m dumb.’

In other words, all the participants are reacting to prompts from their inner voices based on
past experiences in groups. The distortion of this kind of influence was illustrated by Irving Janis
in his book Groupthink. Here he describes how even the most intelligent and informed people
rush to consensus and form conclusions based on little evidence to avoid tensions between each
other.

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 Their relationship with the topic: people must have an opportunity to express what is on
their minds, what their concerns are, if they are to take your topic seriously.
 Reduced autonomy and creative freedom: focus groups are run to an agenda that is not
shared with participants. In our experience these agendas are increasingly long and full of
detail. This immediately creates a dependent mindset where the group takes direction from
the moderator. This in turn increases conformity.
 Mixed messages and confusion: in the hurry to get through the agenda it is impossible to
know whether people are talking about the same thing in the same time frame or not.
 The embodiment problem: we live in our bodies and our feelings are first realised physically.
Yet focus groups do not allow physical movement, or the cathexis of emotion and expressive
responses.

So, if focus groups have so many limitations, what can take their place?

The road to co-creation: Big Talk

Big Talk was the name coined to distinguish the first co-creation process from the self-centred
small talk that dominated focus groups. Big Talk had several important differences from focus
groups, namely:

 It featured large groups (15–100 participants) of people talking together both in plenary and
smaller sessions.
 It took place on two consecutive days, running for up to eight hours each day.
 It focused on an inspiring or salient topic in human affairs.
 It had as little power structure or fixed structure as was reasonably necessary to move a large
group forward in a collaborative manner.
 It comprised more than just customers or citizens. Commercial, institutional or political
people were there, staff of corporations or public services were invited, as were experts,
specialists and any other instrumental or influential parties.
 All participants were invited to take the role of members of a society or neighbours in a city
or country from which to discuss the topic – from personal, not professional perspectives.

This prototype co-creation process was designed to avoid many of the pitfalls and
inadequacies of focus groups.

Co-creation: early definitions

This is the first definition of co-creation that emerged in those early days:

Co-creation is a methodology that involves both the producer and the customer who,
together, create and build solutions, products and services that truly meet the evolving
needs of all parties. In essence co-creation places the customer alongside the producer at
the center of business decision making.
(Langmaid and Forsythe 2003)

Initially the tools of pragmatism and empiricism were used to develop this work in an impro-
visational fashion. As it progressed, a key principle underlying this approach became clear:
‘Relationships are the source of results – more than what you know!’

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In many ways this is just the good old-fashioned notion that building trust, empathy and
shared values and experience is a good foundation for openness, trust and collaboration.
Underlying this principle is our observation that humans in groups are torn by the desire both
to be separate and individual and to join together for a bigger sense of connection and comfort.
It was a key feature of our co-creation work, right from the start, that conflicting desires were
allowed legitimate expression and that time and facilitation was devoted to working through
these to find a higher solution.
What kind of relationships are most helpful in co-creation? There were four main types of
relationships, first distinguished by my fellow co-creator, Mac Andrews, illustrated in
Figure 6.1.
Most activities in the workplace or among strangers are carried out at levels one and two, the
Professional and the Public. Yet the practice of co-creation has taught that a group that can
move fluently between all four levels is easily the most productive creatively. It became
important to develop tools and techniques to help facilitate such mobility.

Co-creation: the essential process

It’s difficult to convey a meaningful impression of a group of 60 or so people working together
over two days. To help get a sense of what a co-creation or Big Talk process is like, here is an
outline of the process: the key steps.

 Invitation and enrolment

 Creating relationship
 Creating safety and warm-ups
 Creating permission
 Completing the past
 Creativity on the topic – exercises, techniques, demonstrations, practice

Figure 6.1 The four primary levels of relationships

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 Celebrating accomplishment – the power of completion and reward

 Building and structuring the creativity
 From creativity to action (planning)
 Enrolling the community (or the organisation)

The role taken by the author in co-creation has been primarily as designer and facilitator.
Now, with more than 100 live co-creation projects completed, both big and small, on com-
mercial and social topics, it is easier to create a list of the steps followed in these projects. The
way these steps emerged was empirical: things were tried, what worked was kept and what did
not was discarded or amended.

Creative techniques
Whenever I talk of co-creation anywhere people are fascinated by the creative techniques. Figure
6.2 presents some of them.
Whichever techniques are used, it is important to maintain a playful non-judgmental atmo-
sphere in the room and to celebrate and acknowledge accomplishment regularly. At least every
two hours creative teams should come together to share their emerging ideas so that everyone
can both applaud them and build on them. The more energy and goodwill is put into building
this creative culture, the more it will flourish. This encouragement is lacking in the outside
world and people are accustomed to becoming quickly discouraged, giving up and calling
themselves and their ideas ‘rubbish’.

Figure 6.2 Creative techniques

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Co-creation in politics: the Blair project

In February 2005 we were invited by a group of people including Philip Gould, Alan Milburn
and Alastair Campbell to run a diagnostic process using co-creative techniques to understand and
repair the disconnection between the UK electorate and Prime Minister Blair.
It was Nicky Forsythe, another co-creator, who came up with the idea of using ‘two chair
work’ as a means of exploring in an open research session the underlying feelings about Blair
and what, if anything, could be done to repair his relationships with key groups of the electo-
rate. In the crucial session we were working with female ‘undecideds’ – women between 35
and 50 who had voted New Labour in the 2001 election but were not reconsidering and were,
at present, undecided.
The interesting feature of ‘two chair work’ is that it brings a surprisingly real representation of
an absent person into the room and allows individuals and the whole group to work with that
person in a creative way. To start with, a volunteer is chosen to be the main protagonist in the
experiment. Next, two chairs are set facing each other about four feet apart. The volunteer is
asked to sit in one chair, away from the other participants, and to close her eyes and imagine
that Tony Blair is sitting in the chair opposite. Next the volunteer is asked to fully experience
her feelings and what she would like to say to Blair, sitting in front of her. Then, opening her
eyes, she is invited to say what came to mind in the genuine and appropriate tone (i.e. with
feeling) to the chair opposite. What came out took us all by surprise:

I loved you and thought you were one of us. A people person. Yet you were more
interested in sucking up to people more famous than yourself. To do that you even put
our boys’ lives at risk in Iraq even though more than a million people had marched against
that war. Why didn’t you listen? Why are you spending so much time away from us? Why
didn’t you come home straight away after the Tsunami? How could you stay on holiday
when our people were dying?

The speaker finished to cheers from the group. Next Nicky asked her to move over to
Mr Blair’s chair and speak as him: how would he answer? What would he say? She was given
time to practise his posture, gestures, tone of voice and expressions with help from the group.
Then she started:

I’m afraid you’ve only got part of the picture. From where I sit the war in Iraq was crucial
to the cause of world peace. But I understand that it’s difficult to see the whole thing for
you [boos from the group!]. You put me in charge and I must do what I think to be the
right thing. I am sure that history will prove us right in the end.

Next Nicky solicited reactions from the volunteer and the whole group. Everyone felt that
the volunteer had provided an accurate representation of her own feelings and Blair’s likely
response – and that they were dissatisfied with that. Then Nicky asked the volunteer to go back
to her chair and speak again as Mr Blair, who this time was saying what she really needed to
hear: this is what emerged:

I understand your feelings and realize there are many who do not agree with me over Iraq.
I realized this as I listened to more and more people over the past months. I still believe
that on balance we did the right thing, though I have been shocked to appreciate the depth
of frustration among those who disagree. I solemnly promise to spend more time at home

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in contact with our own people and to debate these issues more seriously before we launch
on such an endeavour again.

In many ways the difference between the two Blair responses is not huge, but the first is
patronizing and justificatory while the second remains open to the expression of disagreement
and other points of view. In the view of the women this was crucial: they felt heard by the
second Blair, not by the first.
In other words, a reparative response which owned the fact that there had been a breakdown
in both relationships and agreements and that Blair was committed to repairing and attending to
that relationship was needed to reconnect the prime minister. This reflection and commitment
became the basis of his speech at the Sage Centre in Gateshead on 13 February 2005, and was
reported on the BBC with the words:

Well, if a romantic weekend in Gateshead – at the classiest venue in town – can’t fix a

troubled marriage, what can? And, as Tony Blair acknowledged on Sunday in his closing
speech at Labour’s spring conference, he has plenty of fixing to do.
(Wheeler 2005)

The very next day on the front page of the Sun newspaper (which has 8 million primary and
secondary readers), a St Valentine’s Day card with a heart with the following words emblazoned
on it read: ‘You think I’m not listening. I think you’re not hearing. You raise your voice, I raise
mine and some of you throw a bit of crockery’. Slightly less flippantly below, the writer kicked
off with:

Tony Blair last night made a Valentine Day’s plea to Britain to fall in love with him again.
Blair admits that his journey has taken him from being ‘all things to all people’ to ‘I know
I’m right’ and that he has now arrived at ‘we can only do this together’.
(The Sun, 14 February 2005)

As ever a consummate communicator, Blair was able to appreciate the distance that needed
closing between him and frustrated and disappointed female voters – and to offer an olive
branch along the road to reparation. In the seven weeks remaining until polling day on 5 May,
the support among females intending to vote Labour increased by four full percentage points.
At the core of this example is the idea of working with people and taking on board their
concerns rather than on them by deciding what would be best for them and announcing it. This
is the crucial distinction that underpins co-creation and offers supreme value to politicians
who must inevitably negotiate choppy seas, divided opinions, frustrated voters and disaffected
supporters.

Advice for practitioners

To explain what works, this section will propose a political example and the practical steps in
how to do co-creation.

Invitation and enrolment

What idea would most excite you to come and share your views and ideas? How about this:
‘Come and help us build the future for a better Britain. For the first time, ordinary people, who

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belong to no interest or power group and who represent our diverse and multi-cultural society,
are gathering together for two days to co-create a design for a better future.’
Or this: ‘They say that a Big Society is the answer; that we need to come together and take
responsibility for making things better. This is an opportunity to form a prototype of that Big
Society with 50 others drawn from all classes, races, geographies and cultures. For two days we
will co-create a Better Britain together. Will you come and take part?’

Enrolment and attendance

However exciting or promising the invitation sounds, there will be doubts and hesitation among
those to whom it is issued. Even before this point there is the problem of who should be invited.
So, we face the issues of who to invite and how to encourage their attendance.
There are a few important considerations from our experience of co-creation projects here:

 The more naïve the group, the richer the co-creation will be.
 Two days is a lot of time to give up in modern life; you may have to start with one-day
events and introductory evenings to whet appetites and dispel doubts and concerns about
selling and manipulation.
 Experts should be in the minority. They should not have any more power in their opinions
than anyone else.
 We need to consider the question of incentives. In commercial projects we pay cash to
ensure attendance. In political or business forums, the advantages of networking or the
proximity to power are often incentives to attend. It is necessary to avoid engaging only
those with interest in power or lobbying. We need naïve members of the public to ensure
authenticity.
 Experience has shown that cash is the cleanest incentive. Everyone gets the same, and it can
be presented as an honorarium to cover expenses, which to some considerable extent it is. It
is also more generally acceptable to naïve attendees and these are crucial to success.
 Co-creation, like any form of creativity, is meaningless unless the results find an audience.
As the well-known writer on creativity Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi points out:

Originality, freshness of perceptions, divergent-thinking ability are all well-known and

good in their own right, as desirable personal traits. But without some form of public
recognition they do not constitute creativity … Therefore it follows that what we call
creativity is a phenomenon that is constructed through an interaction between producer
and audience. Creativity is not the product of single individuals but of social systems
making judgments about individuals’ products.
(Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi 1996: 314)

 Thus it is vital to give participants a clear understanding of how and via what process their
ideas might see the light of day or be input into further development. The tendency of
politicians only to attend to people and their needs while seeking their votes is well known.
All are sceptical of politicians’ ability to keep them in mind once in power. Co-creation can
help to close this gap.
 As far as possible everyone should speak from ‘I’. It is their personal speaking that we need,
not their ability to quote from learned texts or statistics.
 Everyone in the room has something in common – they live in the society that we are
trying to improve. They all have both personal and social needs. These are often in conflict

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and this must be introduced early. People have already devised ways of working through
these conflicts: what are the techniques already available in the room?

The next part of enrolment is setting the scene. This is the first session of the co-creation
workshop itself. Usually this is done in a theatre-style layout with curved rather than straight
rows of chairs. We are trying not to look too regimented in approach.
Once everyone is seated a facilitator introduces the session by welcoming everyone. Next,
people are reminded of the purpose of gathering here in the form of the objectives of the
session and told a little about how they will work together.
The main forms of engagement will be:

Plenary sessions
These will tend to begin and end each topic and the workshop overall. In these we will get
together as we are now as a large group and people will be invited to describe anything that has
had an impact on them in their experience and to reflect upon insights, discoveries or puzzles.
These sessions will not be debates; we will take it in turn to offer our perspectives if we have
something we wish to make public.

Individual work
We may ask you to venture on your own into an exploration. We might ask you to go out into
the locality with a topic in mind and notice what you see that throws light or perspective on that
topic. We might ask you to draw or compose something that expresses a subject. We might do a
creative visualisation.

Group work
This will happen in twos, fours, eights or any other appropriate size of groupings for the task at
hand.

Large group work

We may create tribes or teams to look at diversity or conflict or competition for resources or
ascendancy.
Whatever the style of work we will feedback to the whole workshop so that we all learn
together and have the advantage of each other’s progress or the benefit of knowing that we are
not alone with a knotty problem. The essential fact here is that all knowledge quickly becomes
the resource for the entire group.

Creating relationships
Our thesis is that people do not or cannot bring all of themselves to a creative process because
fundamentally they are torn by conflicting desires and do not wish this turmoil to be seen by
others. Not only are they worried that others might see it, but we all find it makes us self-
conscious while we are speaking from one side of ourselves whilst denying the other. In these
circumstances it often seems best to toe the line or say little.

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Figure 6.3 Creating relationships

Figure 6.3 shows the process that we developed in our past co-creation programmes. A
good idea is to use flip charts once foursomes have been formed so that people can note their
discoveries as they go round the group. The purposes of this session are fourfold:

 We immerse people quite quickly in engaging with the selfish and social sides of their
natures through participation with everyone else. All are in the same boat. At the same time
the exercises are short and simple. You only have to speak and listen for a little while.
 We subtly train people to listen and report accurately on what others are saying. Taking
responsibility for introducing your partner in his/her presence ensures that people are doing
that. In the instructions each group member is encouraged to correct mistaken details in
their partner’s description of them.
 The idea of splits and divisions as a normal part of living is created in the room and nor-
malised. Everyone has these parts. We don’t need to spend the rest of the session pretending
we are straightforward, nice or tough people.
 The groups work together to examine the consequences of these splits and the workarounds
that individuals have constructed to help to manage them.

Having fun with our different sides

Now it’s time to play with these sides and allow them to express themselves creatively.
Here is a typical exercise that we might use to embody these distinctions and let people practise
them:
In groups of eight, your task is to invent a game that has never been played before, that you
can demonstrate to us in five minutes. Your game must include an instrumental role for both
the selfish side and the social sides of us. In other words you must have to use both to win. The
game must have a name and you have 15 minutes to do it.

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The purpose here is to give the group both instant practice and a successful experience of
co-creating from an open brief in a very short time.

Creating safety and permission

Usually the task of creating permission – in other words of expanding the social and personal
possibilities for people within this group – is accomplished by these opening procedures. If not,
there are a variety of things you can do to expand permissions.
Safety is another matter. We’re not talking about physical safety here; the sense of safety with
which we are concerned is fairness – that everyone has the opportunity to make their
contribution without being bullied, put down or scorned by others.

Completing the past

Most of us simply do not realise day to day the influence that the past has on the future. This
influence is so great that much of the future is already written – it is waiting to happen based
usually on what happened in the past. The efficiencies of habit, adaptation and routine make it so.
We are prone to doing it the way we did it last time. It is like the drift or current of a great river
running through our lives that we cannot see if we look only at the smooth surface of the water.
Unless we take into account the effects and strength of the current we cannot hope to get free of
it. We must distinguish its nature and force for co-creation to be able to step outside of it.
Let’s imagine that our workshop is tasked with the development of a useable, affordable,
high-quality co-creation programme for the electorate and politicians to engage together
in designing policy and practice. In such an event a suitable topic for completing the past
might be:
Let’s imagine that this workshop never happened and that things carried on pretty much as
they are today. Let’s think about the future, say two years from today. What will have hap-
pened? How will the relationship between the general public and politics be two years from
now? What will people be saying? What will be the story of the day in the news? What will
have changed?
If you have time, project a little further forward to the next election. How will that be? Use
the same sort of framework: i.e. ‘If we carry on as we always have, change nothing, what will
be the main themes and emotional climate of the election, five years from now?’
This exercise is best done in groups of not more than eight. Ask each group to use a flip
chart to list the features of the outcome they predict based on the past. Once the exercise is
complete, each group has a couple of minutes to feedback its findings to the whole room.

Creating a clearing
The essence of the clearing created by completing the past is simple. Once the feedback has
happened, everyone is no longer standing in the flow, or floating in the river to maintain the
metaphor, but is standing on the bank, outside of the water. The minute a mindset or ‘groupthink’
loses its grip then it is possible to create something new. Now, before the current re-asserts its
grip, we must put some new information into the room and launch a creative session. One of the
central struggles for politics is that people are so cynical and sceptical about politicians and their
self-serving agendas that it is vital to complete the past to create any new possibilities in this arena.
We don’t need to look too far for this new information. We already have some from the
creating relationships exercise.

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Creativity on the topic

Setting a creative brief

In co-creation projects the brief is always set in collaboration with the sponsor of the project.
We have imagined our brief as we would wish it to be and in so doing mention some of the
problems we find in live briefs. In our theoretical co-creation session, the group has learned that
our natures contain fundamental conflicts. The creative task here is: to find a way of doing
politics, making choices and decisions, that takes account of these conflicts, includes and manages
them. Managing conflicts and finding workarounds is such a part of everyday life that we must
include it in our co-creation processes if we are to reflect reality.

Structuring creativity
After several hours, usually working in teams of up to 10 individuals, you will have a room
packed with ideas. The first thing to do is to have a feedback session where all of the ideas are
shared with the whole group and made available for everyone to build with/work up. Then, after
a break to let the energy settle, it is time to build the ideas into a complete manifesto.
Ideas occur at different levels. There are ideas that are visionary, that seek to change the
world, others that are about process, doing things differently to make things better, others that
are about product features or details, small improvements that can make a big difference, like
say the courtesy light that stays on for 15 seconds when you close the car door or being able to
renew licences online. Even more detailed are ideas to do with guarantees/promises that affect
delivery and what people can count on in this respect. In other words there is a wealth of ideas
and a series of different domains or levels of human activity where they may have an effect.
We noticed that these levels are not completely discrete; they are and must be allowed to be
interlocking, much as a political manifesto needs to cover the main domains of society’s activ-
ities and concerns. This interlocking hierarchy is what came to be called the Total Commu-
nications Technology. A series of five interlocking levels of expression for an idea that

Table 6.1 The different levels of ideas

Level Desired effect Example

Vision Inspiration ‘A world where no-one goes to bed

hungry’
Stand To call to others, rally support ‘I will not eat or drink until the fighting
(commitment) stops’
[Mahatma Gandhi]
Proposition To enrol customers, stakeholders, funders ‘If you can find a better offer we’ll give
you your money back’
Menu To excite prospective customers and allow A list of services and ingredients like a
them to see what they will get menu in a restaurant – each with
some well-crafted description to
attract interest and desire
Delivery To show that you aim to deliver, and how A timetable, coupled with a
commitment to measurable results
and budgets – and including a review
process

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permitted the proponent of the idea to talk about it, both to a front-line worker operating at
the level of transactions or to a CEO who wished to impress the City with his vision for the
future.
In any project or set of ideas these were the crucial elements that needed to be present to
assure both communicability and capability. If an idea cannot inspire, enrol and propose well, it
is unlikely to excite and sustain interest. If an idea cannot be viewed as a menu of things that
can be delivered according to a plan, it is unlikely ever to happen.
We all understand these levels and the distinctions contained within them, but each of us is
practised in some and less skilful at others. That is why so many ideas do not see the light of
day, or get distorted and diminished between insight and implementation. The well-known
Belbin typology used in business acknowledges that any team that wishes to make things
happen needs to feature people skilled in different elements of the process.
To illustrate their qualities and their commonplace occurrence in everyday life, there is a set
of film clips available online that shows each of the levels in action (see www.langmaidpractice.
com and links to VSPMD movies). This is helpful because many people react to this matrix as if
it is unnatural, complicated and difficult to use, without realising that they use it every day: they
just have not put it all together!
After the creativity sessions, it is crucial that the co-creators work in new teams to select the
ideas they are most inspired by and subject them to formulation in this or a similar matrix. As well
as fleshing out the complete hierarchy from inspiration to delivery, this formulation process will
also encourage condensation of the ideas into words and phrases that can be said in a moment.

From creativity to action (planning)

Many people do not have much commitment to detailed planning. This is especially noticeable
in a group that has spent a number of hours building relationships in order to create together.
Planning – and indeed to some extent building the VSPMD matrix above – requires convergent
energy rather than the divergent energy of creativity, together with a high degree of
condensation of the sort in which copy writers and editors are skilled.
Because of this, we usually recommend another day for planning, some 7–10 days after the
creative work. In this detailed session, plans and projects are designed that answer the questions,
‘what’, ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘how much’?

Enrolling the community: the listening programme

One of the most powerful elements of co-creation and its process is the amount of time and value
given to the activity of listening. The listening programme described below can be rolled out as
far as is necessary. It is very hard for people to sustain objections in the face of a better argument if
their opinions have been heard. Here, the co-creators seek out those with strong opinions and
vested interests within the domain of work, be it health, education or social care, and arrange to
listen to 20 or so prominent figures from the relevant domain. These interviews should be
recorded so that content analysis can point out synergies between these views and the co-creation
and highlight differences that need to be resolved or aligned. It is important that those selected to
be listened to are given a similar brief to those who participated in the co-creation sessions – so
that they focus on the same sorts of big questions and also bring their experiences and preferences
to bear on providing some detailed ideas and answers.
It is extraordinary the degree of correspondence and agreement that emerges between the
pure co-created ideas and those of experts and pundits in the field of inquiry. In many ways we

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all want the same things but are reluctant to share our viewpoints for fear of ridicule. We have,
after all, created an oppositional system where power and incumbency rather than ‘the force of
the better argument’ (Habermas) hold sway.
Once the results of co-creation are completed, after the listening programme it is time to
write up the findings in the form of a description, analysis and recommendations for the vision,
commitments and menu of possibilities for the project.

The impact on politics

Co-creation, conducted and revisited regularly, provides an ideal tool for keeping up to date with
the preoccupations, concerns and needs of the electorate and a means of fostering genuine
engagement and input into policy and politics. Co-creation is not just about using a more
innovative market research method. It holds the potential to change the relationship between
government and the people. Its central idea is to work with people rather than on them to find
solutions. This kind of collaborative activity is the future. Just look at the rise in academic papers
mentioning co-creation on Google since 1990, illustrated in Figure 6.4.
I am grateful to my friend and colleague, Dr Nick Coates, for this piece of analysis.
The collaborative spirit of co-creation is reinforced by allowing time for possibilities to
emerge and evolve rather than reacting to a pre-prepared set of ‘options’ as is so often the
case in standard research methods – even if they do include the minister’s favourite!
Time and again our work has shown that if such a favourite is a great idea it will emerge from
the group.
When you consider that any new administration is full of elected representatives who may
never have run a large department, let alone a country, who have only a partial picture of the
vested interests of different elements of the community and have not considered how the

Figure 6.4 Co-creation articles in Google Scholar 1991–2009

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Co-creating the future

political consequences of decisions might play out on the larger stage, it is only too obvious a
methodology to bring light where currently there is ignorance and at the same time to allow
experience to the inexperienced. Above all, it is a forum where creativity and innovation can
shine and politicians can get a real sense of the winds of opinion, desires and fears blowing
through their communities. It is also a place to witness the conflict between expert and lay
opinion that underlies so many policy issues in modern societies.
Not only does it move away from the idea that elites know best, but it moves beyond the
idea that politicians find out what people want and then develop a product to give it to them.
Instead, politicians and public are both creators of the solution. If adopted more widely in
politics, it could potentially transform citizen–state relationships and increase trust in politicians,
as they will be no longer expected to find the answer to everything.

The way forward

One of the laments of the political classes is that the electorate is detached or dissociated from
politics. That is largely because politics seems to take place at such a distance and uses a discourse
(‘the Right Honourable Member …’) that is incomprehensible to most of us. Co-creation offers
a practical, even inspirational means of solving this problem. Policy-making, fact-finding, conflict
resolution, allocating priorities can all be done together.
Political marketing needs to conduct further research into the use of more innovative research
tools, especially co-creation, and be open to new forms and approaches beyond the simple focus
group or poll. Politicians and governments should consider using processes that are co-creative,
as it would help them to develop more positive long-term relationships with their public as well
as better policies.

Bibliography
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Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing

Jennifer Lees-Marshment

Political party market orientation in a global perspective

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Product development, branding

and strategy
Part II
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7
Political party market orientation in
a global perspective
Jesper Strömbäck, Jennifer Lees-Marshment and Chris Rudd

The topic: global political market orientation

Political party market orientation is about how parties behave in response to the electorate; it is a
way of thinking. Whilst all parties might use different marketing techniques such as polling and
focus groups, voter segmentation, direct mail, telemarketing, sophisticated voter databases and
opposition research, what is important is the way they use these, and the influence this has on the
way they create their political product and communicate. Parties may fall into one of three
orientations and be product-oriented, sales-oriented or market-oriented (Lees-Marshment 2001;
see also Newman 1994; Ormrod 2009 for further discussion of a market orientation). These
concepts suggest that some parties use marketing techniques to sell themselves and their policies,
and that some also use marketing to decide what to offer the public in the first place – what
policies to adopt, which leaders to select to best present those policies, and how to best com-
municate policy delivery. It is distinct from other campaign or media management because of the
potential influence of marketing tools on the communication and the political ‘product’. The
defining characteristics of these orientations are summarized in Table 7.1 (see Lees-Marshment
2001; Lees-Marshment 2010a; Strömbäck 2007a; Strömbäck 2010a).
Such behavior has developed in response to changes in voting behavior and communication
whereby in many, albeit not all, countries party identification has declined; voters switch parties
more often than they used to and decide later what party to vote for; political distrust
has increased; political parties have lost members (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000); and media
environments have become more competitive and commercial (Hamilton 2004). Political com-
munication and campaign studies show how political parties worldwide have increased their
efforts to professionalize their campaign strategies and tactics. This chapter seeks to explore the
extent to which political party market orientation has also gone global, by presenting a sum-
mary of results from new research in Global Political Marketing (Lees-Marshment et al. 2010)
which conducted a comparative analysis of party behavior, and examining the extent to which
variation in party behavior is due to a wide range of systemic differences (such as the electoral
and party system).

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Jesper Strömbäck et al.

Table 7.1 Defining characteristics of product-, sales- and market-oriented parties

Product-oriented party Sales-oriented party Market-oriented party

Defining Argues for its own Believes in its own ideas and Uses market intelligence to
characteristic ideas and policies; policies, but realizes that they identify voter needs and
assumes that voters must be ‘sold’ to the public; demands, and design its policies,
will realize that its does not change its behavior candidates and behavior to
ideas are the best and or policies to give people what provide voter satisfaction; does
therefore vote for it. they want, but tries to make not try to change what people
people want what the party want, but give people what they
offers. want.
If the party Believes that the Tries to make better use of Uses market intelligence to
does not voters just do not market intelligence and re-design the product so that it
succeed in realize that the party’s persuasion techniques, i.e., becomes better suited to the
elections policies are the best become more professionalized wants and needs of targeted
ones; refuses to in its campaigning. people.
change policies.

Previous research on global political market orientation

Whilst the spread of professionalization and modernization in campaigning has been studied
extensively (Farrell and Webb 2000; Norris 2000; Plasser and Plasser 2002), there has never been
a systematic and scientific comparative analysis of political marketing behavior in the sales- and
market-oriented sense. Previous research (Lees-Marshment 2001; Lilleker and Lees-Marshment
2005) suggested that parties may be moving towards the market-oriented party model to achieve
electoral success, but that this could be influenced by systemic factors such as party and electoral
system. It was, however, not clear how. The interest in this at a comparative global level was
aided by several well-known world examples of marketing the product, with the most famous
being the transfer and adaptation of the product used by Bill Clinton’s New Democrats in 1992
to Tony Blair’s New Labour in the UK in 1997, to the German SPD and Labour in New
Zealand in 1999. These examples illustrate the use of targeting on new markets and represented a
move away from selling ideologically driven policy to using a voter-responsive strategy. More
recent additions increased such interest: for example, in 2007 Australian Labor leader Kevin
Rudd’s successful campaign was likened to Tony Blair’s.
On the surface, parties seemed to be moving universally towards market-oriented strategies
where political marketing is employed before the electoral campaign. However, the cumulativity
of research on political marketing from a comparative perspective has been limited. One reason
is that most studies are single-country studies. A second reason is that many studies focus on only
a limited number of parties within the chosen country, typically the largest or the most suc-
cessful parties. A third reason is that most studies are British or American in their origins, which
limits the generalizability of the results. We thus wanted to produce a broader study. Whilst
there are other models of market-orientation (e.g. O’Cass 1996; Newman 1994; Lees-Marshment
2001; Ormrod 2009), as we were not focusing on just this form of orientation we decided
to use the Lees-Marshment (2001) framework for a global, more comprehensive project. We
also needed to find a way to examine the impact of systemic features on party behavior in order to
explore not just the extent to which parties have become increasingly market oriented, but also why.
This new project therefore sought to address this first by conducting carefully selected case
studies including 14 countries, and more specifically Australia (Hughes and Dann 2010), the

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Political party market orientation

Czech Republic (Matuskova et al. 2010), Germany (Maier et al. 2010), Ghana (Mensah 2010),
Greece (Kotzaivazoglou and Zotos 2010), Hungary (Kiss and Mihályffy 2010), Japan
(Asano and Wakefield 2010), New Zealand (Lees-Marshment 2010b), Peru (Galindo 2010),
Russia (Hutcheson 2010), Sweden (Strömbäck 2010b), Taiwan (Fell and Cheng 2010), the UK
(Lees-Marshment and Pettitt 2010), and the US (Knuckey 2010). Second, the analysis applied a
framework for comparing political market-orientation, developed by Strömbäck (2010a). The
framework builds on Sjöblom (1968) and argues that political parties are active on at least four
different markets or arenas, each accompanied by specific strategic goals and sets of key stake-
holders: a parliamentary arena, an electoral arena, an internal arena and a media arena (Sjöblom
1968; Strömbäck 2007a, 2007b). The next section will explain this framework and the results of
the research.

New research: global political market orientation

The framework (Strömbäck 2010a) suggests that on the parliamentary arena the strategic goal is
to maximize parliamentary influence, while the primary stakeholders are members of parliament
of different parties. On the electoral arena the strategic goal is to maximize the number of votes,
and the primary stakeholders are the voters. On the internal arena the strategic goal is to
maximize internal cohesion, and the primary stakeholders are members, activists, staff and
representatives of the party. On the media arena the strategic goal is to maximize positive
publicity, and the primary stakeholders are journalists and editors. Whether parties should strive
to be a mainly product-, sales- or market-oriented party is thus not a decision taken in isolation of
the surrounding environment. It is shaped in particular contexts, and is dependent on history and
traditions as well as factors both internal and external. In addition, all party behavior is shaped in
dynamic processes, and it is simply not the case that a party can just make a decision to follow any
of the orientations. To the extent that the party leadership wants the party to follow a particular
orientation, it must be implemented through processes that take time and are vulnerable to
reactions both internal and external.
Therefore, there is a large range of factors related to differences across countries, such as
whether the political and electoral system is candidate- or party-centered; whether the electoral
system is majoritarian or proportional; the strength of the left–right ideological continuum; the
number of parties; the degree of electoral volatility, which follows from the strength of party
identification; how commercialized the media are; how adversarial the journalistic culture is;
whether there are deep social or political cleavages; whether the political culture is egalitarian
rather than hierarchical; the degree of political distrust; and whether there are linkages between
the parties and the media and the strength of these.
With respect to differences between parties within countries, the most important factors
according to the framework are the size of the parties in terms of voter support and resources;
the influence of activists and middle-level elites within the parties; how ideologically committed
on the left–right ideological continuum members of and activists in the parties are; how strongly
supporters identify with the parties; whether parties are part of or have a competitive chance of
forming government; how long parties have been in government; how strongly linked the
parties are to certain policy positions related to major issues; whether parties have suffered suc-
cessive or major electoral defeats; whether the internal party culture is egalitarian rather than
hierarchical; how strong parliamentary party discipline is; whether the parties are mainly office-,
vote- or policy-seeking; and how strong ties the parties have to particular social or political
cleavages or interest groups. Thinking about these factors as independent variables, and the
likelihood that parties are market-oriented as dependent variable, the framework suggests 12

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research propositions related to differences between countries, and 12 research propositions

related to differences between parties within countries. These are summarized in the appendix,
Table 7A.1, at the end of the chapter.
The results of the empirical study were that first, political marketing in a broad sense is a
global activity. Political parties around the world all make use of a diverse set of marketing
strategies, tactics and techniques. However, most parties use marketing techniques to facilitate the
selling of the party, its policies, its image or its brand, but not to design the political product,
and not to adapt to voters’ wants and needs. There were examples of parties behaving in a more
market-oriented fashion, but it was more to win rather than to maintain office. When in office,
they tend to revert to being sales-oriented. As a consequence, there is no evidence that major office-
seeking parties in established democracies around the world successively move towards the
market-oriented party model and that parties in developing democracies eventually follow; and it
appears as if there are significant barriers to becoming consistently market-oriented. Parties tend
to shift from sales to market orientation and back. Additionally, most parties are more or less product-,
sales- or market-oriented: party orientation appears to be a matter of degree rather than of type.
Furthermore, research found that a number of parties were behaving in a more market-
oriented fashion, but not comprehensively so, whilst others attempted to become market-
oriented but failed. Attempts to be market-oriented floundered at the product adjustment
phase. In a number of our case studies we noted that party members or core voters often
blocked the willingness and ability of a party leadership to pursue a market-oriented approach.
In other words, a party leadership can employ marketing professionals, conduct marketing
exercises – focus groups and the like – but the market intelligence gathered may not be acted
upon if members or external support groups are unwilling to respond positively. Parties trying
to be market-oriented are related to how to carry out product adjustment in practice. They
want to be responsive but still credible, authentic and retain some principles, so that they can
satisfy internal as well as external markets. There was also a trend that many parties did not
maintain a market orientation when in power. Thus the comparative study demonstrated that
whilst political marketing is being used on a global scale it is in a much more diverse and
rich way than previously thought. In relation to why this is so, the research found that the
framework helped to explain this to some extent, although the study also uncovered other
factors that impact on political marketing orientation.

The political system

The framework predicted that multi-party systems tend to foster sales-oriented parties as the
multiplicity of parties makes for a crowded political landscape, making it harder for parties to
‘shift to the center’. However, even in countries dominated by two parties there was no clear
pattern for the dominant parties to be predominantly market-oriented. Instead, major parties
shifted back and forth between sales and market orientations, with the main factor pushing a party
towards market orientation being successive electoral defeats or prolonged periods in opposition,
while the shift back to a sales orientation usually resulted from a long period of incumbency.
Those studies that examined minor parties found that gathering information about their potential
market appears to be even more important for small parties, which need to use their limited
resources effectively. This is perhaps not surprising, as all parties, even those that cater to a niche market,
need to have some idea as to who their likely voters are. Importantly, market intelligence can be
used to inform not just product development and strategy, but also the communication and
selling of a party and its programs. What makes market-oriented parties differ from product- and
sales-oriented parties is not their use of market intelligence per se, but how they use it.

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Parliamentary arena
With respect to the parliamentary (or legislative) arena, evidence from a number of countries
confirms that parties that suffer declining vote share in successive elections are more likely to
become more market-oriented as a means to recover lost support. Furthermore, a long tenure of
government incumbency, just like a long spell in opposition, can weaken a party’s market-
orientation. Parties in office face a number of constraints. For example, it is difficult to deliver and
to keep using market intelligence to cater for the wants and needs of only selected target groups,
as a governing party has a responsibility to consider a much wider group of voters. Parties may
also find themselves in a government with coalition partners, and to retain the support of such
partners a party may need to compromise on some of its promises. In a sense there is a ‘curse of
incumbency’ where governing parties are placed in a position where logic dictates they must
defend those policies that they have been responsible for implementing, irrespective of whether
the policies are popular or not. There was one exception to this pattern, where the governing
UK Labour Party tried to reverse a drift away from being market-oriented by reconnecting.
Single-party majority governments are usually in a better position to deliver on promises than
coalition governments. This ability to deliver on promises is reinforced where members of the
governing party or parties in parliament can be guaranteed to support government legislation.
However, this holds for all types of parties in government, not just market-oriented ones. Its
significance lies more in the internal party arena, where members of parliament are viewed as
just one of the stakeholders who must be brought on board if the party leaders should seek to
become more market-oriented.

Electoral arena
Almost all countries have experienced a decline in party identification and party membership,
greater electoral volatility, and a weakening of left–right ideology as a basis for voting. The
country studies suggest that electoral de-alignment is a necessary condition for the development of
market-oriented parties. If parties still compete along the socio-economic cleavage, drawing their
support largely from clearly identified and stable social groupings where party choice is largely the
product of socialization, then a market orientation would seem unnecessary if not even
counter-productive. Yet if electoral de-alignment is a necessary condition for the development of
market-oriented parties, it is not a sufficient condition and does not automatically lead to
more market-oriented parties. A party can also respond to the above developments by intensi-
fying its use of marketing techniques and becoming more sales-oriented. Highly important also
are factors related to the internal party arena.

Internal party arena

The internal party arena imposes significant constraints on the party’s freedom to choose
orientation and in particular become market-oriented. The country studies suggested several
examples where internal opposition retarded a movement towards increasing market orientation,
particularly in established democracies. Therefore, parties in newer democracies without firmly
established party cultures might have greater flexibility to introduce radical change in the party
direction. In general terms, the more centralized and hierarchical the party, the easier to make the
shift in orientation; the more decentralized, the harder.
This also shows the importance of adjusting the product to suit the internal market to ensure
effective implementation. A party’s history means that the party cannot approach an election as

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if it had a blank sheet on which to write party policy. If the party strays too far from its his-
torically defined image or brand, it runs the risk of losing credibility and its core voters, without
necessarily being able to attract new ones. For most party activists, the idea of deviating from
what is perceived as the core ideology or the core values is at odds with the reasons for which
they once became active in politics. Most people join parties because they have a goal to change
society in a particular way. To abandon that goal based on the argument that some voters want
something else may be difficult for an activist to accept.
Such concerns may, however, be reduced when the party has little core vote to lose or its
core support is so loyal that a party can reposition without fear of losing many stalwart sup-
porters; or the party may have a party organization sufficiently centralized or sufficiently
demoralized by lack of success, that party leaders are able to impose more market-oriented
measures despite opposition from the rank and file. The costs of becoming more market-
orientated may, however, be less where parties adopt a more comprehensive implementation of
the concept and properly consider the internal market. For example, Kevin Rudd in Australia
(Hughes and Dann 2010) attempted to appeal to external and internal markets while trying to
shift his party towards more market orientation, although he was then usurped as a result of
internal factions after a loss of public support before he faced re-election. Being more market-
oriented need not mean abandoning internal supporters; the more effective party leaders are at
managing the demands of the different markets, the more successful they can become at
implementing a market-oriented strategy.

Media arena
The research found the media arena to be of less importance as an antecedent of political market
orientation. This does not mean that the media have no effect on political marketing (Sellers
2010; Strömbäck and Kaid 2008): as Temple (2010: 266) suggests, the role of the media is
‘crucially different for politicians than for companies’. The media matter more for political
marketing than political market orientation, however, and in terms of comparative analysis there
was too little variance to isolate the media’s effects on political market orientation. All parties in
our study placed emphasis on the use of the free media with which to communicate with voters,
and in highly competitive and deregulated media markets there are a multitude of media channels
available for politicians to use.

Additional factors: leadership

There was, though, one factor that the framework did not take into consideration, but which was
shown to be of major importance: individual party leaders and whether there was a change of
party leader following an electoral shock. It is clear that in many of the country studies, the role of
a new leader was a critical factor in bringing about major change in a party’s orientation.
Examples include, for example, Tony Blair (UK Labour), Kevin Rudd (Australian Labor),
Junichiro Koizumi (Japanese LDP), George Papandreou (Greek Pasok) and Fredrik Reinfeldt
(Swedish Moderates). At the same time, while electoral defeats and change of leadership may
facilitate changes in party orientation, they do not necessarily cause them. Crucial is how the
electoral defeat is interpreted by party members and activists, and whether the costs to a party
becoming more market-oriented are perceived to outweigh the perceived benefits or not. This
may happen when a party has suffered electoral defeats of such a magnitude or with such frequency
that this is not viewed as a temporary setback. Examples of where electoral defeats pushed parties
towards a more market-oriented strategy would be the UK Conservatives (2005–10), Swedish

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Political party market orientation

Moderates (2003–), and New Zealand National (2005–08). However, the Swedish Moderates
suffered losses in just one election before adopting a more market-oriented approach (Strömbäck
2010b), whereas the other parties suffered three defeats. This suggests that it is important to
understand how the parties perceive electoral defeats. Is the defeat viewed as a temporary setback
or the start of a long-term decline? Or might it even be the case that an absence of electoral victories
can have an effect similar to electoral defeats? A party may have expected to perform well in
successive elections, but in reality failed to expand its vote share. Such a party may react as if it had
in fact suffered electoral defeats.

Summary
The Global Political Marketing project yielded several conclusions, some which call ‘conventional
wisdom’ into question:

 The use of marketing techniques does not equal being market-oriented.

 The dominant trend is sales orientation rather than market orientation: it is not the case that
all major parties become market-oriented, or that parties have to become market-oriented to
achieve electoral success.
 There is no linear progression of party development, and parties shift from sales- to market-
oriented, and back again.
 Product, sales and market orientation should not be considered as categories, but rather as
positions along a continuum ranging from product orientation through sales orientation to
market orientation.

Considering the comparative framework and differences between countries, the research
suggested that the reasons behind this varying pattern of political marketing are:

 A decline in party identification and party membership as well as greater electoral volatility
increases the potential for a move towards greater sales or market orientation, depending on
where the parties start out, but does not mean that all parties will be market-oriented.
 The degree of party unity and discipline on the parliamentary (legislative) arena also has an
impact on ability to deliver and, crossing over into the internal arena, maintain a higher
degree of market orientation.
 The internal arena is highly influential on the success of party strategy and leaders’ ability to
implement a higher degree of market orientation, because members and activists can exert
significant influence on party direction and orientation. In general terms, the more centralized
and hierarchical the party, the easier to make a shift in orientation.
 Fluid and time-bound factors have a great impact, namely electoral loss and new leadership.
Parties that suffer successive electoral defeats are more likely to become more market-
oriented as a means to recover lost support, and a long tenure of government incumbency
can weaken a party’s degree of market orientation while new party leaders who want to push
a market-oriented strategy need to gain control of the party and attract public support.
However, these two factors need to occur simultaneously and thus their causality is more
situational than is often assumed, and this may explain the fluidity in parties’ orientation.

Instead, the project has shown that there are variations across both space and time, and the
complex interactions at different levels of analysis that contribute to political parties’ behavior
and orientations. Political marketing is undoubtedly a worldwide phenomenon, and the use of

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marketing strategies, tactics and techniques is both ubiquitous and here to stay. Parties adapt,
but they adapt based on the particular circumstances relevant to, and constrained by the struc-
tural and semi-structural factors present in their country at any particular point in time. On the
basis of this research, we can therefore suggest a revised framework to predict the degree of
political market orientation: see Table 7.2.

Table 7.2 Revised framework to explain degree of political market orientation

Propositions related to differences between countries

1 Parties in candidate-centered political systems are likely to be more market-oriented than parties in
party-centered political systems.
2 Parties in countries with majoritarian electoral systems are likely to be more market-oriented than parties
in countries with proportional electoral systems.
3 Parties in countries where the left–right ideological dimension is of less importance in the minds of
voters are likely to be more market-oriented than parties in countries where it is of major importance.
4 Parties in countries with few competing parties are likely to be more market-oriented than parties in
countries with many competing parties.
5 Parties in countries with a low degree of party identification are likely to be more market-oriented than
parties in countries with a high degree of party identification.
6 Parties in countries with high electoral volatility are likely to be more market-oriented than parties in
countries with low electoral volatility.
7 Parties in countries with deep social or political cleavages are likely to be less market-oriented than
parties in countries without such deep cleavages.
Propositions related to differences between parties within countries
1 Larger parties in terms of voter support and resources are likely to be more market-oriented than smaller
parties.
2 Parties where activists and middle-level elite have a strong influence on the political product are likely to
be less market-oriented than parties where they have a limited influence as compared with the central
leadership and ordinary members.
3 Parties where the members and activists are ideologically committed on the left–right ideological dimension
are likely to be less market-oriented than parties where they have a more value-oriented outlook.
4 Parties whose voters are strongly identified with the party are likely to be less market-oriented than
parties whose voters are weakly identified with the party.
5 Parties that have a competitive chance of forming the next government are likely to be more market-
oriented than parties that do not have a competitive chance of forming a government.
6 Parties that have been in government for a longer period of time are likely to be less market-oriented
than parties that have not been in government but have a competitive chance of forming the next
government.
7 Parties that are historically linked with certain policy positions regarding major issues are likely to be less
market-oriented than parties that are historically not linked to certain policy positions in major issues.
8 Parties that have suffered successive or major electoral defeats are likely to become more market-
oriented than parties that have not suffered such defeats.
9 Parties that have had a change of party leadership are likely to become more market-oriented than
parties that have had no change of party leadership.
10 Parties with a hierarchical internal culture are likely to be more market-oriented than parties with an
egalitarian internal culture.
11 Parties whose members of parliament mainly answer to the central leadership of the party are likely to
be more market-oriented than parties without a strong parliamentary party discipline.
12 Office- and vote-seeking parties are likely to be more market-oriented than policy-seeking parties.
13 Parties with strong ties to particular social or political cleavages are likely to be less market-oriented than
parties with weak ties to particular social or political cleavages.

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Political party market orientation

Advice for practitioners

Based on the above analysis, there is no universal answer to the question of what works in terms
of electoral success. For practitioners, politicians and parties have a choice: it is not inevitable that
they have to take on any particular orientation. There are almost no general lessons as party
behavior varies so much and the effectiveness is not pre-determined. Leaders of major parties
might still want to aim to become market-oriented as it can aid electoral success, but lots of
factors including the competition affect this and sales-oriented parties do still win and maintain
power. If a party wants to become market-oriented it can do so in all countries, as it is not just
suitable for one type of system, but the leadership must drive the process for it to be successful,
and it must manage internal markets effectively and adjust the product. Most failed attempts at
becoming more market-oriented are thwarted by party figures and members. Once in power, if
parties want to maintain support they need to maintain a market orientation or try to reconnect –
but as yet, few have succeeded at this.

Impact on politics
On one hand this study suggests that political marketing, in one form or another, is truly global,
and thus has changed politics itself. This could threaten ideology and value and seem bad for
democracy as it reduces politics to commercial-like transactions. Politicians around the world
continually seek to use market research and other tools to help them win elections. On the other
hand, the orientation that parties take up, which does not follow a linear pattern from product to
sales to market orientation, but is more flexible, suggests that politicians still have room to choose
how they are going to respond to the electorate. This leaves room for leadership and creativity,
with market-oriented parties most often losing their responsiveness in power in order to pursue
change-making policies.

The way forward

With respect to research, we have two main suggestions for the way forward. First, instead of
conceptualizing product-, sales- and market-oriented parties as three different party types, they
should be perceived on a continuum with product orientation marking one end of the scale
and sales orientation marking the other (see Figure 7.1). Conceptualizing the party orientations
on a scale would allow more nuanced and rich understandings of parties’ orientations and
positions; how their orientations and positions are affected by structural and semi-structural
factors; and how they move, reorient and reposition themselves in reaction to contextual factors
that are more specific in time and place to particular parties.
Second, there is the need for a broader range of methods to be used when studying political
marketing and political marketing orientation comparatively. Up to now, most research on the

Figure 7.1 Product-, sales- and market-oriented parties along a continuum

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Jesper Strömbäck et al.

use of marketing techniques and political product, sales and market orientation is based on
single-country case studies, where the preferred methodology is qualitative interviews and ana-
lyses of party behavior or documents. Studies including a greater number of parties and coun-
tries and using quantitative methodologies are rare, and studies using methodologies that can be
replicated across time or countries are virtually non-existent (but see Ormrod 2009). From the
perspective of comparative research and of increasing research cumulativity, this is a problem.
In-depth case studies and qualitative research holds great value, but to increase research cumu-
lativity, there is a great need for quantitative research using standardized research instruments
that can be applied in different settings (for an example see Gibson and Römmele 2009, who
developed an index for research on the professionalization of political campaigning). Quantita-
tive methodologies using operationalizations of key independent and dependent variables that
can be applied across both time and countries would make research more systematic. Only then
will it also be possible to draw firm conclusions with respect to what works in terms of electoral
success. This calls for a new global study of political marketing and political market orientation,
based on quantitative methodology.
In terms of practice, practitioners need to continue to share ideas through global knowledge
transfer, but they should also be aware of the need to adapt techniques and strategies to suit not
even just the particular country, but the particular election. Whilst political marketing is indeed
global, each election is unique.

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Table 7A.1 Framework for comparing political market orientation: research propositions

Propositions related to differences between countries Propositions related to differences between parties within countries

1 Parties in candidate-centered political systems are more likely to 1 Large parties in terms of voter support and resources are more likely to be market-
be market-oriented than parties in party-centered political oriented than small parties.
systems.
2 Parties in countries with majoritarian electoral systems are more 2 Parties where activists and middle-level elite have a strong influence on the political
likely to be market-oriented than parties in countries with product are less likely to be market-oriented than parties where they have a limited
proportional electoral systems. influence as compared with the central leadership and ordinary members.
3 Parties in countries where the left–right ideological dimension is 3 Parties where the members and activists are ideologically committed on the left–right
of less importance in the minds of voters are more likely to be ideological dimension are less likely to be market-oriented than parties where they
market-oriented than parties in countries where it is of major have a more value-oriented outlook.
importance.
4 Parties in countries with few competing parties are more likely to 4 Parties whose voters are strongly identified with the party are less likely to be market-
be market-oriented than parties in countries with many oriented than parties whose voters are weakly identified with the party.
competing parties.
5 Parties in countries with a low degree of party identification are 5 Parties that are part of or have a competitive chance of forming the next government
more likely to be market-oriented than parties in countries with a are more likely to be market-oriented than parties that are not part of government or
high degree of party identification. do not have a competitive chance of forming the next government.
6 Parties in countries with high electoral volatility are more likely to 6 Parties that have been in government for a longer period of time are less likely to be
be market-oriented than parties in countries with low electoral market-oriented than parties that have not been in government but have a
volatility. competitive chance of forming the next government.
7 Parties in countries with a highly commercialized media system 7 Parties that are historically linked with certain policy positions regarding major issues
are more likely to be market-oriented than parties in countries are less likely to be market-oriented than parties that are historically not linked to
with a less commercialized media system. certain policy positions in major issues.
8 Parties in countries with an adversarial journalistic culture are 8 Parties that have suffered successive or major electoral defeats are more likely to
more likely to be market-oriented than parties in countries with become market-oriented than parties that have not suffered such defeats.
a less adversarial journalistic culture.
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Table 7A.1 (continued)

Propositions related to differences between countries Propositions related to differences between parties within countries

9 Parties in countries with deep social or political cleavages are 9 Parties with a hierarchical internal culture are more likely to be market-oriented than
less likely to be market-oriented than parties in countries parties with an egalitarian internal culture.
without such deep cleavages.
10 Parties in countries with an egalitarian political culture are more 10 Parties whose members of parliament mainly answer to the central leadership of the
likely to be market-oriented than parties in countries with a party are more likely to be market-oriented than parties without a strong
hierarchical political culture. parliamentary party discipline.
11 Parties in countries with a high level of political distrust are 11 Office- and vote-seeking parties are more likely to be market-oriented than policy-
more likely to be market-oriented than parties in countries with seeking parties.
a lower level of political distrust.
12 Parties in countries with news media independent of the party- 12 Parties with strong ties to particular social or political cleavages are less likely to be
political system are more likely to be market-oriented than market-oriented than parties with weak ties to particular social or political cleavages.
parties in countries where the news media form part of the
party-political system.
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Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing

Jennifer Lees-Marshment

Niche marketing the greens in canada and scotland

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8
Niche marketing the Greens in
Canada and Scotland
Susan Harada and Helen M. Morris

The topic: niche marketing

In May 2010 the Green Party of England and Wales made history when party leader Caroline
Lucas won the Brighton Pavilion seat in the UK-wide Westminster election. The victory
demonstrated that a niche party could win wider support in a first-past-the-post electoral system.
Green Party of Canada (GPC) strategists jumped on the Lucas bandwagon, emailing GPC
e-newsletter subscribers, calling for donations so that their leader might emulate Lucas (interview
with Cantin 2010). The Scottish Green Party (SGP) said the victory ‘changes everything’,
providing an excellent platform for the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election (Scottish Green
Party 2010a). The SGP and GPC reactions may suggest they were consolidating base support
through standard political communications methods, or – viewed through a political marketing
lens – may reveal an attempt by either party to rework their niche appeal, using the Lucas victory
for political validation.
The concept of political niche marketing builds on fundamental business model character-
istics. Although Toften and Hammervoll note a lack of a ‘widely accepted single conceptual
definition of niche marketing’ (Toften and Hammervoll 2007: 1380), niche markets are mainly
seen as being compact, with specialized appeal for a small defined group whose members are
distinguished by common needs and/or interests (Keegan et al. 1992; Dalgic and Leeuw 1994;
Kara and Kaynak 1997). A producer aiming to cultivate such a group positions the product(s) to
satisfy the narrowly defined interest (Porter 1980; Bantel 1997; Hezar et al. 2006). According to
Bantel, this allows for producers to deploy sparse resources strategically (Bantel 1997: 246).
Overall, it follows that niche marketing can generally be described as ‘positioning into small,
profitable homogeneous market segments which have been ignored or neglected by others’
(Dalgic and Leeuw 1994: 42). This chapter will explore a niche marketing approach by studying
the Canadian and Scottish national Green parties.

Previous research on niche marketing

The range of political choice in many democratic countries widened in the latter decades of the
20th century, as a significant number of new political parties – including niche parties – were

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Susan Harada and Helen M. Morris

formed (Meguid 2008). The new niche parties, including some Green parties, focused on non-
traditional issues or identities, appealed across left–right divisions, and offered a narrow range of
policies (Meguid 2005, 2008). Although Green parties are not homogeneous (Burchell 2002),
and some have attempted to broaden their perceived ‘single issue’ policy base, they share political
and policy antecedents that justify the niche categorization (Müller-Rommel 1989; Burchell
2002; Talshir 2002).
Acknowledging Lees-Marshment’s caution that ‘politics cannot simply be fitted into a mar-
keting framework that stems from analysis of the business world’ (Lees-Marshment 2003: 9), it
is still valuable to highlight a number of parallels between niche market conditions in both
spheres. In the business sphere, an increasing range of products and shifting consumer expecta-
tions fundamentally altered the largely one-size-fits-all marketing landscape (McKenna 1988;
Kotler 1989; Dalgic and Leeuw 1994). This focused attention on the concept of niche mar-
keting. The balance of power had shifted; the marketplace was required to respond more
nimbly to specific consumer desires. The resulting acceleration of niche marketing had a significant
impact on wider culture (Anderson 2006; McKenna 1988).
In the political sphere, Butler and Collins (1996) utilized marketing elements to reconsider
the categorical framework – which included the ‘nicher’, along with the market leader, the
challenger and the follower – set by various scholars (Porter 1980; Kotler 1994). Butler and
Collins (1996: 29) described a nicher party as the ‘leader in [a] narrowly defined market or
niche’, with ‘specialist appeal’. It is not solely issue-based; successful nichers have also targeted
specific linguistic groups, voters within a defined geographic area, and recent immigrants (ibid.: 33).
Similarly, in business, Kotler (1989) noted that a niche market specialization could run the
gamut from product to geography to quality/price.
There are also parallels with respect to successful strategic nicher behaviours. In business,
Dalgic and Leeuw (1994: 45–46) and McKenna (1988: 93–94) noted the necessity of marketing
the company as well as its product, treating customers as individuals, responding to their unique
needs, and establishing strong long-term relationships. In politics, Butler and Collins (1996: 32)
cited the importance of strong, lasting relationships between nichers and their targeted
political consumers. Raynor (1992) concluded that a successful niche strategy in the business
sphere cannot be communications-driven. Instead, a genuine niche must first be identified, and
only then can a specialization, tailored to meet consumer expectations, be effectively delivered.
Similarly, political marketing theories (Lees-Marshment 2001; Newman 1994; Wring 1997)
generally posit that successful market-oriented political parties identify constituent wants/needs
through market research before tailoring their product/policy accordingly.
Following Butler and Collins, who identified the importance of a ‘create, expand and defend’
nicher strategy (Butler and Collins 1996: 32), it can be said that a political niche party must
adopt specific behaviours, as outlined in Figure 8.1, if it hopes to engage in niche market-
oriented politics.
These identified behaviours are utilized as a guide for analysis that first explores whether the
GPC and SGP can be categorized as niche market-oriented political groups, and then considers
the possible implications of our conclusions.

New research: niche marketing the Greens in Canada and Scotland

Research analysed strategies employed by the GPC during the 2004 and 2008 Canadian federal
election campaigns, and by the SGP during the 2003 and 2007 Scottish parliamentary election
campaigns (for the sake of comparative consistency with the SGP, the 2006 Canadian federal
election, for which GPC strategies were largely an expansion of those used in 2004, is excluded

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Niche marketing the Greens

Figure 8.1 Indicators of niche market-oriented political behaviour

from analysis). To date, their most meaningful party activity has been organized around those
elections. The authors conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews over five months in 2010
with nearly a dozen senior GPC and SGP members in key decision-making roles. The questions
were open-ended, focusing on organization, technology, research, strategies and political niche
marketing concepts. The findings were triangulated with information gathered from party

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Susan Harada and Helen M. Morris

manifestos/platforms and slogans produced for the studied campaigns, alongside news reports,
press releases and the authors’ existing research material.

The Greens in Canada and Scotland

The Green parties in Canada and Scotland are niche parties with similar philosophical roots and
areas of specialization. Both emerged from ecology-based campaigning movements and faced the
challenge of how to transform themselves into successful, functioning political parties, while
retaining their unique political identities. Since its formation in 1983, the GPC has attempted to
develop as a force for environmentally focused social and political change. It first attracted notable
support in 2004, winning 4.3 percent of the popular vote – still marginal compared with the
leading parties (12.4–36.7 percent), and still short of electing members, but significantly higher
than its own 0.8 percent in 2000. The GPC’s geographically dispersed popular vote rose to 6.8
percent in 2008 but it again failed to win a seat. The SGP formed in 1990 by amicably moving
away from the UK party and, in 1999, elected a member to the re-established Scottish Parliament
and gained 3.6 percent of the vote. In 2003 it won seven seats (6.9 percent of the vote), reduced
to two (4.0 percent of the vote) after the 2007 election (when assessing vote share, note that the
SGP stood in the regional list and did not compete for constituency votes).
However, the GPC and SGP have faced differing challenges. Canada’s national first-past-the-
post or single member plurality (SMP) political landscape is dominated by four parties (Con-
servative, Liberal, New Democrat and Bloc Québécois). SMP favours parties with concentrated
support over smaller parties which tend to have dispersed backing. In contrast, members of the
Scottish Parliament are elected by an Additional Member System whereby each elector has two
votes: one to elect a regional member – 56 across eight regions – and one to vote for a con-
stituency Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) (73 members) using first-past-the-post. The
number of MSPs elected under the regional list portion aims to reflect broadly the portion of
votes won by that party, acting as a top-up for parties who may have received substantial
numbers of votes at the constituency level but secured few or no seats (Herbert et al. 2007). The
SGP was constrained financially to contesting the regional list (interview with Harvie 2010). No
party gained a majority in the first three elections to the re-established Scottish Parliament. The
Labour and the Scottish National parties are the two leading parties, with the Liberal Democrat
and Conservative parties each garnering a decent share of seats. The smaller parties, including
the Greens, took three seats in 1999 and 2007 and 17 seats in 2003, a direct contrast with
Canadian smaller parties, which remain sidelined and seatless.
With six times as many eligible voters spread unevenly across territory more than 125 times
the size of Scotland, Canadian political life plays out in unique ways. The influence of regional
interests and the resources required to campaign nationally loom large in Canadian party for-
tunes (Carty et al. 2000). The 2004 changes to the electoral funding system, which subsidized
parties winning a minimum of 2 percent of the national vote, had an impact on the behaviour
of political parties (Flanagan and Jansen 2009). The GPC, as will be discussed, was no excep-
tion. It qualified for state funding in 2004, receiving approximately (CDN) $1,000,000
annually; this rose to around (CDN) $1,800,000 after the 2008 election. The SGP has limited
funds, mostly from individual small donors. In 2003 they had £63,864 (Electoral Commission
2003) to fight their campaign; in 2007 this was boosted by Green MSPs donating 20 percent of
their salary to party funds.
The similarities and differences allow us to examine GPC and SGP campaign behaviour from
a niche market-oriented perspective, while considering variables that might influence success,
including electoral systems, geography and funding. Accepting that both parties satisfy the first

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indicator of political niche marketing through their focused area of appeal, our case studies will
analyse the extent to which they engage the remaining three indicators as evidenced by their
governance and campaign decision-making structure, candidate selection process, and platform/
manifesto development process, as well as their application of existing and new polling data and
other feedback mechanisms during two campaign periods. If we find evidence of political niche
market-oriented techniques, we will ask what this means for the cohesion of their parties and
democracy. If we find no such evidence, we will ask if adoption is possible, and if greater
electoral success would result.

Green Party of Canada (GPC) – federal elections 2004–08

The GPC’s governance structure was designed to facilitate decentralized decision-making, a
Green party feature that allows Greens to portray themselves as unique entities dedicated to
promoting a non-traditional approach to politics (Müller-Rommel 1989; Burchell 2002).
However, the GPC has been evolving towards a more traditional centralized and leader-centric
structure during campaign periods. Its first significant shift occurred in 2004 (interviews with
Crookes 2010a, Travis 2010b), when it attempted a more ‘professionalized’ campaign style
(Gibson and Römmele 2001). Emulating larger parties, the GPC ran its first full-blown national
leader’s tour, and aimed for consistent and more top-down party messaging through the pro-
vision of national campaign materials to Electoral District Associations (EDAs). However, limited
resources hampered consistent cohesion between the two levels (interviews with Travis 2010a,
2010b).
With the possibility of qualifying for post-election public subsidies, the party secured funding
at the national level through private loans and donations, before and during the campaign
period (Elections Canada 2004a, 2004b). The money enabled it to top up its one part-time staff
member with nearly five dozen paid staff and volunteers (interview with Travis 2010b). It set
up a more centralized campaign structure with paid staff in key decision-making roles; this was
reprised in 2008. The professionalization attempts arguably caused some erosion of the
GPC’s claim to the unique political behaviour that was part of its original niche attraction.
During both campaigns the party experienced internal tensions and subsequent media coverage
reminiscent of the traditional political parties from which it was seeking to set itself apart
(Harada 2006, 2009).
Two measurements of the GPC’s ability to forge strong relationships with its constituents are
common political participatory methodologies: candidate selection (Erickson and Carty 1991;
Cross 1998); and policy development (Carty et al. 2000). In 2004 the GPC had a decentralized
structure for candidate selection. It lacked resources to develop a rigorous central process,
leaving it to EDAs and local volunteers whenever possible (interview with Travis 2010b). Still, a
significant new top-down strategy of running a full slate of candidates was imposed. This had a
two-fold objective: to attain the popular vote level necessary for state funding (which resulted
in a number of parachute candidates), and to recast its minor party status. Post-2008 there was
talk of requiring central party pre-screening of local nominations, in order to minimize the
possibility of candidates who might damage party credibility. However, it was recognized that
significantly centralizing candidate selection could alienate the party’s grassroots (Harada 2009).
Allowing local members to largely retain candidate selection power enabled the GPC to con-
serve a crucial element of its unique identity, which likely helped preserve relations with core
niche constituents.
The participatory nature of the GPC’s policy development process is examined within the
framework of its campaign platforms. In 2004 the GPC used the internet to maximize voter

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engagement. The platform chair designed an interactive ‘wiki’ that allowed party members to
create and edit the platform’s policy planks; non-members could view and comment only.
Three rules governed plank development: existing party policy, passed at convention, could not
be contradicted; existing policy need not be included; and policy gaps could be filled with new
planks (interview with Pilling 2010). By 2008 the largely decentralized process was appreciably
altered, although the intent – to seek as much input as possible while building constituent–party
relationships – remained the same. The GPC held a series of pre-campaign policy conferences
across the country, involving party members, subject-area experts and the general public. The
GPC’s leader and shadow cabinet crafted an omnibus policy document, which incorporated
results from the conferences alongside existing party policy: the planks of the subsequent 2008
campaign platform were pulled from that document. That process provided a more indirect
connection between grassroots participation and the final platform than did the 2004 process.
However, the final 2004 product had attracted critics, notably environmentally focused non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), one reason the interactive ‘wiki’ experience was not
repeated (interview with Travis 2010b).
Lees-Marshment (2001, 2003) notes that market intelligence is crucial for political parties
seeking to become market-oriented. As outlined above, it is also crucial for niche political
parties seeking to defend and expand their niche support. Limited resources meant that the
GPC largely relied on public market research. In 2004 it parlayed its growing support levels in
public polls into mainstream media coverage – a bid to build credibility and create a sense of
momentum. This strategy continued in 2008. In 2004 other strategies included attempts to
change public perceptions that the GPC was a left-leaning, single-issue party: it embraced more
fiscally conservative policy planks (interview with Pilling 2010), and made efforts to ensure that
its leader discussed a wide range of issues, not just the environment (interview with Crookes
2010b). By 2008, with a new, high-profile leader, the GPC had repositioned itself into a more
leader-centric entity. The national campaign and television advertisements focused on leader
Elizabeth May; she led GPC efforts to muster public support for her eventual inclusion in the
nationally televised debates, which traditionally involved only the leaders of the larger political
parties. As participation was largely restricted to parties with seats, May’s inclusion was also
strategically enabled by the GPC’s pre-campaign recruitment of an independent Member of
Parliament, who later failed to keep his seat under the Green banner.
Informal market intelligence was gathered through internet outreach. The website was
increasingly professionalized and the GPC grew more adept between 2004 and 2008 at utilizing
its website and emails for campaigning and fundraising. Feedback mechanisms such as blogs
were linked into the site. An internal system of voter ID management was developed and made
available to local campaigns, and was used at the national level to target support more efficiently
(Harada 2009).
The GPC had sufficient resources to commission some limited formal market research in
2004 and 2008. In 2004 national surveys were conducted by Oraclepoll Research before and
just after the election call, probing issues of importance to voters, as well as their openness to
alternatives such as proportional representation and tax shifting. EDA-specific surveys were also
undertaken to identify support levels (interviews with Crookes 2010a, 2010b). The market
research influenced messaging in news releases, some of the leader’s speeches and resource
investments in one EDA. It had no impact on the platform, mainly because polls were anath-
ema to some GPC members (interview with Travis 2010c). Although information released by
the party about 2008 market research is limited, it acknowledged hiring an external expert to
analyse polling data to help it make decisions about resource concentration. It also surveyed
popular support in half a dozen key ridings. During the campaign, it conducted market research

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to gauge support levels for the GPC leader’s electoral bid (Labchuk 2008). Overall, the strategy
of funnelling additional funding and human resources support into specific EDAs in 2004 and
2008 was a tactical departure for a party with a philosophy of decentralization, as was the
decision to actively commission market research. The latter move was particularly significant.
Even so, the information garnered from the research seemed to direct campaign strategies rather
than lead to product adjustment.
The fourth characteristic of a niche market-oriented political party is its ability to resist
incursions by other parties through continual product/party adjustment based on market intel-
ligence. The incursion threat was greatest in 2008, when public opinion surveys identified the
environment as one of the main issues concerning Canadians. The major parties staked sub-
stantial claims on the climate change file, given its prominence as an issue of concern (Ellis and
Woolstencroft 2009; Jeffrey 2009; Erickson and Laycock 2009). The left-of-centre New
Democrats, in particular, were cognizant that they could lose crucial support from young voters
attracted to the GPC’s environmental emphasis (Erickson and Laycock 2009: 99). Although the
opportunity existed, the GPC did not consistently meet the incursion threat by promoting its
own unique identity. On the one hand, the party tied the top-of-mind environmental issue to
its tax shift policy; when the Liberals adopted a similar ‘green tax shift’ programme the GPC
portrayed it as a marker of its own political relevance. On the other hand, the party leader
aligned herself with the Liberal leader (who personally championed climate change issues),
when the two struck a deal to not run candidates in each other’s ridings. The deal ignited a
controversial internal/external debate about strategic voting, and about GPC identity as a
movement versus a political party (Harada 2009); it did little to assist the GPC with incursion
resistance.

Scottish Green Party (SGP)

In 2003 the SGP enjoyed its greatest electoral success, gaining seven regional list members of the
Scottish Parliament. The party’s ‘2nd vote Green’ election campaign sought to differentiate the
traditional first-past-the-post constituency vote from the regional list vote. Voters had two votes;
the SGP campaign suggested that people could follow ‘tribal loyalties’ with the first, but that the
second was the conscience or freedom vote (interview with Baird 2010). This campaigning
technique was employed by the SGP and the Scottish Socialist Party, while larger parties
appeared to stick to traditional constituency-based tactics (Ministry of Justice 2008). The cam-
paign encouraged the idea of vote-splitting (interview with Harvie 2010) – backing a different
party on the constituency and list ballots. The political landscape in 2003 leant itself to this
campaign; when the party manifestos were launched, political commentators struggled to dif-
ferentiate between the parties (MacWhirter 2003). Arguably, the main division between the
parties was over the war in Iraq, a policy area not devolved to the Scottish Parliament (Burnside
et al. 2003: 26). One candidate said that given the similarities between the main parties, con-
stituents were willing to give smaller ones, such as the SGP, a chance with their regional list vote
(interview with Ballance 2010). Of those who voted, between one-fifth and one-quarter cast
their second vote for someone – including the SGP – other than one of the four parties that had
dominated the 1999 parliament (Curtice 2003).
The 2007 Scottish parliamentary election presented a very different political landscape. The
election was viewed as a two-horse race between the pro-independence Scottish National Party
(SNP) and the Labour Party, which supports Scotland remaining a part of the United Kingdom.
The possibility and cost of Scottish independence were constant campaign themes. Voters had
clear choices between the parties on issues that were devolved to the Scottish Parliament. The

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outcome of the vote was expected to be very close, prompting speculation that voters were
less willing to risk their second vote with smaller parties such as the SGP (Curtice 2007). In
the first two elections there were two separate ballot papers: one for the regional vote and
one for the constituency vote. In 2007 a single ballot contained both. Arguably this
worked against smaller parties seeking to focus on list votes. The new format may also have
contributed to the abnormally high number of spoilt ballots. In 16 constituency contests
the number of spoilt ballots was greater than the winning candidate’s majority (Denver
2007: 62). The single ballot paper containing both regional and list contests precluded a
repeat of ‘2nd vote Green’. In 2007 some 146,099 ballots were rejected (Electoral
Commission 2007c). The 2003 SGP vote was around 150,000. The head of SGP commu-
nications for the 2003 election argued that given the margins with which the SGP was getting
elected, the loss of spoilt ballots was enough to almost wipe it out in 2007 (interview with
Burgess 2010).
The SGP operates from four principles: ecology, equality, radical democracy, and peace and
non-violence (Scottish Green Party 2007a). The party functions democratically such that the
final manifesto can be a distillation of ideas from all party members. In reality there is a small
core of active members (Bennie 2004), and drafts go through party committees before one person
pulls the ideas together into one coherent policy platform (interview with Baird 2010). Tradi-
tionally, the gathering and use of market intelligence has not played a role in the development
of party policy.
The election of seven MSPs in 2007 dramatically changed the party’s ability to forge a
unique identity between election periods. The SGP was a relative unknown to many voters,
and MSPs worked to build credibility throughout the parliament, possibly neglecting public
campaigning and local branch development (interview with Harvie 2010).
The SGP ramps up activities ahead of a Scottish parliamentary election. Scarce party resour-
ces are concentrated upon elections where there is a perceived stronger chance of winning seats
(interview with Ballance 2010). Local parties take the lead on candidate selection in line with
the SGP principle of decentralization. The national party will act as an overseer to try to ensure
gender balance and, as one former MSP put it, ‘avoid rogue elements embarrassing the party’
(interview with Baird 2010).
The seven SGP MSPs elected in 2007 boosted party funds by contributing 20 percent of
their parliamentary salary. Local party branches also had an MSP to hold accountable and to
communicate with voters through the media. The party had access to policy research conducted
by SGP staff employed by parliamentarians. Harvie likened it to a loose association of local
societies suddenly having the staff and resources of a sizeable national NGO (interview with
Harvie 2010). The additional money and resources enabled the national party to have a degree
of influence on, for example, locally issued press releases. However, with the strong principle
of decentralization, local parties and individual MSPs continued to act independently on
local concerns (interview with Baird 2010), suggesting that there was no clear single party
message.
Decision-making by members at the SGP conference, as well as at a series of meetings
throughout the year, can be lengthy and complex. There has been some internal debate about
reforming the policy process to make it more responsive and nimbler, but no specific changes
have been made (interview with Harvie 2010). The main relationships that the party forges are
with its own membership through the policy-making and campaigning stages. List candidates
must campaign across substantially larger regions than their constituency candidate counterparts.
South of Scotland stretches across the width of the country encompassing around 30 market
towns (interview with Ballance 2010), while the Highlands and Islands is a region the size of

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Belgium (interview with Scott 2010). Rather than using a marketing strategy, Scott said that
campaigning would likely be conducted where volunteers were available. In 2007 those MSPs
not holding down outside jobs were able to dedicate themselves to ‘campaigning twenty-four-
seven’. They also had enhanced knowledge and resources, having served in parliament (interview
with Ballance 2010).
In 2003 restricted funds meant that public outreach was limited to the party election
broadcast (assembled by a friend of a party member with an edit suite (interview with Harvie
2010)), the free delivery of an SGP-financed leaflet to every household, activists putting up
street placards, and maximum possible media coverage (interview with Burgess 2010). The SGP
received more limited media coverage than the four main parties. Media attention was focused
on the Iraq war and, as one journalist put it, multi-party politics between all-male, middle-aged
leaders who agree on more nurses, teachers and police is hard to fit into media news values
(Fraser 2003). For the 2007 election the SGP had much more money (£437,107), but still a
fraction of the SNP’s £1.4 million (Electoral Commission 2007b). The shortage of funds meant
that the party struggled with a lack of information about voters. One MSP noted that in
2007 the SNP had a clearer idea of who Green voters were than the SGP, and deliberately
targeted their vote. The size and funding of the party limited its options ahead of the 2007 poll
(interview with Ballance 2010). The SGP was still very much at the building stage of con-
ducting market research, largely to reinforce existing SGP positions and help to shape internal
policy debate (interview with Harvie 2010).
There is a concern that the party must stick to its core principles, communicating these to
voters rather than adapting them to popular sentiment (interview with Baird 2010; Bennie
2004). The SGP is confident that it has the true environmental and social justice credentials and
directly criticizes other parties’ environmental rhetoric (Scottish Green Party 2007a, 2007b). A
long-serving member of the party argued that, rather than changing the SGP to meet popular
opinion, there is a need to let the public know that the SGP addresses wider issues and that the
environment is a core issue, not a fringe concern (interview with Baird 2010). The SGP appears
to operate under the assumption that it is too small to set the political agenda but can use cir-
cumstances to further its cause, be it the electoral system or the victory of the Greens south of
the border. As the next SGP conference approached, the victory by Caroline Lucas, leader of
the Green Party of England and Wales, was front and centre in the publicity material (Scottish
Green Party 2010b).
The GPC and the SGP did not wholly conform to our theoretical framework for political
niche market-oriented parties, as noted in Figure 8.2.
A number of factors limit the ability of the GPC and SGP to operate as true niche market-
oriented parties, including:

 Money: market intelligence is crucial, but expensive (Marland 2005). The GPC has
some means to conduct limited market research and has shifted closer to a marketing
model in that sense. However, it was the SGP, with fewer resources, that won repre-
sentation, suggesting that although money is a factor, the electoral system is also critical to
success.
 Green principles: being a niche political party in a marketing age can be a double-edged
sword. Non-traditional party behaviours help create niche support, while adopting tradi-
tional marketing techniques may be equated with traditional political party behaviour. Par-
ties face tension between core beliefs and their somewhat elaborate democratic structures
versus a growing realization of a need to streamline operations and be more responsive to
public opinion in order to be electable.

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Figure 8.2 Indicators of GPC and SGP niche market-oriented political behaviour

Advice for practitioners

Noting Bantel’s (1997) earlier point about niche firms having the ability to employ scarce
resources strategically, niche parties may consider a variation of Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ model,
which involves marketing to individual niches rather than mass marketing (Anderson 2006). This
variation could aim to selectively deepen the niche rather than expand it in ways that might
alienate core support or deviate from fundamental party principles. As such, it would differ from
‘segmentation’, which Shani and Chalasani define as a ‘top-down approach’ to dividing up a large
market, and instead more closely resemble what they term a ‘bottom up’ niche marketing
approach (Shani and Chalasani 1992: 35). In our view, a niche market-oriented party could

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present unique aspects of itself to portions of the population rather than marketing the party as a
whole to the entire electorate. This includes:

 Marketing a leader as a distinct and winning brand rather than marketing the whole niche
party;
 Marketing the niche party at a lower level of government to establish credibility; electing
even one member can demonstrate that the party has legitimate, productive representatives,
and is not simply a campaigning group;
 Exploiting aspects of the electoral system which lend themselves to niche parties, such as
regional list voting and proportional systems, rather than trying to compete head to head
with mainstream parties.

Impact on politics
Political parties may be able to adopt some niche market-oriented behaviours while minimizing
the need to drastically retool their unique party identities. They might retain their core niche vote
while attracting new support and giving the political consumer a wider range of choice. Cir-
cumstances and electoral systems would dictate how that would translate into concrete post-
election political and policy action. An electoral system such as a regional list system may give
citizens access to a greater variety of political representation to advocate on their behalf. Within a
traditional SMP system, the impact of niche party representation would depend on the parlia-
mentary makeup. Unless the elected niche party members had sufficient representation to hold
the balance of power in a minority parliament, members may have limited influence on policy.
On the other hand, the election of even one representative, such as the leader, could have great
symbolic value for the issue(s) or political philosophy championed by the niche party. The
representative could be deployed strategically, to deepen the party’s support.
It may be that the framework of the political environment will ultimately limit the choices
of niche parties and compel them to play within the rules of the game set by the larger parties.
Although that limitation can hinder democracy, in a certain sense it can also encourage the
push towards democratic values. If the end result is that niche parties are forced to gain a
fuller understanding of their constituents in order to elect representatives within established
frameworks, their hard-won understanding might lead, in the end, to a more meaningful
representation of minority interests.

The way forward

It is possible that Green parties in particular need to consider marrying a market-oriented mindset
with more pragmatic electoral strategies. A closer study of the UK and Australian electoral
successes may provide assistance for niche party campaigners elsewhere, enabling them to adapt
successful Green strategies.
Market-oriented basics – professionalizing and building credibility – could sharpen the niche
party’s ability to tap into existing ‘green’ supporters and gain their vote. This could be more
effective than attempting to change unduly its product in the search for a new support base.
Further research could assess the feasibility of applying a version of the Long Tail model to
niche parties. A political variation of the model has already been popularly defined within the
context of US politics as being ‘every variety of political belief that does not fit within the two
major parties’ (Kling 2005). This goes full circle to the question of whether Green parties can
expand their support base to reach those who hold a variety of political beliefs, and whether, in

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doing so, they can still retain their original niche constituents. It would be painstaking work
to set a Long Tail-type framework and then track support across differing systems and
through several campaigns in order to answer that question, but it would be an interesting and
worthwhile pursuit that could ultimately encourage political participation.

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Political branding in the modern age

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9
Political branding in the
modern age
Effective strategies, tools and techniques
Kenneth M. Cosgrove

The topic: branding strategies and tools

Branding is a common marketing strategy and technique, and this chapter discusses the different
ways in which it is used by the mainstream political parties in the US and, by way of comparison
within North America, the Conservative Party of Canada. Branding offers important advantages
to the political practitioner because it can sum up a complicated series of events or ideas, give
meaning to an individual or incident, and provide a consistency of message over time with which
one-off efforts simply can’t compete. The brand’s importance has grown during the past three
decades as the number of political enterprises and the amount of background noise generated
through the transformation of media from mass to niche has occurred. Branding represents a
summary for the consumer about a product or, in this case, a party, candidate or policy, which
can be subject to significant input by the user based on experience or perception. Branding works
with positioning and differentiation because it helps to answer the questions of what market space
the product should occupy in the mind of the consumer, how it differs from other products in
the same space, and which consumers should and should not be interested in the product being
supported. Based on the positioning, branding ensures that values, benefits and specific attributes
all tie together, which allows for a consistent message. Branding requires a wholesale commit-
ment to building a complete offering, ideally over time. Branding done well can add value far
beyond just a single marketing campaign as each successive initiative builds on the existing
strength of the brand. However, when poorly executed, it can make it all too easy for
the opposition to attack, because the implementation no longer matches the brand promises
communicated to the voter/consumer.
There are multiple branding strategies just as there are multiple uses for the brand. This
chapter will focus specifically on the brand hierarchy concept because it is a good way to
examine the way in which the brand reaches the consumer on a number of different levels.
One commonly implemented strategy includes focusing on a top level (or house brand in
consumer marketing lingo), then layering specific platforms and products under that brand.
Another common strategy is to focus on the platform and product brands, and de-emphasize

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Kenneth M. Cosgrove

Figure 9.1 A typical brand hierarchy

the top level. These techniques allow us to look at the way in which the high-level brand
vision is translated into the specific brand attributes and these guide the way in which the brand
is translated to the consumer.
Two relevant examples of effective implementation of these strategies from the consumer
world are BMW and Proctor & Gamble. BMW uses a strong centralized brand with a con-
sistent message, emotion and product – high-end products for people who enjoy driving. This
goes across multiple product categories, such as cars, motorcycles and commercial trucks. Mini is
the one notable exception to this strategy, and is essentially a stand-alone brand with a narrow
product line that is tightly aimed at a specific audience to which the BMW brand may not
appeal. In contrast, Proctor & Gamble markets its products under a variety of brand names.
Many consumers may not realize that the parent company of two competing brands of deter-
gent is, in fact, the same. For BMW, the targeted focus allows them to launch new products
under the same umbrella, while using fewer resources. For Proctor & Gamble, the emphasis on
the platform brands, such as Tide or Swiffer, allows them to create a unique message for each
product, without worrying about how well it fits with the top-level brand. Figure 9.1 illustrates
a typical brand hierarchy.

Branding tools
Once the branding strategy has been selected, the next step is to develop the implementation
plan. Branding incorporates values, benefits and attributes for a specific product, candidate or
policy. While the execution can focus on any of these key areas, the most successful brands over
the long term resonate with the voter/consumer’s core values, and allow the messages to be
framed in terms of high-level values and emotions, versus specific benefits or attributes that can
be more easily countered by the opposition. Benefits ladders offer a graphic illustration of
this concept and are used repeatedly throughout this chapter. See Figure 9.2 for an example of
this tool.

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Political branding in the modern age

Figure 9.2 Benefits ladder

Previous research on branding strategy

The use of branding in peer-reviewed political science literature is growing but the literature
is still very heavy with analysis centered on framing and public relations or one-off incidents.
The US media, on the other hand, is filled with references to the concept of political
branding but these lack the broader analytical framework provided by the political marketing
literature.
Of particular value and interest are the work of Catherine Needham, Bruce I. Newman and
Kenneth M. Cosgrove. Each of these scholars has written extensively about the use of branding
in different areas, using different methods and in distinctly different contexts.
Writing primarily in the context of British politics with some comparison to the Clinton
years in the US, Needham has looked at the brand in terms of explaining leader popularity in a
variety of ways. A good brand should have six attributes: simplicity, uniqueness, reassurance,
aspiration, values and credibility (Needham 2005). Her work on Blair and Clinton indicates that
the brand can help a party leader build a relationship. As incumbents, facing challenges in
shifting strategic and institutional environments, she argues the value of the brand in terms of
candidates and services, and the changing nature of the brand in the modern fragmented age.
While Needham argues that parties engage in branding, she also suggests that this could cause
potential problems down the road during leadership changes. Needham rightly points out that
branding can help parties make the original sale and can be a key customer relationship man-
agement tool, especially in this age of declining customer loyalty (Needham 2006). What she
does not examine is the extent to which some of the branding around Clinton had to do with
Clinton or the work of his opponents. She further suggests that branding is heavily bundled up
with customer relationship marketing in a way that does not seem to be supported by the
political world as consistently as she suggests is the case. Further, she does not look at the
George W. Bush Administration, which was so enamored of the permanent campaign that an
entire book appeared on the topic (Edwards 2006).

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More recently, Smith and French (2009) argued that the brand can be a key way in which
consumers learn about politics. They argue that the brand’s importance can change depending
on the presence of competitors, the person leading the party, its ability to keep promises and its
perceived importance (Smith and French 2009). They look at the brand from the perspective of
the consumer more than the marketer and argue that it can build community and provide
cultural identity, rational benefits that really seem to differentiate between one set of proposals
and another, psychological benefits and a reinforcement of self-perception, while allowing
voters to seek out variety in their consumption. However, they close by asserting that the
emerging global anti-brands movement may limit the value of the brand itself (ibid.). This last
line of argument was anticipated in Heath and Potter (2004), who argued that such movements,
far from undermining the branded consumerism about which they are complaining, tend to
reinforce it.
Writing from the US perspective, Bruce I. Newman (1999) also examined the Clinton
Administration’s effort to build an image. While Newman’s work is most interesting in terms of
the way image building works in general, it only looks at a single case and suffers at this point,
as would any contemporaneous examination of the Clinton strategy, from the shift away from
mass to niche marketing. Newman’s work is interesting because it acknowledges that image
building is occurring, but it is limited by its orientation toward mass marketing. It would remain
applicable as a guide for that, but is silent about the new media world that exists at present
because it was written only at the dawn of it.
Writing several years later than Newman and well into the era of niche narrow-
casting, Cosgrove (2007) argues that branding is a key tool to smooth over such leadership
transitions and this has been proven by the multi-decade success of the Republican Party in
building a brand that has Ronald Reagan as its heritage. The use of Reagan as a heritage has
allowed, in general, the Republicans to avoid the kinds of succession problems that have been
seen in the UK. Needham has written that the intra-partisan contest has become one of who
can align best with the Reagan heritage and how quickly can they do this. The candidates that
have done so – George H.W. Bush in 1988 and his son in 2000 and 2004 – have had an easier
path to election and legitimacy within the party than have the two candidates who demon-
strated that they didn’t share the Reagan product heritage – John McCain in 2008 and
George W. Bush in 2000. The Republican Party has applied its brand not just to all of its activ-
ities but to its customer relationship management plan, and has attracted support from swing
voters as a result.
There are a number of excellent works from the business literature that would be of use
to anyone seeking to expand their understanding of the concept and its applications. Of
particular note are the works of Trout and Ries, individually and collectively, as well as
Ries and Reis (2002) on the creation of successful brands. Ries and Trout’s (2001) work
Positioning shows the way in which a brand comes to occupy a specific market space. Also,
from the commercial branding perspective, the works of Sergio Zyman and his co-authors
make for a good read (Zyman 2000; Zyman and Brott 2002) about the transformation of
the marketing and advertising worlds and their subsequent impact on branding. Mark
and Pearson’s (2000) work on the power of narrative and archetype in branding building,
as well as Travis’s (2000) work on emotional branding have considerable relevance for
political marketers, despite their orientation toward psychology and commercial applications.
This is because tapping into cultural narratives and emotional appeals have probably never
had more value than at present. Political activists have written extensively about branding
from the left and the right. Their work tends to reflect their partisan bias; however, the
words of Viguerie and Franke (2004) and Trippi (2004) show how brands get created

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Political branding in the modern age

and used, and their work also focuses on mechanics or ego far more than does the academic
literature.

New research: party branding

There are fundamental differences in how an organization, such as a political party, strategically
chooses to brand itself. While many branding strategies are viable, some are more consistently
effective than others. This chapter compares and contrasts several different branding strategies.
These strategies run the gamut from unified party branding with supporting branding for policy
initiatives, to more decentralized branding with candidates and policies being uniquely branded.
Specific examples include: candidate Obama, the Obama Administration, Nancy Pelosi and the
New Democratic Congress, Canada’s New Government and the Republicans’ bundled policy
initiatives.
The next sections will look at two, of many, different ways to brand. The methods used by
the Democrats and Republicans illustrate two different approaches to using the brand. The
Republicans have been branding for a long time with a focus on their high-level partisan brand.
The benefits of focusing on the top-level house brand include consistency in messaging and
efficiency in launching a new campaign, because it is tied-in closely with the existing brand,
which is already recognized by the voter/consumer. Trade-offs of this strategy include more
difficulty in establishing a unique identity beyond that of the party. It is also difficult for an
individual candidate or the party as a whole to move away from a failed party strategy. In
contrast, the Democrats have chosen to put more emphasis on the individual platform and
product brands. The benefits of this strategy are that individual candidates and policies get more
focus and a unique message can be crafted to sell the voter/consumer on the benefits of said
candidate or policy. The most significant trade-off is an increase in the amount of resources
needed to successfully execute this strategy. Because it does not tie in with a strong high-level
brand, the brand and its associated message must be built from scratch. This means time and
money must be repeatedly spent to effectively develop and communicate a strong message. The
two brand hierarchy charts in Figure 9.3 and Figure 9.4 show the divergent strategies of the
parties.
The Democratic Party’s branding efforts have been far more scattershot in terms of
composition, consistency and intensity than have the Republican (especially Conservative)
branding campaigns. Additionally, for most of the period the Republicans enjoyed a significant
advantage in marketing architecture. The Republicans were further advantaged by the fact that
one of their movement leaders, Ronald Reagan, had significant experience as a product
marketer and was far more familiar with the means through which product marketing works
than was any Democrat. One can argue that it was, in fact, not until after the 2004 election that
liberals, in particular, became concerned with these matters.
Select case studies help to illustrate these points, as well as offer insight into effective and less
effective branding execution.

Effective branding examples

 Candidate Obama
 Republican Party (1980–2006)
 Canada’s New Government and the Harper Government
 The War on Terror

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Figure 9.3 Democrat brand hierarchy

Figure 9.4 Republican brand hierarchy

Ineffective branding examples

 The Obama Administration
 New Direction Congress
 Opportunity Society

Advice for practitioners

Candidate Obama: building an effective personal brand as party brand

While there is no doubt that the Obama campaign had a policy agenda, it is not clear that this was
the driving force behind Obama’s election. The policies were akin to the product line that the

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Figure 9.5 Obama benefits ladder

brand supports. The brand was very much about aspirations and values. The core Obama brand
could be summed up as containing the values of hope and change, but also a heavy dose of the
idea of new politics to move beyond the partisan division of the Bush years. Candidate Obama
was a focused, effective communicator who usually made his case in the terms that are commonly
employed by successful product spokespeople. When he did not do so, one could see the
communication problems that would emerge in the Obama Administration, when his more
professorial traits emerged. The brand supporting Barack Obama’s campaign changed little from
the beginning of the primary and caucus season to the end of the general election.
Obama was heavy on brand values, had a clear set of brand benefits and attributes that
positioned him very favorably for the circumstances within which the 2008 contest was held. As
the New York Times reported, the visual representation of the brand featured a red, white and
blue color scheme, a consistent font and a logo specifically created for it. It was designed by a
commercial design studio and a designer with a background in corporate marketing who
explained that he first treated Obama like any other corporate client, but then read his two
books and wanted to position the candidate as a uniter of the red and blue states and a clean
break with the past (Hellner 2008). The logo and the message sourced from Obama’s own
writing created a highly authentic brand and in this Obama bears a striking resemblance to that
Conservative heritage brand, Ronald Reagan. The net result was to build a strong personal
brand but, as the results of the 2010 election proved, personal brands may not translate to the
rest of a political party.

Republican Party (1980–2006)

The Republican Party used branding in conjunction with a product-marketing model to sell its
candidates and its issues to the voters during the 1980–2006 period. Its brand featured Ronald
Reagan as its face and, eventually, its heritage. Its brand promise and core were focused on a

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specific version of Conservatism that emphasized a strong national defense, free market eco-
nomics, weak regulatory and social states, and family (meaning traditional Christian) values. The
Republican brand became the political equivalent of total entertainment marketing at sporting
events, in that the voters were presented with it at every opportunity in policy and political terms,
as well as through a variety of policy issues. The Republican Party had a very long run of success
with its core brand. It really only ran into trouble when it presided over a massive economic
downturn, two wars and a series of scandals, meaning that its product no longer appeared to work
as the brand promised. The downside to the Republican strategy of branding the party then
harmed the party’s electoral fortunes because all Republicans were tied on some level with its
brand failure. While many Republicans may have wanted to distance themselves from George
W. Bush, the branding strategy that they had collectively used to win elections and sell policies
tied them all together in the public mind. The Republican solution at this point has been to, first,
oppose Obama’s agenda, second, debate repositioning themselves, or third, launch the branded
‘Tea Party’ movement that is very much employing the conservative branding strategy associated
with Ronald Reagan and the 1980–2006 period.
Republicans had great but not perfect success branding public policy issues, as the examples
of the Bush Administration’s War on Terror and the Opportunity Society show. The first sold
because it responded to market conditions, could incorporate a variety of policies and presented
the Administration as responding to a pressing public problem about which people knew little,
as Cosgrove (2007) reports. The Bush team placed its policy proposals into a coherent narrative
that enabled it to build fellowship between unrelated events abroad and implement sweeping
changes in US domestic policy. The opposite was true in its Opportunity Society brand because
the problem it sought to deal with was not obvious to the consumer, who already knew a lot
about social spending, and because the Administration expended little effort in selling it, didn’t
tie it to the higher party brand and many opponents had their own branded alternatives ready
to contest it. The result was success in one case and failure in the other. Branding policy works
well when introducing new things or things about which the US public knows little and for
which the proposal can be presented as the obvious solution.

Canada’s New Government: a comparative case that worked

Branding is employed by the Conservative Party of Canada in a way that resembles the branding
style employed by the US Republican Party. Early on in their work with branding, the Canadians
received help from some of the same people who perfected that strategy in the US. For example,
the very successful US political consultant Frank Luntz instructed a conservative Canadian civic
group on how to go about branding the Conservatives (Canwest News Service 2006). Consistent
with the brand strategy, he suggested centering the effort on taxes and accountability, stressing
images and pictures, tapping into national symbols and tying their activities to Canada’s national
sport, hockey (ibid.). In his speech, Luntz ran through what constitutes the core of the Con-
servative branding strategy (taxes, accountability, justice and personal traits of the candidate,
especially honesty), before pointing out the need to tie the branded government’s policy actions
to the daily lives of average folks (ibid.). One key difference is that Canada as a nation is quite
consciously branded, as Potter (2010) has noted.
The Conservative Party has a face for its brand, Stephen Harper, just as the Republicans did
in the US. Once elected, the Conservative Party of Canada instructed bureaucrats and political
staff to refer to the Conservative Government. As the Ottawa Citizen reported in 2006, an email
from Natural Resources Canada told employees to substitute the brand for the former gov-
ernment title and gave formatting instructions for how the term was to be written (Ottawa

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Citizen 2006). Doing so fits the branding strategy because a consistent face was put on all aspects
of a relatively amorphous institution: the Canadian Government.
A web search using Google featuring the terms ‘Canada’s New Government launches’
produced a number of results in very different policy areas, each using this branding.
For slightly over the first year and a half of the Conservative reign the term was used, being
eventually replaced by an emphasis on the Harper Government, as the CBC reported in
2007 (Canadian Press 2007 and Wikipedia no date). This transition should not be taken as a sign
of failure but rather of success, because the ‘new’ branded product had survived long
enough that it was no longer so new and it could be branded in a different way: the Harper
Government.
A second Google search was conducted for the terms ‘The Harper Government launches’
and it, too, produced a number of results across different policy areas. The Harper Government
has also pursued a branding campaign around a high stimulus issue: economic policy. It has
done so by launching ‘Canada’s Economic Action Plan’. The Plan has its own logo (featuring
multicolored arrows upward and a consistent font for its verbiage with both official languages);
it appears on signage at funded projects, which also note how many jobs were created at the site
in question or how much money the federal government has invested in the relevant policy
area; and there is a nationwide media advertising campaign in support of it. Thus, the Plan’s
impact is tied directly to the site on which the work is being done or to the policy area in
which money is being spent, and to the economic fortunes of the community in which it is
being implemented. This, as we will see, is a very different approach to the topic of economic
stimulus than was taken by the Obama Administration in the US. The Harper Government
placed its branded economic recovery plan within the higher-ranking brand of the country of
Canada.

What didn’t work: the Obama Administration and the New Direction Congress
While branding is a wonderfully useful tool for political marketers, it is not without its problems.
This section will examine some of the downsides of branding beyond what we saw above in the
case of the Bush Administration. It will look most specifically at the transition from Candidate
Obama to the Obama Administration. The Obama campaign brand raised public expectations
and emotions in a way that President Obama has found difficult to satisfy. We can see this in its
core message that Huffington reports was described by David Axelrod as being ‘change versus a
broken status quo; people versus the special interests; a politics that would lift people and the
country up; and a president who would not forget the middle class’ (Huffington 2009). The
Obama experience shows the downside to the way in which the Democrats are trying to brand,
because the candidate was branded but was unable to show results right away or communicate on
a daily basis with the public as candidates do. Further, neither the party nor the Administration’s
policy proposals were clearly branded. Branding works best when it is part of a well thought out
marketing plan; it is less effective on an ad hoc basis.
Although Obama had articulated a policy agenda and had been consistent in selling it, this
was neither the bulk of his campaign activity nor, especially after early October, the focus of the
election, which became the economic crisis of the moment and which candidate would deal
better with the crisis. Obama had an ambitious policy agenda but much of the campaign was
either about aspirations or economics. Once in office, the campaign’s policy laundry list did not
produce a house brand for the Obama Administration or the Democratic Party. Thus, the
policies and the Administration itself lack the brand value proposition that the Obama campaign
very much had. Instead, individual issues have been dealt with, but there is no coherent story

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around them within which to understand them, and there is no structuring device like a house
brand for the Democratic Party through which these could be sold to the voter. The lack of a
single set of core values that run throughout all of the marketing campaigns surrounding policy
and the lack of an overall narrative built around the whole are striking when compared to either
the Obama campaign or the Republican branding strategy. It is difficult to identify where the
Administration has used branding while in office. This may reflect the above-noted split
between the heavy emphasis on consumer relationship marketing and brand building under-
taken by the Democratic Congress at present and the Republicans during the Age of Reagan
and a heavier orientation on governance issues favored by Obama’s chief of staff, or it may
simply be the result of a White House that is pushing so many policies at once that it is difficult
to market any of them well. There are many different takes on this problem. Three include
Alter (2010) or Peters and Simon-Rosenthal (2009), who look at Rahm Emmanual’s theories
on branding; Jonathan Alter (2010), who discusses the first year of the Obama Administration;
and Mat Bai (2005), who examines the role of linguist George Lakoff in shaping Obama’s
message. The clear product brands that have been developed have been around the stimulus bill
and the first lady (see Borelli 2010), but nothing more.
This failure meant that the significant policy and political accomplishments of the first
two years of the Administration have not received much public acclaim or registered much
public awareness. The lack of a Democratic house brand has not helped. Other Democrats and
third-sector groups have used a tag-along strategy to promote their own agendas under the
guise of supporting Obama’s. The Administration’s inconsistency has created this situation and
has made it seem more reactive than was the case for its more branded Republican predecessors.
Even worse, it has promoted ideas, not initiatives, and has no way to brand those, as was the
case during the healthcare debate. Candidate Obama represents an excellent model of what
works in branded politics, but President Obama is more of a cautionary tale about branding’s
pitfalls.

The stimulus bill: promises made, not kept

The most branded undertaking of the Obama Administration has been the American Investment
and Recovery Act of 2010, frequently called ‘the stimulus bill’. Its name positioned public
spending as ‘investments’, it was marketed through the use of signs on sites that had received
funding, which featured a logo and the name, but no mention of how much money was being
spent there or how many jobs were being created (that information could be found by
examination of the market-oriented website that tracked the number of jobs it created, the
amount of ‘tax relief it provided’ and showed users where the money was spent, recovery.gov).
The overall logo focused on green energy and manufacturing, alongside an American flag, and
was placed on $5 million-worth of signage which often included a figure of a worker with shovel
(Condon 2010).
At no point did the words ‘Obama’ or ‘Democrats’ appear on the signage. The problem with
this program was that Obama made specific statements about its impact in terms of employment
and time of recovery. Branding generally does not work well with such specifics and can set up
the political actor using it for a brand failure should product performance not match brand
promises. Something like this happened in the Bush Administration with ‘Mission Accom-
plished’, and again with the Obama ‘Recovery Summer’. The White House rolled out the term
in June 2010, as ABC News reported (Dwyer 2010). While this may have been an attempt to
get the public to emotionally engage with the Administration and its policies while showing
that promises had been kept, the obvious difference between the brand narrative and realities in

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Figure 9.6 Benefits ladder – American Reinvestment and Recovery Act

the economy instead raised questions about the Administration’s competence. While the con-
sensus position on the stimulus bill and the bailouts is that they staunched the economic
bleeding, this required the Obama team to try to prove a negative and thus limited the number
of ways in which it could visually show that its promises had been kept, as is required in an
effective branding campaign. This experience illustrates the downsides of using specifics in
branding and of using branding in situations where the marketer doesn’t have a great deal of
control over events, as is the case with economic policy in the globalized world. Thus, the
Republicans were able to introduce the narrative that they had built for several decades about
Democrats in general and liberals in particular, and their reluctance to embrace free market
economics. The Administration, meanwhile, was left to talk about gradual instead of dramatic
improvements to initiate a positioning and differentiation exercise to shift most of the blame for
the current circumstances onto the GOP (the Republican Party) and the Bush Administration.
It has sometimes branded the Republicans as the ‘party of No’, something that many of its core
Conservative activists readily embraced.

Healthcare: no consistency in branding

Achieving a national health system that covers all Americans has been a goal of the Democratic
Party since at least the 1950s. During the first 18 months the Obama Administration and
Congressional Democrats got much closer to that goal. They did so using the term ‘reform’, but
this was not one specific proposal, meaning that there were multiple plans and differing benefits
that would flow from the passage of a bill. These were, in a nutshell: better access, better care and
lower costs.
The problem is that there isn’t a single Democratic product and this fight exposed the deep
differences within the party over ideology. The Republicans had a much simpler message of
opposition, which was deeply based in the values and emotions of their targets: Obamacare.

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Figure 9.7 Benefits ladder – healthcare

The Democrats, who debated and revised, ended up with a policy but not a brand because they
lacked the top-level values with which they could sell the policy to the voters. Their final
argument seemed to be that passing this policy change was a way to stick it to greedy insurance
companies and, indeed, their case for doing so was aided when several insurers announced
large rate hikes in the spring of 2010. While the Democrats attempted to market this policy as a
huge victory and sent the president on a post-passage roadshow as a post-selection device, this
episode represented a defeat because the Republican brand gained credibility with party
identifiers and swing voters.

Cap and trade: no immediate benefit

Because of the economic and healthcare battles, there was little time to produce the other
two major initiatives that had been touted during the 2008 campaign. Cap and trade, a
platform brand that combined energy and environmental policies, and comprehensive immi-
gration reform. These promises mattered to key constituencies but they also mattered to
Republicans who, once again, might not have the best intellectual policy and may not
have helped their own brand but have certainly won the emotions and values surrounding
both issues.
The bill passed the House but a combination of effective conservative marketing and a lack
of a consistent Democratic campaign doomed it. As one of its opponents explained, cap and
trade was turned into ‘cap and tax’, and the entire trading system’s favorable impact on
the balance sheets of large economic enterprises was pointed out, according to Myron Ebell of
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the leading opposition groups to the proposal
who spoke to the New York Times in March 2010 on the topic (Broder 2010). The
opponents blocked the bill because they picked two stimulus issues that were both visible to
and tied into the lives of average Americans. The Democrats, in contrast, promised new jobs

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Figure 9.8 Benefits ladder – cap and trade

and more reliable energy, but couldn’t say when those things would come about or what their
cost might be. Good branding requires that one be aware of market conditions in order to
succeed.

The New Direction Congress: failure to build public awareness

The Congressional Democrats also had a substantive interest in selling policy and that was done
through a different vehicle to the Democratic campaign committees: The Party Congressional
leadership. They had multiple problems in executing the brand strategy during their first four
years of attempts. This was because: during the first two years they had no strategic incentive to
do so because of the fixed electoral calendar; there was no agreed-upon Democratic product or
core principles, so there was no single Democratic brand.
Eventual speaker Nancy Pelosi’s effort shows one possible way in which the Democrats could
build a consistent brand, but it also shows how difficult it is to do so on a stand-alone basis.
Pelosi also met repeatedly with branding and marketing legend Jack Trout and linguist George
Lakoff to shape a message, as Peters and Simon-Rosenthal (2009) and Bai (2005) reported
independently. They used positioning and differentiation to brand the 110th Congress as the
‘New Direction Congress’. As Peters and Rosenthal and a CNN report in August 2006 show,
they branded their policies by developing the ‘Six for 06’ platform and ‘The Contract with
America’, with the intention of making that year’s elections a referendum on the Bush
Administration. The items were very similar to the kinds of value-driven appeals that Repub-
licans normally make. The items were, according to materials found on the House website: real
security at home and overseas; prosperity – better American jobs, better pay; opportunity –
college access for all; energy independence – lower gas prices; affordable healthcare – life-saving
science; and retirement security and dignity (www.speaker.gov/pdf/thebook.pdf). While
nobody could oppose these goals on their face value, they showed how branding could be used

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Kenneth M. Cosgrove

Figure 9.9 Benefits ladder – Congressional Democrats

to mask the contents of a party’s policies while at the same time differentiating the party from
its opponents. The benefits ladder that Pelosi and the Democrats used in 2006 can be seen in
Figure 9.9.
Once in office, the Democrats held a 100 session in order to show that they were keeping
their promises and, as a result, ensuring credibility in their brand.
Their strategic problem was the fixed electoral calendar in the US. It became very much in
their interests not to try to fully execute their brand strategy and to avoid dealing with
controversial topics, because doing so would give Republicans an opportunity to differentiate
themselves from an unpopular incumbent president and revitalize their brand. The use of a
brand strategy can limit the willingness of political leaders to take on difficult issues. We can see
this in the subjects taken up during the period: national security, the minimum wage, student
loan costs and energy policy, as the New York Times reported on 3 January 2007 (Hulse 2007).
The term ‘New Direction Congress’ became the dominant feature of the House leadership’s
communicative efforts during the remainder of that Congress, and Speaker Pelosi was out-
standing at staying on message, as the same article reported. The internet retained traces of this
throughout the Democrats’ Congressional majority, with web pages bearing a box containing
blue stars and white text reading ‘A NEW DIRECTION’. Behind that, in smaller white text
but clearly visible, were the kind of vague value-driven terms with which branding works well.
Examples included ‘restore accountability’, ‘preserve our planet’, ‘defend our country’ and
‘strengthen our families’. The entire website was clearly set up with a marketing and branding
model in mind, as it noted what had been ‘accomplished’, what was ‘on the President’s desk for
approval’, what was ‘headed for the President’s desk for approval’, what had ‘passed the House
and Senate’, ‘passed the House’, and what had ‘been blocked by Senate Republicans’, and
finally what had been ‘vetoed by the President over the Will of the American People’. The
New Direction Congress continued to be used by some Democrats throughout their majority,
as the author found during the course of this research (see www.speaker.gov/legislation?

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id=0053). As Peters and Simon-Rosenthal (2009) note, at the end of its first term the speaker
herself presented the list of accomplishments of the branded Democratic Congress by listing the
promises it had kept, by noting that it had achieved a rate of 70 percent bipartisanship in its
activities, by noting that more could have been done but for President Bush and his Congres-
sional allies, and by noting the continuing need for ‘A New Direction for America’ (www.
speaker.gov/legislation?id=0053). The problem was that nobody ever heard of it beyond
Capitol Hill and this was partially a result of the unwillingness of the Democrats to use their
brand in the service of large policy battles that would build more public awareness of and equity
within it. Branding, then, works better when public attention is called to the brand through
both free and paid media.

Branding as a power tool: what works and the care to be taken

The brand is the key communicative tool of contemporary politics. It is a real power tool because
it can be the key to gaining and using power to great effect. It is a must have in order to
effectively communicate with the voter/consumer. However, the politician or party using the
brand is wise to take care that one would with any powerful tool because, while very useful, its
use comes with some risk. Mistakes that limit its effectiveness include: having a great brand but a
weak product or no product at all; inconsistency in using the brand; not undertaking the actions
that will build awareness and equity; failing to see the brand as part (but not all) of one’s customer
relationship management strategy; and failing to use the brand as a device to keep the consumer
engaged, and instead settling for a one-time purchasing decision. The brand can be a key tool to
stimulate longer-term activism provided the mistakes noted above are not made and a branding
strategy is in place prior to initiating its use. Successful branding requires consistent messaging
across candidates and policies and having the product being sold in place before launching the
branding effort. It involves a stronger appeal to values than to specific knowledge, in an effort to
win over emotions rather than facts. It requires a clear decision about branding strategy to be
made in terms of the choice between branding a party and branding individuals or specific policy
proposals. While both can work, there are significant resource trade-offs involved. In the case of
building an overriding house brand and then applying it to everything, the problem is that it
becomes difficult to reposition away from policy and personal failures.
Branding works best when the brand is clearly and consistently positioned, when supported
by strong messaging, and when it moves up the benefits ladder from specific attributes to high-
level values. All of the successful brands in our case studies did these things well. The failures
have been those that have failed in at least one of these elements. Branding is too powerful a
tool to use casually or lightly but, as is true with all powerful tools, a little planning and thought
can produce a very impressive result.

Impact on politics
The brand is a double-edged sword in democratic terms because it has the potential to ensure
effective communication between politicians and citizens, but it can expose a political actor as a
failure and can be seen as a manipulative device. It seems to work best when introducing new
policy ideas, new political movements or individual candidates. It seems to be of less use when
trying to introduce changes to an entrenched status quo that is well understood by the public, as
both George W. Bush (ownership society) and Barack Obama (administration policy branding)
discovered. This is driven by the fact that a key component of branding is the positioning, and

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Kenneth M. Cosgrove

once the consumer/voter has categorized a candidate or policy initiative, it is far more difficult to
change that mental assessment.
Overall, it is a powerful tool when used properly, and it is capable of helping people to
understand their world and to join together to solve public problems, as its use in the US and
Canada shows. Its effectiveness in introducing new commodities to public life is profound, but
seems more limited when trying to change public perceptions of a familiar status quo. It
requires a significant amount of time and energy to build and consistent effort to maintain, but
doing so can strengthen the organization by making it easier to launch new candidates and
policy proposals. A well-built brand can create enduring ties between citizens and the politician
and can be one way through which citizen education about politics and policy can occur.

The way forward

Branding is a key and growing area of political market research. Some of the issues that research
could address are the branding of leaders, the knowledge and understanding of consultants of
political branding, and democratic implications.

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The politics of hope

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10
The politics of hope
The Democratic Party and
the institutionalisation of the Obama brand
in the 2010 mid-term elections
Brian M. Conley

The topic: institutionalising the party brand

The branding of Obama as an agent of hope and change was central to the successful strategy of
marketing the Democratic presidential candidate as an appealing alternative to the Republican
status quo in 2008. However, unlike either the re-election of Bush in 2004 in the US, or Tony
Blair in 2001 in the UK, which were also characterised by the use of branding strategies, it is not
clear whether the Obama brand was, or will become the Democratic Party brand. In both the
Blair and Bush re-elections, the candidate’s message reflected ideas central to an established party
brand (Gould 1998; Lilleker 2005; Cosgrove 2007). This was less the case with Obama’s election,
given the absence of a similar, market-oriented effort to brand the Democratic Party over the last
decade. The Obama election, then, raises questions about why candidates, parties and other
political organisations are increasingly using branding strategies. It also raises questions about how
and when branding strategies are formally incorporated into the functioning of a party, and
specifically whether or not the Obama brand will be adopted by the Democratic Party or will
remain, as it originated, the product of a highly successful political entrepreneur.
The development and use of more market-oriented strategies, including branding, is a rela-
tively new trend in US and UK politics. In the US, for example, the presidencies of Ronald
Reagan, Bill Clinton and George Bush were each characterised, with varying degrees of success,
by the development of branded political personalities and stories. In the UK, Tony Blair and
the Labour Party’s ability to defeat the Conservatives in 1997 after more than a decade out of
power also illustrates how the development of a market-based brand story can change a party’s
or a candidate’s fortunes. Now Barack Obama, and his story of hope and change, has provided
one of the most pronounced examples to date of the manner in which a branded politics is
redefining how political leaders interact with and are perceived by the public. What is equally
clear is that some parties have been more successful than others at designing and implementing
unique brand stories. This is particularly true in the US, where despite the Republican Party’s
success at institutionalising a conservative political brand, the Democrats have largely been

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The politics of hope

unable to brand themselves (Cosgrove 2007). The Democratic Party has had branded
candidates, party leaders and, more recently, electoral campaigns. What Democratic leaders
have struggled to do is brand the party itself, or to institutionally codify a consistent and
differentiating political narrative, with associated policies, symbols and images.
However, with the approach of the 2010 mid-term elections, the Democratic Party hoped
to capitalise on Obama’s branding success by incorporating themes central to his brand story
into the party’s core message. It was unlikely, I would argue, that the Democrats would be able
to replicate the Republican Party’s branding success in 2010 owing to persistent institutional
and cultural differences between the parties. While the Republicans have traditionally been a
more centrally organised, top-driven party organisation, dominated by an institutional culture
that prioritises party unity over dissension, the Democrats, by contrast, have historically been less
organisationally cohesive (Freeman 1986). The practical consequences of this are that the
Democrats, as a party and as individual office holders and candidates, have been less able than
the Republicans or Labour to cohere around a unifying political narrative.
The focus of the chapter will be on the Obama brand and the extent to which the brand was
or was not institutionalised by the Democratic Party during the mid-term 2010 elections. To
analyse this, the chapter will look first at the concepts of political and party brands. I will do
so as an entry point into a broader discussion of how differences in political culture might help
to explain variations between Republican, Labour and Democratic Party branding. Do differ-
ences in internal political culture and the degree of party centralisation help explain why the
Democrats, unlike either the Republican or Labour Parties have been unable to institutionalise
a unique political brand? To test this question, I will look at the degree to which the Demo-
cratic Party and its candidates who ran to retain party seats in the US Senate in the 2010 mid-
term election were able to run a coordinated campaign, centred on a unifying brand story. I
will do so by examining the degree to which they adopted two policies central to the Obama
brand: economic recovery and tax relief.

Previous research on political and party branding

Branding has emerged as one of the most common tools used by market-oriented political parties
to both respond to the shifting needs of the market as well as to potentially build loyalty among
targeted voters. In politics, brands are essentially unique political narratives or stories designed to
link in an enduring way the interests and aspirations of the market with the product promises of a
particular party, candidate or organisation. When successful, political brands are experienced as an
affirmation of the beliefs and values of the targeted audience, which can create a durable asso-
ciation in the voter’s mind between themselves and a party. However, their use also highlights
precisely how targeted and party-driven a market approach to politics can be. The brand
experience, whether in business or politics, is intended to be an exclusive one. It forms a bond
with certain audiences by reflecting their values, but also by contrasting them with other beliefs
or practices in society. At the same time, brands are not fully participatory. They are based on
market needs, but are designed by and for candidates, parties and other entities as a means of
building loyalty, and thus enhancing competitiveness within the electoral market place.
What distinguishes a branding strategy, then, from other approaches in politics is the ability
of the brand to foster an exclusive association in the minds of a targeted audience between their
preferences and that of a party’s product. What a brand does, explains Ken Cosgrove in his
study of the rise of a Conservative Republican Party brand in the US, is ‘build images in peo-
ple’s minds about a product or … politicians or public policies’ (Cosgrove 2007: 16). Brands are
for the most part ‘intangible’, explains Gareth Smith, and consist mainly of ‘the knowledge

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Brian M. Conley

about a product that is held in the memory of consumers’ (Smith 2009: 211). For instance, ‘a
name is not a brand’, as Daryl Travis contends, ‘neither is a logo’ (Travis 2000: 4). Rather, a
brand is ‘what these symbols mean and the feelings they engender’, Travis explains (ibid.: 4).
Such imagery and feelings are intended to ‘set a brand apart’, Cosgrove writes, in order to
‘attract the right audience to it’, and to ‘give that audience a set of feelings about using and
being affiliated with it’ (Cosgrove 2007: 10). Political brands are able to elicit such strong feel-
ings by invoking ideas, values, aspirations or ‘frames’ inherent to the market in which the party
or candidate is situated. Frames, Cosgrove writes, may be defined as the ‘means through which
the target audience sees the event’ (ibid.: 24). The power of such framing, Cosgrove and others
note, can be seen in the emotional connections that some customers develop toward brands
‘that [are] much deeper than the product being sold’ (ibid.: 19; Mark and Pearson 2001;
Travis 2000).
The use of a targeted branding strategy in the 1970s and 1980s helped Conservative
Republicans, Cosgrove explains, to build a loyal base of supporters sufficient to move the
Republican Party from a minority to a majority status in US politics. The development of a
distinct conservative brand story helped the Republicans to ‘produce a consistent message about
themselves’ and in doing so, ‘build lasting relationships with their audience targets’ Cosgrove
(2007: 7) explains. The Republican brand resonated, he contends, because it ‘tells a story, makes
promises [and] is specifically positioned to appeal to targeted audiences’ (ibid.: 11). The brand
effectively explained to a select audience how conservatism reflected their values, was distinct
from Democratic policies and would, if afforded the chance to govern, provide a new type of
leadership for the country. The brand worked, in other words, because it did what most suc-
cessful brands have done, as Catherine Needham has argued: namely, it offered ‘simple and
reassuring messages, effectively differentiated [itself] from their opponents, established a value
basis for [its] claims, built aspirational appeals and delivered on their promises’ (Needham 2005:
348). Successful brands, Needham explains, not only simplify consumer choice, they offer a
unique and affirming product experience.
As Cosgrove notes, the branding of the Republican Party was initially promoted by party
conservatives, and the brand’s institutionalisation within the party in many ways parallels the rise
of the Republican right in the 1980s and 1990s (Cosgrove 2007; Brennan 1995). The first real
political success of the Conservative Republican brand came in 1980, when Ronald Reagan
was able to draw on the emerging conservative brand narrative to win the presidency. Reagan
became, in the process, what scholars refer to as a ‘brand personality’ (Smith 2009). In 2000,
and especially in 2004, George W. Bush was able to follow Reagan’s example, which has now
become a ‘heritage brand’ for the Republicans, and present himself as a line extension of the
Conservative Republican brand (Cosgrove 2007: 72). We saw something similar in 1997 when
Tony Blair and the Labour Party won a landslide victory over the Conservatives. Again, a
candidate was able to win office, at least in part, by successfully ‘personifying’ an appealing party
brand narrative (Lilleker 2005; White and de Chernatony 2002).
In both cases, individual candidates used simple, differentiating and aspirational ideas, images
and rhetoric developed by their party, along with specific promises to brand their candidacy.
Bill Clinton and, to a greater extent, Barack Obama have also been able to do so, but unlike the
Republicans or Blair, neither Clinton nor Obama had an enduring party brand narrative on
which to draw (Newman 1999; Morris 1997). The conservative brand story upon which
Reagan rested his presidential candidacy in 1980, for example, had been developed over more
than a decade by a conservative political movement that extended beyond the Republican
Party, but that had also become a dominant force within the GOP (the Republican Party) in
the 1960s and 1970s (Cosgrove 2007; Brennan 1995). Indeed, Reagan’s own emergence as a

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political figure in the mid-1960s sprang directly from his prominence within the historic, but
failed conservative campaign to elect Barry Goldwater president in 1964 (Schoenwald 2001).
Tony Blair’s leadership, first within the party and then as prime minister, was also shaped by an
ongoing effort to rebrand the Labour Party in the early 1990s (Gould 1998; Lilleker 2005;
White and de Chernatony 2002). After finding itself in an historically weak position following
repeat Conservative Party victories in the 1980s, the Labour Party sought to reverse its fortunes
in the 1990s by rebranding itself as ‘New Labour’. The goal of this initiative was to ‘modernise’
the party, write White and de Chernatony, and to ‘reconnect [it] to the electorate, and over-
come the electorate’s doubts and fears about Labour as a party of government’ (White and de
Chernatony 2002: 48). The result was a repositioning of the Labour Party that aligned it more
firmly with the aspirational and individualist values of the growing ‘working middle-class’ in
Britain, as Philip Gould describes it, while at the same time distancing the party from its tradi-
tional commitment to working-class interests (Gould 1998: 173). It was a narrative that Blair, as
a young, savvy politician, was readily able to appropriate as a means of casting himself as per-
sonally indicative of a new, more forward-looking and less class-based style of Labour politics in
Britain (Lees-Marshment 2001a; King 1998).
In both the Republican and Labour cases, then, the branding of individual politicians fol-
lowed from the branding of a party. Yet, as President Obama’s branding success illustrates,
candidates and politicians are capable of branding themselves independent of an established
party brand. What is less clear, however, is whether a candidate or politician can brand a party.
The Democratic Party leadership has, since Obama’s 2008 victory, sought to institutionalise the
unique features of the Obama brand narrative. However, evidence suggests that the party is
again failing to effectively brand either itself or its policies. It is a circumstance that raises ques-
tions not only about whether or not a candidate brand can become a party brand, but also
about whether or not there is something distinct about the Democratic Party itself that limits its
ability to institutionalise a unifying brand narrative?
Comparative research on the Republican and Democratic parties in the US has pointed to a
number of differences between the parties, including differences in party goals and party organ-
isation (Aldrich 1995). Arguably, however, the most persistent difference between the parties,
though one of the least studied, is the difference in political culture. In her seminal essay on the
topic, for instance, Jo Freeman (1986) argues that the two major parties in the US essentially
share the same goal of winning elections, but differ fundamentally in terms of their internal
political culture. The source of this difference, she argues, is at once ‘structural’, and relates to
how power or decision-making authority is exercised within the respective parties, as well as
‘attitudinal’ or how the parties perceive themselves. ‘In the Democratic Party power flows
upward’, Freeman explains, while ‘in the Republican Party power flows downward’ (Freeman
1986: 328). The result, she continues, is a ‘Democratic Party [that] is pluralistic and polycentric’
and ‘has multiple power centers’, and a Republican Party that is more ‘unitary’ and one where
‘great deference is paid to the leadership, activists are expected to be “good soldiers”, and
competing loyalties are frowned upon’ (ibid.: 329). Cultural differences between the parties also
follow, she claims, from the fact that Republicans see themselves as representing dominant
cultural values in the US, while the Democrats perceive themselves as outsiders, or representa-
tive of more marginalised groups. We know, as Cosgrove discovered in his study of the
Republican Party, that brands can help unify a party (Cosgrove 2007: 54–55). However, it may
also be true, as Lees-Marshment’s (2001a) analysis of market-orientated parties suggests, that
some heightened level of party centralisation may be critical to the successful design, adjustment
and implementation of a market-driven branding strategy. Certainly, the Labour Party, under
Blair, as Lees-Marshment notes, exhibited a highly centralised party structure, which was used

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to bring the party leadership and membership in alignment, at times quite forcefully, with the
New Labour brand narrative (Lees-Marshment 2001a: 184–86). A similar pressure to adhere to
the party brand was applied from on high by the Republican leadership during both the recent
period of Republican dominance in Congress, and the Bush presidency (Sinclair 2006; Hacker
and Pierson 2006; Schickler and Pearson 2005).
To examine what impact, if any, political culture, particularly in terms of party organisation,
has had on the Democrats’ ability to institutionalise a unifying brand narrative, I will look at the
degree to which the party’s effort to retain its majority in the US Senate in 2010 was or was not
based on a repositioning of the populist economic policy that was central to Obama’s brand
narrative. In this context, institutionalisation may be defined much as Lees-Marshment has
defined ‘implementation’ in the marketing process, that is, a policy has been institutionalised
when it has been both formally adopted by the party leadership as well as in practice by the
party rank-and-file (Lees-Marshment 2001a: 37–39). Did the party use promises of economic
recovery and tax relief in 2010, much as Obama had successfully done in 2008, in order to
highlight how continued Democratic rule in the Senate would differ from a return to Repub-
lican control and thus what voters would get if they supported the Democratic Party in 2010?
Moreover, to what extent were these ideas embraced by Democratic senators running for
re-election in 2010?

New research: the Obama brand

Obama’s branding strategy effectively encapsulated many of the key variables that Cosgrove,
Travis, Needham and others associate with successful branding. His brand story was at once
simple and reassuring, centred as it was on a rhetoric of ‘hope’ and possibility, while also being
implicitly differentiating. Obama was an agent of hope, but also of change in a time marked by
Republican excess. The power of Obama’s brand can been seen in his extraordinary appeal, as a
candidate and as a person. The enthusiasm that Obama supporters felt about his candidacy, for
instance, was twice that felt by McCain’s supporters (Todd and Gawiser 2009: 42). Obama’s core
message – ‘Yes We Can’ – reflected the optimism that many core Democratic voters wanted to
have about the direction of the country, the prospects of rebuilding the economy and ending or
somehow winning the war in Iraq. It was a level of message clarity that was largely absent from
the McCain campaign. The Obama brand targeted specific segments of the electoral market,
made promises and explained how change could be made (Plouffe 2010: 377–78). For the
audience, it was a unique branding experience facilitated by an unprecedented uniformity in
policy pronouncements, rhetoric, imagery and stylistic nuances that informed everything the
campaign did, said and published.
Such continuity in content and delivery was particularly true with regard to the populist
thrust of Obama’s economic policy. As polls indicated throughout the 2008 election, the
American public regarded problems with the economy, including slowed job growth, the loss
of employment benefits and a rapidly contracting housing market, as the most pressing issues
facing the country (Kenski et al. 2010: 16–17). These concerns became particularly acute after
the near collapse of the financial markets in September 2008. As the candidate of hope and
change, Obama was able to strike a chord with the public by successfully linking the lax reg-
ulatory and regressive tax policies of the Bush presidency to the excesses of Wall Street, while
also proposing middle-class tax relief, specifically a tax cut for 95 percent of Americans (Kenski
et al. 2010: 186–87; Obama 2008: 35–36).
That the Democratic Party would adopt Obama’s brand follows not only from his electoral
success and charisma, but also from his place now as the formal head of the party. The party,

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moreover, has become increasingly open to the branding idea, having successfully used a
branding strategy during the 2006 mid-terms to characterise itself as distinct from a Republican
‘Culture of Corruption’ in Washington (Cosgrove 2009: 17–19). In terms of the party leader-
ship, notably the White House, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC)
and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), the adoption of Obama’s brand
narrative was clear during the run-up to the 2010 election, as evidenced by the party’s policy
statements and rhetoric, imagery and official websites. This is particularly true with regard to
economic policy. When talking about the economy, jobs or taxes, the party leadership sought
to capitalise on Obama’s narrative of a changed politics in Washington by casting the Democrats
as defenders of the interests of the ‘average American’, and ‘main-street’, in contrast to a
Republican Party that is out of touch, ideologically extreme and subservient to the interests of
corporate power. They have particularly highlighted the economic benefits of the Recovery or
‘stimulus’ Act.
However, the party has faced real problems both repositioning the economic rhetoric of
Obama’s brand to appeal to mid-term voters, as well as implementing it party-wide. Most of
the 19 Democrats running to retain party seats in the US Senate in 2010 ignored or effectively
ran away from President Obama and his brand with regard to economic issues. Indeed, an
analysis of their campaign websites – where research suggests that candidates and campaigns tend
to offer the most ‘unmediated, holistic and representative portrait’ of their principles and policy
positions – reveals a lack of any uniform presentation of the Recovery Act, either in terms of
simplified rhetoric, differentiating policy statements, affirming imagery, particularly images of
the president, or, for that matter, claims of promises made and promises kept that highlight
what the Act delivered for middle-class Democratic voters (Druckman et al. 2009: 346). Instead,
during the fall campaign only nine, or 47 percent, of the candidate websites even referred to the
Recovery Act, while only four, or 22 percent, made any reference to Obama when discussing
economic policy. Moreover, only three (16 percent) and 10 (52 percent), respectively, referred
to such signature features of Obama’s economic narrative as the tax cut for 95 percent of
working families, or middle-class tax relief, in general. These trends are illustrated in Figure
10.1. Overall, the websites of Senate Democrats seeking to retain party seats in 2010 suggested
no unity of content; and no simplified, differentiating political narrative modelled on Obama’s
branding success. Indeed, among the websites examined, there was only one example – Harry
Reid of Nevada – of a candidate seeking to differentiate their position or the Democratic Party
position from Republican policies by contrasting themselves with the economic policies of the
Bush era, as both the White House and the DSCC had actively done.
The Republicans, by contrast, have for the most part lined up, as a party, behind a critique of
big government and a renewed endorsement of the principles of the free market. As the
Republican National Committee (RNC) website succinctly states, the Republican Party
‘believes in the power and opportunity of America’s free market economy’ and thus ‘oppose[s]
interventionist policies that put the federal government in control of industry and allow it to
pick winners and losers in the marketplace’ (GOP 2010). Both claims animated the campaigns
of nearly all the 18 candidates running to retain Republican seats in the Senate, as can be seen
from their nearly uniform critique of oversized government (94 percent), taxes (83 percent) and
government spending (88 percent), as is demonstrated in Figure 10.1.
To be sure, there are a number of possible reasons for this contrast, and specifically the failure
of the Democrats to cohere around a more unifying, market-based message. The president’s
sliding popularity, which reached a low of 43 percent in August 2010, may help account for the
absence of a more coordinated party strategy. It is not uncommon for candidates to distance
themselves from unpopular presidents in mid-term elections. It happened to both Reagan and

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Figure 10.1 Candidate messaging by issue: US Senate election, 2010

Clinton during their second year in office, for instance. However, there was no correlation
between competitiveness of the election and cases where Democratic candidates distanced
themselves from the president. Candidates were on message in several competitive races,
including Mike Bennet in Colorado, Harry Reid in Nevada and Barbara Boxer in California,
and not on message in several states that were considered safe for the Democrats, notably
Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut and Ron Wyden in Oregon. Moreover, the tenets of
Obama’s economic populism remained moderately popular in the US in the summer and fall of
2010. Support for the ‘stimulus’ (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), for example,
reached its highest point (38 percent) in August 2010 since the law’s passage in 2009
(Rasmussen Reports 2010). Obama also retained the approval of roughly 80 percent of regis-
tered Democrats right up to the 2010 election (Jones 2010a). Taken together, what these vari-
ables again suggest is that the lack of coherent Democratic branding strategy follows as much
from ineffective centralised party organisation as it does from political uncertainty. Some
Democrats were on message, in competitive races and won, and Obama remains quite popular
among Democrats; yet the party still lacked a coordinated campaign.

Advice for practitioners

For political branding to be successful, parties need to become more responsive to internal
stakeholders as well as voters. There are five steps that parties can take to create an effective brand:
see Table 10.1.

Impact on politics
Scholars have questioned the degree to which simplified and targeted brand narratives designed
by parties actually contribute to voter awareness of the issues, or generate solutions to complex
policy challenges, like economic recovery, or whether they simply exaggerate differences
between parties, primarily for short-term electoral gain, and ultimately discourage voter parti-
cipation (Smith and French 2009; Needham 2005). A brand story can strengthen a party, but the

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Table 10.1 Five steps to successful party branding

1 Market research: A party must become more systematic in its study and understanding of the changing
contours of public opinion as they relate to the party, its policy and politics in general. The party must
learn how it is perceived by the public and what the public expects from the government in order to
begin the process of identifying those segments of the public with which the party can and cannot relate
and thus possibly build a lasting relationship.
2 Brand design: The market research process will enable a party to design and modify brand concepts
based on market desires as well as the party’s unique history and political identity.
3 Brand implementation: To be effective, the brand concept must be as organic to a party as possible, to
the extent that it must reflect the input and then receive the support of a broad section of a party’s
leadership and membership. To work, a political brand cannot be imposed from above, nor resisted from
below, but once established the brand will function as a mechanism for coordinating the party’s
activities. Hence, those who initiate or manage the brand process within a party must develop internal
mechanisms through which they test and gather feedback on working brand concepts from all
stakeholders.
4 Brand communication and management: Once a party brand has been developed, it must become the
main prism through which the party interacts with and is understood by the public. It is the brand that
will represent the party in the public mind whether it is during, after or between elections. As such, the
brand is also the vehicle through which the party will, when necessary, reposition itself with its target
audiences.
5 Brand delivery: A party’s brand, its promises, ideals and images must permeate the party’s behaviour and
decision-making process once in government. A brand will only engender loyalty if it seen as successfully
delivering on its promises.

loyalty it fosters, as Cosgrove discovered in his study of Conservative Republicans, may be

grounded as much on core values and a grasp of the issues as it is on emotionally charged
characterisations of an opponent (Cosgrove 2007). Though the development of a Republican
Party brand ‘has served the Conservative movement very well’, Cosgrove writes, ‘it is not at all
clear that it has served the people or the government of the United States nearly as well’ (ibid.: 8).
The strength of the Conservative Republican brand, he explains, rests on the ‘feelings’ that it can
engender in its target audience, ‘rather than to substantive impact of the policies [it] proposes or
the soundness of their analysis of current events’ (ibid.: 8). The result, he concludes, is that ‘large
numbers of average Americans have … voted for politicians who enact policies that work against
their substantive interests because of the highly visible, emotive way in which … policy has been
presented to them’ (ibid.: 8).
However, a brand may also weaken a party, as Lilleker argues about New Labour. As part of
their rebranding efforts in the mid-1990s, Labour leaders began focusing the party’s targeting
efforts on less committed ‘swinger’ and ‘doubter’ voters, Lilleker writes, rather than on party
‘loyalists’. The party’s subsequent victory in the 1997 and 2001 elections have generally been
seen as validating this strategy, Lilleker writes, but the election results also reveal its weaknesses.
The party was able to reach out to new swing voters, and won both elections in landslide
fashion, but it did so, Lilleker explains, at the expense of some of its most loyal supporters, who,
the evidence suggests, were confused and ultimately demobilised by the party’s rebranding
efforts (Lilleker 2005: 19). During the 2001 election, for instance, which saw a record-low
turnout nationwide in the UK, ‘the constituencies that witnessed the lowest turnout, on aver-
age, were safe Labour seats in those areas regarded as the party’s heartland’, he explains (ibid.:
19). Such is the risk, Lilleker asserts, of a market-oriented party and politics that becomes too
narrow in its targeting, and abandons other segments of the public (ibid.: 24).

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The way forward

The solution, however, is not for parties and candidates to distance themselves from branding,
but to take the brand premise more seriously. The conditions of a successful brand are in many
ways quite demanding, requiring not only a keen appreciation for changing market needs, as well
as effective implementation and communication, but also successful delivery once in government.
Unless each is satisfied, the voting public will not be. That, as Lees-Marshment notes, gives
political marketing and branding the potential to be a powerful force in favour of a more robust
form of democratic governance (Lees-Marshment 2009: 275).
Unfortunately, in the case studied in this chapter, the US Democrats have struggled with
every step of the marketing process, from design to delivery. As such, the way forward for the
Democratic Party is to develop a more compelling brand narrative that affirms what it means to
be a Democrat and specifically what Democratic politics offer the US in contrast to the
Republican alternative. This process starts with market research, through focus groups and
internal and external polling, as well as less formal means, to determine what a receptive audi-
ence wants and needs from the Democratic Party. Such market research will enable the party to
not only target certain market segments but also, when needed, reposition itself with these
audiences. The party must then design a party brand story that responds to and reflects the
concerns, issues and aspirations gleaned from potential target audiences. The design process may
entail, as Lees-Marshment notes, minimal change to a party, or alternatively, ‘changing … not
just the policy of a party, but aspects such as its leaders … the behavior of … candidates for
office, organizational structures and membership rights’ (Lees-Marshment 2001a: 33). As
importantly, however, the party must also ‘adjust’ its brand product, as Lees-Marshment con-
tends, to ensure that it is consistent and complementary with the party’s values and strengths;
that it is acceptable to the party’s base; achievable in terms of policy implementation; and stra-
tegic, or likely to help the party win elections (Lees-Marshment 2001a: 33–34). Doing so helps
with the institutionalisation of the brand, or ensuring that the party as a whole, and not just
party leaders, ‘accept’ both the party’s brand identity and, as importantly, a market-driven pro-
cess of determining its contours. Only then can the Democratic Party begin to use a brand story
to communicate with the public in a more focused and compelling way, and thus more effectively
convey what it represents and how it differs from the Republican Party.
The Democrats’ difficulties with the branding process stem in large part from the
party’s decentralised and federated institutional culture. As such, it may prove difficult for the
Democrats to institutionalise a unifying brand narrative. However, confronted as the party is
by a highly effective opposition Republican brand, designing a clearly differentiated brand
product based on market and party needs that can then be communicated to the public may be
essential both to bring the Democratic Party together and to ensure that it remains politically
competitive.

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Internal marketing
Part III
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11
Internal party political relationship
marketing
Encouraging activism amongst local party
members

Robin T. Pettitt

The topic: internal party relationship marketing

Local party member activism is an area of growing importance for electoral success, and parties
and scholars alike often debate how participation can be encouraged within increasingly cen-
tralised party organisations. Modern political marketing in some ways creates an obstacle to local
activism: a carefully crafted product, based on extensive marketing analysis carried out by experts
hired by the party leadership, and delivered in a centrally controlled campaign, inevitably means
centralisation of key functions – especially, quite obviously, designing the product. We therefore
have a situation where the making of the product is increasingly seen as a something done
centrally, but where local activists have a key part in bringing that product to the voters. This
creates a problem, especially if the local volunteers are not happy with the product. It is a well-
established idea that activists need to be incentivised. What is the incentive for delivering a
product that activists have had no stake in producing? However, relationship or stakeholder
marketing offers new tools and concepts to analyse and potentially overcome this problem. This
chapter will focus on how internal stakeholder relationships can be nourished and explores what
strategies can be used to incentivise internal stakeholders in a centralised organisation.

Previous research on internal party marketing

Although Hughes and Dann (2009) have discussed the importance of stakeholders in political
parties generally, little has been written about the relationships between internal stakeholders.
The few exceptions are Dean and Croft 2001 and Lees-Marshment 2001. In the model of a
market-oriented party, Lees-Marshment notes the importance of adjusting the product to suit the
internal market to aid implementation, and criticises UK ‘New’ Labour under Blair in the lead-
up to 1997 for failing to do this effectively (Lees-Marshment 2001: 181). Of course, the failure to
view party members as key stakeholders could have been a deliberate attempt to illustrate that the

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Robin T. Pettitt

party had changed. A clash with internal stakeholders is sometimes seen, not as a necessary evil,
but as being outright beneficial. According to the New Labour pollster Philip Gould, Blair said in
1994 that ‘Past Labour leaders failed because they compromised. I will never compromise. I
would rather be beaten and leave politics than bend to the party. I am going to take the party on’
(Gould 2001: 216). The former Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who read Philip
Gould’s book with the intention of ‘doing a New Labour’ to his own Liberal Party (Pettitt 2009:
249–51), has argued that a (victorious) confrontation with internal critics not only shows the
strong leadership necessary for high political office, but also shows the voters that change has
taken place and is firmly entrenched (see Larsen 2003: 263–64, 266–68). However, this chapter
will consider both the importance of bringing internal stakeholders on board and how it might be
achieved.
As for relationship marketing, one of its key points is the importance of building relationships
that go ‘beyond the immediacy of market transactions’ (Payne et al. 2004: 856). Dean and Croft
argue that relationship marketing in politics is about having a ‘focus … on building lifetime
relationships with voters instead of intermittent, short-lived promotional blitzkrieg every four to
five years’ (Dean and Croft 2001: 1212). Having such relationships will make it easier to ensure
repeat ‘buying’ and also has the potential to lead to a better product through a more intimate
understanding of voters’ demands.
However, the most important aspect of relationship marketing is the idea that a particular
organisation, be it a company or a political party, does not just have to consider the ultimate
buyer of the product, but also all the stakeholders, both external and internal, involved in
making and delivering the product. In the context of local activism the issue of internal stake-
holders is particularly important. One of the key texts in the field of relationship marketing
stresses that ‘Relationship marketing also focuses on the internal (staff) relationships critical to
the success of (external) marketing plans’ (Christopher et al. 1991: viii). Christopher and col-
leagues argue that a company has six markets (Christopher et al. 1991: 21).1 This model has
been found to be, with some modifications, useful in analysing company behaviour (see e.g.
Payne et al. 2004). Dean and Croft recognise the potential in the multiple market model
employed by Christopher for understanding political parties, but also stress that merely relabel-
ling the original model to approximate a political party rather than a company would be a
mistake. Instead they suggest starting from scratch when adapting the idea to political parties
(Dean and Croft 2001: 1205, 1206–7).
This chapter will propose a multiple market model for political parties by drawing on the
literature on political parties and campaigning.

New research: new theories of internal marketing

This section will outline a model for understanding the multiple markets or stakeholders that a
party has, particularly internally, and discuss empirical illustrations. Figure 11.1 presents the model
that argues that a party has eight markets, three internal and five external.
When it comes to the internal markets it makes sense to work with Katz and Mair’s idea that
a party has three ‘faces’ (see Katz and Mair 1993, 2002). These three faces are: the party in
public office – i.e. elected parliamentarians and government ministers; the party on the
ground – i.e. volunteers in the party, be they card-carrying and fee-paying members or ‘merely’
regular supporters; the party in central office – i.e. anyone paid to be working for the party.
These three faces make up the internal markets or stakeholders of a party. On the external front
there are obviously and most importantly the voters, analogous to buyers/consumers in the
commercial world. In the context of party politics the media must be seen as a separate market

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Internal party political relationship marketing

Figure 11.1 Multiple market model for political parties

that needs careful attention. In addition there are what can be broadly be defined as
‘interest groups’, which make demands of political parties and can in turn be useful as influen-
cers of the primary market of the electorate. According to Almond et al. (2007) there are two
types of interest groups that are or more or less permanently organised (as opposed to brief
surges of activism): associational groups – i.e. named groups set up with the specific purpose of
promoting a specific cause or section of society, with examples including trade unions, Amnesty
International, Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature; and institutional groups, e.g.
organisations that were not set up with the purpose of promoting certain interests, but never-
theless have interests of which they want parties to take account. In addition, they may be able
to affect the electorate. The main example of institutional groups is national and international
businesses and companies. The final market, and one which has become increasingly important
in recent decades, consists of external experts in political campaigning.
Having outlined the multiple market model for political parties, the section will now outline
how the relationships between these different markets have changed. Much of the literature on
campaigning regards parties as having moved through three stages (see Table 11.1), each with
different relationships between the various party stakeholders (see Figure 11.2 – the arrows
indicate the strength of the relationship. Interest groups have been put to one side here as they
do not feature prominently in the party political campaigning literature).
Looking at the developments from the first to the second stage there is a clear centralising
trend and a move away from activist involvement in campaigning. Two factors created this
trend. The first is the increased centralisation of the making of the product. As parties become
increasingly focused on surviving in an ever more volatile electoral market the leadership starts
to turn away from old ideological certainties and towards designing a product that is tuned to
the demands of the voters. In doing so they turn to polling experts and away from the mem-
bers. The second factor is the rise of national television in the late 1950s and 1960s. This led to
the focus moving away from local ‘shoe leather’ campaigning and towards national media
campaigning, often focused on the leader. Again, experts were brought in to help to the
detriment of party membership involvement.
However, in the third stage there is a strong counter-trend towards local activism (see
e.g. Whiteley and Seyd 2003; Denver et al. 2003; Green and Gerber 2008). The conclusion of

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Table 11.1 Stages of campaigning

Stages Characteristics

‘Style’ of campaigning Personnel Voter feedback Voter segmentation Communication channels

1 Pre-modern; ‘Propaganda’ approach; Decentralised local Local canvassing returns. Heavy emphasis on Party press, posters,
Product-oriented party; rallying the ‘masses’ campaigning by Impressions and ‘gut specific class (class- billboards, pamphlets,
mass party behind a pre-existing volunteer activists instincts’ mass party) word of mouth via
product volunteers. Little if any
focus on press
management
2 Modern; ‘Selling’ approach; Highly centralised Extensive nationwide Catch-all approach; Heavy focus on national
Sales-oriented; research to find out campaign organised by polling attempting to attract media, especially
catch-all party which voters might be internal media and voters from across television. Decreased
interested in pre-existing polling experts; heavy society irrespective of emphasis on local
product and explore focus on a leadership- social background channels. Rise of media
which elements of the driven national media management; building
product might resonate campaign relationship with
with the potential voters journalists
at a given time
3 Post-modern; ‘Marketing’ approach; Highly centralised Increasingly advanced Continued use of catch- Targeted direct mail to
market-oriented; less about attracting campaign making polling and use of focus all approach; also carefully selected sectors
cartel party voters to a pre-existing increased use of external groups increased use of detailed of the electorate; return of
product and more about campaign professionals voter segmentation volunteer-driven word of
discovering voter needs contracted in on an ad- according to array of mouth; increasingly
and designing a product hoc basis. Return of the social and demographic intense media
accordingly local campaign relying on factors management ‘spinning’
volunteer activists to sell the message
the product door to door,
but local campaign
co-ordinated from the
centre
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Figure 11.2 Stages of campaigning with relationships between stakeholders

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Robin T. Pettitt

one group of scholars in their work on the UK is that ‘there is no doubt that constituency
campaigning is now seen as more significant than ever by the parties and possibly even more
significant than the national campaign focussed on the mass media’ (Fisher et al. 2005: 18).
The importance of local campaigning has also been recognised across the Atlantic, as exem-
plified by the 2008 Obama presidential election campaign. In his book on the campaign Plouffe
writes: ‘Our secret weapon, day in and day out, was our army of volunteers, real people who
brought Obama’s message and ideas to their neighbors, co-workers, and fellow citizens, guided
by our extraordinary staff’ (Plouffe 2009: 379–80).
What we are left with in the third stage is a strong central product designed by the leadership
with help from external experts. That product is then ‘sold’ to a large extent through the
centrally co-ordinated efforts of local activists.
However, these two trends – the centralisation of the making of the product and
the importance of local activism in modern campaigning – creates a problem. One key line
in Plouffe’s book is the argument that there ‘is no more effective courier for a message than
people who believe in it and have authentically embraced it’ (Plouffe 2009: 379). In this he
is no doubt right, but that has important implications when it comes to political marketing. As
we saw above, the making of the message has become centralised and the local participation in
the making of the product is limited. The question for party leaders then becomes how they
give volunteers a stake in a product they were not invited to help create.
That brings us to the issue of incentives for activism. Clark and Wilson (1961: 130) in their
seminal paper on incentives argue that all ‘viable organizations must provide tangible or intan-
gible incentives to individuals in exchange for contributions of individual activity to the orga-
nizations’. Further, it has been argued that such incentives cannot be collective goods – that is,
available to everybody irrespective of membership or activism (Olson 1965). Hence, arguing
that a member of, for example, the working class should be active in a working-class party
because it would be beneficial for the working class to have such a party in power would not
work. All workers would benefit from having a working-class party in power, regardless of
whether they helped put that party in power or not. On a cost-benefit analysis it would make
more sense not to be active, since the benefits of party victory can be enjoyed without having
been active. What are required then are ‘selective’ incentives – that is incentives that are only
available through activism (Olson 1965).
Clark and Wilson (1961: 134–36) identify three broad categories of incentives:

 Material incentives: these are rewards for activism that have tangible and often monetary
value, e.g. a salary.
 Solidary incentives: these are intangible rewards associated with the process of being active.
Examples include the pleasure derived from socialising and the feeling of group member-
ship – of being part of something bigger than oneself through one’s activism. Clark and
Wilson (1961: 134, note 8) also include feelings of loyalty towards the organisation (as
distinct from its purpose) in this category. Seyd and Whiteley (1992: 60) use the term
‘process incentives’ to describe the idea that ‘for some people, the political process is inter-
esting and stimulating in itself, regardless of the outcomes or the goals’ (Seyd and Whiteley
2002: 52).
 Purposive incentives: these are related to the stated ends of the organisation. Hence a com-
mitted socialist will be active in a socialist party because of their strong belief in socialism.
A socialist may not seek socialist ends because they would benefit personally, but because
they believe in the idea of socialism. The same would go for a committed conservative,
liberal, religious believer or strong atheist.

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Internal party political relationship marketing

The argument being made here, then, is that for successful internal relationship/stakeholder
marketing to be implemented in relation to local activists it must be based on one or more of
these incentive types. The following will explore how this might be done.
There are five approaches that party leaders can take to internal stakeholder marketing aimed
at motivating local activists to carry out their role in external marketing.

Material incentives (pay them)

The simplest and easiest option, but perhaps also the one that will lead to the least convincing or
energetic local campaigning, is to pay activists. That is, employing straightforward material
incentives. This would certainly involve the least amount of effort in terms of the quid pro quo
involved, i.e. once the money has been handed over and the activities carried out there are no
further mutual obligations by either party leaders or activists.
However, there are also several problems with this approach. First, paying sufficient numbers
of activists to make a difference in a campaign is expensive, and in some countries there are
limits on how much a party is allowed to spend before and during an election campaign (see,
for example, the several contributions in Lees-Marshment et al. 2010). Hence, there will have
to be a balance between paying for local activists and for all the other parts making up a modern
election campaign. Even if there are no limits on what can be spent, the money has to come
from somewhere. State funding is very generous in some countries (see again Lees-Marshment
et al. 2010), but not limitless and relying on private donations brings with it its own problems in
terms of favours being bought and suspicions of outright corruption (see, for example, the
several contributions in Williams 2000).
However, perhaps most importantly in relationship marketing terms, relying on paid activists
could undermine the effect of having personal contact between the party and voters. As Plouffe
argues, genuine volunteers can work better than paid labour (Plouffe 2009: 182, 379). It is
worth reiterating his comments that there ‘is no more effective courier for a message than
people who believe in it and have authentically embraced it’ (ibid.). If the ‘courier’ is paid, the
authenticity of the message could well be undermined by the impression that the activist is only
in it for the money, whether that is true or not. Hence, material incentives are simple and
straightforward, but also carry cost, both in terms of money (obviously) and in loss of the
‘authenticity’ of personal campaigning.

Base strategy (give the internal stakeholders what they want)

The second option is to rely on purposive incentives, that is, go for what Panagopoulos and
Francia (2009: 320–21) refer to as a ‘mobilise the base’ strategy. In this situation the party leaders
will incentivise their (potential and actual) activists by pushing a product that is very much to the
liking of the party’s most committed supporters. As Clark and Wilson argue, one of the reasons
for being active in a party is the commitment to the stated aims of the party. If the leadership
pursues policies and rhetoric very much in line with the party’s official ideological foundations
they can mobilise the ideologues amongst the party’s supporters. This is what Lees-Marshment
would refer to as a sales-oriented party (Lees-Marshment 2001: 29–30), that is, a party that has a
product in place first, and then focuses on selling that product to the voters, hoping that they can
be made to like it. According to Panagopoulos and Francia (2009: 321), this was the approach
followed by the Republicans in 2002 (successfully in electoral terms) and again in 2008 (with
somewhat less success, at least electorally). It has also been argued that the British Conservative
Party followed this approach from 1997 until about 2005, with notable lack of electoral success

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Robin T. Pettitt

(Lees-Marshment and Pettitt 2010). This option will certainly make it easier to get the internal
stakeholder on board, but as exemplified by the British Conservatives from 1997 to 2005 and the
Republicans in 2008, whilst it may successfully mobilise activists, there is only so much that
‘authentically committed couriers’ can do to pass on a message if it is something the voters really
do not want to hear. Arguably, it is also a strategy that is less likely to work for a catch all-style
party that is basing its strategy on attracting a wide range of voters across several societal groups.
Hence, this approach may be more appealing to smaller parties, especially in multi-party systems,
which can have a very successful life appealing to fairly narrow groups. As a prime example of this
can be mentioned radical parties on both the left and the right in the Scandinavian consensus-
style democracies. In these highly fragmented party systems radical parties have successfully
mobilised fairly narrow sections of the electorate with base strategies, but have still managed to
achieve a significant level of legislative influence due to the tendency towards coalition and/or
minority governments.

Empty vessel (glittering generality)

A related approach is what might be referred to as an empty vessel or ‘glittering generality’
strategy. As with the base strategy, the appeal is to purposive incentives. However, rather than
trying to appeal to the base with a strongly ideological product, the idea is to use a vague and
more or less empty product, which sounds appealing to a wide group of people, but mainly
because it is so vague that people can project onto the product their own ideas, wants and
demands. The idea of ‘glittering generality’ is taken from Lee and Lee’s (1939) work on pro-
paganda techniques, in which ‘associating something with a “virtue word” – is used to make us
accept and approve the thing without examining the evidence’ (ibid.: 23). A ‘virtue word’ is
essentially any word or phrase with positive connotations which is then used to build support for
someone or something, but without explaining the exact meaning of that word. Examples
include the Labour Party’s 1997 slogan ‘New Labour, New Britain’, followed shortly after by
‘Cool Britannia’. In an age seen as suspicious of overt ideological appeal, Blair’s and Schroder’s
use of the idea of a ‘third way’ or ‘new centre’ (see, for example Hombach 2000), copied from
Bill Clinton, falls into the same category. Whilst extensive attempts have been made to flesh out
what the third way means (e.g. Giddens 1998), it has been repeatedly used and often in very
vague ways to appeal to a non-ideological electorate. Obama’s use of ‘yes we can’ and ‘change we
can believe in’ would also count as a ‘glittering generality’ strategy. Indeed, any appeals to
‘change’ not followed by a detailed plan would count as a ‘glittering generality’. The advantage of
this strategy is that it can appeal to purposive incentives, but without the same risk of alienating
non-ideologues inherent in a base strategy. In short, it is a purposive strategy for the catch-all
party.
There are, however, two downsides. The first is that the glitter of the generality will fade
very quickly, either when the emptiness of the virtue word is exposed, or, especially in the
case of gaining power on the back of a glittering generality strategy, the flesh has to be put on
the bone. As soon as a new government has to actually start doing ‘things’ many people will
very quickly discover that what they had imagined was meant by the glittering generality does
not match the actions of the new government. In other words, the formerly empty vessel of the
glittering generality will be filled with the solid evidence of government action, thus driving out
what people thought was meant by a particular virtue word or phrase. Arguably, this is exactly
what happened to Blair and Schroder, both immensely popular at the time of their first victory,
but who over time faced a sustained decline in popularity. The same could be said to have been
happening to Obama since his inauguration in 2009.

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Dignified/empty democracy
The next strategy relies on solidary incentives, i.e. the satisfaction derived from feeling part of a
greater whole through activism, in this context the satisfaction of being involved in creating the
party’s product through, apparently, democratic processes. The idea of ‘dignified democracy’
comes from Walter Bagehot’s 1867 description of the British political system. Bagehot separates
the British political system into a ‘dignified’ and an ‘efficient’ part. The efficient part is where
power really lies; the dignified part is where the show of consultation takes place and where
the legitimacy of the efficient part is created. In the context of party politics the dignified part is
the powerless conference, the ‘listening’ tour of the party leader or the membership-wide ballot
carefully timed and worded to ensure the greatest possible likelihood of leadership success. In one
memorable phrase Bagehot writes that the dignified parts of a political system ‘may not do
anything definite that a simpler polity would not do better; but they are the preliminaries, the
needful presentations of all work. They raise the army’ (Bagehot 1963: 62 – emphasis added).
According to the UK Labour Party politician R.H.S. Crossman, this is highly relevant for
political parties. In the case of the Labour Party he writes that:

Since it could not afford, like its opponents, to maintain a large army of paid party workers,
the Labour Party required militants – politically conscious socialists to do the work of
organising the constituencies. But since these militants tended to be the ‘extremists’ a
constitution was needed which maintained their enthusiasm by apparently creating a full
party democracy while excluding them from effective power.
(Crossman 1963: 41–42)

This has the advantage of, potentially, resolving the battle identified by Lilleker between
internal membership and external voter opinion should the two diverge (Lilleker 2005: 577).
By making a show of consulting internal opinion, but still following external opinion, the lea-
dership of a party can use solidary incentives to mobilise activists for external marketing pur-
poses whilst still designing a product that will attract an election-winning cross-section of the
voters. As Crossman suggests, this is the approach followed by the Labour Party for a significant
part of its history. The downside, apart from the morally dubious nature of the approach, is that
activists will eventually notice that their views are not actually reflected in the party’s product.
Hence, dignified democracy will only work for so long before it starts to wear off. This is
particularly the case if the leadership wants to change the party’s product. Again, this is some-
thing which can be seen at several times in the Labour Party’s history, especially with the rise of
‘New Labour’.

Effective/real democracy/consultation
The final option is the other side of the coin of Bagehot’s dignified democracy – the effective
element, i.e. real democratic consultation and joint creation and ownership of the product by all
internal stakeholders. Plouffe’s remark that the most effective courier for a message are people
who believe in it and have authentically embraced it (see above) is relevant here. It is reasonable
to argue that people are most likely to embrace and believe in a product they have themselves had
a hand in creating. Whiteley and Seyd (2002: 215) show in the context of the British Labour
Party that those most active in the party are also the ones most likely to favour participatory
models of democracy. This suggests that genuine democratic product development can be a
powerful tool for mobilisation.

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Table 11.2 Levels of policy

Policy level Consists of

1 Long term Basic principles, statements on ideology

2 Medium term Electoral period, election manifestos
3 Short term Annual, parliamentary year
4 Day to day Daily negotiations internally and externally, crisis management

The most important argument against internal party democracy is that the political struggle
requires fast decision-making and that democracy is simply too slow to cope with the require-
ments of political life. This is something that has been recognised at least since the work of
Michels (1915) almost 100 years ago. However, whilst this may be true for some aspects of
political life it is not universally so. Policy can be divided into several layers as illustrated in
Table 11.2. The daily cut and thrust of politics (Level 4) certainly requires very fast turnaround
times, especially in the world of 24/7/365 news. Extensive consultation is clearly not possible
on the day-to-day rough and tumble of politics, but provided the right mechanisms are in
place there should be nothing fundamental to stop fairly extensive consultation taking place at
the other three levels. By right mechanisms is meant forums for debate and consultation
between leaders and activists. For a democratic consultative product development process to
lead to a sellable product, leaders need to understand what activists are willing to sell, and
activists need to understand what voters are willing to buy. This mutual understanding is best
achieved through a process of consultation and sharing of information, including the leadership
sharing party polling data with the activists and activists feeding back on how local party bran-
ches are reacting to early product designs. Hence, a democratic product-development process is
not simply about the party on the ground telling the party in elected office what to do, but
about developing a relationship between the internal stakeholders that will allow them to share
information on what the voters will buy and the activists will sell, and if there is a divergence,
agree on a compromise. As Sheth and Parvatiyar argue, when stakeholders deal directly with
each other they are likely to ‘understand and appreciate each other’s needs and constraints
better, are more inclined to cooperate with one another, and thus, become more relationship
oriented’ (Sheth and Parvatiyar 1995: 398).

Advice for practitioners

When considering how to mobilise local party activists, party leaders need to be aware of the
implications of taking one path to local mobilisation rather than another. To assist in making the
choice between the different incentive strategies the following two points should be taken into
account:

 Regardless of what approach is chosen there will be benefits and costs. When deciding on
their approach the party leadership therefore needs to consider what kinds of benefits are
important to them and what kinds of costs they are willing to bear. Table 11.3 gives a brief
summary of the costs and benefits of each approach.
 As with all marketing, market intelligence is key. Traditionally in the context of political
parties ‘market intelligence’ has meant understanding the electoral market. What the idea of
multiple markets highlights is the need for intelligence on more than just the electoral
market. In the context of internal relationship marketing in a political party what is also

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Internal party political relationship marketing

Table 11.3 Costs and benefits of different incentive strategies

Strategy Costs and benefits

Material incentives Gives a high degree of product design flexibility and makes a catch-all strategy easy
to pursue. However, it will also result in a low level of authentic commitment to the
product, and the relationship will last only as long as the money continues to flow,
and can therefore in effect be switched on and off.
Base strategy Gives a very low level of design flexibility and pursuing a catch-all approach will
therefore be difficult. On the other hand, activist commitment to the product will be
high and will last as long as the product is relatively unchanged.
Empty vessel Gives a high degree of product design flexibility making a catch-all strategy easy to
pursue. Activist commitment to the product will be high, but also short term once
they realise the disjuncture between what they thought they were getting and what
they are actually getting. Building new relationships will subsequently be very hard
indeed, in contrast to the relatively easy ‘on/off’ nature of material incentives.
Dignified democracy Leads to a high degree of product design flexibility and a high degree of activist
commitment to the product. However, whilst it may be easier to hide the emptiness
of dignified democracy than of the empty vessel, once it is exposed the relationship
will end and be very difficult to rebuild.
Effective democracy Reduces the flexibility of the product design as the product will have to be adjusted
to take into account activist views. Product design flexibility is likely to be enhanced
if the leadership shares information on voter demands and therefore increases
activist awareness of what is required to increase the electoral attractiveness of the
product. Activist commitment will be high, and the relationship between the party
in elected office and the party on the ground will continue for as long as democratic
consultation continues.

needed is intelligence on the ‘party on the ground’ market. For example, if a catch all-
oriented party leadership is faced with a ‘party on the ground’ market which is more con-
cerned with ideological purity than electoral success, then they will have to decide between
trying to change the internal market to a more catch-all-oriented stance or choose either the
empty vessel or the dignified democracy strategies. Material incentives are unlikely to work
on ideologically motivated activists and neither a base strategy nor effective democracy is
likely to lead to a catch-all product. However, these decisions can only be made if adequate
internal and external market intelligence is available.

Impact on politics
The ways in which parties mobilise activists and voters have potentially major implications for the
future path of democracy. Mair has argued that there is a worrying trend in both the practice and
normative views on democracy away from popular participation in democratic life (Mair 2006:
33). Amongst his evidence for this he cites the widespread decline in voter turnout at election
time and the equally widespread decline in party membership numbers. The result, he argues, is
that we are increasingly seeing a ‘notion of democracy that is being steadily stripped of its popular
component – democracy without a demos’ (Mair 2006: 25). Needless to say, he does not see this
as a thing to be celebrated. However, the rediscovery of the importance of local campaigning,
and the role of local activists in that campaigning, does appear to present a counter-trend. Not
only does local campaigning involve a greater level of direct interaction between parties and

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Robin T. Pettitt

voters, but also a need for party leaders to (re-)engage with local activists, further strengthening
the local connection. Both these factors would appear to lead to a greater level of popular
participation in and contact with democratic processes, either as voters being engaged by parties
or as party activists. This being the case, the increased focus on local campaigning does hold the
potential for a re-engagement between parties and voters and through that lead to parties that are
more closely tied in with civil society and therefore more responsive to its demands – something
which political marketing has always hoped to achieve.
However, whether or not and how well this actually becomes a reality will depend to a
considerable extent on the ways in which internal relationship marketing is carried out, espe-
cially the method(s) chosen to incentivise local party stakeholders. Each of the five approaches
to incentivising internal party stakeholders at the local level offers different levels of potential
and danger when it comes to sustained party/civil society interaction.
Relying on money is perhaps the simplest option, but also one that is unlikely to achieve any
sustained interaction between parties and civil society, or even between party and activists
beyond the election campaign. As Payne et al. argue, relationship marketing involves ‘an
emphasis on stakeholder collaboration beyond the immediacy of market transactions’ (Payne
et al. 2004: 856). Relying purely on material incentives in the form of payment for activism is
not likely to build such collaboration in the context of political parties.
A base strategy should certainly be able to achieve Plouffe’s ‘authentic’ activism, but also runs
the risk of undermining any catch-all profile. Hence, it may rally the activists, but turn off many
voters when they are offered a product not to their taste.
The problem with both the glittering generality and the dignified democracy approaches is
that, whilst they certainly have the potential to generate authentically motivated activism, they
are also inherently short term. Sheth and Parvatiyar (1995: 398) argue that a key part of rela-
tionship marketing is an emotional bonding between stakeholders that transcends the immediate
exchange. However, Plouffe also argues that such bonds are based on fragile sinews of trust
which are easily broken (Plouffe 2009: 380). Hence, whilst both glittering generalities and
dignified democracy can undoubtedly create excitement and engagement to counteract the
growth in the gap between politicians and voters, there is a price to pay later. The inevitable
disappointment that will come when the vessel is filled with something not quite right (as is
almost bound to happen when people fill in the blanks themselves) or when the hollow nature
of dignified democracy is exposed, is likely to destroy the relationship between internal stake-
holders and quite possibly accelerate the rate of separation between (by now probably former)
local citizen activists and politicians.
The last option, i.e. genuine democratic internal relations, is therefore the option that is most
likely to counteract the rise of a democracy without a demos in a sustained manner. Democratic
relations between internal stakeholders will make all parts of the party aware of what is required
to create a product that has enough catch-all appeal to be electorally attractive and still able to
mobilise local activists. Hence, a democratic process of product design is the incentive system
most likely to generate a product that will be ‘sellable’ and also generate sustainable local party
activism and thereby long-term relationships between voters and parties.

The way forward

The main issue to take forward is how best to put into practice incentives for local activism that
are sustainable, and will not lead to either a loss of electoral appeal through a too narrow product
or to later disappointment, loss of trust and resultant decline in activism. It has been suggested that
internal democratic processes are most likely to achieve this, but there are significant challenges

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Internal party political relationship marketing

that would have to be overcome to implement such a system. What is clear is that more needs to
be done to understand how effective internal political marketing can be carried out in the context
of party politics.
A number of key areas need to be explored:

 What combinations of the five incentive strategies are currently being used to build (more
or less) lasting relationships with local activists?
 How well do they work? There are problems with all five strategies, and how these are
overcome, or not as the case may be, will be important to understand.
 For how long do they work? As already mentioned, glittering generalities and dignified
democracy have limited shelf lives. This is particularly important, and interesting, in the
context of Obama in 2012, who will have to decide what comes after ‘yes we can’.

Internal relationship marketing is crucial to maintain activism, something that is increasingly

central to electoral success, and important lessons could be learnt through documenting and
developing good practice in this area.

Note
1 They are customer markets; internal markets; referral markets; supplier markets; employee (recruit-
ment) markets; and influence markets.

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Party members as part-time marketers

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12
Party members as part-time
marketers
Using relationship marketing to demonstrate
the importance of rank-and-file party
members in election campaigns

Peter Van Aelst, Joop van Holsteyn and Ruud Koole

The topic: party members as part-time marketers

Modern election campaigns consist of two elements: a centralized media campaign around the
leadership of the political party and a campaign involving the participation of active party
members or campaign activists. The literature on parties and campaigns emphasizes the impor-
tance of the first element, the media campaign, while at least until recently downplaying the
importance of members. Political marketing literature itself has paid little attention to the role of
members. This chapter will address that omission by combining insights derived from relationship
marketing with ideas on party members and grassroots campaigning. Using the concept of part-
time marketers, we demonstrate the potential importance of party members in modern or
postmodern election campaigns. This will be illustrated through a case study of Dutch parties and
party members.

Previous research: the dominant literature on professionalization rather

than on member activity
Within the political party literature, research on the media side of election campaigns describes
various aspects of professionalization of parties (e.g. Panebianco 1988), including the introduction
of campaign professionals (e.g. Plasser and Plasser 2002), opinion pollsters and market intelligence
(e.g. Butler 1996), centralization of decision-making (e.g. Farrell and Webb 2000), improving
media strategies (e.g. Norris et al. 1999), and a candidate-centered approach (e.g. Poguntke and
Webb 2005). The idea is that professionalization and innovation has become a prerequisite for
success and survival in contemporary campaigns and elections (Butler and Ranney 1992; Swanson
and Mancini 1996). To sketch the line of reasoning roughly: elections are won by a small group
of professional strategists who craft a central message, and a ‘charismatic’ party leader who

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subsequently ‘sells’ this message successfully in front of television cameras. This handful of
professionals and the political leader are in close contact with each other, operating from a ‘war
room’. They have little contact with the rest of the party, let alone with the rank-and-file party
activists and members: ‘parties have begun to transform themselves more and more into cen-
tralized and professional campaigning organizations, in which the scope for the amateur politician
has been curtailed and in which the weight and direction of party strategy have tended
increasingly to be located within the party leadership as such’ (Mair et al. 2004: 265).
This literature seems to ignore party members as a potentially valuable link to voters. In their
‘modern model of campaigning’, Swanson and Mancini (1996: 252) mention as its defining
elements ‘personalization of politics; adapting campaign practices to media logic and priorities;
and employing technical experts to advise parties on public relations, opinion polling and
marketing strategies’. No mention is made of the rank-and-file party membership. By some
scholars, party members are seen as a barrier to reach the general electorate since they are less
flexible and ‘still bound to the traditions of their party’ (Mair et al. 2004: 266). Also, following
the work of, among others, Duverger (1951) and May (1973), active party members are con-
sidered as more extreme and not representative of a party’s electorate and potential support.
Notwithstanding the fact that this thesis lacks convincing empirical evidence, according to this
line of reasoning a party that listens too much to its members runs the risk of being out of touch
with ordinary voters and will subsequently lose elections.
In recent years the idea that party members and local campaigns are irrelevant or a hindrance
for electoral success has been challenged. Especially in the UK, scholars have proven that tra-
ditional local campaigning, including the efforts of party members, may lead to better perfor-
mance (for an overview see Fisher et al. 2006). Whiteley and Seyd (2003) have shown that local
campaigning contributed to success in the 1997 British elections: without the efforts of local
members, the Labour victory would have been more modest. The authors warn parties that
alienating their members may come with a price (Seyd and Whiteley 2002). ‘[M]embers are as
important as election campaigners … Parties with fewer active constituency campaigners will
suffer electoral consequences’ (Seyd and Whiteley 2004: 361). Denver and colleagues present
concurring results for both the 1992 and 2001 British elections. Admittedly, the electoral ben-
efits of the efforts of ordinary party members are marginal, but they are significant (Denver et al.
2004) – in times when each and every vote is worth fighting for, it would be ill-advised not to
use all auxiliary troops that are at one’s disposal (Fisher and Denver 2009). The overall positive
argument on contribution of local ‘labour-intensive’ campaign activities based on UK findings
concurs with findings in other countries such as Canada (Carty and Eagles 1999), Ireland (Marsh
2004) and the US (Wielhouwer 1999; Green et al. 2003).
The work of Scarrow (1994) on parties and party members theoretically underpins pro-
membership arguments. They may operate as ‘vote multipliers’ or as ambassadors to their
respective communities. If party members are willing to express their political views and pre-
ferences in their daily contacts this may result in a benefit for the party, especially if they are
able to circulate the message to a ‘non-party milieu’. Since party membership is a communica-
tion channel that works both ways, party leaders may be able to learn about voters’ opinions via
their members. Moreover, the more parties provide opportunities for their members to impact
on party policies, the more members may be willing to be active as local ambassadors for their
party (e.g. Ware 1992; Van Holsteyn and Koole 2009).
Political marketing research helps to expand these arguments by utilizing relationship mar-
keting theories. The concept of part-time marketers was developed by the founding fathers of
the so-called Nordic school (Gummesson 1987; Gummesson 1990; Grönroos 1994; Grönroos
2000). These scholars contributed substantially to the emerging theory of relationship

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Party members as part-time marketers

marketing, with roots in service and non-profit marketing. They stress the need of creating
mutually satisfying exchanges and long-term relationships between customers and organizations
(Grönroos 1994). Establishing such relationships should be realized by the organization and all
of its members, not solely by a separate marketing or sales department. As Gummesson (1987: 17)
puts it: ‘The work to create and maintain market relationships is divided between the full-
time professional marketers in the marketing department and the omnipresent (non-professional)
“part-time marketers” ’. According to Grönroos (1990), this demands a specific management
philosophy and a commitment of the organization so that employees as amateur part-time
marketers have the attitudes and skills to perform this task. This implies attention to internal
marketing and a view of employees as an important channel for promotion of the organization.
Relationship marketing has been applied to politics to only some extent (see Henneberg
2002; Bannon 2005; Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy 2009). In the work of Johansen (2005) the
idea of the part-time marketer has been most explicitly applied to the world of parties. In order
for a party (the organization) to create a relationship with its voters (the customers), a special
role should be attributed to its members (the employees). In Johansen’s organizational perspec-
tive these members have a crucial input and output function. This is why she questions the
increasing role of focus groups and surveys to gauge public opinion while at the same time ‘the
potentially effective feedback channel of party membership’ is neglected (Johansen 2005: 95).
By communicating daily experiences to the party leadership and campaign professionals within
the organization, members can be a valuable help from an input or bottom-up perspective,
acting as an ‘early-warning system’ for societal developments that may be about to hit the party
(Koole 2000). Moreover, their contribution is less costly than the services of professional poll-
sters and consultants (Müller 2000). Lees-Marshment states that parties should be aware of the
‘internal reaction’ when employing a market-oriented strategy, but that taking members ser-
iously does not conflict with the goal of electoral success (Lees-Marshment 2001; Lees-Marshment
and Quayle 2001: 211). Also Strömbäck (2007) stresses the importance of ‘the internal arena’ in
party-centred democracies.

New research: the theory and practice of part-time marketers

Towards a model of members as part-time marketers

This new research thus argues that rank-and-file party members have been overlooked as
valuable, employable auxiliary forces in the fight for the volatile voter of the 21st century. Based
on the insights of relationship marketing we develop and empirically explore the idea of party
members as part-time marketers: marketing is not a separate task solely performed by a specialized
department of the organization, but involves all parts of the organization. In the political and
electoral context party members are those who operate close to the electoral market, which offers
them the opportunity to have multiple contacts with ordinary voters. These contacts could be
useful both as a way to persuade people to vote for their party and as a feedback channel to
inform the party leadership about the concerns and preferences of ordinary citizens and potential
supporters. Drawing on these ideas, we argue two principles:

 Members provide an important feedback function, i.e. a form of market intelligence: Parties
may learn from their members as they interact on a daily basis with citizens and voters, as
employees on a day-to-day basis interact with customers. Moreover, ordinary party mem-
bers are more than the professional politicians present and active in different parts of society,
e.g. in a sports club, school board, or interest group (Van Holsteyn et al. 2002). As a

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Peter Van Aelst et al.

consequence of this omnipresence in society the rank-and-file members receive plenty of

information about the opinions, the preferences and the general mood of ordinary citizens.
 Members contribute to the electoral success of their party by promoting its candidates and
platform: Using members as local campaigners can be considered as a contribution from an
output or top-down perspective. This, of course, can hardly be considered an original idea,
but rather an idea that seems to have been forgotten by political parties and scholars alike. In
their effort to control, market and ‘sell’ their products, parties have centralized and pro-
fessionalized their power structures, especially during election campaigns. Parties have
indirectly discouraged their ordinary members to be active.

Johansen (2005) stresses both principles and points to the fact that the party membership as
input (feedback) and output (promotion) channel may interact and strengthen each other.
Moreover, the more ordinary members have the feeling that they are co-producers of ‘their’
product, the more willing they are to convince others to taste and buy it. It is like the employee
of Volkswagen who drives a Volkswagen and positively discusses the company and the car with
friends, family and acquaintances as well.
If members have, potentially, such major benefits for parties both in the short and long run,
how come they are given so little attention? Previous research suggests that the reluctance to
include individual party members in modern election campaigns may have to do with their
opinions and attitudes (see Lees 2005; Lilleker 2005a). Are members representative of potential
voters of their party and for the party as a whole? If in particular the active members have more
extreme positions (cf. May 1973; Jacobs and Shapiro 2002: 59; but see Norris 1995; Granik
2005; Koole and Van Holsteyn 2000; Scarrow and Gezgor 2010), there is a danger in having
them act as marketers. They may chase off moderate supporters and attract the wrong, ‘extre-
mist’ voters. More generally, the fact that this small group of citizens have become party
members makes them the exception to the rule and different from all those citizens who did
not become members. This may impact negatively on their capacity to act as party ambassadors,
in particular in times when new political entrepreneurs are picturing a negative image of parties
and party members. Politicians such as Berlusconi in Italy have created organizationally thin
parties that more or less serve as the leaders’ personal instrument (Mazzoleni 2000). The suc-
cessful Dutch populist Wilders has created a party with only one individual member: himself.
Finally, that some people did become party members does not mean that they want to be
active and want to become a party activist. The notion of party members as part-time marketers
implies that members are willing and able to play an active role, in particular in the run-up to
elections, in meeting and persuading potential voters. This is far from obvious. It is one thing to
become a party member, but it is another thing to become active on behalf of this party in a
discordant context – competitive democratic elections are about differences of opinion and
conflicting preferences and interests.
To address these concerns about the electoral potential of ordinary party members we present
a model (see Table 12.1), which includes three preconditions for the idea of members as part-
time marketers: representativeness, connectedness and willingness. Representativeness refers to
the position and attitudinal make-up of members as two-way communication channels between
potential voters and the party. In this capacity, i.e. ‘members can be political communicators,
both upwards and downwards’ (Seyd and Whiteley 2004: 362), they have to know and repre-
sent political opinions correctly (e.g. Scarrow 2007). Probably for party members the best way
to possess this knowledge is to have identical or at least similar opinions compared to (potential)
voters as well as to the party more generally. If in this way members are representative, then this
precondition for acting as party ambassadors and intermediaries between the mass and elite

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Party members as part-time marketers

Table 12.1 A model of members as part-time marketers

Representativeness – Members know and can communicate public opinion and preferences from
mass to elite level
– Members have identical or at least similar opinions compared to (potential)
voters for the party
Connectedness – Members are connected to society at large, not just party elites
– Members are connected to various other organized parts of civil society
Willingness – Members are open about their political affiliation and willing to spread
the word
– Members are willing to campaign for the party in election time

levels will be fulfilled. Connectedness means that members are active in society at large, not
only in their party organization. Modern party organizations are sometimes referred to as cartel
parties, linked to the state but detached from civil society and acting as ‘semi-state agencies’
(Katz and Mair 1995: 16). If this were indeed the case this would be problematic for the idea of
party members as marketers. If neither parties nor individual party members are related to other
parts of society, then any activities of individual members as part-time marketers would be
impossible or ineffective. Willingness, finally, implies that members have the drive and motivation
to be active for their party. Studies have shown that this is not always the case (e.g. Granik
2005; Scarrow 2000). If members are to take up their role as part-time marketers they should be
open about their party affiliation and willing to actively promote their party.

The model of members as part-time marketers: the Dutch case

We explore our model of party members as part-time marketers by inspecting the Dutch case in
more depth. The Netherlands is a parliamentary democracy with an extreme proportional
electoral system, a fragmented party system, a tradition of coalition governments and a polity that
has been typified as a consensus or consociational democracy (Lijphart 1999). The Netherlands
fits the general pattern of advanced Western democracies, with major changes in the political
landscape in recent decades (Pennings and Keman 2008). As regards party membership, a slight
reversal of the downward trend was noticeable following the exciting political situation with the
rise and success of the controversial Pim Fortuyn in 2002 (Den Ridder et al. 2011a). The number
of party members is about 3 percent (Andeweg and Irwin 2009: 76; see for a comparative
overview Mair and van Biezen 2001).
The analysis is based on a survey among a sample of party members. Seven (out of ten)
parties that were represented in the second chamber of parliament after the general elections of
November 2006 participated in this Leiden Party Member Survey (LPMS) 2008.1 The ques-
tionnaire contained several questions that were similar to questions of the Dutch National
Election Study 2006, to compare members with ordinary voters. With response rates ranging
between over 30 percent and over 60 percent, and a total number of 4,251 members participating,
ample information on party members was collected.

 Representativeness: Do party members resemble voters? From a socio-demographic

perspective this is not the case: members are old, male and highly educated. However,
the picture for substantive representation tells a different story. On several issues members
have almost identical opinions to the voters of their party. Only with regards to the issues of the

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Peter Van Aelst et al.

integration of ethnic minorities and European integration were there slight but significant
differences between both groups for a few parties, but the overall conclusion is that the ideas
of members correspond closely with those of the voters (see Den Ridder et al. 2011b; Koole
and Van Holsteyn 2000). Moreover, in general ideological positions, i.e. with respect
to their self-placement in terms of left and right, voters and members are similar. On a
10-point scale, the mean ideological position of the two groups of the same party never
differs by more than one point; for several parties the difference is less than half a point.

For our model this substantive similarity should be considered much more important than
the socio-demographic differences. As long as the older, educated male members express
the same political opinions as the voters and potential supporters, as well as the party, they can
act as both the party’s input and output channel. Although similar issue and ideological posi-
tions, of course, do not conclusively prove that individual party members and other relevant
actors within and for these parties are on exactly the same ideological wavelength, they do
strongly suggest that members are suitable to act as part-time marketers from the perspective of
representativeness.

 Connectedness: Pim Fortuyn, the political entrepreneur who was murdered only days
before the general elections in 2002, referred to the Dutch political process as ‘a completely
incestuous scene of self-appointing and co-opting political and administrative elites’ (Fortuyn
2002: 135–36, translation by the authors). This is another way of stating that parties have
developed into cartel parties with strong ties to the state but only weak ties to civil society
(Katz and Mair 1995). The fear that parties are disconnected from society is not warranted,
however, if we look at their members. We asked them whether or not they were a member
or supporter of a number of different interests and other groups, ranging from labour unions
to sports clubs and from women’s organizations to organizations for the conservation of
nature, and whether or not they were active as a volunteer worker for these groups. These
indicators of societal connectedness clearly prove that party members are not clinging
exclusively to their party but are involved in other groups and organizations. Only a tiny
minority of 5 percent were not members or supporters of any other group. In general, over
40 percent were members of one to three other organizations and an almost equal percentage
were members or supporters of four to six organizations (see Table 12.2, final column).
Moreover, passive involvement is more frequent than activism, but the majority of party
members indicate that they have done voluntary work for one to three groups or organizations.

Even more important and relevant from the point of view of the respective parties is that
there is no negative relationship between being active as a party member and both passive and
active forms of involvement in other organizations within civil society. According to the rival
structure hypothesis (e.g. Sainsbury 1983; Ware 1996), we should expect that as a result of the
competition for scarce resources of time, money and energy, activism inside and outside the
party would be correlated negatively. This is not the case. Indeed, if there is any correlation it is
a (weak) positive one. Over 30 percent of the members who ‘confess’ to be inactive as a party
member are not doing any voluntary work in any other organization either, compared with 15
percent of the members who consider themselves very active. In the latter group, one in ten
members is engaged in voluntary work in at least four groups, whereas this is true for almost
one in four of the most active party members.
Our data show support for the second precondition: party members are no unworldly citi-
zens, isolated from and unaware of the wider society, and swallowed by the activism for or

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Table 12.2 Indicators of societal connectedness of party members, by level of activism (%)

Level of (subjective) activism as a party member

(Almost) Not very Fairly active Very active All members

not active active

Number of organizations of which

party members are a member or
supporter:
0 7 4 4 3 5
1–3 51 48 42 45 48
4–6 41 44 48 45 43
7+ 2 4 6 8 4
Number of organizations for which
party members are a voluntary
worker:
0 32 20 16 15 24
1–3 59 63 56 63 60
4–6 10 17 27 22 16
7+ 0 1 2 1 1

Source: Leiden Party Member Survey 2008 for seven parties (see note 1) (weighted data).

within their party. Contrary to the idea of a cartel party being isolated from society, members of
Dutch parties are rooted in society at large and connected as members or volunteers to other
organized parts of civil society. As such, they are able to constitute the linkage between their
party and society. At election time they may canvass in the various societal environments and
groups with which they are connected. All in all, many party members have the potential to
play the role of ambassador, salesman or foot soldier – but are they willing to do so?

 Willingness: According to our third precondition, party members should be willing to be

active as part-time marketers. As said, this is not obvious. First, many members are not active in
their party. In the LPMS 2008 a plurality of 44 percent of the members considered them-
selves inactive; only 25 percent was in their own estimation fairly or very active. The fact that not
all Dutch party members are or want to be active is not exceptional from a comparative per-
spective (Scarrow 2000).
 The concept of part-time marketers, however, implies that members are first of all open about
their political affiliation and willing to spread the word. Our data show that many Dutch
party members are willing to speak out about their party membership (Table 12.3, final column).
For over 90 percent it is true that their acquaintances know about their membership and a large
majority of 72 percent of the party members talk about their party at work. Moreover, about 80
percent do not think that being active for their party would cause any discomfort in everyday life.
 Party members also think that they can be a source of information for their party (at the
input side of the communication channel). A large majority of over 70 percent agrees with
the statement that rank-and-file members may have good ideas about what their party
should do, and a non-negligible minority of about 20 percent even think that they know
the minds of the people better than elected representatives. Since less than 10 percent of
members think that activities of people like themselves are of no use since the party lea-
dership decides everything, the potential for fuelling the leadership with information from the
mass level very likely does exist.

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 If it is true that future behaviour is best predicted from past performance, parties still have
some encouraging to do. In Table 12.3 findings for three separate campaign activities are pre-
sented, i.e. for actions that indicate the willingness of members to show their political pre-
ference and to actually canvass at elections. The data show that four out of every ten members
have shown a poster or window bill at home; over 20 percent tried to persuade others to vote
for their party, and distributed leaflets or other campaign information. But the glass appears
to be half empty rather than half full: some party members already act as part-time marketers for
their party, but for all parties included in our study the majority is not active, or at least not at
recent election campaigns.

To sum up, party members who are less active internally do not differ strongly from their
more active fellow members with respect to their willingness to speak out as a member or in
their self-confidence as a party member. What makes the difference – and this may come as no
surprise – is that those members who are less active within their party also appear to have been
less active as auxiliary troops for their party at previous election campaigns. Apparently, those
members who consider themselves to be very active already act as part-time marketers: 65 to 75

Table 12.3 Indicators of potential willingness of members to be active for their party, by level
of activism

Level (subjective) of
activism as a party member

(Almost) Not very Fairly Very All members

not active active active active

Willingness to speak out as a party member

‘At work I never talk about my party’ (% not 62 74 83 90 72
true)
‘The people among my acquaintances know 87 95 99 99 92
that I am a member of [party]’ (% true)
‘People who are active for their party 78 78 82 76 79
experience discomfort in their everyday life’
(% (fully) disagree)
Self confidence of party members
‘Rank-and-file party members know the 21 24 20 18 22
minds of the people better than elected
representatives’ (% (fully) agree)
‘Often rank-and-file party members have good 69 72 78 81 72
ideas about what the party should do’
(% (fully) agree)
‘Activities of party members like me are of no 9 9 6 8 8
use since the party leadership decides
everything’ (% (fully) agree)
Prior campaigning experience : percentage of
party members who during the previous five
years (very) often...
...showed a poster or window bill at home 24 40 65 77 40
...tried to persuade others to vote for the party 9 19 39 64 22
...distributed leaflets or other information 5 19 51 76 23

Source: Leiden Party Member Survey 2008 for seven parties (see note 1) (weighted data).

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Party members as part-time marketers

percent of those members did show a poster, tried to persuade others and/or distributed
campaign information. Those members who are less active within their party are also (much)
less active in the run-up to elections. So according to our data, a substantial number of reserve
troops are still at rest. Dutch parties have tried to mobilize these troops, but apparently not
effectively and without convincing results as yet. However, the party that succeeds in getting them
into action will be able to employ an impressive number of extra marketers in future campaigns.

Advice for practitioners

What lessons can parties learn from the general idea of members as part-time marketers, and the
Dutch case in particular? We showed that the alleged unrepresentativeness of members is to a
large extent – in the Netherlands and from a substantive point of view – a myth. Dutch party
members’ opinions on major political issues and in terms of left–right ideological self-placement
hardly differ from their parties’ electorate. Furthermore, party members are active in and connected
to other parts of civil society as members and active participants in various societal organizations. This
makes these members well positioned to provide feedback about the general mood of the electorate.
Our study supports the idea of devoting structural attention to this valuable and relatively cheap
form of market intelligence, for instance by organizing regular surveys among members and
providing members with easy online and offline ways to express their opinions to the party
headquarters. This feedback channel is the first benefit of treating members as part-time marketers.
Besides the market intelligence that it provides, the input channel strengthens the second
benefit of the part-time marketer concept: members as active ambassadors and foot soldiers for
their party. Our case study showed that the representativeness and connectedness of members
does not imply that they have been active in campaigning. A majority of members has not
canvassed for their party in recent years. This means that there may be new ground to develop
among the party membership. Parties should try to mobilize this group of potential foot sol-
diers, who remain necessary in order to meet with potential voters face to face and make the
party visible on the street. This is not an easy assignment, but it might be an effective under-
taking. In our survey over 40 percent of members stated that they were never asked by their
party to get involved in any activity for their party, but of those 60 percent who were con-
tacted, over 90 percent appreciated this. Among the 40 percent who were never contacted,
over 50 percent thought this would be a good idea. Among the party membership there is
virgin territory as regards party activism.
Finally, we believe that regarding members as part-time marketers is not only useful in the
short run, i.e. to win the next election, but also in the long run. Parties that neglect their rank-
and-file members may attract new voters, but simultaneously lose their traditional base of sup-
port. In the case of UK New Labour, Lilleker (2005b) found that members felt that there had
been a lack of consultation when their party modernized in the 1990s and they had been dis-
enfranchised. Labour had won votes, but lost two-thirds of its members since the mid-1990s
(Pettitt 2009). As voters become more disloyal, a party that loses a significant amount of
members loses some of its lifeblood. Moreover, ‘[b]y taking measures to extend the role of
individual members in party decision-making, cartel parties can defend themselves against
accusations of elitism and detachment from society’ (Hopkin 2001: 345).

Impact on politics
Parties are not the only beneficiary of the part-time marketer model: democracy as a whole might
benefit. The idea of members as part-time marketers means that ordinary people are actually

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Peter Van Aelst et al.

involved, not only as spectators but as co-producers. In this respect, the part-time marketer model is
in line with theories that stress the importance of a participatory democracy (e.g. Verba et al. 1995).
As party members become an integrated part of an electoral strategy in a market-oriented
modern election campaign, our model might also adjust the (incorrect) idea that political
marketing is necessarily in conflict with traditional party activism. The concept of part-
time marketers should not be seen in contrast to the centralized media campaign, but rather as a
crucial part of it. We even argue that without the party’s central organization involvement and
coordination, the idea of part-time marketers has little chance of being truly effective. On the
one hand, the input and knowledge from wider society would never reach party headquarters,
and on the other hand, party leaders’ attempts to activate their members would be unheard or
left unanswered. In short, successful election campaigns require an integration of modern and
traditional methods. As Marsh (2004: 263) aptly puts it, ‘elections take place on the airwaves,
but they also take place on the doorsteps’.

The way forward

Future research should try to test more cases to explore whether party members are really
unwilling, or rather unable, to be more active in a campaign context. Are these members simply
not mobilized, or consciously neglected by party headquarters? Whatever may be the case, with
at least two of the three preconditions fulfilled in the Dutch case, there is ample reason to further
explore and develop the possibilities for political parties to increase the grassroots potential of
party members in election campaigns, in particular in a time where the internet has dramatically
increased the opportunities for parties and candidates to connect more easily with their core
supporters, as was shown by the primary campaign of Howard Dean in 2004 (Hindman 2005)
and again by Barack Obama in 2008. ‘It is clear that parties are here to stay, an unavoidable part of
democracy. Whether, as Schattscheider believed, political parties make modern democracy, or
whether they are an inextricable weed in its garden, is a question that social science research does
not answer yet’ (Stokes 1999: 263–64). Indeed, political parties are here to stay, as are their
members, so why not make the best of it?

Note
1 The parties that participated were: the Christian Union (ChristenUnie, CU); the Christian Democratic
Appeal (Christen Democratisch Appèl, CDA); D66 (Democraten 66, or Democrats 66); the GreenLeft
(GroenLinks, GL); the Labour Party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA); the Liberal Party (Volkspartij voor
Vrijheid en Democratie, VVD); and the Dutch Reformed Party (Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij,
SGP). Three parties did not want to participate: The Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV);
the Socialist Party (Socialistische Partij, SP); and the Party for the Animals (Partij voor de Dieren,
PvdD).

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13
Yes we can (fundraise)
The ethics of marketing in political
fundraising

Alex Marland

The topic: fundraising

Fundraising, according to Wilcox (2008: 3), is ‘the art and science of approaching potential
donors with the right appeals at the right time’. It involves directly asking for money and other
gifts or indirectly raising funds such as through special events or product sales. Sponsors use publicity
techniques to attract attention to the fundraising cause or to persuade giving. Alternatively, they
may use marketing whereby research has identified an objective shared with target groups and
donations are solicited for that mutual cause. Unlike philanthropy, which is a one-way exchange,
political fundraising likely involves the donor receiving a benefit, be it material, social or ideological.
Little wonder, then, that political fundraising is often equated with ‘prostitution and extor-
tion’ (Steen 1999: 160). The interrelated role of marketing, campaigning and money sparks
ethical alarm among academics and journalists who worry about potentially nefarious implica-
tions for democracy (O’Shaughnessy 1990, 2002; Smith and Bakvis 2000; Wilcox 2008). This
chapter considers the ethics of marketing strategy and tactics in political fundraising.
It can be unclear what constitutes a legitimate concern about fundraising marketing. To dis-
cuss this we must first unpack a number of these terms, beginning with ethics, before we can
apply theoretical principles of marketing to the recent practice of political fundraising.
Humans consider various norms, particularly legal and moral standards within a given society,
to assess their own and others’ behaviour, including that of professional organizations (Audi
2010; Brenkert 2008; Duska 2007; Murphy et al. 2005; O’Shaughnessy 2002; Rosen 2005;
Stoker 1992; Wueste 1994). There is no one set of norms, nor an agreed upon morality, and
thus there is variation in the judgement of the degree of acceptability of ethical, legal and social
behaviours. Ethics, then, involves a philosophical and cultural interpretation of these standards
to differentiate between good and bad behaviour. At times, this can be straightforward and
normative, as in the case of laws or a written code. Even so, ethics can be controversial and
subjective, invoking one’s personal standards of right and wrong. As a result, as O’Shaughnessy
(2002: 1092–93) has concluded, ‘no ethical debate is ever final’ since there are no answers, just
critiques, and therefore there is ‘no final resting place for the ethical debates on political mar-
keting’. Since all answers to ethical questions are subjective and necessarily biased, we are faced
with developing objective questions to help individuals self-adjudicate the ethics of political

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marketing applications. In other words, assessing the ethics of utilizing marketing in political
fundraising typically involves little more than culture-specific educated guesses.
In theory, political actors ought to act on behalf of the collective interests that they represent,
and therefore be of virtuous character. In practice, however, often their self-interests prevail;
this is the egoism that is also found in the sphere of business marketing. Moreover, as any fan of
Machiavelli will attest, for political actors the conundrum of so-called ‘dirty hands’ emerges
whereby morally unpalatable actions are carried out in an effort to achieve a greater moral good
(Wueste 1994). Ethical theories such as utilitarianism are used to sort out such ‘damned if you
do and damned if you don’t’ dilemmas (Duska 2007: 20; also Audi 2010; Murphy et al. 2005;
Rosen 2005). Any such discussion of political ethics, or of fundraising or marketing for that
matter, can thus pit idealists against realists (Audi 2010; Duska 2007; Singer 2007; Stoker 1992).

Previous research on fundraising

There is no standard model of ethics to test against cases of using political marketing for fun-
draising purposes. Fundraisers worldwide might simply observe the universal fundraising prin-
ciples of empathy, honesty, integrity, respect and transparency (European Fundraising Association
2006). However, there are ethics questions in the marketing literature (such as Audi 2010;
Brenkert 2008; Murphy et al. 2005) from which we can identify questions for elements of the
marketing mix that can be used by a fundraising organization to develop a code of ethics and a
decision-making framework.
In theory ethical fundraising is likely to build trustworthiness which should lead to future
donations; the opposite is also true (Rosen 2005). In politics, fundraising regulations are intended
to uphold democratic ideals by aiming to reduce political corruption, by promoting electoral
competition, by upholding freedom of speech and by preventing collusion (Smith and Bakvis
2000). The primary concern about marketing is that it involves manipulation and persuasion,
particularly through the communication of falsehoods (Brenkert 2008; Kelly 1991; O’Shaughnessy
2002; Sheth and Sisodia 2006). Marketers are thought to exploit market intelligence for their
own purposes rather than for those of consumers. This risks taking advantage of the most
vulnerable in society and ranges from pushing the boundaries of good taste to criminal acts.
According to Kelly (1991: 157–60), the theoretical ideal of political marketing in fundraising
is unattainable: organizational change is unlikely to result in response to donors’ preferences.
Too often financial calculations, rather than positive donor relations, are used to measure fun-
draising success and, as a two-way exchange relationship, political donors seek gains in return
for their gifts whether they do so in their own interests or whether they seek benefits for the
public good. There is thus an expectation for political actors to deliver on their pledges which,
as the dirty hands dilemma indicates, is frequently impossible given that politics occurs in an
environment of daily policy tradeoffs. Moreover, ethical issues for marketing research include
data collection that violates privacy, that lacks informed consent, or which involves the covert
gathering of competitive intelligence (Brenkert 2008; Murphy et al. 2005). Given such a wide
scope of behaviours we must analyse the ethics of political marketing on a case-by-case basis and
resist the temptation to dismiss the entire genre (O’Shaughnessy 2002; also O’Cass 2009: 190).
There are even ethical dilemmas involved with marketing and marketing communications’
use of audience segmentation. This grouping of like-minded electors through geodemography,
behavioural data and/or psychography is used to support product differentiation and to identify
promotional efficiencies (Baines et al. 2003), but the resulting favouritism of select audiences can
entail an ethical condition such as exclusionary segmentation (Brenkert 2008: 83–87). Thinking
of this from a political fundraising perspective, on the grounds of social desirability a marketer

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might opt to ignore citizens whose statistical profile indicates that they are likely to want to
donate, such as a conservative candidate who wants to avoid receiving funds from church-goers
for fear of being labelled beholden to the Christian right.
Segmentation also inevitably results in the practice of beneficial targeting. This is described by
Brenkert (2008: 84) as marketers treating members of the most desirable segments better than
the members of other segments. The most salient prospective donors may receive additional
information, often through direct marketing, which is of benefit to the recipient if the infor-
mation is wanted, but which presents an ethical harm if privacy is violated. Note that this is
different to the practice of benefit segmentation, whereby electors are segmented along the
benefits they seek or stand to receive, which speaks to the opportunity for fundraising marketers
to hone in on the personal values of potential donors (Baines et al. 2003; Steen 1999). Ethical
concerns emerge here if cognitive and emotional levers are employed to motivate donations.
Murphy et al. (2005) have signalled that the resulting target marketing is unethical chiefly if it
focuses on vulnerable populations, such as people who fear for their physical safety, those who
lack the ability to understand information, those who cannot resist enticements and people who
face significant pressure to conform. Often this involves people at either end of the age spec-
trum, but also those occupying the less favourable end of the socio-economic spectrum who
may be ignorant of the marketplace, such as some recent immigrants.
A communications element of political marketing is the marketing mix. Successful political
fundraising involves ‘repetition, reinforcement, and relentlessness’ (Steen 1999: 171). To that
end the marketing mix comprises a strategic combination of marketing communications methods
and tactics such that messages are reinforced via different media to which the target audience is
likely to be favourably exposed. Components that have particular relevance to fundraising are
advertising, direct marketing, endorsements, the internet, media relations, personal sales and
pricing. These are briefly described below.

Advertising
There is a plethora of ethical criticisms of advertising, ranging from broad social harms to case-
specific deceptive advertising (Murphy et al. 2005). Typically only cost-efficient targeting such as
online banner advertisements are viable for fundraising purposes, but given the potential harms of
advertising, it is incumbent upon fundraisers to inform donors about the campaign advertising
that their money will support, particularly if it is of the negative or attack variety.

Direct marketing
At the core of most fundraising campaigns are direct mail and telemarketing, potentially as part of
a relationship marketing campaign that conveys feelings of group membership (O’Shaughnessy
1990; Schnur 1999; also Graves 1997). For instance, fundraisers customize appeal letters and
develop postcards with stimulating imagery designed to generate a response from market seg-
ments of prospective donors, a technique that has been most successful for ideologues who
promote fear, particularly conservatives (D’Aprile 2010; Wilcox 2008). Technological innova-
tions mean that direct marketing is quickly evolving, however, such as email being sent to mobile
smart phones, or fundraising appeals issued via social networking websites (‘socnets’) such as
Facebook and LinkedIn. This is adding to concerns about the profit margins of conventional
direct mail given the high costs (e.g. creative fees, list rental, postage, printing, prospecting), the
battles with fundraising consultants over who owns a list and the post-campaign solicitation of
funds to reduce debts (D’Aprile 2010).

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Endorsements
Political marketers may encourage opinion leaders such as celebrities as well as regular folk
to publicly endorse a political party or candidate. This attention-grabbing practice transfers the
endorser’s positive attributes to the sponsor’s image and provides assurances of trustworthiness to
audiences (Meenaghan 2001; Veer et al. 2010). For example, a high-profile politician might record
a supportive voice message which is distributed by auto-diallers, or a Hollywood celebrity might
issue an online video appeal for donations. A more personal approach is to engage prominent
political supporters at special events, such as at breakfast and barbeque fundraisers (Steen 1999).

The internet
Online fundraising has exponentially increased the quantity of donors and funds, even among
second-tier candidates (Wilcox 2008). The use of information and communication technologies
(ICTs) in fundraising is cheaper, more efficient and more inclusive than telemarketing or direct
mail, reaching a donor pool of citizens who are younger, less affluent and who hold more
moderate world views. Moreover, a range of messages can be circulated by text, still images,
audio and/or video, conveying feelings of being part of an interactive online community,
something that Wilcox (2008: 14) refers to as a ‘virtual solidary benefit’. However, the self-regulated
nature, low cost and global reach of the internet means that there are a plethora of ethical
considerations, including online privacy protections, excessive solicitation, reduced control over
who is asked and the potential for fraud.

Media relations
An inexpensive and credible way to appeal for political donations is to attract coverage in
mainstream news media and on political blogs (Schnur 1999). Generating such earned media can,
for example, entail issuing press releases that inform news editors of staged publicity events such as
a candidate speech or a fundraising gala.

Personal sales
Many potential donors, particularly those donating large amounts, respond well to a ‘retail
approach’ of personal solicitations (Steen 1999: 170), such as receiving a phone call from the
candidate, socializing with members of a finance committee, or being persuaded by the politically
connected ‘bundlers’ who collect many donations. Prospective donors might receive an exclusive
invitation to pay a sizeable fee to attend a special event, such as a dinner at a supporter’s home,
where the candidate makes a public appearance. Photographs of the candidate with the donor
may be purchased and then be shared with other potential donors, such as over socnets, turning
the donor into an endorser.

Pricing
How much to ask a supporter to donate is carefully researched. Specific dollar amounts are
proposed because vague requests are less successful and for the same reason the amount requested
tends to be higher rather than lower (Steen 1999). Major donors will want personal interaction
with the candidate and may ask questions about why the money is needed. Other donors may
need to be encouraged that even tiny amounts are wanted.

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From this review of the literature, a new theory – principles of ethical marketing fundraising – can
be created which can then be tested empirically.

New research: a new framework of ethical marketing fundraising and its

application to Barack Obama’s fundraising
Drawing on the understanding from literature, a new theoretical framework of ethical marketing
fundraising has been created, which is detailed in Table 13.1.
These ethical theories and core principles can be applied to a modern model of fundraising
marketing employed by the Barack Obama campaign team. When Obama declared his pres-
idential candidacy in February 2007 his party nomination campaign faced a significant financial
challenge given that Hillary Clinton had the backing of many of the Democratic Party’s major
donors. Moreover, while US election spending is notoriously under-regulated as a matter of
free speech, fundraising regulations are reasonably strict: in the 2008 election cycle Americans
were allowed to give a maximum of $4,600 ($2,300 during the primaries, $2,300 for the gen-
eral election) to a presidential candidate (Corrado and Corbett 2009). So, while the ‘splashy
social events’ such as the fundraising dinners described by Wilcox (2008: 4) continued to be a
vehicle for large contributions, particularly from white males who were older, educated, white
collar and affluent, these donor limits necessitated an emphasis on fundraising small amounts
from a large quantity of individuals.
While the political fundraising undertaken by the Obama presidential campaign was inno-
vative and made strong use of the marketing mix it did so in a manner that prioritized the
organization’s needs over the interests of donors (i.e. it did not uphold the highest ethical
standards). Its fundraising objective was to provide supporters with marketing tools to become
mini-bundlers (Burch 2009; Corrado and Corbett 2009; Green 2008; Smith and Bratt
2009; Wilcox 2008). In other words, it was insufficient to donate funds: the Obama team
wanted volunteers to become brand advocates and, using ICTs, to donate their labour inde-
pendently to raise even more money from their peers. To accomplish this, feelings of an insider
status needed to be conveyed, citizens needed to be empowered, and donation ‘asks’ would
have to be balanced with social participation invitations. This was not so much a commitment
to deliver donor value as it was an effort to exploit supporters’ positive feelings about Barack
Obama.
Software experts and amateurs offered up their ideas and services for developing and pro-
moting My.BarackObama.com, a website that was very user-friendly. The site’s URL address
and an online donate button, with its simplified donation checkout, was promoted in various
elements of the marketing mix: in online advertising including interactive display advertise-
ments, search engine advertisements via paid keywords, positioning in blogs and links from
YouTube videos; in direct mail and emails; in speeches by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey;
and in mainstream news media coverage (micro-blogging, such as via Twitter, was still in its
infancy in the 2008 campaign). An e-communications campaign was initiated that conveyed
immediacy, intimacy and preferred customer status, especially to mobile phone users as part of a
‘mobile marketing’ programme (Smith and Bratt 2009). The traditional list of potential donors
used in direct marketing was regularly updated with email, cellphone, text messaging and social
networking contact information, as well as zip codes to aid in segmentation. Such personal data
were provided by online donors, by attendees at political events and by people who purchased
or entered contests to win campaign merchandise; it is unclear to what extent standards of
informed consent were observed. List members were segmented into groups who
regularly received tailored e-messages, such as breaking campaign news, customized repeat

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Table 13.1 Core principles of ethical marketing fundraising

1 Donors do not feel pressured

Donors can easily opt out of verbal agreements and out of receiving further requests
Inbound calls to the campaign office do not result in sales pressure tactics
Telemarketing does not unduly interrupt potential donors; people are not over-solicited
The amount solicited does not take advantage of a donor’s financial situation; justification is given for
asking for larger amounts from wealthier or more motivated donors
The sales pitch is not overly familiar, flattering or aggressive; fundraisers do not suggest that a trustworthy
personal relationship really exists
2 Donors give their informed consent
Donors are aware of how their funds will be used
Intrusive methods such as email spam are avoided
Privacy principles are upheld; only relevant personal information is solicited and kept on file; databases of
donor information and giving history are secure; if donor information is shared with others, the donor’s
consent is obtained first
Web tracking cookies are not used as spyware
3 Fundraising communications are truthful
Communications claims are based on evidence and embellishment is justifiable; information is shared with
journalists even if it is sometimes negative; attempts at spin control are reasonable
Fundraisers answer questions honestly and provide relevant information
Only authorized invoices are issued; envelopes do not look like they contain official government
information
The candidate or party is not misrepresented; testimonials are not taken out of context
4 Fundraising research follows high industry standards
Offers by an opponent’s former employee to provide competitive intelligence are refused
Opponents’ fundraising practices are not monitored under unscrupulous conditions
Research is objective and necessary; segmentation is not discriminatory
Telemarketers do not pose as researchers
5 No harm results from political fundraising
Cognitive and/or emotional appeals do not exceed accepted norms
Endorsements are not given under duress
Offensive remarks and negative social impacts are avoided; disturbing images are not used
Online transactions are secure
Publicity tactics are within the boundaries of good taste
Vulnerable groups are not contacted and are protected
6 There is a commitment to deliver donor value
Fundraisers are well-trained to observe ethical principles
Fundraisers do not receive commission that might spur sales pressure tactics; if a fundraising firm or
endorser is paid, this is disclosed
Fundraising expenses are monitored and reported; the firm that processes donations is not affiliated with
the fundraising firm
If inducements are offered, such as a gift, the retail value is identified; lower-quality products are not sold
for fundraising; policy promises are not unreasonably made as an inducement
There is significant concern for the donor’s interests

solicitations including requests for pledges of as little as $5, and encouragement to match the
donation of a peer. Donors could ‘subscribe’ to a pledge programme of making regular small
e-donations until they reached the annual limit and could direct friends to monitor their
fundraising progress on socnets.

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What did the online platform look like? The personalized experience for members of the
‘Organizing for America’ campaign, including ‘Obama ’08’ graphics, continued to be used two
years later in the 2010 congressional elections. Supporters who created their own fundraising
page were encouraged to upload a personal photo, to write a testimonial and to identify a
financial goal ($1,000 was the suggested amount). A graphic of a thermometer displayed their
progress towards their stated financial objective. Each supporter was encouraged to enter
friends’ email addresses, up to 20 at a time, so that they could receive the following message:

President Obama and I are committed to changing the political process by growing an
organization founded on a broad base of support from ordinary Americans. This organiza-
tion is about putting the people’s interests ahead of the special interests, but to do that,
Barack needs help from people like you and me. I’ve set my own personal fundraising goal
for the organization, which you can see in the thermometer to the right. Will you click the
thermometer to make a donation and help me reach my goal?
(Organizing for America 2010)

Some suggestion could be made that this technique knowingly exerted social pressure on
peers to donate, that commitments to deliver donor value were not expressly communicated,
and that the Obama campaign may have developed an email database of supporters’ friends
without their consent; however, fundraising communications were truthful and no significant
harms resulted. The benefits of fundraising and donating were both psychological and material,
generating an emotional ‘fun’ connection (Green 2008) that created ‘an online fundraising
psychology that empowered’ donors (Corrado and Corbett 2009: 138). The social benefits of
insider status included receiving campaign updates, downloadable ‘yes we can’ ringtones and
news widgets; obtaining more socnet friends and the phone numbers of potential supporters;
and showing off donation status and items purchased in the Obama online store. Psychological
motivations included the campaign creating a sense of urgency, insider involvement and per-
sonal responsibility, through statements such as, ‘Your own personal fundraising page will put
the financial future of this organization in your hands. You set your own goal, you do the
outreach, and you get credit for the results’ (Organizing for America 2010). Material induce-
ments included virtual gifts, such as e-wallpaper, and qualifying to win paraphernalia such as
Obama t-shirts and calendars, backstage passes at campaign events and, later, a flight to Chicago
for election night celebrations. Such incentives continued to be extended post-election, with
donation inducements ranging from Obama coffee mugs in exchange for a $15 donation, to a
chance to win one of 10 tickets to the Presidential Inauguration. These sorts of enticements
may be considered fair game: whilst a mug may cost the organization less than a dollar its retail
value might be $10 and some might believe that an insider trip to Obama’s historical Inaugu-
ration would be priceless, though contest entries should not necessarily be dependent on
donating.
We can assess the ethics of the Obama campaign’s fundraising by applying the theoretical
framework of ethical marketing fundraising. In all areas we can see that the campaign behaved
in an ethical manner in that no harm appears to have resulted, though it could have done
better: the campaign office used ICTs to exert peer pressure on donors; standards of informed
consent were wanting; and inducements may have capitalized on some supporters’ heightened
emotional state. This application also demonstrates that the model needs to be tested using
original data such as elite interviews because much fundraising information requires insider
knowledge, such as evaluating the protection of donor databases, identifying whether vulnerable
groups are contacted, or establishing the appropriateness of expenses.

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Table 13.2 Factoids about Obama campaign fundraising (21-month total, as of election
day 2008)

Money raised (total) over $600 million

Money raised online over $500 million
Money raised through online advertising $20 million (est.)
Number of email addresses in campaign database 13 million
Number of individual donors over 3.95 million
Number of online donors 3 million (est.)
Number of online donations 6.5 million (est.)
Value of average online donation $80
Percentage of online donations in increments of $100 or less 92%

Source: Smith and Bratt (2009); Vargas (2008). Information about the money raised by all campaigns in 2008 can be
found elsewhere, such as Corrado and Corbett (2009) and Green (2008).

Advice for practitioners

Conceptually speaking, the use of ICTs, particularly social networking sites, should be one of the
most successful tactics for political fundraising. This is due to more than just time, labour and cost
efficiencies, which are compelling advantages in their own right. Writing before the era of
socnets, Steen (1999: 167) remarked that fundraising is best when it entails ‘an army of volunteers
or members of the community who solicit contributions’, which is exactly what the Obama team
demonstrated in their use of ICTs. For brand advocates to become mini-bundlers, a campaign not
only needs to provide internet-savvy volunteers with software tools, but with a sustained psy-
chological motivation that leads them to respond favourably to ‘asks’ related to campaign
objectives. As with all two-way fundraising, this can be achieved by offering ideological, material
and/or social benefits, which the Obama ’08 campaign did for many electors by capitalizing on
the campaign’s competitive advantages, not the least of which was the candidacy of an historic
political figure who motivated an army of followers.
Online fundraising has quickly become preferred over conventional methods because it is a
single technique that leverages many of the positive features of direct marketing, endorsements,
personal sales and pricing. Using ICTs, the administrative costs of fundraising can be directed
foremost to market research to inform target marketing decisions and advertising to reinforce
donation messages. This must complement, and not replace, traditional fundraising methods
which may reach other audiences such as non-users of ICTs or socnets and the big donors who
expect personal attention. The institutionalization of online activities among direct mail, tele-
marketing and public appearances by the candidate will be important as the competition for,
and complexity of, e-donations grows.
The overarching comparative implication for political marketers outside of the US is that
they must customize American fundraising techniques to their own markets, including local
campaign regulations, cultural norms and donor capacity. For instance, in the UK civic volun-
teerism and political donations are lower than in the US, and the financial regulatory framework
provides fewer incentives for political parties to fundraise (Anstead 2008). The crafting of a
written fundraising appeal involves style differences even in the Canadian market, where com-
pared with its southern neighbour there are variations in cultural meanings and power distance,
appeals to vanity or patriotism versus economics, as well as regional and language considerations
(Graves 1997). In authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, as well as in developing economies, the
use of ICTs for fundraising may be inappropriate and/or impossible. Moreover, domestic fun-
draising opportunities may be quite limited, except in more developed areas of the country, and

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the closeness of a philanthropic organization’s relationship with the state must be considered. In
Latin America, for example, civil society organizations can be so cash-strapped that they often
serve an institutionalized public policy function, and people may donate to charities because of
perceptions of government inefficiency, corruption or regression (Bailey 1999). Brenkert (2008: 184)
has remarked on the ethical relativism of customs, morals and rules in other societies, such as the
tolerance of bribery and gift-giving. This reinforces the point made at the outset of this chapter
that there is considerable variation in what constitutes acceptable ethical, legal and social beha-
viours in political fundraising and marketing, though presumably political marketers should
strive to uphold common ideals in all markets.

The impact on politics

O’Shaughnessy (1990) has long warned of the democratic harms of political marketing on
democracy: public apathy, demise of community, political fragmentation, superiority of minority
interests over the majority, the growth of false issues, etc. This may be briefly tempered by the era
of e-democracy, wherein citizens are encouraged to engage in online political debate, are
consulted by government elites and are urged by their peers to participate in elections. Using
internet marketing for fundraising purposes results in a democracy that is more egalitarian than
one that prioritizes backroom personal deals and where donating is concentrated among the rich.
The overall effect of the Obama campaign’s ICT strategy was to reduce the effort necessary for
supporters’ political participation and which thus increased civic engagement (Burch 2009).
Optimists may then point to how marketing is growing closer to democratic ideals than the
politics of days gone by.
Realists, however, will suggest that elites will eventually control any new grassroots tech-
nology, as illustrated already by the contrast in quality of the websites of well-financed
campaigns as compared with those of underfinanced upstarts. The most significant legal pro-
blem appears to be policing internet fraud. Approximately 1 percent of donations in Obama’s
campaign were scrutinized as being received from donors using fake names and from non-US
citizens, a concern related to outdated election rules that did not require the collection of the
names and addresses of people giving less than $200 (Mosk 2008). As well, the problem of
perpetual fundraising may contribute to donor fatigue and a diminished interest in civic
engagement. Donors in 2008 continued to be solicited well after Obama had taken office, to
the point that emails could be perceived as spam and requests for money as insensitive to citi-
zens’ financial situations in a troubled US economy. It is even worse when such messages are
reinforced in the news media which reports on the latest party fundraising gala event. As
president, Obama has engaged in dozens of fundraising events that coincide with official pre-
sidential trips, and the prices for special event tickets, such as dinner at a museum or a reception
at the mansion of singer Gloria Estefan, have reached as high as $34,200 and the price of a
photo with the president has been a reported $10,000 (Weisman 2010).
To this end we can apply some of the dualist perspectives of business ethics (Singer 2007; also
Stoker 1992) to political fundraising. From an idealist’s perspective, fundraising practices should
be mindful of the societal implications, and should uphold moral standards that are consistent
with the sponsor’s ideals. Group rights should be upheld and, when faced with barriers, insti-
tutional changes should be pursued for the benefit of all. Financial efficiency is thus less
important than is a social choice perspective of following ethical practices that exceed established
norms. This long-term promotion of community through distributive justice and care-based
ethics is more likely to be championed by left-wing political actors (i.e., liberal and social
democrats, socialists) and presumably by most fundraising charities.

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Conversely, a realist will point to the need for political fundraising to deliver maximum
profits so as to fund the war chest needed to run a credible campaign. The most rational
behaviour is thus the one that delivers, within acceptable norms and laws, the best return on
investment in a competitive marketplace. This pursuit may involve unconventional proprie-
tary practices resulting in a competitive advantage that inflicts damage on the political
system. Capitalist selfishness and ruthless strategizing prevails over collectivism and altruism.
This sort of short-term approach to the concentration of resource advantage and freedom
from government restraint tends to be the domain of the political right (i.e., conservatives,
libertarians).
The dualist perspectives of idealism versus relativism mirror contrasts between the marketing
concept (TMC) and its more paternalistic counterpart, the social marketing concept (SMC)
(Brenkert 2008). Looking at fundraising from TMC and SMC perspectives, a marketer who
solicits funds should prioritize donor satisfaction while avoiding perceptions of political corrup-
tion as a means towards securing profitability, and efforts to ensure this satisfaction should be
promoted throughout the organization. In seeking to satisfy donors’ wants and desires, a TMC
fundraiser does not make any ethical judgement about the broader societal implications of the
fulfilment of those desires: that is the donor’s prerogative, within the boundaries of the law,
though even an amoral marketer may need to inform and motivate prospective and existing
donors. An SMC fundraiser, however, is concerned with the societal implications of meeting a
donor’s wants and desires. The broader moral implications for the community at large are pitted
against the profit motive. Thus lucrative fundraising opportunities might be turned down
because of the marketer’s concern for social values.
Raising money provides a political organization with some autonomy to pursue its objectives
and with flexibility to respond to emerging situations, but a challenge for political marketers is
that the unethical behaviours of others sour the political marketplace and thus have a negative
impact on politics. Marketing fits nicely with fundraising because the solicitor is often con-
cerned about the donor’s interests, and there is thus a mutual satisfaction of wants and needs. In
politics TMC and SMC encourages a ‘constructive dialogue’ between parties and electors
towards achieving shared economic and social objectives (O’Cass 2009: 198). However, Sheth
and Sisodia (2006) have cautioned that marketing is losing effectiveness amidst a consumer
marketplace that is as dissatisfied, disloyal and alienated as the elector marketplace, which is
partly a consequence of the unscrupulous marketing that takes advantage of customers and
which harms society.

The way forward

Having identified ethical questions and issues for political marketers involved with political
fundraising, we can consider these in the context of the Obama fundraising machine, and identify
a framework of best practices applicable to other case studies. We can see that the stakes are high
in an election, especially a race to become president of the US, and so the act of raising money
may matter more than the ethics of how it is raised. The tactics used in the 2007–08 period, and
repeated in 2010, were innovative and highly successful, but they still involved egoism, a plethora
of policy proposals, peer pressure, persuasion and inducements. This was followed by over-
solicitation that may have bordered on intrusion. In short, concerns for collecting money
superseded the donors’ interests, under a collective philosophy that presumed agreement that the
election of Barack Obama was for the greater public good.
The two-way approach employed by the Obama Democrats whilst they were governing is
a more exemplary model for political marketers. In 2009 the Democratic Party organized a

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Alex Marland

contest to receive citizen-generated 30-second videos supporting health insurance policy

reform. These were uploaded to YouTube and 20 finalists’ videos were available for public and
expert voting. With the congressional vote on the controversial legislation looming, visitors
to BarackObama.com were shown videos that had not yet been broadcast in mainstream media,
and were encouraged to donate so that the winning video could be aired to a television
audience:

Help put the final ad on the air. In the next few days, we’ll be using the winning video as
the basis for a new television ad that will air across the country – and you can help, by
ensuring we have the resources to make the biggest impact. With only weeks to go before
the final vote on health insurance reform, we need to make sure Congress hears this
grassroots message. Can you help get this message out, just when it’s most critical? Please
donate today, using the form on the right.
(Organizing for America 2009)

This tactic is the way forward for ethical practitioners, researchers and for trainers: a rational
method to achieve idealist fundraising that exemplifies the SMC approach without sacrificing
the competitive or financial priorities of a TMC marketer. It is a fantastic blend of organiza-
tional responsiveness and use of the marketing mix, democratizing the fundraising process while
generally observing the aforementioned universal fundraising principles. Donors were reason-
ably informed what their donations would be used to finance. Positive civic engagement
inducements included a chance to become the author of profiled advertisements and an offer to
participate in the selection of the televised advertisement. Certainly data collection privacy
concerns may persist, there are audience limitations insofar as access to ICTs is concerned, and
perhaps fear was used to motivate donations from the disadvantaged. However, such an appeal
to fund a clear policy objective is democratic, addresses the dirty hands dilemma and reduces
many vexations about audience segmentation. As a publicly available practice it encourages
competitors to monitor its success and to follow this as the way forward.
The material presented in this chapter can inform a broad framework of best practices for
other case studies (Table 13.3). Political marketers should collect and analyse research about the
general public, develop policies that are important to key segments, and openly ask for money
to support the promotion of specific policy proposals that funding can help lead to their
implementation. This should be performed in a transparent manner that provides audiences
with policy details while disclosing trade-offs, with information about the promotional tactics
that their funding will support, while engaging and empowering them in the collection of funds
and creation of promotional materials. By bearing in mind the fine line between good and
questionable practices, fundraisers may be more prone to not only practise non-intrusive and
transparent tactics, but to also hold to account those who employ deceptive and/or intrusive
methods.
In theory, generally, if selectively, following the core principles of ethical marketing fun-
draising (donors do not feel pressured; donors give their informed consent; fundraising com-
munications are truthful; fundraising research follows high industry standards; no harm results
from political fundraising; and there is a commitment to deliver donor value) and embracing
good practices that are non-intrusive and transparent should help raise more money. A balance
of idealism and relativism is needed, however, for in politics practising good ethics does not
necessarily equate to success. Based on the information presented in this chapter, though,
especially the 2009 health reform case, it would seem that campaigns do stand to benefit from
employing innovative methods while observing higher ethical standards.

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Yes we can (fundraise)

Table 13.3 Framework for best practices when using marketing in political fundraising

Questionable practices: Good practices:

non-intrusive, but deceptive non-intrusive and transparent
Data mining Clear, achievable policy promises made
Excessively friendly requests Donors choose/informed how money spent
False impressions of insider status Donors voluntarily connect with each other
Hyperbole in press releases Easy to opt out of pledges
Low odds of winning an inducement Factual websites with objective information
Media spin Information shared with inquiring journalists
Poor quality products for sale Monitoring of fundraising progress
Wealthy citizens given special access User-requested mobile marketing

Bad practices: Questionable practices:

deceptive and intrusive transparent, but intrusive
Aggressive sales pitches Actions justified as for the greater good
Donor information shared without consent Appeals to vulnerable populations
Embellished advertising Images of sex or violence
Endorsements given under pressure Inducements offered
False sense of urgency/responsibility Opinion research
Fundraisers hide commission earnings Oversolicitation/spam
Hiring of opponents’ staff Peer solicitation
Preying on people’s emotions Pop-up online advertising
Pushy telemarketing Positioning in blogs and online videos
Unauthorized invoices Truthful advertising

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14
Political parties and direct
marketing
Connecting voters and candidates more
effectively

Peter N. Ubertaccio

The topic: parties and direct marketing

At the end of the 20th century political parties worldwide followed a trend towards the
centralization of campaigning. In the US, for example, political parties centralized certain fun-
draising and marketing efforts in their Washington, DC arms – the two national committees and
their counterparts for House and Senate candidates – even as the local organizations that once
served to connect citizens to government became less important to voters and to nominations. At
the same time, political campaigning used the more sophisticated tools of political marketing,
particularly direct marketing. Direct marketing, a pioneering tactic of international companies
such as Amway and Tupperware, micro-targeting and social networking replaced the tactics of
the old party system and, when aggressively used in political campaigns, hold out the promise for
a return to locally active organizations. In the US, they were first seen in the Republican
congressional campaign of 2002 and the Bush re-election campaign of 2004, which demonstrated
that highly effective micro-targeting of voters combined with direct marketing strategies
could find more and turn out a greater number of partisan voters. The same principals of
direct marketing were also used by Vermont governor Howard Dean during the 2004 Demo-
cratic primaries, and then to form the social media strategy of the Obama for President campaign.
Nevertheless, despite the way that the Obama campaign was said to mobilize grassroots
campaigning, as a new round of campaigns for Congress and president get underway in advance
of the 2012 national elections, the US party system remains largely candidate-centered, with
fundraising and messaging centralized in Washington. This chapter will both discuss the nature
of direct marketing and its use by parties so far, as well as debating its potential to reconnect
voters to local party organizations and campaigns, making the conversations among citizens and
between them and candidates much more vibrant.

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Previous research on party decline and direct marketing

Political marketing research has commented on the centralizing effect of marketing (Lees 2005)
and the potential downgrading of party members (Lilleker 2005; Pettitt 2009), as well as the
transformation of party organization (Newman 1994). Lilleker (2005) argued that the UK’s New
Labour lost volunteers because its promises became more oriented ‘towards the middle-class
swingers, rejecting working-class based politics’ (Lilleker 2005: 573). Political marketing can
change internal power: as strategists together with the leadership determine policy direction in
relation to market intelligence, this ‘can leave ordinary members feeling alienated’ (ibid.) if they
see no response to their demands within that product development process. In the UK Labour
case, Lilleker (2005) found that members felt that there had been a lack of consultation and
they had been disenfranchised. In other sub-fields of political science, such as parties, there is an
extensive literature on the decline of the US party system. Indeed, parties have always found their
centralizing thrust to be difficult in the US system of separation of powers, federalism, and
checks and balances, all part of what historian Richard Hofstadter called the ‘Constitution-
Against-Parties’ (Hofstadter 1969). From the zenith of their power and influence in US politics in
the late 19th century, parties as organizations have been in relative decline, having lost
control of the ability to bestow party nominations and commanding allegiance among fewer and
fewer voters. Progressive and New Deal era reforms undercut party solidarity and weakened
party organizations as the US executive became the centralizing feature of US politics
whereas parties in the early 2000s are in a ‘late state of a century-long decline’ (Shafer 2003). ‘As
the presidency evolved into a ubiquitous institution’, noted Sidney Milkis, ‘it preempted party
leaders in many of their limited but significant tasks: linking the president to interest groups,
staffing the executive department, policy development, and … campaign support’ (Milkis 1999:
100). These reforms combined with what David Broder views as subsequent ‘years of neglect’
turned parties into little more than fundraising mechanisms for a candidate-centered polity
(Broder 1971). In the 21st century, roughly 30 percent of the US electorate registers as ‘inde-
pendent’ or ‘no party’. Among the reasons for this de-alignment of voters is the decline of party
organizations.
The decline of patronage, a result of civil service reforms and a more professionalized gov-
ernmental work force, deprived the traditional system of its main source of support. Local party
organizations, bereft of financial support and access to jobs, declined as well. As a result, party
organizations became nationalized as the affairs of our politics became nationalized in scope
during the mid-20th century. However, that greater outlook did not result in greater party
power. Rather, parties served as devices for candidates to use to raise funds, hone their message
and learn strategy. Their link to local organizations and citizens atrophied. Milkis reminds us
that parties have always been a bulwark of local democratic forces and that the administrative
aggrandizement and growth of presidential power in the mid-20th century further reduced the
role of party organizations in American life. Despite frequent calls for a revival of strong parties,
‘such calls for fundamental reorganization of political parties and their relationship to politics
and government have fallen on deaf ears’ (Milkis 1999: 185).
Parties, under the weight of national administrative power, strict campaign finance laws and
primary elections to choose nominees, adapted. Newman (1994) details the transition of an
older ‘party concept’ of campaign strategy where patronage and a ‘lifetime of party affiliation’
play a crucial role in a candidate’s success, to a ‘marketing concept’ of strategy. In the latter,
‘strategy originates from the voter and begins by breaking down the electorate into distinct and
separate segments of voters’. Using the techniques of political consultants, once segmentation
has been achieved, ‘the candidate creates an image for himself and uses that to position himself.

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Political parties and direct marketing

The strategy is then executed through information channels based on the results of marketing
research and polling’ (Newman 1994: 38).
As for direct marketing, O’Shaughnessy and Peele (1985) is one of the few studies in political
marketing, and this focuses on the use of direct mail in the 1980s. They note how it was used
by previous presidential candidates including Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Jimmy
Carter, Edward Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, and argue that telemarketing works well in
conjunction with a mailing or to approach lapsed supporters or donors: ‘Americans for Reagan
in conjunction with a mailing raised seven million dollars by telephone in 1980’ (O’Shaughnessy
and Peele 1985: 115–16). This early study of direct mail noted the complexity of such tactics
relative to party strength. On the one hand, the use of direct mail ‘represents a way of mobi-
lizing mass allegiance’ but it does so in a ‘personal way’ and it is also a ‘catalyst for political
fragmentation in the United States, as maverick pressure groups innocent of party loyalty have
employed it to carve out a national constituency’ (O’Shaughnessy and Peele 1985: 119).
Despite this, there is little doubt that advances in the targeting of direct mail were indispensable
to parties and campaigns beginning in the 1970s. In the pre-electronic era, direct mail allowed
party operatives to tap into a stream of new voters for electoral and financial support. Direct
mail was conceived as a political mechanism less to benefit the Republican Party and more to
galvanize a growing number of conservative activists around the country in the late 1970s who
then successfully took over the party machinery. Pioneered by Richard Viguerie in the 1978
congressional election, direct mail was credited with assisting conservatives in 30 congressional
races win an election, including future speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia. The Republican
National Committee (RNC) adopted the technique and aggressively used direct mail in an
attempt to reach parity with Democratic lists of voters. It also allowed the national party to
bypass state and local actors and to reinforce a political message directly to Republican and
Republican-leaning voters. The appeal of direct mail to campaigns is that it can be targeted to
distinct groups of voters by purchasing voter lists; it can allow campaigns to ‘create a running
narrative’ with voters; and it provides a wonderful volunteer opportunity, infusing campaign
organizations with energy (Shea and Burton 2006: 190).
Direct marketing requires a much greater level of active participation in the campaign or
party apparatus. Also called multi-level or relationship marketing, direct marketing was pio-
neered as a business model that distributes products and services by using a process through
which independent agents market to families and friends. Similar to a pyramid structure, the
independent agents create their own sales force, called a downline, by recruiting others into the
business. Profits earned reflect the sales activity of the sales force, with downline agents earning
profits for themselves and their upline supervisors. All levels of the model earn greater
profits based on the size and the activity of their team. Direct marketing firms rely on person-
to-person advocacy, using personal networks of family, friends, churches and civic organizations
as their recruiting ground.
However, in politics, direct mail as a campaign tactic opened the window to direct marketing
by political parties since it allowed party and candidate organizations to move into a more direct
relationship with voters. Of course, tactics that emphasize personal contact between political
organizations and voters are not entirely new. During the heyday of party strength, personal
tactics were part and parcel of precinct-by-precinct strength, but as direct marketing emerged in
the 21st century as a multi-billion dollar, technologically savvy enterprise, major candidates for
office took greater notice. The advent of social networking technology made the tactics easier
to follow, though not all who try succeed, as the McCain campaign’s failure to successfully
navigate the new contours demonstrates. Obama’s campaign beat McCain on every single
measurement of online activity and at coordinating all of those who used social networking to

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Peter N. Ubertaccio

engage the candidate. However, social networking is only one aspect of direct marketing and,
as the unhappy experience of Howard Dean demonstrates, does not supplant get out the vote
efforts. Still, it is the tactic du jour for campaigns for the same reason direct marketing firms
continue to prosper: An analysis in the alternative online magazine EnergyGrid declared:

The reason why MLM [multi-level marketing] can work so well is that people are much
more likely to fall for a sales pitch from a friend or relative, or a stranger in a home setting,
than they are from a stranger in a shop or market, or an advert in a paper, magazine or on
the Internet.
(Energy Grid 2004)

Here network marketing is quite similar to political marketing in terms of citizen participa-
tion in political parties. Paul Whiteley (2011) notes, in his research on the decline of political
parties, that ‘Membership and activism are stimulated by interest in politics, discussion of politics
with friends and by civic norms’. An early research note on social pressure notes that ‘social
pressure messages are roughly an order of magnitude more influential than conventional partisan
or nonpartisan appeals’ (Davenport et al. 2010: 423). The authors define social pressure messages
at those ‘designed to encourage adherence to social norms by reminding people of their obli-
gation to abide by these norms and indicating that compliance will be monitored and perhaps
disclosed to others’ (ibid.). Although political marketing has not focused on this development,
this chapter will attempt to address that gap, and draw on literature within campaign and elec-
tion studies, media sources and the accounts provided by practitioners during the key campaigns
of 2000, 2004 and 2008 that saw a steady progression of direct and network marketing tactics.

New research: direct marketing by the Bush Republicans and beyond

When Republican President George W. Bush won re-election in 2004 over Massachusetts
Democratic Senator John F. Kerry, he did so despite losing independent voters 49 percent to 48
percent, reversing a modern trend in presidential elections where independent voters decide who
wins the White House. With both Bush and Kerry winning high percentages of strong partisan
identifiers and Kerry winning the independent vote, it was an increase in Republican identifying
voters who provided the margin of victory for Bush. The Republicans found and turned out
more Republican voters. Abramson et al. note that:

with fewer independents to woo and such an even balance, the battle becomes a contest
for the remaining independents and the weak partisans, as well as one of ‘strengthening the
base’, that is, appealing to those already predisposed to be supporters to motivate them to
turn out.
(Abramson et al. 2007: 216)

In this environment, the Republicans relied on their growing fascination with direct
marketing firms.
The gold standard of American network marketing companies is Amway. Founded in 1959 it
is a privately held company that sells home health goods and a variety of household goods. By
2010 it had sales in excess of $9 billion in the US and it has expanded globally to all corners of
the world. Its growth in sales is not due to traditional marketing. Amway bypasses the typical
media environment by relying on independent business owners (IBOs) who market Amway’s
vast array of products directly to potential customers, beginning with their families and friends.

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Success is achieved in part as IBOs convince their ‘networks’ to purchase products they
already use in their households from the Amway distributor. IBOs also recruit and train other
people, again drawing on their network of connections. The process repeats itself over and over
again as pyramid-shaped structures grow and grow, all sparked by personal connections and
influence.
Amway’s success and its appeal to legions of supporters brought it a good deal of political
attention. Amway formally met politics during the 2002 and 2004 Republican efforts to
increase their majorities in Congress and ensure the re-election of George W. Bush. Voter
segmentation and data processing have allowed campaigns and political parties to micro-target
populations of voters with direct mail and, increasingly, direct outreach. This was achieved
most effectively by the Republican Party under Bush and Karl Rove. Their near defeat in 2000
stimulated Rove’s interest in these emerging tactics. Caught off-guard when his estimates for a
2000 victory hinged on turnout of about 20 million evangelical voters, about 4 million more
than actually turned out for Bush, Rove set about recasting GOP (Republican Party) strategy.
Rove and staffers at the Republican National Committee instituted the ‘72-Hour Task Force’
which became the ‘72-Hour Project’ designed to increase the number of Republican voters by
using personal campaign teams to contact GOP-leaning voters within 72 hours of the polls
opening on election day. In its implementation, the 72-Hour Task Force drew heavily on
network marketing techniques to create a new organizational level of activism, the grassroots
network, complete with ‘upline’ and ‘downline’ participants, who could more effectively reach
prospective voters and increase turnout.

Mentoring young partisans

Dan Balz described these efforts as ‘a throwback that both Democrats and Republicans have
rediscovered as an antidote to television ads’ (Balz 2003). However, this ‘throwback’ was applied
with modern marketing techniques and direct marketing finesse. For example, the RNC ran
experiments to test the claims of network marketing firms. According to Garance Franke-Ruta
and Harold Meyerson, in 2002, as an experiment, ‘four volunteers were pitted against a pro-
fessional telemarketing firm, each with an identical script and separate lists of voter names. The
four volunteers got almost 5 percent more people to the polls than the pros’ (Franke-Ruta and
Meyerson 2004). As Ken Mehlman noted:

The most important thing you can do in politics is give someone a personal contact from a
credible source. Not just a personal contact from a paid person on the ground, but someone
in their church, their gun club or the PTA.
(Kondracke 2004)

Armed with this data, volunteers were recruited by national, state, local and collegiate party
organizations at rallies, meetings and, increasingly, through the internet. The new downline
recruits were assigned to precincts in which they would network and would find mentors in
more experienced campaign hands. All such volunteers reported to an RNC marshal who
would organize them into small groups with mobile phones given to each one. The groups
were assigned a specific task: to staff phone banks, canvass select precincts, or conduct campaign
visibility. The training involved in this approach was rigorous, often occurring over a period of
months and often targeted at specific goals of expanding the GOP coalition and registering new
voters. Incentives were employed as well, such as receiving a signed picture of the president or
tickets to major Bush re-election events.

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The analysis of the network marketing tactics in the 2004 Ohio presidential campaign by
Matt Bai illustrates the degree to which parties have mastered the techniques of network mar-
keting. Campaign manager Ken Mehlman was one of the preeminent architects of what was
referred to as ‘the Plan’. Local parties and campaign organizations were to work in close con-
sultation with the national party and Bush campaign to set goals for the volunteer aspect of the
reelection effort. Said Mehlman:

The lessons of reality TV are that people are into participatory activities … They want to
have influence over a decision that’s made. They don’t want to just sit and passively absorb.
They want to be involved, and a political program ought to recognize that.
(Bai 2004)

The process of mobilizing voters in the 2004 Republican campaign was left in the hands of
local volunteers, Bush Team Leaders. Bai was introduced to Todd Hanks, the Delaware
County, Ohio Bush campaign chair. Bush won Delaware County with 66 percent of the vote
in 2000, so it was a solidly Republican county where Bush needed to win big to offset expected
Democratic gains in the urban areas of the state. In order to keep Ohio in the GOP fold, Hanks
was committed to maximizing the Republican vote. As a downline participant, Todd Hanks
was recruited and kept in the organization in the same way that someone is recruited and kept
in a network marketing company. Despite his strong political preference for Bush, ‘Hanks
readily admitted that his ultimate goal is to rise through the ranks of local and even state poli-
tics’, wrote Bai. ‘For Hanks, the Bush campaign offers a chance to recruit a “downline” of new
volunteers who will, ideally, remain loyal to him in future campaigns – including his own’
(Eggen 2004). The old-style, patronage-based machine has thus been replaced by the pyramid
goals of network marketing organizations.

The Bush brand

To provide a greater stimulus to their local campaign organizations, Bush’s consultants developed
an identifiable Bush brand. The branding was in part a product of Bush’s unique moment in
office during the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the ensuing rally of popular support
around his presidency. Bush’s rocky relationship with the American people, a lingering status due
to the unusual circumstances of his election, ended with the terrorist attacks. The branding
centered on issues of leadership, security and strength. W, the president’s middle initial, was
emblazoned on coffee mugs, cufflinks and apparel. Having a ‘product’ to ‘sell’ is, of course,
critical to any marketing technique, and it is especially so for network marketing where the
personal contact of the ‘sales force’ is on the line.
When Bush entered the congressional elections of 2002, he became the best upline salesman
for the ‘brand’. More than most recent presidents, he was relentless in these efforts, visiting 40
states and over 100 congressional districts on behalf of Republican candidates in 2002. While
nearly all modern presidents engage the people during congressional elections, few dive as
deeply as Bush. No president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1934 presided over a party that gained
seats in their first midterm election.
The success of the 2002 campaign provided the evidence that Republican Party leaders
needed of the effectiveness of not only Bush as party leader but also the network marketing of
parties. Indeed, by 2004 Bush’s efforts as party leader bore fruit because of the organizational
network marketing techniques on the ground. According to Bush’s chief strategist, Matthew

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Dowd, ‘We had good candidates, but also, we had such good tactics. But having a president
with a 60 percent, 59 percent job approval helps’ (Dowd 2005).
The GOP ‘plan’ in 2004 developed grassroots organizations in all 50 states, but with special
emphasis on 16 ‘battleground states’. The top of the upline managers were at the campaign
headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, followed by regional coordinators and state-level coordi-
nators; these three levels were all paid campaign operatives. Beneath the state-level coordinators
was the downline – county, city and precinct officials – who were volunteers. By election day,
this cooperative operation had more than 1 million volunteers nationwide, a party machine for
the modern era.
The upline managers set specific goals for the downline participants, including recruiting
volunteers, organizing campaign events, registering and contacting voters. Participants at every
level of the organization were held accountable for meeting these goals. Just as importantly, the
Bush campaign provided highly targeted messages for the volunteers to deliver. This ‘micro-
targeting’ was produced by extensive and sophisticated research. As Dan Balz and Mike Allen
reported:

Once those people were identified, the RNC sought to register them, and the campaign
used phone calls, mail and front-porch visits – all with a message emphasizing the issues
about which they cared most – to encourage them to turn out for Bush.
(Balz and Allen 2004)

The net result of the network marketing techniques was greater attention to the grassroots
and more viral activity among potential Bush voters in 2004. According to state senator Jane
Earll of Erie County, Pennsylvania, compared with past campaigns, ‘There are more campaign
people around, more coordination, more ground troops and grass-roots organizing’ (Raum
2004).
After the 2004 election, RNC chair Ed Gillespie emailed his followers with the good news:

1.2 million volunteers made over 15 million contacts, knocking on doors and making calls
in the 72 hours before the polls closed. 7.2 million e-activists were contacting their family,
friends, and co-workers. The RNC registered 3.4 million new voters, enlisted 1.4 million
Team Leaders, and contacted – on a person to person basis – 30 million Americans in
the months leading up to and including Election Day, and in the final 72 hours we met
129 percent of our door-knocking goal; and met 120 percent of our phone-calling goal.
(East 2004)

Beyond 2004
Direct marketing of campaigns was front and center in the Dean campaign of 2004 and the
Obama campaign of 2008. Dean’s was the first campaign to truly fashion the internet as a political
force to be reckoned with. The increasingly unpopular war in Iraq fed Dean’s insurgent campaign
and provided it with a unifying message. His use of MeetUp and BlogforAmerica.com
encouraged a small group of supporters to reach out to their networks. Dean began 2003 with a
few hundred supporters on MeetUp, only to increase that number to 140,000 in the fall. He
raised $15 million in contributions using these connections and innovative internet fundraising
(Wolfe 2004). Going into the primary season, Dean had become the Democratic frontrunner due
largely to his campaign’s embrace of emerging technology and the direct marketing capabilities of

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social sites such as MeetUp. However, while the Bush campaign of 2004 would emerge suc-
cessful for using direct marketing to identify new voters and get them to the polls, the Dean
primary campaign faltered. His internet fundraising, MeetUp number and fundraising prowess
could not motivate enough voters to get out the vote and he stumbled badly in early voting.
Two years after the Democrats failed to deny Bush re-election, the president’s public stand-
ing was so low and sustained that Democrats came to appreciate how the direct marketing
efforts advanced by their opponents and the effective use of the internet demonstrated by
Howard Dean could be harnessed to help achieve victory at the ballot box.
Initially, the match-up between Democratic motivation and Republican direct marketing
tactics was indeed an intriguing one. Robin Toner noted the continuing relevance of the 72-Hour
Project to the Republicans in 2006, as well as the supreme confidence placed in it by many of
the party’s elite. Indeed, in an election where a sour national mood driven by an unpopular war
in Iraq and a litany of high-profile Republican scandals was mounting against the GOP, many
saw their voter outreach program as the biggest reason to remain hopeful going into the election.
The ability of Republican strategists to target nearly every potential Republican voter through
comprehensive computer databases and micro-targeting, and deliver an individually tailored
message was considered an adequate compensation for a relatively unmotivated base. Party
strategist Tom Cole described the 2006 midterms as ‘a race where professionalism has to make
up for enthusiasm’ (Toner 2006).
However, the success of GOP efforts in 2004 faced a much more difficult environment in
2006. Still, they stuck to the same strategy that had helped them win the presidency in 2004
with a goal of adding roughly 2.2 million downline supporters to augment their 170 million
member-strong Voter Vault database. On top of this were efforts to register over 400,000 new
votes and recruit 2,000 more get out the vote coordinators along with thousands of precinct
captains and roughly 100,000 new volunteers (Ambinder 2006). The GOP had also planned to
invest roughly $26 million in its grassroots get out the vote efforts. The mechanics in terms of
manpower and financial backing were in place to run a GOP mobilization campaign that was at
the very least on par with the once vastly superior Republican efforts fielded in the previous
two elections.
Democrats matched the Republican efforts and the most critical point of departure for them
was to equalize Republican superiority with financial resources. According to the National
Journal, the congressional and senate campaign chairs, Rahm Emmanuel and Charles Schumer,
placed the 72-Hour Project firmly within their gaze and incorporated its capabilities into their
campaign strategies over a year before the 2006 midterm elections. While dissention between
Emanuel and Schumer and Howard Dean was well documented, Democratic strategic leader-
ship was eventually able to coalesce around the need for a better-funded get out the vote effort.
Dean, subsequently elected chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) after his pre-
sidential aspirations ended, loudly advocated a 50-state strategy whereas the congressional cam-
paign chairs preferred a more targeted effort in states and districts where Democrats were truly
competitive.

Voter outreach and targeting

Despite the tactical disagreements, the increased commitment to voter outreach helped open the
possibility that combined Democratic efforts would actually be able to exceed those of their
Republican rivals. This was aided by an assertive fundraising campaign on the part of Democrats
which allowed them to enter into the final weeks of the campaign with nearly as much money as
the Republicans. Prior to the election, the totals projected from the Democratic Senatorial

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Campaign Committee (DSCC), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC),

and the DNC were expected to eclipse the $30 million budgeted for the 72-Hour Project. The
DNC alone had budgeted around $12 million for voter outreach programs, setting a new high for
a midterm election (Ambinder 2006). Increased funds for voter turnout helped the Democrats to
bridge a crucial gap in micro-targeting in the 2006 election. Stephen Weismann at the non-
partisan Campaign Finance Institute, noted that ‘The big trend is micro-targeting, and that was
used by Democratic-oriented groups to supplement their knowledge … they were trying to get
more precise. Republicans were in this area first, but Democrats are catching up’ (Vaida and
Munro 2006).
Micro-targeting and the use of sophisticated internet databases were a crucial facet of the
successful implementation of multi-level marketing strategies by the Republican Party in 2002
and 2004. In fact, the 72-Hour Project was essentially fueled by the information contained
within the Republican database or the ‘Voter Vault’. A massive collection of voter data, Voter
Vault contained a wealth of information pertaining to individual voter biases, habits and points
of view, and was accessible to GOP volunteers and organizers as well as the party leadership. As
such, Voter Vault existed simultaneously as a means to monitor and organize party activity
within the 72-Hour Project framework as well as a source of practically limitless data on
potential voters. This voter data allowed the Republican Party to tailor specific messages to
meet the preferences and persuasions of potential voters as well as deliver them with precision.
Obama’s victory in 2008 has been remarked on at length and his successful use of the inter-
net obscures the important permanence of the Bush strategies of 2002 and 2004. David Carr
noted that:

Like a lot of Web innovators, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely
new. Instead, by bolting together social networking applications under the banner of a
movement, they created an unforeseen force to raise money, organize locally, fight smear
campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then
John McCain and the Republicans.
(Carr 2008)

Obama had 290 percent more supporters on Facebook than John McCain, for example.
Beyond the numbers, though, was the aggressive get out the vote mechanism. The character-
ization of the McCain campaign’s ground effort is startling not just for its comparison to
Obama’s highly coordinated, energized effort, but also for the comparison to the Bush effort of
2004, noted for its high level of network activity. According to Sean Quinn, who visited both
campaigns in the swing state of Missouri, ‘We’ve observed no comparison between these ground cam-
paigns. To begin with, there’s a 4–1 ratio of offices in most states. We walk into McCain offices
to find them closed, empty, one person, two people, sometimes three people making calls’
(Quinn 2008).
Quinn went on to add, ‘The McCain offices are also calm, sedate. Little movement. No
hustle. In the Obama offices, it’s a whirlwind. People move. It’s a dynamic bustle’ (Quinn
2008). The contrast to the Bush efforts could not have been more striking.
The McCain campaign’s failure to use advances in social media, its failure to integrate its web
content and get out the vote mechanisms, and its relative disregard for the direct marketing
tactics employed by the Bush Republicans are symptomatic of the candidate-centered, execu-
tive-dominated system of US elections. Despite centralization of certain key functions in their
DC headquarters, political party organizations remain secondary to candidate influence and
intra-party competition.

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In sum, we can see that the Republican application of network marketing techniques to
party organization paid off with party victories in 2002 and 2004. Significantly, however,
Republican Party affiliation in the electorate has not changed since the 2000 election of Bush,
hovering around 31 percent of the population, with Democrats declining from 36 percent to
33 percent (Harris Interactive 2005). It was also used beyond 2005 and direct marketing
increased their share of the vote for the winning parties in 2004 and 2008. It is thus a significant
tool for political parties and political campaigns but has also yet to become fully institutionalized.

Advice for practitioners

Direct marketing is to contemporary campaigns what direct mail was in the late 1970s: ‘its role
should interlock with other mediums so that the various elements of a campaign are mutually
reinforcing’ (O’Shaughnessy and Peele 1985: 122). The integration of marketing tactics needs to
be adapted to the direct marketing environment perfected by the Bush, Dean and Obama
campaigns. There are five key ways to effectively integrate direct marketing in modern political
campaigns:

 Begin with voter targeting. In a political environment such as the US, where party
membership is fluid and not formalized, where de-alignment has increased the numbers of
independent voters, and where party identifiers of the two main parties are relatively equal,
targeting sympathizers with a history of voting is a key first step in direct marketing of pol-
itics. If, as Davenport et al. (2010: 425) suggest, ‘social pressure interventions have persistent
effects’, then finding likely voters to which one can directly market a candidate or party is
vitally important.
 View the online campaign site as a portal for personal contact. Campaign consultants
scrambled in the 1990s to develop websites to provide information to voters, but online
presence is not an effective get out the vote mechanism unless thoroughly integrated into a
direct marketing experience. Clicks on websites need to be evaluated and monitored for
market integration: is the campaign connecting with the right prospective volunteers and
voters and from where are these clicks emerging – Google searches, social media, etc. This
information is important to campaigns looking to tailor a message to specific audiences.
 Social media integration. A modern campaign must take care to create a social media uni-
verse that does not dilute is message. A modern campaign must have a YouTube station,
Facebook and Twitter accounts. It must be aware of emerging social media technologies and
adapt accordingly. Ideally each page allows followers to post – particularly effective is a
YouTube station that allows followers to create and post their own video, essentially cam-
paign commercials for free. The social media environment allows prospective voters and
volunteers to connect to likeminded individuals, an important solidary benefit.
 Mentorship. If campaigns want to turn new voters, donors and volunteers into long-term
advocates, a system of mentorship and encouragement is necessary. Here the study of suc-
cessful direct marketing firms, Amway, Tupperware, Discovery Toys, is essential. These
firms have a well-honed system of mentorship that puts their most successful and proactive
upline managers into an ongoing relationship with downline recruits. Shea and Burton’s
(2006: 182) study of modern campaigns notes that ‘All the basic principles of new-style
campaigning apply to the grassroots operation. Because the “soldiers” in the grassroots effort
are generally untrained, they often need supervision.’
 Networking. Direct marketing is largely successful when new recruits tap into their existing
networks. Here the solidary benefits of belonging to a party or working on a campaign are

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used to advance the interests of a candidate into a cross-cutting array of groups: civic orga-
nizations, churches, volunteer or fraternal associations. Targeting prospective voters in these
environments by properly trained campaign workers allows a candidate or party to buttress
their messaging with a personal contact from a known and trusted source. The technology
of voter identification ‘adds efficiency to what used to be a time-sensitive process’, notes
Christine Pelosi (2007: 53), but ‘the science of targeting numbers will always need the art of
local wisdom. Micro targeting only works with input from people on the ground, in the
communities.’

Impact on politics
Can direct marketing halt or reverse the decline of party organizations in the US? Although direct
marketing is clearly an important tool in political marketing, hitherto it has not fundamentally
reshaped the organizational contours of the US party system. Nevertheless, it may still do so. If
direct marketing was used to its full potential it could help parties create more positive and long-
lasting relationships with voters, and stimulate participation. The obstacles are high, as Whiteley
(2011: 36) notes: ‘Party activism and membership have been declining across most of the
democratic world.’ Of particular interest to Whiteley is the relationship of a political party to
the state with a close relationship helping to weaken party activism: ‘If party organizations
become denuded of volunteers, then political parties are even more likely to become wholly
dependent on the state.’
Any resurgence of party membership, activism and local organizational strength will come
about from an increase in local membership. Here direct marketing can have the same impact in
politics as it has had in business by fostering a downline of recruits sympathetic to the goals of
the larger organization who enjoy the solidary benefits of being part of a team of likeminded
individuals. However, the downline has a substantial impact on its upline supervisors and bad
mentorship or a structure that impedes the solidary benefits enjoyed by members can stymie
efforts at party renewal. Lilleker’s work on New Labour is instructive: ‘Those who Labour were
relying on for unequivocal support felt the brand was no longer for them and so rejected
the product entirely’ (Lilleker 2005: 22).
A direct marketing approach that brings new recruits into the organization and continues to
provide solidary benefits to more seasoned members and keeps both in a constant state of
motion might be able to revive dormant organizations in support of a candidate or political party.

The way forward

The fascinating research to conduct may lie in the significance of what happens in those energetic
campaign headquarters where network marketing techniques are utilized. New voters brought
into the political process by the Bush and Obama campaigns experienced a new type of politics
based upon older understandings of the importance of face-to-face encounters and networking.
That socialization into politics at the local level has the potential to reshape local party and
campaign organizations into a continuing force for renewing the US party system. Research
could also study developments such as the creation of Organizing for America, which aims to
bring volunteers into helping campaign in government, not just for an election, and other
initiatives in parties around the world to involve party members. A useful next step is to figure
out what happened to the new recruits into these organizations, to determine whether the
experience with a formal direct marketing style of campaign had the long-term effect of keeping
them politically active and responsive to party organizations and party politics.

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15
The party official as political
marketer
The Australian experience
Stephen Mills

A campaign is not a time for much original thought; it is a time for tactical manoeuvring and
carrying out plans and procedures developed in an earlier more normal climate.
Andrew Robb, Federal Director Liberal Party of Australia (Robb 1996)

The topic: the party official as political marketer

Party officials – the full-time paid professional employees of the party organisation – are often
overlooked in accounts of political marketing campaigns, in favour of the more high-profile
elected party leaders and external consultants. Yet party officials can perform distinctive functions
that the political marketing literature suggests are necessary if the party is to achieve sustained
electoral success. This chapter describes these functions and presents examples, drawn from the
Australian context, of party officials as political marketers. While party structures and campaign
practices differ in democracies around the world, it is argued that greater attention to the role of
party officials will provide a more complete understanding of the political marketing process.

Previous research
Party scholarship has long recognised that the ‘party-as-organisation’ represents a distinct element
of a tripartite structure alongside the ‘party on the ground’ and the ‘party in office’. The ‘party-
as-organisation’ or ‘party central office’ includes the national executive, secretariat and paid party
officials, and performs distinctive activities including managing and coordinating election cam-
paigns (Key 1964; Katz and Mair 1993). As party membership declined, and communications
technologies rapidly expanded and diversified, party officials transformed from bureaucratic
administrators to become ‘electoral professionals’, with skills appropriate for post-ideological
‘catch-all’ campaign strategies (Kirchheimer 1966; Panebianco 1988; Farrell 1996; Henneberg
and Eghbalian 2002; Negrine 2007; Smith 2009). Party officials manage campaign organisations
and budgets, where volunteer labor and member subscriptions have been supplemented, and in
some cases replaced, by professional staff and consultants, corporate donations and taxpayer
subsidies (Ware 1996; Young and Tham 2006; Nassmacher 2009).

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Yet party officials constitute ‘one of the most under-researched fields in the study of political
parties’ (Webb and Kolodny 2006) – not least in the political marketing literature. In Britain,
accounts of successful political marketing campaigns have tended to overlook party officials
by aggregating their role within a broader narrative that features many other party and non-
party actors: leaders, members of parliament, candidates, members, donors, supporters, activists
within the party and aligned special interest groups and, not least, specialist external consultants
(Lees-Marshment 2001; Wring 2005). Alternatively, US accounts have portrayed party officials
as relics of a campaign model long superseded by the candidate-based campaign (Newman
1994; Sabato 1981; Scammell 1997; Medvic 2006), or perhaps as ‘shadowy men of the political
backrooms’ (O’Shaughnessy 1990: 12); again, these accounts accord a prominent role to the
external consultants.
However, an important contribution to the political marketing literature about party officials
suggests that the sustained competitiveness of a political party can be analysed with the resource-
based view (RBV). For Lynch et al. (2006), the competitive resources of a party include human
resources (such as leaders, supporters and policy-developers), intellectual resources (policies) and
organisational capabilities (such as campaign competencies, the skills and knowledge with which
it crafts and communicates its messages for voters, deploys party activists at national and local
levels, and targets voters). With this explicit introduction of the party organisation into the
political marketing discussion, and its recognition of organisational skills as key competitive
resources, the RBV invites closer consideration of the role of party officials. Critically, Lynch
et al. distinguish between long- and short-term resources, asserting that short-term resources
deployed in the immediate ‘battle’ of an election campaign will be ‘more competitive if they
have been nurtured in the years preceding the formal campaign’ (Lynch et al. 2006: 86–87) – a
view well articulated by the Australian party official Andrew Robb cited at the head of this chapter.
This chapter will argue that party officials can indeed play a key role in political marketing,
and that this role extends well beyond the marketing communications functions, to include key
decisions about the party’s acquisition and deployment of long-term resources. It will do so by
reference to the most senior officials of Australia’s two major political parties – the national
secretary of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the federal director of the Liberal Party. There
has been no comprehensive or comparative study of Australian party officials, and the available
material is scattered among party histories (Hancock 2000, 2007; McMullin 1991), published
archives (Weller and Lloyd 1978; Starr 1980), organisational studies (West 1965; Parkin and
Warhurst 1983; Warhurst and Parkin 2000), accounts of the new campaign technology
deployed by party officials (Mills 1986; Young 2004) and journalist accounts of election
campaigns. Despite contributions to the political marketing literature by Australian political
marketing scholars (O’Cass 1996, 2001, 2009; Hughes and Dann 2009, 2010), there are few
Australian case studies or discussions of Australian practitioners.
Party bureaucrats themselves are notoriously ‘reticent’ (Panebianco 1988: 221) about their
role, and political marketing activities are difficult to perceive in real time (Lilleker and Negrine
2006) since parties developing rival political strategies seek to protect their plans against pre-
emption. Yet successive national secretaries and federal directors have an interest, post-
campaign, in explaining (or justifying) their strategic intentions. Certainly, national secretaries
and federal directors have delivered post-election speeches at the National Press Club since
1993, and have participated in post-election academic collaborations (Bean et al. 1997; Simms
and Warhurst 2000, 2005; Warhurst and Simms 2002; Simms 2009) and other conferences (for
example, Young 1986). They have also acted as informants to post-campaign narratives and
analyses by journalists (for example Williams 1997; Jackman 2008) and academics (Blewett
1973). These have together provided the basis for the following analysis.

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New research: three party officials as political marketers in Australian

federal elections
This analysis focuses on three Australian party officials: Mick Young, ALP federal secretary
from 1969 to 1972; Andrew Robb, federal director of the Liberal Party from 1991 to 1997; and
Tim Gartrell, ALP national secretary from 2003 to 2008. These officials were the most
senior executives in their party organisations, elected (in the case of the ALP officials)
and appointed (Liberal Party) by their national executive bodies to head the party’s secretariat.
In this capacity, each of them also held the title ‘campaign director’. Each of them managed
the opposition party’s campaign in two successive elections, losing the first (in 1969, 1993
and 2004, respectively) and winning at their second attempt (in 1972, 1996 and 2007,
respectively).
The analysis explores the activities of each official in relation to five distinctive functions that,
according to the political marketing literature (Lees-Marshment 2001, 2009; Lynch et al. 2006),
are necessary for a political party to achieve sustained electoral success. These are gathering
market intelligence, designing the product (policy and leadership), building long-term campaign
resources, deploying short-term campaign resources, and post-campaign product delivery.

Market intelligence
Gathering market intelligence has been identified as the necessary first stage of a political mar-
keting campaign model, allowing the political marketing organisation to orient itself to voter
preferences. Market-oriented parties have come increasingly to rely on market research; party
officials play the central role in providing this intelligence.
Public opinion polling had been pioneered in Australian election campaigns by the ALP in its
successful state campaign in South Australia in 1968; a key official in that campaign was Mick
Young (Blewett and Jaensch 1971: 65–66, 204–5). Now as federal secretary and full-time
campaign director, Young insisted that Labor ‘use to the full the research and media techniques’
that were available (Blewett 1973: 10, citing a planning memo written by Young nearly a year
before the 1972 election). Young later acknowledged that national surveys had been used
‘extensively’ during the campaign, and were ‘an integral part of all our decision making’ (Young
1986: 98, 106). For example, polling identified weaknesses in the image of party leader Gough
Whitlam, leading to a more effective communications style (Blewett 1973: 8) and was also used
to pre-test the advertising slogan which carried Labor’s message of change: ‘It’s Time’ (Young
1986: 106). Polling was conducted through the party’s advertising agency, the expenditure of
which Young strictly controlled (Young 1986: 98).
In these early years, polling meant quantitative (random sample survey) research, conducted
infrequently as funds permitted. Through the 1980s, both parties increased the frequency and
intensity of this kind of polling while also embarking on qualitative (focus group) research,
allowing them to segment the marketplace to track and target the attitudes of swing voters in
marginal seats (Mills 1986). The frequency and reliability of national polls published in the
media allowed both parties to focus their own survey work on marginal seats. While he was still
deputy director of the Liberal Party, Andrew Robb had identified a promising young market
researcher, Mark Textor; in 1991 he appointed him as the Liberals’ in-house pollster. Textor’s
meticulous, extensive and innovative market research, both quantitative and qualitative, made a
crucial contribution to the Liberals’ development of a market orientation in the lead-up to the
1996 campaign. Robb distilled his campaign strategy not around a product description but
around ‘a distillation of swing voter sentiment’ (Williams 1997: 100).

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Textor’s accumulation of attitudinal data allowed him to create what he termed a ‘psychograph’
of typical middle-Australian swinging voters. These fictional constructs, named ‘Phil’ and ‘Jenny’,
represented a young married couple with one child, moderate incomes, a mortgage and a car in
need of a service; ‘Phil’ and ‘Jenny’ had voted Labor in 1993 but their economic and lifestyle
concerns made them open to changing their vote this time. This construct was created more
than a year before the 1996 election campaign. Robb used it to help Liberal candidates in
marginal seats identify and communicate effectively with the voters they needed for victory. He
would ask the candidates: ‘Have you spoken to Phil and Jenny lately?’ According to the account
by journalist Pamela Williams, to whom Robb granted privileged access during the campaign,
‘Phil’ and ‘Jenny’ became ‘the subjects of endless discussion in party meetings, the template
family every Liberal candidate needed to know about [and] a code for the entire campaign’
(Williams 1997: 65). In all this, Robb’s campaign underlines the validity of Lynch et al.’s (2006: 86)
proposition that parties need to target their messages at voters of strategic significance; different
voters – loyal voters as against swing voters – will have different views on the party’s key mes-
sages. The Australian parties’ focus on swing voters is perhaps intensified given that, under Australia’s
compulsory voting system, they are saved the expense of mobilising their loyalist voting base.
By the time of the 2007 election, Tim Gartrell was conscious of the Liberals’ reputation for market
research, admitting later ‘much has been said about their crucial roles in victories, never defeats’
(Gartrell 2007). Gartrell commissioned two separate research operations. For quantitative research,
he continued to use the Australian-New Zealand firm UMR Research, whose principal, John
Utting, had been engaged in federal and state Labor campaigns for the previous decade. UMR was
commissioned to conduct quarterly telephone benchmark surveys of marginal seats; when a rapid
response was needed, UMR conducted an ‘e-panel’ of online marginal seat respondents (Jackman
2008: 110, 151). For qualitative research, Gartrell appointed, on the advice of an earlier Labor research
guru Rod Cameron, a new research group headed by Tony Mitchelmore (Jackman 2008: 35).
Mitchelmore conducted intensive rounds of focus group discussions – for example, 16 group discus-
sions in six centres around Australia in a fortnight. His techniques to probe the attitudes of swinging
voters included using ‘whimsical analogies’, such as asking ‘what kind of fathers’ party leaders John
Howard and Kim Beazley would make, or how a ‘Labor factory’ would differ from a ‘Liberal factory’.
He also asked voters to describe their hopes and fears for their children’s future, as a way of assessing
whether they thought the country was heading in the right direction (Jackman 2008: 37, 101).
Like Textor, Mitchelmore provided his client not just with reports of voter attitudes but with
strategic advice on how to take advantage of this intelligence. This included suggesting words
and phrases that Labor spokespeople could use that resonated with swing voters. Labor’s
description of their target swing voters as ‘working families’ was, like Textor’s ‘Phil’ and ‘Jenny’,
a product of market research. So was Labor’s description of Prime Minister Howard as ‘clever’
and ‘out of touch’ (Jackman 2008: 59). On one occasion, Gartrell received a leaked copy of one
of Textor’s recent research reports for the Liberals (Jackman 2008: 142). Underlining the
competitive environment of party research, Gartrell crowed in a speech to the National Press
Club after Labor’s victory that ‘our researchers finally bested the other side’ (Gartrell 2007).
In these examples party officials have identified market researchers, hired them as in-house or
external agents, commissioned research, distilled communications messages and – particularly
Robb and Gartrell – constructed campaign strategies and campaign messages from it.

Designing the product: policy

The second stage of a political marketing campaign is to use market intelligence to design the
party’s political product, including the policies it presents to voters. Lynch et al. identify as a

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critical resource the party’s ability to develop policies that satisfy and attract current and future
voters (Lynch et al. 2006: 83). Again, party officials can play a critical role in this process.
This was not an early development: in the early 1970s research was used for packaging pur-
poses, and Young did not seek to influence policies. ‘We did use slick marketing techniques,
and did package Whitlam to a certain extent’, Young conceded, ‘[b]ut we were only able to do
that because there was something to be presented to the electorate. The policies had been
hammered out over a number of years’ (Young 1986: 107).
By the mid-1990s, however, Robb was closely involved in developing the Liberals’ policy
platform. At a critical meeting of party leaders and staff in January 1996, Robb addressed the
meeting immediately after it was opened by party leader John Howard, and laid down the
electoral framework within which policy should be selected. This was a research-driven
framework. According to Williams’ account, ‘Each of the major policies, and its presentation,
had to accord with the rhetoric of one or more of four campaign themes: ‘to give certainty of
security to families, to get small business back in business, to give hope to young people and to
restore trust and honesty in government’. Robb also insisted that policies be accommodated in a
planned 33-day campaign schedule to ensure a steady stream of announcements to feed the
news cycle (Williams 1997: 160). Lynch et al. suggest that messages directed to ‘swing’ voters
should be both persuasive (i.e. attracting voters to ‘support your party’) and dissuasive
(i.e. making negative critiques of the other party). This accurately describes Robb’s approach,
which balanced positive messages around Howard with negative reminders of Prime Minister
Keating (Williams 1997: 100).
In 2007 Labor’s policies were developed by leader Kevin Rudd, his private staff and party
strategists including Gartrell, to accord with the preferences of the ‘working families’ indentified
in research. Seeking to position Rudd as ‘the future’ versus the Howard government as ‘the
past’, Labor promoted fresh ideas, fiscal conservatism and opposition to the government’s
industrial relations legislation. Announcements of ‘reviews’ of government policy generated
news during the campaign while retaining flexibility on the actual course to be followed if
elected (Jackman 2008: 48–51, 110, 154).

Designing the product: leadership

Leaders are one of the primary party resources identified by Lynch et al. (2006: 83). Market
research provides an intense focus on party leaders, measuring voters’ approval of their perfor-
mance and personalities; research on voting intentions provides a measure of a party’s success at
orienting itself to the preferences of the electorate. Market research accordingly influences party
considerations about whether incumbent leaders are succeeding in their jobs or whether they
should be replaced. Since market research is commissioned by, and presented in the first instance
to, the party officials, they are in a position to influence these discussions.
Again, this was not the case during Young’s time as federal secretary. Whitlam had been
elected leader in 1967 and took Labor to victory in 1972 despite having lost the 1969 election.
Both Robb and Gartrell, having lost their first campaigns (with John Hewson as leader in 1993,
and Mark Latham in 2004, respectively), were closely involved in transforming their party’s
platforms and leadership, with a view to ensuring their electoral acceptability in the next elec-
tion. Research commissioned by Robb and later leaked to the media from the party’s secre-
tariat, played an influential role in the dumping of Hewson by Alexander Downer. Subsequent
research showing Downer’s poor standing with voters led to his replacement by John Howard
in 1995; Robb himself communicated the findings to Downer and within the party (Williams
1997: 15–21, 55).

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Market research was likewise deeply implicated in Labor’s dumping of Latham’s replacement,
Kim Beazley: market research, highlighting Beazley’s inability to ‘cut through’ to voters, was
being used internally to destabilise him by the end of 2005. Gartrell himself briefed Beazley on
Mitchelmore’s latest research on the leader’s ‘dismal’ standing with voters (Jackman 2008: 35, 58).
Later, Gartrell tellingly stated that it had been Rudd’s replacement of Beazley in December
2006 that marked the start of the trend towards Labor. The implication is that none of the
longer-term resources that the party had been developing under Beazley were relevant – a
result that Lynch et al. would not have predicted. Beazley was an experienced parliamentarian
and former senior minister, who had led the opposition to narrow defeat in the 1998
elections and again in 2001. Rudd was untried, a career bureaucrat elected to Parliament
only in 1998, where his most senior political role had been foreign affairs spokesman. In
fact, Beazley’s accumulated experience was regarded in research as a negative, while Rudd’s
novelty became a campaign asset. Gartrell told the National Press Club: ‘our research was telling
us that people thought Kevin Rudd was different to the old Labor Party: a new style of Labor
leader with an agenda that connected with people’. Labor built its entire campaign messaging
including television commercials around introducing this new leader as ‘Kevin ’07’ (Gartrell
2007).

Building the campaign’s long-term resources

A critical element of political marketing is its time dimension. Lees-Marshment (2001) sees
political marketing as a sequence of activities across the whole electoral cycle; Lynch et al. (2006)
distinguish between long-term and short-term resources. The practical effect of this for cam-
paigners is that the whole time between elections should be given over to strategic planning and
resource development, such as acquiring the organisational skills to research, craft and commu-
nicate its message. The Australian examples indicate that party officials are the central players in
building the long-term organisational resources of their party.
Young’s approach to the 1972 campaign emphasised early planning, professional staffing,
maximum possible use of market research and media techniques, expanded fundraising, cen-
tralised decision-making and consistent execution – all this in contrast to the 1969 campaign
which was ‘virtually a last minute effort’ (Blewett 1973: 9–10, citing Young’s planning memo).
When Young was first appointed federal secretary, Labor’s secretariat had ‘no permanent staff’;
he appointed three senior communications professionals and supplemented Labor’s long-standing
advertising agency with new sources of specialist advice. Young also assembled and, as campaign
director led, a nationally coordinated campaign machine via a national campaign committee
which included state branches, parliamentary leaders and their staff and agency representatives
(Blewett 1973: 10). This was Labor’s and indeed Australia’s first national campaign structure and
it met regularly in the year leading up to the 1972 election. Meanwhile, at the level of the
‘party on the ground’, ‘some Labor stalwarts were aghast at the commercial slickness and fatuity
of the “soft-sell” campaign’ (Blewett 1973: 14).
Curiously, Lynch et al. do not mention financial capacity among the key party resources. Yet
given the high cost of new campaign techniques, and the dwindling flow of member sub-
scriptions in the ‘catch-all’ party model, access to secure funding is an essential party resource. In
1969 Labor had been ‘many thousands of dollars’ in debt from previous campaign costs (Young
1986: 96). Planning a much more expensive campaign for 1972, Young, along with Whitlam
and others, set about raising new funds from unions, businesses, individuals, state and local party
branches and – to fund the research survey in 1971 – an unnamed ‘group of wealthy Whitlam
supporters’ (Blewett 1973).

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Robb also assembled significant campaign resources for the Liberals’ Head Office: in
Williams’ (1997) account, he hired new staff, including campaign experts from the US; upgra-
ded the IT system and database on marginal seats; began ‘overhauling’ the party’s advertising
strategy and replacing its agency, George Patterson, with a bespoke team of creative and stra-
tegic professionals; and staffed a unit with special responsibility for marginal seat campaigns.
Paying for these new campaign resources represented a significant challenge for Robb and the
party organisation. The Federal Secretariat reportedly consumed an annual budget of $2.5 million,
net of one-off election campaign costs. The leadership change to Howard had apparently
helped re-ignite enthusiasm among the party’s traditional corporate donor base, and the party’s
bank overdraft was renegotiated. Australian political parties had become eligible in 1984 to
receive funding from the taxpayers commensurate to their voting support at the previous elec-
tion. These funds were paid to state branches, however, and Robb needed to negotiate funding
of campaign activities in each state.
As Robb and Young had done, Gartrell set about rebuilding Labor’s organisational cap-
abilities in the wake of the 2004 defeat, believing that Labor had been ‘badly outgunned’ both
financially and ‘in the way it developed and implemented strategy’ (Jackman 2008: 78). In
addition to hiring Mitchelmore and UMR, Gartrell appointed a new advertising strategist, Neil
Lawrence, and brought in former British Labour politician Alan Milburn as adviser and sound-
ing board. With the assistance of these advisers – Milburn providing copies of Tony Blair’s 2005
campaign strategy – Gartrell wrote a 10-point plan for campaign management, which empha-
sised message discipline, centralised decision-making and close liaison with the parliamentary
leader. The ‘Kevin ’07’ theme was launched four months out from the expected campaign,
building name recognition of the new leader and enforcing the ‘past versus future’ positioning
(Jackman 2008: 87, 159). On funding, Gartrell as national secretary was the ALP’s designated
agent to receive the $22 million in public funding paid after the 2007 election (Australian
Electoral Commission 2008; Orr 2010). Labor’s campaign was also boosted by significant
resources from the trade union movement: its ‘Your Rights at Work’ campaign, opposing the
government’s industrial relations legislation, included television advertising, rallies, workplace
meetings and 22 full-time union organisers, at a total estimated cost of $28 million (Wanna 2010).

Deploying short-term resources

The corollary of the emphasis on long-term resourcing is that short-term resources are a less
significant ‘function of’ the long term (Lynch et al. 2006: 85–86). This insight is borne out in
practice by the examples of the three Australian party officials, for whom the election campaign – in
Australia, typically of five or six weeks’ duration between the issue of writs and polling day – was
largely concerned, as Robb suggested, with ‘tactical manoeuvring and carrying out plans and
procedures developed … earlier’.
Labor used two electoral cycles to progressively develop its leadership and policy resources
before the 1969 and 1972 elections. It built organisational resources, repaid its debt, built a
professional team and developed campaign capabilities in the three years – especially, the final
12 months – before the 1972 election. Some 12 months before the election, Young ran a
‘mini-campaign’ that refined campaign themes and logistics. Four months out, the ‘It’s Time’
theme had been selected and pre-tested, and most of the television commercials – involving a
group of celebrities singing the ‘It’s Time’ anthem – had been shot ready for broadcast (Young
1986: 107). Whitlam’s policy speech, delivered at the outset of the campaign proper, was
described by his speechwriter as ‘simply a summary of the work of the previous six years’
(Freudenberg 1977: 226).

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However, in contrast to Labor’s development over two electoral cycles under Whitlam, the
Liberals in the 1990s and Labor in the following decade had much less time in which to
develop their competitive resources, thanks to leadership instability and policy uncertainty.
Robb and Gartrell built organisational capability in less than a single three-year electoral term.
Once new leadership (Howard and Rudd, respectively) was in place, policy development proceeded,
as we have seen, over a short, intense time frame in 1995–96 and 2006–07, respectively. Once
the campaign ‘battle’ itself was underway, however, both Robb and Gartrell were able to deploy
short-term resources effectively, in particular with intense marketing communications activity.
Robb rolled out the ‘50 or 60’ policy announcements that had been agreed at the policy
meeting in January (Williams 1997: 99). He created an operational headquarters in three floors
of rented office accommodation in Melbourne. He enhanced staff resources with further short-
term hires. He embarked on an intense program of television advertising designed to bring
previous messaging to a sharp anti-government pitch. He intensified market research inclu-
ding marginal electorate surveys, and used it to rebalance campaign resources such as staff,
advertising and direct mail. He prepared carefully for campaign set-pieces such as the policy
launch and the leaders’ debate.
Gartrell set up campaign headquarters in Sydney in readiness for the campaign and he, too,
implemented a previously planned campaign schedule and advertising program. His campaign
activities included authorising campaign advertising, arranging preference deals with minor
parties and buying advertising. ‘We went into those six weeks knowing every single day had to
be a good day. No room for error. A gaffe-free zone’, he recalled later (Gartrell 2007). Gartrell
specialised in exploiting new opportunities for message dissemination during the last three days
of the campaign when television advertising is forbidden, including skywriting, SMS texting,
distributing DVDs and securing deals to run Labor advertisements on the homepages of popular
websites and on the TVs for sale in the RetraVision retail chain (Jackman 2008: 193).

Delivery
Just as political marketing activity begins well before the campaign proper, so it extends long after
voting day. Unsuccessful parties must return to the intelligence gathering and product design
phases, to refine their offering for the next campaign; successful parties must set about delivering
on their promises in government (Lees-Marshment 2001). While it remains unclear just how voters
balance past performance with the promise of future gains, political marketing suggests that
parties should work after every election to build a sustained relationship with voters over several
election cycles, rather than relying for success on a one-shot transactional exchange at a single election.
Having identified political marketing functions performed by these Australian party officials
before the elections, it is notable that less than a year after their respective electoral victories,
all three of them had resigned. Young and Robb went on to significant parliamentary and
ministerial careers; Gartrell remains a prominent social campaigner. None of them remained to
assist their newly elected government with the delivery phase of the political marketing
sequence. To the extent that the Whitlam, Howard and Rudd governments did deliver
on their promises – and the record is somewhat patchy – this did not occur because of any
contribution by the party officials who had been involved in winning the election.

Advice for practitioners

Party structures and campaign practices differ in democracies around the world. The campaign
management role that in Australia is performed by party officials is typically performed in

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US presidential campaigns by personal appointees of the candidate (Plouffe 2009: 24; Institute of
Politics 2009) or in British campaigns by a Member of Parliament who is a trusted adviser of the
leader (Blair 2010: 3; FT Reporters 2010). In Australia, party officials appear to have stronger
institutional autonomy than in Britain: chosen by the party organisation, they are better able to
survive differences with the parliamentary leader (for example compare Young 1986: 94–96, and
Williams 1997: 57, 275, with Blair 2010: 82).
Yet professionalisation of campaigning has been a global phenomenon, driven by media and
marketing revolutions that have transformed campaign management in Australia no less than in
the US, Britain and elsewhere (Farrell 1996; Plasser and Plasser 2002). The three cases reported
here suggest that party officials can be highly effective political marketers. As party executives
and designated ‘campaign directors’, they exercised significant organisational power: they set
electoral strategy, engaged market researchers and advertisers, marshalled financial resources
including public funding, managed campaign headquarters, recruited staff and volunteers, and
coordinated the campaign activities of the party ‘in office’ and the party ‘on the ground’. Their
campaign leadership bestowed personal influence on party resourcing across the board, including in
policy development and the selection of parliamentary leadership.
Against this, it must be emphasised that they succeeded only as opposition campaigners.
Successful opposition campaigns are rare, certainly in Australian politics where there have only
been four changes of government at the ballot box in the 16 elections since 1972. Their per-
formance over several years in opposition says nothing about their capacity to meet the political
marketing challenge of government since, as we have seen, none of them attempted to do so.
The important point is that campaign managers of all varieties need to be aware of core
political marketing concepts and develop expertise in applying them in campaigns. In the
absence of formal training programs this can best be acquired through practical ‘on the job’
experience, as indeed was the case with these three examples. Parties seeking to ensure a future
supply of campaign expertise should implement career development programs to rotate their
officials through a variety of campaign roles and challenges (Mills 2010). This can include sub-
ordinate roles in the party organisation, exposure to specific campaign functions, electoral con-
tests at state or local levels, or as volunteers or observers with affiliated parties in foreign
countries.

Impact on politics
The impact of political marketing by party officials can be seen most obviously within the party
itself. Contrary to the propositions advanced by Lynch et al. (2006: 85), party members and local
activists do not represent an essential campaign resource. To be sure, there will always be some
role for local volunteers, particularly in marginal seats, in doorknocking during the campaign and
mobilising voters on election day. Yet a research-driven, capital intensive, nationally centralised
style of political marketing places less reliance on bottom-up political expression and activism.
Indeed, the centrist strategies arising from research-based marketing communications may serve
to reduce levels of engagement and participation by members and activists driven by values or
ideology. Thus while membership of Western political parties has been in decline, head offices
have grown in size, resources, influence and specialisation.
In particular, the strategic significance of market research bestows organisational stature on
whoever in the party controls that research. This can operate at the expense of the members
(Smith 2009) and also of elected politicians, whose relative effectiveness and standing is mea-
sured by research in stark terms. It may be that in an environment of what has been termed a
‘permanent’ election campaign (Blumenthal 1980), activities across the entire party – by branch

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members as well as elected legislators – will be increasingly subjected to the centralising and
coordinating role of Head Office. Party officials appear to have been granted – or, perhaps, they
have seized – the mandate to make the pursuit of electoral success the overriding mission of the
whole party organisation.
This implies a broader impact at the level of the electoral contest. Party officials are effective
political marketers regardless of their partisan affiliation or personal political leanings. Of course,
party officials may well share the broad values of their party and be personally committed to its
success, but their effectiveness as campaign director depends on their professional skills, and they
are employed for instrumental rather than ideological purposes: they seek electoral victory.
They find political marketing strategies well suited to the task, and these are largely value-free
and available to both sides of politics. Indeed, the RBV suggests that parties willing to make the
necessary long-term investments in organisational capabilities such as campaigning skills can
be expected to achieve more sustained electoral success than those that do not. The electoral
contest, then, has shifted decisively beyond the traditional normative drivers of democratic
choice – policy and leadership – to turn in part on a contest for campaigning skills, professional
staffing and money.
Again, the limits of this transformation need to be noted. The evidence presented here sug-
gests that different stages of the political marketing sequence are the responsibility of different
parts of the party. While this requires further research, it seems that party officials – the ‘party as
organisation’ – have clear responsibility for gathering market intelligence, building organisa-
tional resources and deploying them in the campaign contest. The product design phase is a
more collective exercise involving the organisational and legislative components of the party,
while delivery appears to be the exclusive preserve of the party ‘in office’. Party members ‘on
the ground’ have little role at any stage. Regardless of the attractions of market orientation as an
opposition campaign strategy, a gulf may exist between the tasks of winning elections and of
governing.

The way forward

The identification of party officials as central to political marketing opens up a challenging agenda
of research questions with significant implications for practitioners. Political marketing research
needs to include analysis of party officials when considering how campaign strategy and com-
munication is developed. Further studies of party organisations and party officials are needed,
including comparative studies across parties and, in particular, comparing parties in government
and opposition. Establishing the framework of accountabilities within parties, including the
organisational ownership of market research, appears central to understanding the broader process of
political marketing. Further research is needed on the process of long-term resource development,
expanded to include considerations of financial resources and brand.
Such research could throw light on a critical unresolved political marketing issue. Organisa-
tions seeking success in the electoral marketplace must be market oriented, that is, focused on
understanding and satisfying the preference of consumers. This is a threshold requirement in the
literature, yet its practical implications remain unclear. On the one hand, consumer-voter satis-
faction is understood as essential but ultimately subordinate to the goal of the organisation itself
(profitability, electoral success); relationship-building and product delivery are vehicles to further
organisational success. On the other hand, consumer satisfaction is presented as a desirable end
in itself, as it fundamentally considers ‘society’s well-being’ (Henneberg and Eghbalian 2002: 81) or
‘creates value for voter-citizens’ (O’Cass 2009). Where do party officials fall in this debate? The
evidence here would place them in the former camp, valuing voter preferences not for altruistic

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Stephen Mills

or normative purposes but for the instrumental purpose of defeating the competition and win-
ning the electoral contest. Moreover, party officials appear to care less for relationship building
or policy delivery, seeking instead to generate only just enough voter satisfaction to secure an
electoral majority. Further research with practitioner reflection could establish the validity of
these observations and consider their implications for political success and democratic health.

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Communicating and connecting

with the public
Part IV
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16
Campaigning in the 21st century
Change and continuity in American
political marketing

Dennis W. Johnson

The topic: campaigning in the 21st century

Political marketing strategies and techniques have transformed campaigns and elections in the US
during the first decade of the 21st century. What was creative and new in 2000 was surpassed in
2004; what was exciting and unique in 2008 was improved upon in 2010. Because of the
immense changes brought about by technology and online communication over the past decade,
a new model of professional political campaigning has been emerging: one that is far less top-
down and controlled by political consultants and has greater engagement of ordinary citizens.
This chapter describes and evaluates the enormous changes that have occurred in American
political marketing, especially with the advent of online communication, and presents a model for
21st-century campaigning, looks at what works and what does not, and suggests areas for future
inquiry and scholarly research.

Previous research
For most of American history, political parties have been dominant forces in campaigns and
elections. They recruited candidates, made campaign funds available, assessed public opinion and
mobilized voters (Herrnson 2005: 19–36). By the mid-1960s, however, party-centered cam-
paigns had given way to candidate-centered campaigns, with individual candidates hiring their
own teams of experts, political consultants and operatives (Menefee-Libey 2000; Herrnson and
Campbell 2008). Scholars began noting the growing importance of a new fixture in election
campaigning: the political consultant (Sabato 1981; Medvic 2001; Burton and Shea 2003; Dulio
2004; Johnson 2007). By the late 1960s and early 1970s, political consultants routinely worked
for individual candidates and in the last two decades of the 20th century, they became permanent
fixtures in US elections.
An example of a well-funded US Senate campaign held during the 1990s would illustrate the
extent to which candidates relied on professional assistance. The senatorial candidate would hire
a full range of consultants and operatives: a campaign manager, a media team, private polling
firm, researchers, fundraisers, voter identification and targeting specialists, get out the vote,
direct mail and telephone operatives. In order to pay for the consultants, the polling, phone

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Dennis W. Johnson

banks, television advertising, direct mail, staff and office, and countless other expenditures, the
campaign would probably need to raise $5 million, depending on the size and number of media
markets (Johnson 2007).
This senate campaign and thousands like it would have been conducted using the 20th-century
model of campaigning.

The 20th-century model of campaigning in the US

During the last 35 or 40 years of the 20th century, candidates for major political office in the US
retained the services of political consultants. Those campaigns shared several common features.
First, political consultants were in command-and-control mode. They would be the domi-
nant voice in defining the contest, creating strategy and in maintaining message discipline.
Candidates, of course, would have the last word and were ultimately responsible for the
conduct and tone of the campaign, but often the decisions were driven by the experience and
knowledge of the senior consultants.
Second, the consultants and strategists would employ a top-down method of communicating.
They would gather information from likely voters, guided by survey research results, through
polls, focus groups and dial meter sessions, but would not involve individual voters or activists
in the critical decisions of the campaign, such as what the candidate says, the shape and content
of the candidate’s television commercials, where the candidate goes and what issues should be
emphasized.
Third, campaigns relied on television as the chief medium of communication. For many
secondary races in major media markets which could not afford television, direct mail became
the communication weapon of choice. Campaigns also relied on radio advertising, billboards,
phone banks and newsprint to get their message across to voters (West 2010).
Fourth, campaigns had time to craft messages, days and even weeks to put together television
advertising, time to absorb an opponent’s attack and then respond in kind. However, with the
advent of all-news television and radio channels and 24/7 news cycles, campaign messaging and
communications were compelled to go on all-day and all-night alert. Polling results became
more easily available and their results were aided by advances in software technology.
Fifth, much of the campaign was based on guesswork, instinct and past experience. Campaigns
relied on past voting data and census figures, but did not factor in other elements such as lifestyle
choices, intensity of support for issues or candidates, and other matters.
Sixth, fundraising was conducted primarily through big ticket events, where a small number
of contributors would ‘max out’ – give the largest amount of money permitted by law. Direct
mail was the vehicle of choice for reaching those contributors who gave less money, but it was
very expensive to cast about for potential donors. Small-dollar donations, $25 or so, were also
received, but it was difficult and expensive to rely on such small givers. Except for special
events, it was very hard to raise large amounts of money in short periods of time.
Seventh, except in presidential and other high-profile campaigns, voters were basically spec-
tators. They would be asked primarily to do one thing, show up on election day and cast their
ballot. Few voters contributed money, volunteered on campaigns or interacted with the campaign
in any way.

New research
Scholars from the disciplines of political science, political communications and political marketing
increasingly are turning their attention to modern campaigning and professional campaign

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Campaigning in the 21st century

management. They have seen over the past decade a number of critical, even transformative,
changes in the way US campaigns are conducted. The changes have come in fundraising, survey
research, television advertising, targeting and mobilizing voters, and the nationalization of
campaigns (Semiatin 2005; Semiatin 2008; Johnson 2010). Most profoundly, however,
the changes have come from the explosion of online communication, which will be the focus of
this chapter.

The new media

Just as online communication has fundamentally changed the way we interact with one another,
so, too, have political campaigns made enormous changes in the way they communicate with
people, the way people communicate with campaigns, and the way citizens, activists and voters
communicate with one another about elections and campaigns. What has changed during the
past decade?

Getting information about elections

Just like much of the industrialized world, the US has become a much more wired nation. At the
end of 2009 a total of 74 percent of American adults stated that they used the internet, 60 percent
used broadband and 55 percent connected to the internet wirelessly (Rainie 2010). While online
communications have become more accepted by younger, better-educated citizens, still the
majority of Americans rely on the local television news (40 percent), cable news networks
(38 percent) and the nightly network television news (32 percent) to ‘regularly learn something’
about presidential politics. The internet was relied on by 24 percent of those surveyed (Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press 2008).

Campaign websites
As new online technologies have emerged, they have been incorporated into political campaigns,
sometimes quickly and, at other times, hesitantly and cautiously. By the 2000 US presidential
campaign and the 2002 midterm elections, campaign websites and online communications had
become common features (Johnson 2006). Some online activists and observers were talking about
the profound changes that online communications would bring, changing forever the way
campaigns are run. In their assessment of the place of the internet in future elections, political
scientists Bruce Bimber and Richard Davis took a sober look, and concluded that internet
campaigning helped to reinforce political attachments, helped mobilize activists to contribute
funds and to volunteer their time, and ‘just maybe – to vote’. They recognized that the internet
was a niche communication tool, directed at highly specific audiences, which would become
highly effective to mobilize those who are politically active and interested, but they predicted that
the internet would ‘not produce the mobilization of voters long predicted’ (Bimber and Davis
2003: 165).
Political scientists Stephen Schneider and Kristen Foot examined the growth of US pre-
sidential campaign internet site features from 2000 to 2004. They found that websites grouped
features in four common areas: informing (with features presenting issues, campaign news, bio-
graphy speeches, photos and campaign advertisements); involving (online donations, volunteer,
sign up for email, campaign calendar events and campaign store); connecting (endorsements,
links to government, civic and advocacy groups, political parties, and comparisons with other
candidates); and mobilizing (sending links from the site, e-paraphernalia, offline distribution of

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Dennis W. Johnson

campaign materials, letters to the editor, action management sites or sections) (Schneider and
Foot 2006; also Foot and Schneider 2006). The authors found a slight increase from 2000 to
2004 in informing, a sharp increase in the practice of involving, a slight increase in the pro-
portion of campaigns engaged in connecting, and mobilization was just beginning to emerge in
2004.
The innovations in online communication first came in the 2003–04 Democratic presidential
primary season from the Howard Dean campaign. Dean connected with the social networking
site MeetUp.com, created the first presidential candidate blog site, its own social network
(Deanlink), a personalized page for fundraising (Deanspace) and a virtual community for young
people (Generation Dean). Several on the Dean online technology team created Blue State
Digital, an online technology firm, and later worked directly on the Obama 2008 presidential
campaign or as consultants to it. The Dean campaign led scholars to examine the impact of
online technology in the pre-Obama era (Williams and Tedesco 2006).

YouTube and web videos

With the creation of the video website YouTube in 2005, it was not long before campaigns
began using this convenient platform for free media. YouTube hit its stride in the 2008 pre-
sidential campaign. Barack Obama made the most use of this vehicle, posting 1,839 videos with
an astounding 132.8 million viewers; by contrast, John McCain posted 329 videos with 26.3
million viewers. YouTube became a platform for candidates to bypass the established media and
go directly to viewers online (Frantzich 2009). Many of those viewers, of course, were too young
to vote or were not registered, were not American citizens, or were repeat viewers. YouTube
also joined up with CNN to produce two presidential debates, where questions posted online by
viewers were used, rather than those posed by a panel from the mainstream media.

Email, cell phones and Twitter

One of the older technologies is still one of the most important: electronic mail. Online expert
Michael Cornfield observed in 2004 that email would outperform a website ‘ninety-nine days
out of a hundred’. Email is sent to a defined address, it is read, it is easier to respond to, and it is
harder for the press and the political opposition to monitor than a campaign website (Cornfield
2004: 27). Over the years, campaigns have become more interactive: posting pictures, videos,
links to other information and, not surprisingly, including ‘Donate Now’ buttons.
One of the innovations of the 2000 presidential election came from the Al Gore campaign.
Through emails to supporters and followers, it encouraged them to text message or email their

Table 16.1 First use of selected online communication tools in US political campaigns

Campaign websites 1992

Email 1992
Political advertising on the web 1998
Text messaging 2000
Blogging 2003
Social networking 2004
Online videos (YouTube) 2006
Microblogging (Twitter) 2008

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Campaigning in the 21st century

own friends, to get them interested in Gore’s campaign. By 2008, and particularly in the
Obama campaign, text messaging and friend-to-friend contacts were used on a massive scale.
Not until the mid-2000s did US campaigns begin to understand the potential of cell phones
as communication devices. Mobile phone communication had caught on in other parts of the
world, helping to bring down the government of Joseph Estrada in the Philippines in 2001 and
mobilizing democracy protestors during the Ukrainian ‘Orange Revolution’ in 2004 (Institute
for Politics, Democracy and the Internet 2005). With the creation of the smartphone, particu-
larly the RIM BlackBerry, the Apple iPhone, the Nokia N900 and phones running Google’s
Android operating systems, campaigns have been able to develop smartphone applications to
help mobilize volunteers, and facilitate fundraising and other campaign functions.
The microblog Twitter was created in early 2006 and soon went public. Several 2008 pre-
sidential candidates, starting with John Edwards, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, used Twitter to
communicate with followers. Since then, candidates have been routinely adding Twitter to
their repertoire of online communication devices.

Political and campaign blogs

Political blogs have fundamentally changed the way citizens interact with candidates and others.
Blogs, first used in presidential campaigns by Howard Dean in 2003, were then used extensively
by John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 general election (Trammell 2006). Since that
time, presidential and many other national and state candidates have used blogs to communicate
with followers.

Social networking
Social networking as a political communication tool first appeared during the 2004 Democratic
primaries, when Howard Dean’s campaign used MeetUp.com; then other campaigns both at
presidential and congressional levels in 2006 began to use social networking. Presidential can-
didate John Edwards signed up on more social networks than any other candidate in 2008: at least
23 sites. However, it was Barack Obama’s campaign that had a huge presence on social network
sites. There were over 2.2 million supporters on the various Obama Facebook sites, 800,000 on
MySpace and a substantial following on LinkedIn and other social networking sites. More than
2 million people logged on to MyBO (My.BarackObama.com) and through it were able to
contribute funds, raise funds, develop communities and reach out to like-minded groups.
Through MyBO, there were 400,000 blog postings, 35,000 volunteers were recruited
and 200,000 off-line events were held. Obama had ‘friended’ more than 7 million supporters
(Vargas 2008a).

Online advertising
Political advertising on internet sites began in 1998 and has grown slowly since. During the 2004
presidential campaign, the candidates, parties and major interest groups spent roughly $2.6
million on online banner advertisements. Yet this figure was less than 1 percent of that spent on
television buys in the 100 largest media markets during the same time. By the end of the 2008
presidential election, the Obama campaign had spent some $16 million on online media – a tiny
fraction of the complete media buys (Kaye 2009).
A relatively new marketing theory, Long-Tail Marketing, argues that businesses and political
candidates can communicate better with those they are trying to reach by going to small, niche

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markets rather than relying on broadcasting to larger audiences (Anderson 2006). The 2008 US
Senate campaign of Minnesota Democrat Al Franken used long-tail nanotargeting to reach
voters. It targeted more than 125 niche groups with more than 1,000 pieces of persuasive online
advertising, for less than $100,000. For example, when a Minnesota farmer used the search
engine Google, the Franken campaign had bought keywords and phrases, hundreds of them,
like ‘farm supply’, ‘feed stores’, or ‘large animal veterinarian’. When the farmer entered those
words in his search, up would pop a Franken for Senate advertisement geared toward agricultural
interests (Koster 2009).

Impact of online communication

Increase in online news consumers

We might mark the 1996 presidential election as the beginning of online political campaigning in
the US. During one of the presidential debates, Republican candidate Robert Dole announced
his website address to a nationwide audience. His presidential website was rudimentary and he
botched the address; nevertheless, over a million people responded the next day. Looking back
on 1996, it seems almost light years away when thinking about online communication.
First came email and websites, then blogs, social networking, web videos, smartphone
applications and the rest. The best of presidential, congressional and statewide campaigns began
adopting all of these communications tools; so, too, did advocacy groups, the old media and
others. By the mid-2000s, the attentive public had an incredible, bewildering array of infor-
mation available about presidential campaigns. During the 2004 campaign, for example, the
Pew Research Center estimated that there were 63 million ‘online news consumers’ in the
US (Rainie et al. 2005). That number rapidly expanded during the 2008 campaign, as indicated in
Table 16.2.

Instant, unfiltered communication

Online communication meant instant communication and campaigns, especially in the crucial
final weeks, can run at warp speed. A campaign can be attacked at all times of the day or night,

Table 16.2 Online metrics for the 2008 presidential campaign

Obama McCain

Facebook friends on election day 2,397,253 622,860

Unique visits to campaign websites in week 4,851,069 1,464,544
ending 1 November
Online videos mentioning candidate 104,454 64,092
Campaign-made videos posted on YouTube 1,822 330
Total hours people spent watching campaign 14,600,000 488,000
videos (as of 23 October)
Cost of equivalent purchase of 30-second $46.9 million $1.5 million
advertisements
References to campaign’s voters contact 479,000 325
operation on Google

Note: These figures should be observed with caution, since there is no way to know the number of repeat viewers, those
who live outside of the US, and those not eligible to vote.

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and in the pinball-like atmosphere of a heated contest, particularly in its final days, bad news can
come with the speed of digital communication. It could be a blog posting, an email charge gone
viral, a nasty video posted on YouTube, or any one of a variety of online sources. This also means
that rumor and innuendo, unchecked and unverified, can abound. Rumors during the 2008
presidential contest were bountiful. Whisper and rumor campaigns have always been part of
political campaigns, but the online nature took them to a different, more sinister level. Psy-
chology professor Nicholas DiFonzo, who had been studying political rumor-mongering for 20
years, observed that he had never seen so many rumors as seen in 2008 (DiFonzo 2008). Many of
the falsehoods and ugly rumors were directed against Obama, in particular.
Is the internet the culprit? It is certainly the vehicle. Cass R. Sunstein argues that people
increasingly are getting their information not from the major news channels, like network tel-
evision, but from online sources. They subscribe to email listservs or RSS feeds for their favorite
sites. Liberal blogs tend to link to other liberal blog sites, and conservative blogs, to an even
greater extent, link to other conservative blogs (Adamic and Glance 2005). Sunstein argues that
the internet ‘serves, for many, as a breeding group for extremism, precisely because like-minded
people are deliberating with greater ease and frequency with one another’. He calls this process
‘cyberpolarization’ (Sunstein 2009; Kolbert 2009).

The ever-present camera and the viral response

Today, no candidate is safe from the prying eye of the television lens, the video recorder, or the
cell phone camera. A gaffe, an errant word or gesture, can be immediately captured by a
campaign volunteer or by anyone holding a cell phone. During the early 2008 presidential
primaries, Hillary Clinton was caught singing the national anthem horribly off-key at a campaign
stop; John Edwards was caught primping for two full minutes in a television station’s green room,
meticulously combing his hair before an on-camera appearance. Journalists Chris Cillizza and
Dan Balz mark the 2006 mid-term election as one that changed the rules of the game. This was
the year of the ‘rogue videographers’ (Cillizza and Balz 2007). Probably the most damaging was
an errant comment made by Senator George Allen of Virginia, running for re-election. His slur
of an Indian-American campaign worker reached YouTube, went viral, and was probably a
central factor in his close loss. The Allen defeat meant the end of his possible presidential bid, but
also a key loss for Republicans in the US Senate, leading to a turnover in party control.

The open-source campaign

Taking its name from open-source software, the term ‘open-source campaigning’ or ‘open-
source politics’ emphasizes citizen involvement and direct online participation in elections and
campaigns (Sifry 2004). Veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart summed up the impact of
technology on the 2008 presidential campaign: ‘This is a big transformation in how campaigns
operate, and it boils down to the power of one, the feeling that one individual can make a
difference’ (Vargas 2008b). Successful, professionally driven campaigns have always been driven
from the top down, but now with the enormous opportunities and challenges of online
communication, a new model is appearing, with citizen input encouraged and fostered.
This is probably the most important aspect for new media and online communication in
election politics: in the best of campaigns (and with the best of candidates) activists and even
casual voters can feel a sense of sharing and participation. Through online communication, they
share their ideas with candidates, are encouraged to volunteer, meet and talk with others, share
their experiences and take some measure of ownership in the campaign.

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Dennis W. Johnson

Advice for practitioners

The 2008 presidential campaign offered us the most technologically savvy presidential candidate
in history, Barack Obama. Armed with his two BlackBerrys, Obama first had to do battle against
Hillary Clinton, who announced her candidacy over the internet but then ran a much more
traditional 20th-century campaign, and in the general election against John McCain, who didn’t
even use email and whose campaign, while it used some of the bells and whistles of online
communication, didn’t have the same remarkable effects as Obama’s. The Obama campaign set
the standard for the use of online technology, the integration of offline and online elements, and
the innovative usage of social media, cell phones, the internet and television.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe stated that ‘technology was core to our campaign
from Day One and it only grew in importance’ (Plouffe 2009: 237). The campaign invested
heavily in staff and equipment. Digital campaign veterans from the Howard Dean campaign,
like Joe Rospars and Jascha Franklin-Hodge, both of whom then worked for Blue State Digital,
Chris Hughes, who along with Mark Zuckerberg had co-founded Facebook, and a number of
executives from technology companies teamed up to form the backbone of the online cam-
paign team. Nearly 90 staffers were hired, and millions were spent on servers, email systems,
web development and text messaging. A single database, with terabytes of information, was created,
integrating all aspects of fundraising, social networking and activism from MyBO – something
never done before in presidential campaigns (Graff 2009).
Aided by online communication, Obama supporters held more than 100,000 events
throughout the country; more than 10,000 people applied to become one of the 3,000 Obama
‘organizing fellows’ who would go out in their communities to register voters; more than 3
million phone calls were made by Obama supporters during the last four days of the campaign
alone (Graff 2009).
The Obama campaign oversaw more than 100 different websites, had 57 different profiles on
MySpace, created nearly 2,000 YouTube videos, including the most successful YouTube entry,
Obama’s 37-minute speech on race relations during the 2008 primary season, which was watched
by more people online than seen on television.
What the Obama team had done could have been done by any of the 20 major party can-
didates for president that year. There was nothing radically new about the technology; there
was no secret formula. The key was the integration of online campaigning into the overall
campaign: in fundraising, field organizing and communications (Cornfield 2010; Germany
2009). Garrett M. Graff, a veteran of the Dean presidential bid, observed that ‘the game-changer in
the Obama campaign … was that technology and the Internet was not an add-on for them. It
was a carefully considered element of almost every critical campaign function’ (Graff 2009: 38).

Impact on politics

The 21st-century campaign model

Compared with the presidential campaign of 2008 and the congressional elections of 2010, the
US campaigns of a decade earlier on the surface may seem antiquated. With the maturing of online
communication techniques, it seems like a whole new ball game for candidates, political con-
sultants, political activists and voters. The reality, however, is more complicated. A new campaign
model is emerging, but in many ways it still fits into the contours of the 20th-century model.
First, political consultants will still dominate in defining the campaign, setting its objectives,
laying out the strategy for victory. Consultants will be in much greater demand because of their

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Campaigning in the 21st century

ability to cut through the clutter of both new and old media communication. With many more
voices involved, there is the need for a clear, determined voice to define the race and state the
case for the candidate. Campaigns will forever need to focus on fundraising, developing and
communicating their message, mobilizing voters and getting them to vote. Campaigns in the
21st century will rely heavily on campaign managers, general consultants, pollsters, media teams,
direct mail and other specialists. What will change, however, is the acceptance and the inte-
gration of online media into the core of the campaign. As the online component began to
mature, campaigns realized the importance of having a webmaster, a blog specialist, a director of
social media, an online advertising group, an online staff with equal strategic importance as any
other component of the campaign. Ultimately, in the best-run campaigns, the online component
will be a seamless, integral part of all campaign functions.
Second, the top-down, command-and-control model will give way to a more fluid model,
which encourages citizen input and involvement. However, this can be tricky. On the one
hand, it sounds like a clearly desired goal to have more people involved with the campaign,
with more ideas flowing, with greater participation. On the other hand, it can be chaotic: fol-
lowing the whims and wishes of the moment instead of concentrating on a consistent, long-
term strategy; listening to the loudest voices rather than the voices of those voters who could
carry the candidate to victory; having a thousand messages and no clear message at all; and, like
online media-savvy 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean, being overtaken by the demands
of supporters and losing control of the campaign.
Third, television will continue to be an important medium for campaign advertising, but,
perhaps in the most fundamental transformation, online communications have created whole
new ways of reaching voters. Free media, once confined to television, radio or newspaper
coverage, now finds an unlimited home on YouTube and other web video sites. Likely voters
are now reached through internet advertising, RSS feeds, podcasts, interactive websites, social
media platforms, blogs, microblogs (like Twitter), text messages and that old standby, email.
Fourth, campaigns have speeded up dramatically. The campaign must expect to be engaged
24 hours a day. Polling results, field information, targeting and early voting data can all be
received, analyzed and put into action in hours rather than in days or weeks. The campaign
now sleeps only when the election is over.
Fifth, guesswork, instinct and experience are still key, but they are supplemented by research,
metrics, and advances in market research and data collection. It now becomes easier for a
campaign to know if a series of advertisements is working through focus group and dial meter
research, by the click-through rates of online advertising, by the analysis of microtargeting
information, and other techniques.
Sixth, campaigns still rely on big-dollar givers, but now can also have inexpensive access to
small-dollar donors, thanks to online contributing solicited through email, texting, websites and
online advertising. The universe of money givers can expand many-fold, using techniques often
seen in public radio or other nonprofit fundraising schemes.
Seventh, thanks to online communication, voters can have a greater sense of participation in a
campaign. They can be mobilized, they can mobilize themselves, meet with like-minded activists,
and more easily contribute time, money and energy to a campaign. Of all the aspects of the
21st-century campaign model, this is the most promising for bringing about greater participation.
The 21st-century model recognizes the continuing need for consultants and campaign spe-
cialists, but it also recognizes that campaigns stuck in the old traditions and practices of the
1980s and 1990s are destined to be left behind and ultimately will become non-competitive.
Likewise, those campaigns that fail to appreciate and use the craft and techniques of the 20th-century
model are destined to become non-competitive.

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Dennis W. Johnson

Table 16.3 20th-century and 21st-century campaign models compared

20th-century model 21st-century model

Consultants dominate in creating strategy, in Consultants dominate; online component

maintaining message discipline, in becomes integral part of campaign
communicating with the public, and getting
voters out to vote on election day
Top-down approach More fluid, with ideas, direction and support
from grassroots
Television as most important communication Television is important, but explosion of new
medium media, free media online
Relatively more time to craft messages, Campaign speeds up, running 24/7
responses and analysis
Much of campaign based on guesswork, Heavier reliance on research, data and metrics
instinct and past experience to guide the campaign
Fundraising through big-ticket items; expensive Big-ticket fundraising important; small-amount
direct mail solicitations; few small-amount donors opening up through inexpensive online
donors technology
Except for presidential contests, limited Greater involvement of citizens, activists; sense
involvement of citizens beyond voting that campaign is directly connected to them

The way forward

The 21st-century campaign offers many research opportunities for political management and
political marketing scholars. With a new model of campaigning emerging and dynamic new ways
to reach people, there are many challenges and opportunities for scholars and practitioners to
examine and explore. Here are a few questions concerning new media communications and
other aspects of 21st-century campaigning in the US:

The shape and direction of professional campaigning

How have the various segments – campaign generalists, pollsters, media, fundraisers, targeting
specialists – of the political consulting industry adjusted to the new reality of technology and
online communication? Is there a disconnect between the manner in which voters want to be
informed and contacted and the way political consultants inform and contact them?

Just what works?

Green and Gerber (2008) have examined the impact of get out the vote techniques and found
most of them wanting. What about other areas of communication, persuasion and identifying
voters – are the current practices of political consultants effective and efficient uses of scarce time
and money? What new technologies and online communication tools hold out the most promise
for connecting with voters?

Integration of old and new media in campaigns

How will online media be integrated into other forms of communication? Is the technological
revolution in campaigning at a plateau, or will there be new advances in communication and in
identifying and contacting voters? Will there be a grand convergence of media platforms?

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Campaigning in the 21st century

New media advertising

If we are in the ‘prehistoric age’ (Cornfield and Kaye 2009) of online advertising, what are the
possibilities and opportunities for such advertising? What is the impact of such advertising? With
the ability to measure click-throughs, do such metrics give researchers a clearer insight into the
impact and effectiveness of online advertising?

Television
Is the 30-second spot a relic of 20th-century advertising? With more people watching more
television (and more television channels), how can consultants strategically target their paid
television advertising? How will television advertising be transformed in the next decade?

Polling, cell phones and reaching people

How can the inherent problems of cell phone-survey research be resolved? Can automated polls
(robocalls) and brushfire polls yield results that are statistically reliable and valid as survey
instruments? Will private political pollsters find online polling an inexpensive and reliable
alternative to telephone-based polling? Is random digit dialing (RDD) too expensive a method
for reaching voters; should it be replaced with voter lists?

The opportunities and limitations of microtargeting

Microtargeting in political campaigns came of age during the first decade of this century. Is there
a more cost-effective way of conducting microtargeting analysis? With more and more demo-
graphic, lifestyle and psychographic information loaded into databases, does this information yield
more accurate and sophisticated portraits of the electorate?

Campaigning at the local level and 21st-century techniques

As Chapman Rackman (2009) has observed, local-level campaigns seem to be a decade or so
behind in developing the state-of-the-art campaign techniques that are seen at the presidential or
major statewide level. How have local, small-budget contests been able to tap into new tech-
nologies and online communication? What are the optimal tools that a small-budget campaign
can use most effectively?

A better way to fund political campaigns

Thanks to online contributions, it becomes easier to both solicit funds and contribute them. Are
there ways in which structural and legal barriers to small-amount campaign financing can be
broken down further? Is democracy better served by having strict limits on campaign con-
tributions and by encouraging small-dollar donors through online giving? Is the legislation for
public funding of presidential candidates in need of a major overhaul?

Better campaigning or merely louder voices

How can online technology and online communication bring about better citizen participation, a
more informed electorate and more democratization of the electoral process? How can it do so

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Dennis W. Johnson

without merely succumbing to the loudest, most persistent voices rather than the true wishes of
the greater majority?
These and other questions face us in the decade ahead, as the 21st-century model of profes-
sional campaigning becomes more evident, and as technology and online communication both
reinforce and transform our ways of electing candidates to office.

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17
Selling Sarah Palin
Political marketing and the ‘Walmart Mom’
Robert Busby

The topic: selling candidates

The emergence of Sarah Palin as an iconic figure for the Republican party in the 2008 election
was testament to the interplay of several issues central to an understanding of the contemporary
nature of political marketing. Her personal brand utilised elements of her personal values and her
lifestyle choices, the emotive use of the history of the Republican party to symbolise her as the
inheritor of a distinctive Republican mandate, and the expression of populism through the
exploitation of her autobiographical past and regional location. On its own the Palin brand was
sufficient to create an identifiable and marketable political product which attracted attention on
both a state and a national stage. However, other factors were significant. Palin’s ‘mediagenic’
presence granted her a disproportionate amount of coverage in the 2008 election race in com-
parison with her opponents and indeed her running mate. Her brand of marketing, while
targeting a perceived swing voting group in the form of the ‘Walmart Mom’, appeared to
marginalise rather than expand the base from which she aspired to gain votes. While her mar-
keting strategy in the first instance appeared to aspire towards a sales approach in an attempt to
attract swing voters, it became clear as the 2008 campaign progressed, and indeed beyond its
conclusion, that she became increasingly embroiled in a product-oriented approach, shoring up
the right wing of the Republican party and advancing forcefully her personal brand.

Previous research: existing marketing theory and selling the individual

The US approach to political marketing is distinctive, increasingly candidate- rather than party-
centred, and is highly dependent upon the interaction between polling information and media
images (Lock and Harris 1996). Existing theory on individual brand marketing has concentrated
on a range of attributes considered essential to effective political brand construction and mar-
keting. Among the most important attributes of candidate branding are consistency of brand
(Butler and Harris 2009), the manufactured image (Newman 2001), authenticity and consistency
(Needham 2006; Holt 2002), the substance of the candidate (Henneberg et al. 2009), and market
segmentation and appeal (Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy 2007; Baines 1999). Of associated
importance in terms of the branding of character are the integration of human characteristics and

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Selling Sarah Palin

brand identity (Smith 2009), emotional bonds between elector and elected (Newman 1999), and
the integration of hard and soft political issues (Scammell 2007). These elements as individual
components are instrumental to effective political marketing.
In addressing the dynamics of appealing to voters in the 2008 presidential election, market
segmentation and targeting were important to creating a successful electoral coalition. As evi-
denced by Clinton’s election wins, voters respond to the image and messages advanced by
candidates in several ways, emotional, rational and social (Newman 1999: 263). Targeted mes-
sages to specific voting groups work to make campaigning more efficient and meaningful to the
intended recipient. Voter breakdown goes beyond simple messages, however. Additional fea-
tures include geographical identification, association with particular behavioural traits of a
group, psychographic issues relating to lifestyle choice and beliefs, and demographic facets
reflecting social locators (Smith and Saunders 1990). In modern election campaigns segmenta-
tion has been increasingly detailed and has worked to target sub-categories to further afford
narrow targeted campaigning (Penn 2007). Segmentation works in partnership with the
attempted mobilisation of voting blocks central to the creation of winning majorities. Existing
understandings of a segmented electorate played an important part in the selection of Palin as a
candidate, and in her marketing to narrow sections of the voting block in both a social and
ideological manner.
Candidate branding receives mainstream media coverage and a reciprocal relationship
between the two is evident. In addressing political marketing, Bruce I. Newman identified:

In politics, the application of marketing centers on the same process [as commercial mar-
keting], but the analysis of needs centers voters and citizens; the product becomes a mul-
tifaceted combination of the politician himself or herself, the politician’s image, and the
platform the politician advocates which is then promoted and delivered to the appropriate
audience.
(Newman 1999: 3)

Branding is multidimensional in its form and assists in the political positioning of candidates
(Scammell 2008). Political figures are now increasingly, alongside political parties, considered as
an individual brand in modern politics (Guzman and Sierra 2009: 208). Existing consideration
of the importance of brands in politics suggests that they are important in creating positive images
of leadership, instilling the values of a product, and ‘are aspirational and evoke a positive vision
for a better way of life’ (Needham 2005: 347–48). Branding can also be used to create bonds of
association with the electorate through the use of language designed to evoke emotional asso-
ciation in the political realm, for example Bush’s use of ‘“moms and dads” in place of parents’
(Fritz et al. 2004).
Acting as a further element in the successful marketing placement of a candidate is the effort
to place the individual in an appropriate market niche. The identity of the candidate conjoined
with an awareness of their role and function in selling the political product is an important
element in an appreciation of the realities of selling leadership to the electorate. In the case
under consideration, the selling of Palin as a vice-presidential candidate, this is significant. Col-
lins and Butler identified theories of market positioning with respect to candidates, challengers
and leadership options. They pinpointed positions relating to the ‘market leader’, the position of
the ‘challenger’, the ‘follower’ and the ‘nicher’ (Collins and Butler 2002: 7–13). The role of a
vice-presidential candidate in the contemporary election cycle presents theoretical challenges of
brand placement and positioning. The role, dependent upon the variables employed to market
the candidate, appears suited to the positioning of the nicher; that is, it serves to address niche

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market needs and complements the product position of the market leader who is best placed to
appeal to a broad range of voters. The problem of the ‘nicher’ placement is that it serves to
cater to a narrow product identity in the electoral marketplace and can be limited in its electoral
appeal. An additional feature of placement is a consistency of position, that it remains identifi-
able to the consumer in a sustained form (Bannon 2004). In the context of 2008 and the eco-
nomic downturn, consistency of position, market placement and credibility were important
variables in marketing a successful vice-presidential candidate.

New research: marketing Sarah Palin

McCain was aware, at an early pre-Palin stage of the election process, that the Republican party
had a problem confronting Bush’s legacy, arguing ‘we’ve got a brand problem’ (Ramsay 2008).
Incorporating Palin onto the Republican ticket offered an opportunity to address issues relating
to branding, market positioning, segmentation, and to appeal to important social locators.
On paper and in her prior experiences in Alaska, Palin’s selection appeared to fulfil many of
the theoretical requirements underpinning political marketing and the selling of an individual
candidate.
America Online identified the issue of personal market branding, familiar from business
applications, and how this applied to Sarah Palin. It stated:

A person’s brand is their mission statement. What are your core values? When people hear
your name, what do you want them to think? These are the questions brand consultants
say Palin should be asking at this crossroads of her career.
(Pendlebury 2009)

On CNN John Quelch, a marketing professor at Harvard Business School, considered the
McCain–Palin ticket to be ‘an example of what good marketing and brand-building are all
about’ (Keck 2008; Ramsay 2008). Quelch considered that the 2008 election had a twist which
accentuated the importance of the individual candidate brand at the expense of that of the
political party. He observed:

What is relevant is the brand image of the candidate. I don’t think that there is a GOP
brand issue relevant to the outcome of this presidential election. It is going to be a matter
of McCain–Palin, Obama–Biden. Those are the brands in play for the swing voters,
regardless of party affiliation.
(Keck 2008)

McCain worked in particular to distance himself from the past Republican brand of Bush,
yet he was thought to have generally failed to offer the voter ‘a different direction’ (Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press 2008a). Moreover, consumers expect there to be
a consistent quality of product to be correlated under a brand name, in this case the Republican
brand (Phipps et al. 2008). McCain also appeared to lack consistency of brand identity across the
course of the campaign (Butler and Harris 2009). Bruce I. Newman argued:

Just as companies need to partner with each other to be effective, so too do politicians.
A candidate must get all partners to share his or her vision of the future. The focus should
be on what can be, not what is. One must never lose sight of one’s customer.
(Newman 1999: 85)

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Selling Sarah Palin

A problem for the Palin candidacy was that while in theory she could support McCain and
fulfil a ‘nicher’ position in market placement, in practice her brand became excessively narrow
and her product limited in its appeal. McCain argued, when he introduced Palin as his running
mate on the ticket, that she appealed as someone ‘who reached across the aisle and asked
Republicans, Democrats and independents to serve in government’ (Thornburgh 2008). This
proved to be increasingly erroneous as the election progressed and suggested a problem of brand
and market placement.
Alongside her Alaskan politics, Palin’s physical appearance became an issue which determined
her brand. Newman identified the importance of the manufactured image as a core facet in the
acceptance of a political candidate (Newman 2001). In parallel Needham identified the need for
consistency of brand identity and authenticity, and the basis for success in this area: ‘brands must
be perceived as authentic and value-based, necessitating congruence between the internal values
of the product or company and its external message’ (Needham 2006: 419). The collision of
these two elements ultimately caused problems in selling Palin’s message. Her physical appearance
was a focus of media attention from the outset. Susan Scafidi, a law professor from Fordham,
perceived of Palin: ‘In our image-based society, the packaging of a candidate requires strategic
spending on visuals, from stage make-up to backdrops to podiums at a flattering height – and
yes costumes’ (cited in Thee 2008). The authenticity of Palin’s brand was questioned when it
was disclosed that she had received $150,000 from the Republican Party for clothing. News of
expensive clothes offered a stark contrast to Palin’s brand as a ‘hockey mom’ (Stacy and Wangrin
2008). Ed Rollins, who ran Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984, argued on similar grounds,
‘It just undercuts Palin’s whole image as a hockey mom, a “one-of-us” type of candidate’
(Healy and Luo 2008). This had the impact of confusing Palin’s brand, creating division between
the internal and external values of the brand, and presented an inconsistent message to the voter.
There were problems in accommodating Palin onto the Republican ticket in the election
race. Accommodating her brand with McCain’s brand as both a Republican and a political
maverick created confusion. She served in part as a focal figure for the Republican right,
but was presented as earthy and authentic so as to appeal to potential swing voters. Steve
Schmidt, key campaign strategist for the McCain team, identified the requirements of the vice-
presidential candidate. They had to support McCain’s ‘“maverick” credentials’, attract women
voters, distance the ticket from the Bush presidency and mobilise the base of the core Republican
movement (Brox and Cassels 2009: 352; Mohan-Neill and Neill 2009: 24) There was some
success in this realm. Chris Cillizza, writing in the Washington Post, observed:

There is no brand in Republican politics as powerful – or as tenuous – as that of Alaska

Gov. Sarah Palin. She is simultaneously the hottest commodity on the Republican fun-
draising circuit and a figure of ridicule among the Democrats (and even many independents)
who believe that her status as a national figure is entirely undeserved.
(Cillizza 2009)

Palin’s position as a vice-presidential nominee, however, made the attainment of Schmidt’s

objectives demanding, particularly as she perceived herself to be constrained by the mandate of
the McCain agenda. She aspired to imprint her own brand as she desired during the campaign.
She appeared to err towards a ‘market leader’ concept as opposed to the ‘nicher’ position that
she had been selected to fulfil.
The selection of Palin initially aspired towards co-branding alongside McCain on the
Republican ticket. Howard Belk, co-president and chief creative officer at branding agency
Siegel and Gale in New York, observed:

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Each partnered a complementary personality who would overcome their own short-
comings and reach new audiences. It’s a good strategy, but it panned out very differently
for each … McCain’s appointment of Sarah Palin, on the other hand, looked smart initi-
ally – she is young and a woman – but she became a bigger focus of media attention than
McCain himself, which was confusing.
(Simms 2008)

In this instance the fusion of two distinctive brands created confusion as to the identity value
and meaning of the party ticket. In this instance media coverage acted as a variable on the
balance of the co-branding strategy.
Palin’s individualism made the relationship with the Republican party and McCain
difficult to sustain across the duration of the campaign. The manufacturing of the McCain–Palin
brand revolved around political and cultural populism and a rejection by the Republicans, and
Palin in particular, of any trappings of elitism. This went hand-in-hand with an anti-intellectual
platform. This was the bedrock for Palin’s preferred style of political marketing. It was instinc-
tive, revolved on an appealing personality and valued emotion above reason. Palin’s interaction
with the voter was to have a relational approach to the overall construct of political marketing,
utilising social media as a route through which to interact with her consumer groups. However,
as identified by Henneberg et al., there are problems with this approach as it ‘has to go beyond
the cosmetic and superficial’ (Henneberg et al. 2009: 170).
McCain was identified as a ‘maverick’ candidate – giving him an ill-defined ideological
position within the race. Palin ultimately followed a similar path. She declared that she was
‘going rogue’ and forged her own identity within the campaign. This, however, blurred further
her brand image and that of the party. An unnamed McCain source complained that Palin:

is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone. She does not have any relationships of trust
with any of us, her family or anyone else. Also, she is playing for her own future and sees
herself as the next leader of the party.
(Bash et al. 2008)

Increasing disputes and overt tensions between Palin and McCain created a campaign where
the precise nature of the party brand became unclear (Palin 2009: 318–21). It was relatively easy
to pinpoint individual ideas and political aspirations, but as a singular entity the brand became
ill-defined and problematic, suggesting tensions between party identity and the contemporary
branding of individual candidates.
Palin’s marketing brand during 2008 became heavily interwoven with an identification
with a perceived swing voting group, the Walmart Mom. This was testament to an under-
standing of market segmentation and the use of Palin’s background as a marketable commodity.
Market research underpinned an appreciation of the importance of the Walmart Mom as
a pivotal swing group with split electoral loyalties. Walmart Moms represented a distinctive
brand of their own during the campaign. Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy identified that
market segmentation allowed an identification to cater to ‘what voters want, and how
they want it …’ (Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy 2007: 18). With an ongoing economic
recession, a directed appeal to an identifiable consumer group on the grounds of gender and
socio-economic status appeared to be of strategic benefit to the Republican party, catered
to swing voters who received concentrated media attention, and addressed microtargets in
marketing.

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Selling Sarah Palin

The Walmart Mom was defined as a lower-middle-class white woman who shopped at dis-
count retailer Walmart at least once a week. Business Week identified the statistical bracket
within which this group fell:

They’re not as well off as average Americans: Some 41% of frequent Wal-Mart shoppers
have incomes below $35,000 vs. 25% of the population at large. They’re less educated than
their neighbors: 31% of U.S. voters have a high school education or less, vs. 39% for
Wal-Mart Women. Those characteristics set them apart from the firmly middle-class
Soccer Moms so closely tracked in past election.
(Sasseen 2008)

This target group had three attributes. They were squeezed by the prevailing downturn in
the economy, they were likely to vote, and polls indicated that they, as an aggregate grouping,
were undecided about who to vote for. This is important to the theory on segmentation and
microtargeting. The targeting strategy was overt. This segment was given a niche label, it was
talked about openly in the campaign and it shaped the interpretation of Palin’s candidacy and
brand appeal.
The Palin product dovetailed with this target group. Palin was presented as a political
manifestation of the Walmart Mom. Although wealthy, she was by far the poorest of the four
candidates competing for office. The New York Magazine considered the rationale for the
prominence of Palin in the race:

in picking Palin as his V.P., McCain had introduced into the electoral equation a set of
variables – gender, class, celebrity, ideology – at once powerful, combustible, and unpre-
dictable. They presaged a fall campaign in which the most wretched sort of identity politics
will apparently prevail. And they reflected a new strategic dynamic that may well deter-
mine the outcome: the fierce and frantic pursuit by sides of this year’s ‘It’ demographic, the
so-called Wal-Mart moms.
(Heilemann 2008)

For example, a single mother from Florida who worked as a waitress argued that there were
connections between her prior support for President Bush and her new-found support during
the campaign for Palin: ‘He [Bush] was really good for my family … We’re hurting financially,
but he shares our values just like Sarah Palin does’ (Bosman 2008). Thus, it was not just the case
that Palin targeted key groups, but that she was marketed, with pronounced psychographic
meaning, as the embodiment of the social group she sought in part to represent. The integration of
the political product with consumer identity was transparent and marketed prominently.
In addressing market segmentation there were problems of Palin’s appeal becoming limited
rather than fulfilling the broader brand considerations desired by campaign strategist Schmidt.
Her product became intrinsically linked to a narrow target segment. It fulfilled a ‘nicher’ role in
this context, but worked to narrow her appeal. Conservative columnist William Kristol, writing
in the New York Times, mused over the political considerations used to pick vice-presidential
running mates and how this impacted on the selection of Palin:

McCain didn’t just pick a politician who could appeal to Wal-Mart Moms. He picked a
Wal-Mart Mom. Indeed he picked someone who, in 1999, as Wasilla mayor, presided
over a wedding of two Wal-Mart associates at the local Wal-Mart. ‘It was so sweet’ said
Palin, according to the Anchorage Daily News. ‘It was so Wasilla.’ A Wasilla Wal-Mart

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Mom a heartbeat away? I suspect most voters will say, ‘No problem.’ And some – perhaps
a decisive number – will say, ‘It’s about time.’
(Kristol 2008)

The justification of Palin’s placement in targeting a narrow market segment appeared to be

ratified by poll statistics. Alignment between product identity and market outcomes appeared to
initially work. McCain experienced pronounced alterations in demographic support across the
period of the Republican convention in 2008. The benefits of targeting a market were evident.
Time reported:

where 55% of white women voted for Bush in 2004, only 50% voted for Republican
candidates in the 2006 midterm elections, which was one of the reasons the party lost both
houses of Congress … as much as Palin pleased the conservative base of the party, white
women were the real target audience McCain was aiming at with his surprise pick of the
Alaska governor. The campaign hopes female voters will relate to her thoroughly modern
and complicated everywoman story, even if they don’t agree with her on the issues.
(Tumulty 2008)

Through the Republican convention, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll,

‘McCain enjoyed a 20-percentage point turnaround against Obama among white women,
going from an eight-point deficit before the Republican National Convention to a 12 point
advantage after it’ (Tumulty 2008).
Across the longer term Palin made little inroad into solidifying a female vote. She was viewed
in a similar light by men and women in poll samples. In September Pew reported, ‘Men and
women offer nearly identical ratings of Palin; 56% of men and 53% of women say they have a
positive view of the vice presidential candidate’ (Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press 2008b). Over time Palin appealed less and less to women voters, especially those identified
as Walmart Moms. By the third week of October, 38 percent of women sampled by Pew had a
‘favorable impression’ of Palin, as contrasted with 50 percent of men. The early poll figures,
where Palin fared best, indicate that she appealed, in socio-economic brackets, mostly (61–34
percent) to those who earned between $50,000 and $75,000, and much less (46–35 percent) to
those who earned less than $30,000 (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2008c).
Interpretation of candidate personality is important to the creation of brands and in marrying
human characteristics with brand identity (Smith 2009). Furthermore, Palin’s Alaskan identity
allowed geographic segmentation in the marketplace. Her candidacy and personality did not have
to be reinvented to play to a national audience. Marketing involved subtle refinement and
accentuation on aspects of her background which had already proven to be viable and electorally
popular in Alaska. Early poll evidence suggested that the selection might bode well. Following her
acceptance speech, Palin was viewed favourably by 58 percent of a Rasmussen poll sample, a rating
which put her ahead, albeit marginally, of both McCain and Obama (Rasmussen Reports 2008).
Palin’s authenticity was central to her brand. She was portrayed as a person who genuinely
represented the person she was in real life. In looking for a distinctive brand identity within the
ticket, the Pew Research Center asked poll respondents for a single word that best described
the vice-presidential nominees. Although ‘inexperienced’ was the highest one-word response
for Palin, there were additional issues which contributed towards the positive branding of Palin.
Pew observed, ‘For Palin “strong”, “fresh” and “interesting” are among the most commonly
mentioned terms. Voters also say Palin is “smart”, “confident” and “energetic”’ (Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press 2008b).

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Selling Sarah Palin

Underscoring Palin’s market placement for a targeted socio-economic group, her candidacy
was imbued with populist attributes. It was sold as a clear and distinct form of her appeal, and
contrasted with the more subtle populist mandates of her opponents, including Obama
(Greenberg 2009). Modern populism embodied ‘a language whose speakers conceive of ordin-
ary people as a noble assemblage not bounded narrowly by class, view their elite opponents as a
self-serving and undemocratic, and seek to mobilize the former against the latter’ (Kazin 1995: 1).
Eleanor Clift in Newsweek identified the challenges facing voters when considering the infor-
mation presented by the vice-presidential candidates of each party: ‘Palin is wooing the same
working-class constituency that could decide the election in battleground states like Ohio and
Pennsylvania with her pro-gun, family and religious down-to-earth values’ (Clift 2008). Her life
story afforded her many advantages in branding herself as a populist, serving to fuse psychographic
segmentation with demographic and behavioural elements. She reflected in her autobiography
on what she and her husband conveyed: ‘We felt our very normalcy, our status as ordinary
Americans, could be a much needed fresh breeze blowing into Washington D.C.’ (Palin 2009:
220–21).
The major television networks labelled her as a ‘perfect populist’ (Bauder 2008), her
rhetoric was consistent to this end, and her opponents criticised her for celebrating the merits
of ordinariness at the expense of elites and political leaders. Selling her as a person worked
effectively. Selling her as a prospective political leader proved more problematic. Pew reported
that:

By a wide margin (70% to 50%), more swing voters say Palin is down-to-earth. While
nearly identical percentages of all voters see both candidates as honest, more swing voters
say this trait describes Palin (67%) than say it applies to Biden.
(Pew Research Center for the People and the Press 2008a)

Marketing the person as an individual brand was an important element in selling Palin to the
Walmart Mom; however, she was strongly linked to the right of the Republican Party and this
proved more difficult to present as a marketable asset during the campaign (Salam 2009).
In summary, the impact of Palin’s candidacy in the 2008 presidential election was pro-
nounced and significant. A range of elements central to the modern campaign were used and
exploited to good effect by Palin and her campaign strategists. Her authenticity, psychographic
profile and the exploitation of geographic and behavioural elements of her background and
character fused to great effect in presenting her as a product of appeal and market impact. The
gender component was utilised to provide contrasts with Hillary Clinton and suggested that
Palin’s experiences as a woman were relevant to her ability to sell herself as a political product.
Individual brand elements were strong. However, such strengths also created weaknesses, or
were undermined during the campaign:

 Her prominence in the span of media coverage far surpassed that generally afforded a vice-
presidential candidate. Her position as a ‘nicher’ in the formation of a working ticket which
had a target audience morphed into a scenario where she appeared to be the market leader,
and this changed the dynamics of media campaign coverage, and thereafter popular
interpretation.
 Her brand proved controversial and divisive, thus losing as well as attracting support. Her
ability to sell herself as the embodiment of the contemporary working woman had pro-
nounced limitations, because despite her emotional appeal she appeared unable to mobilise
her target market into actual votes.

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 The emphasis on her personal life cast doubt on her leadership ability and thus suitability for
vice-president. Scammell (2007) pinpointed the importance of interweaving hard politics
and soft social attributes into the building of a political brand and the challenges afforded by
this fusion.
 Media exposure of issues, such as her clothing choices and their cost, lent credence to beliefs
that Palin’s image was manufactured and thus created confusion about her brand identity.

Advice for practitioners

The marketing of Palin’s political brand has distinctive lessons for leadership and strategy:

 Do not allow vice-presidential candidates to become the market leader as their position is
then vulnerable to attack.
 Avoid developing a brand that only appeals to a distinctive psychographic populism, which
whilst successful initially, can also alienate mainstream supporters and thus lose votes overall.
The integration of personal attributes and a populist mandate, where the candidate is pre-
sented as being a mirror of the target voting segment, builds ultimately superficial support in
elections.
 Take care to protect initial brand strengths, and do not let them be undermined by other
presentational tools or campaign activities.
 Exhibit both leadership and personal attributes; both skills and emotional connections with
voters.
 Caution should be exercised with market strategies that interweave economic variables with
the social and lifestyle characteristics of candidates.
 Gender can have a positive role in creating a distinctive brand identity, but also changes the
type and tone of coverage afforded a candidate.
 The difficulties of incorporating individual brands into an embedded party brand identity are
pronounced, and suggest that short-term rebranding of both candidates and party is difficult
to accomplish.

Impact on politics
Marketing individual candidates is not straightforward, but both the success and the difficulties
faced by the candidate in this case study suggest positive implications for democracy. The success
of authenticity in this case suggests that politicians need to be ‘normal’ and reflect ordinary
citizens. Populism is important in branding, but it has limits in its market appeal. Whilst tools such
as branding, positioning and targeting offer politicians the means to attract support at the early
stages of the campaign, and connect emotionally with the public, voters still require to be shown
leadership skills and that a candidate can connect with a range of support groups, not just one
target market. This may be good for democracy, because it shows the limitations of pragmatic
strategising to win support.
Individual candidate brands are clearly an enticing realm for media coverage, with evidence
of elongated coverage on personal considerations throughout election campaigns. Yet candi-
date-centred coverage appears to demonstrate limitations on the willingness of the voter to
accommodate wall-to-wall coverage on individuals as central components in election races.
Voter exhaustion suggests that candidate branding, while important in informing voters of
election choices, can be detrimental to popular engagement with politics and create weariness
during election cycles.

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Selling Sarah Palin

The fusion of multiple individual brands with a party brand, particularly one that is entren-
ched, is a challenging task. In seeking to alter brand identity the consumer requires time to
accommodate and understand new identities and to appreciate consistency of the brand pro-
duct. Multilevel branding, if not delivered with precision and clarity, runs the risk of presenting
the voter with a range of competing identities which acts to the detriment of the political party
and candidates. Long-term rebranding is evidently an important consideration for candidates
who aspire to, or have to, modify the underlying party brand.
The failure of a strong recognisable brand to generate the support it was chosen to target
suggests that the current means by which political organisations, with sophisticated techniques
of market research, make decisions may need reconsideration. The appeal of candidates at local
or state level of government may not necessarily be transferable to a national stage, and the
variables that propel candidate branding at the sub-national and national positions evidently
demonstrate different challenges in mobilising voters and presenting a legitimate brand identity.

The way forward

There exist clear avenues for further exploration in the field of candidate branding and political
marketing strategies. Further research is needed on party and candidate branding, and how the
two interconnect. After the election Palin extricated herself from the limitations of a tight party
brand and took steps to place herself in a political position where she could develop her own
personal brand via media devices which cut the linkage with the mass media. Separation between
candidate branding and party branding is clearly necessary. Yet they are inevitable bedfellows
in the pursuit of political office. In political coalitions, and in scenarios where minor parties or
political individuals are able to sell themselves with more effectiveness than the prime candidate,
there are similar conundrums. The challenge faced by Cameron and Clegg in representing
themselves as party leaders, as prime minister and deputy prime minister in the UK, and as
individual political figures in their own right, poses questions about how political balance can be
successfully achieved. While individual candidate branding is clearly evident and of importance in
the contemporary campaign, how internal candidate brands are accommodated alongside one
another in both campaigns and government is an aspect of importance, particularly given
the increasing focus on individuals as candidates and the slow diminution of party brands as prime
product locators.
Gender remains an important consideration in political branding. Continued attention given
to gender-related candidate branding underscores a need for further research into whether differing
expectations of brands across male and female candidates are generated by the candidates themselves,
the media or the voter. Similarly, the presence of men and women on the same political platforms
presents issues about brand balance. In the case study evaluated here the female candidate’s
brand received disproportionate coverage and attention. The increasing number of women in
pursuit of high political office creates opportunities for comparative analysis about whether
there are similar gender-skewed brand mechanisms in place in comparative democratic systems.
Market intelligence and product placement have become increasingly sophisticated in the
contemporary era. Market segmentation and microtargets suggests that the selection of candi-
dates who can appeal to swing voters have a pivotal place in influencing voter choice and
election outcomes. Yet it is clear that selecting a candidate on this account has limitations and
that while market placement is important, there exist peripheral market spheres which have to
be addressed to ensure a breadth of appeal. How non-target groups can be engaged and
mobilised in the context of leadership and candidate-centred brand politics remains a pressing
marketing concern.

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18
Populism as political marketing
technique1
Georg Winder and Jens Tenscher

The topic: populism

Populism is a widely used communicative strategy in politics that seems to have become more
and more important in recent years. Since the mid-1980s populism has entered the political stage
of some established Western democracies; to name but a few: Jörg Haider (Austria’s Freedom
Party) in Austria; Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front National) in France; Silvio Berlusconi (Forza Italia) in
Italy; Josef Blocher (Swiss People’s Party) in Switzerland; and Geert Wilders (Freedom Party) in
the Netherlands. Their success has been perceived by some scholars as a typical symptom of
fundamental political transformation or political crisis (Taggart 2000: 5), or reflective of disen-
chantment with established, ‘old-fashioned’ political parties (Mudde 1996). However, populism
is not only a symptom of crisis but also a strategy of managing communicative relationships.
Against this backdrop, it is time to reflect on populism as a political marketing technique. So
far, this has neither been done in political marketing studies nor in populism research. Yet,
we assume that populism is a political marketing technique in its own right, one that offers a
specific form of political communication, organization and mobilization. This chapter will dis-
cuss the concept and contextual factors which facilitate or impede the introduction of populist
actors and the development of populism as a political marketing technique. Furthermore, we
will test its practical relevance by examining case studies from the US (long-time established
democracy), Austria (relatively young but strong democracy) and Venezuela (emergent, unstable
democracy).

Previous research
Political marketing research has not previously focused on populism (Lederer et al. 2005),
although it is of course the subject of significant and controversial debate elsewhere in political
science (see, for example Ionescu and Gellner 1969; Canovan 1981). There is very little
consensus in this literature about how to define populism: some see it as a political ideology
with roots in a cohesive social concept of the democratic society (Mény and Surel 2002: 40 ff.),
while others tend to qualify populism as a ‘thin centered ideology’ (Freeden 1998; Mudde
2004: 544) that misses an elaborated vision of society and ‘only gives a precise meaning and

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Populism as political marketing technique

priority to certain key concepts of political discourse’ (Abts and Rummens 2007: 408). In this
understanding, populism possesses an ideological core that considers society to be ultimately
separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt
elite’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of
the people (Mudde 2004: 562). A second research strand emphasizes the communicative
dimension of populism: here, populism is characterized as a communication instrument or a
political style (Taguieff 2002: 80; Jagers and Walgrave 2007). Political actors make use of the same
principles as in the ideological approaches to populism but deploy populist communication in
order to be more successful while ideological concepts assume that the populist elements form an
essential part of a political actor’s policies. Both approaches to populism, as well as those that point
at its organizational components (Weyland 2001: 12), refer to the two key criteria of ‘the people’
and ‘the elites’. We therefore argue that populism is a political communication style that is strategically
deployed by political actors in order to mobilize potential voters and to establish stable relationships with
specific target groups.
Populism has two key dimensions: inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion refers to the fact that
populist communicators claim to speak for the people in the meaning of ‘representing the whole
democratic sovereign’ (Canovan 1999: 4). Jagers and Walgrave (2007: 3) explain that ‘populism
is a communication frame that appeals to and identifies with the people, and pretends to speak
in their name’. When politicians are being inclusive, they frame their political messages in a way
that conveys both the message of proximity to a broad range of potential ‘clients’ and the pre-
tended advocacy for their needs and concerns. Exclusion is used to stress inclusion – if some
people are ‘in’, then others must be ‘out’, and thus they are a perceived menace to those within
the ‘in’ group. Populist discourse attempts to introduce, consolidate and frame such threats.
Respective political leaders challenge the existing order and thus stigmatize ‘the elites’ as peo-
ple’s principal opponents. Thus, what we can draw from this literature is that populism is a
communication style where politicians frame proximity to and identification with ‘the people’
and simultaneously purport to advocate their interests against a highly privileged elite that is out
of touch with the citizens’ needs. To reach their goals populist communicators routinely refer to
notions of civic identity, including terms like ‘the state’, ‘the nation’ or ‘religious feelings’ – especially
when branding threats from outside.

New research: marketed populism

The theory: populism and the stages of political marketing

Populism as a communication strategy can be connected with political marketing concepts and
market orientation. Market orientation discusses how techniques (such as market research and
product design) and concepts (such as the desire to satisfy voter demands) can be used to reach
specific goals such as winning elections, but lacks detailed ideas for an effective communication
strategy, without which any political marketing objectives and any efforts to establish and stabilize
external relationships are doomed to fail. This section puts forward new concepts by adapting
Lees-Marshment’s (2001) concept, which differentiates between product orientation, sales
orientation and market orientation.
Product-oriented political parties tend to ‘set policies and expect others to support the orga-
nization on the basis that the policy is right’ (Lilleker and Lees-Marshment 2005: 7). Sales-
oriented parties also start with well-established political products, i.e. a set of realistic policies,
but additionally make use of ‘market intelligence to design their communication strategy in
order to persuade voters to support the party’ (ibid.). In contrast, market-oriented parties first

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Georg Winder and Jens Tenscher

turn to the ‘customer’s’ concerns, behaviors, needs and demands before designing a product that
is delivered in accordance to specific market conditions. Obviously, such market orientation
requires not only the highest degree of sophistication and professionalization within political
parties but also a maximum of ideological flexibility to effectively mold political products and
promises. We assume that populist parties hold such an ideological flexibility since they often
lack a clear-cut, long-established profile and position within the electoral market. Furthermore,
populist parties are keen to adjust their communicative strategies to their customers’ needs and
feelings. Their organizational structure, normally hierarchical and leader-oriented, makes it easy
to incorporate political marketing techniques. As a consequence, we argue that populism best
suits market-oriented political parties and less suits a sales orientation. Product-oriented parties
would not turn to populism as a communicative strategy. How populism and market orienta-
tion match becomes obvious when we refer to the nine stages of a political marketing process
that Lees-Marshment’s (2010) model identifies. We merge those stages into three crucial phases
(see Figure 18.1).

Phase 1 – market intelligence

Market research could be considered as the initial stage of every marketing process. Before
developing and designing a product it is necessary for political parties to identify most prospective
target groups, their needs, desires and feelings (Lilleker and Lees-Marshment 2005: 10). Even
though this stage is crucial for all political competitors nowadays, populist parties do have a special
interest in ascertaining potential customers’ orientations since their communicative strategy is
explicitly supposed to procure ‘closeness to the people’. Such an approach asks for an in-depth-
knowledge of ‘the people’s’ needs and worries. Actually, it is not ‘the people’ as a whole who are
targeted by populist parties but especially the ‘ordinary, decent people’ (Canovan 1999: 5), who
feel not sufficiently addressed by the governing elites and frustrated by the established parties. It is
the common people, namely the ‘losers of modernization’, people who are or at least feel to be
economically or culturally deprived, that are foremost open to populist pledges (Spier 2006: 36;
Decker 2006: 13). These people are ‘counter-consumers’ (Butler and Collins 1994: 26) on the
political market; they rather vote against than in favor of political supplies. The first step of

Figure 18.1 Model of marketed populism (populism-specific elements are in italic)

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Populism as political marketing technique

populist market intelligence is to locate these people and to get detailed information about their
moods, feelings and policy demands. At this stage, populist parties and candidates, like their
competitors, make use of a broad set of opinion research instruments, including opinion polls and
focus groups.

Phase 2 – product design and development of a communication strategy

Based on marketing intelligence data about prospective consumers, political parties develop a
product, adjust to it and implement it internally, i.e. within the political party. Afterwards,
a strategy on how to communicate the (new) product externally to prospective supporters,
voters, competitors and media, has to be designed. Compared with other parties, the process of
product development, adjustment and implementation seems to be much easier for populist
parties because they are to a large extent exempt from ideological or policy-related standpoints,
which makes it easier for them to react to current moods and to design products that are easy to
grasp and to communicate. While established parties have to take care of their party history and
former political decisions, populist actors have the edge over their competitors in simply
being against (the elites, the other parties, etc.) and being in favor of something/somebody (the
underprivileged, frustrated ‘counter-consumers’). Consequently, populists usually turn to position
issues (Stokes 1966) that are most important for their potential voters and in which established
parties’ records or promises are non-satisfying. Populist answers to burning problems are for the
most part rather vague and simplistic, and populist products usually appear as simple solutions
to complex problems. This is where positive role models, leaders, frontrunners and skilled
communicators to whom people can refer as being the product come in. Therefore, populist
products are basically composed of two main components: clear-cut (and mostly just a few)
messages covering the most prominent issues, plus the image of a strong and charismatic fron-
trunner or party leader. Other aspects of political products that are crucial for the success of
competing political parties – namely the political party and its ideology (Butler and Collins 1994:
21) – are of minor importance.
When it comes to product adjustment and its internal implementation, populist parties ben-
efit from their hierarchical structure: party members, candidates and parties’ representatives
do not have to be convinced, they just have to accept and follow the parameters and decisions of
the party leaders. In this process the leaders of populist parties (and their advisors) play a crucial
role as they do when it comes to developing a campaign strategy. Obviously, populist parties
are privileged concerning the centralization of strategy development and strategy conducting,
often regarded as a key element of successful political campaigning (e.g. Plasser and Plasser
2002; Strömbäck 2010). They have always and inherently focused on communicating externally
with ‘the people’ and not on internal discussions. This focus usually unfolds as a ‘pro/con’ or a
‘good/bad’ strategy reflecting the two dimensions of inclusion and exclusion. The charismatic
leader thereby serves as focal point between framing of closeness and comprehension towards
the people (inclusion) and framing of the advocacy for the people’s concerns against the ruling
establishment and perceived menaces (exclusion).
In sum, a populist communication style is characterized by simplified standpoints, primarily
communicated through a charismatic, rhetorically skilled and supposedly credible character.
Such an approach has to be perpetuated – during an election campaign and beyond – to have a
lasting impact on potential voters and consumers. That includes permanent observation of
contextual campaign dynamics (e.g. issue cycles, public mood, oppositional strategies, political
decisions, etc.), which are essential for a cyclical process of readjusting and communicative
implementing of product-related standpoints. In this campaign-related perspective populism as a

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Georg Winder and Jens Tenscher

political marketing technique also requires continuous proactive communication efforts and the
ability for short-term reactions. Once again, we assume that the organizational, leader-focused,
hierarchical and lean structures (Taggart 2000: 102) of populist parties facilitate this process of
continual modulations and quick reactions.

Phase 3 – election day and post-electoral times

Due to the pivotal importance of elections within liberal democratic systems and political
markets, populist parties’ success and acceptance is essentially measured in electoral votes: votes
obtained for their product and counter-votes ‘stolen’ from established parties. Vote-seeking is the
primary imperative of populist parties while most of their opponents strive for policy-making as
well. That might explain why populist parties are extremely focused on electoral campaigns and
why they tend to concentrate on short-term success instead of long-term sustainability. There-
fore, political marketing’s cyclical dimension (Lees-Marshment 2010: 8), i.e. the process of
building up stable relationships with consumers, seems to be underdeveloped.
That explains both rapid uprisings and electoral successes of populist parties, and their abrupt
disappearances (Heinisch 2003). In addition to that, populists’ propensity to ‘anti-communica-
tion’, especially against competing political parties and the governing class, casts their potential
for a pragmatic parliamentary oppositional role and, even more, for governing positions into
doubt. Ironically, populists’ electoral success therefore often stimulates their parliamentary dis-
appearance at the next elections. The rationale behind this up and down with which populist
parties are universally confronted is that parliaments inherently constrain politicians both with
respect to policy standpoints and their communicative performances. Therefore, populists in
parliament often become what they initially pretended to stand against: a part of the political
elite. As a consequence, populist parties habitually tend to become less populist or even show a
tendency to collapse as a result of internal frictions. However, there is one structural feature that
impedes populist parties’ rupture: namely, once again, a strong, internally undisputed, charis-
matic leader (Canovan 1999: 5) who takes the chance of an oppositional role to present himself
and his party as solitary advocate of people’s needs in parliament.
Such a strategy repeatedly malfunctions if transferred to governmental roles. At least in well-
established democracies with multi-party systems and a politically independent press, long-term
reigning populists are still exceptions that prove the rule (e.g. Italy’s current prime minister
Silvio Berlusconi). The lack of enduring success of most populist parties might, however, not
only result from their disqualification and unwillingness to form coalitions with political opponents
(and vice versa), rising frictions between pre-election promises and post-election performances
and tangible deficits in political decision-making. It is, as we argue, not least a consequence of
weak cyclical marketing efforts and populists’ self-reduction to sales-orientation.

Contextual impacts on the applicability of populism as a political

marketing technique
Although populism might be universally applied to any political markets, there are some inter-
vening factors – beyond the political product itself discussed above – that have an impact on
the probability of successfully relying on populism as a political marketing technique. Such factors
are located both on the meso level of the political party involved and on the macro level, i.e. the
‘environment’ shaping the political market conditions. The latter ones primarily result from a
country’s (a) political system (including its institutional framework, electoral system and party
system), (b) social and cleavage structure and political culture, (c) media system and journalistic

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Populism as political marketing technique

culture, and (d) situational contingencies (issue cycles, public mood, etc.). These contextual
factors do not only affect political marketing orientations in general (Strömbäck 2010), but we
assume that they also have a significant impact on the emergence and success of populist parties
incorporating political marketing techniques.
When we first look at the meso level in particular, there are numerous factors that facilitate a
party’s turn to populism as a communicative, marketing-oriented strategy. As mentioned above,
these factors root in a party’s internal structure and culture on the one hand and its govern-
mental and parliamentary role on the other hand. In short, political parties with a top-down
structure and a leader-focused hierarchy are privileged to turn to populism.
Long-established political parties with clear-cut ideological profiles, deeply rooted in the
cleavage structures of societies, are insufficiently flexible to turn to populism – even more so if
they reflect rather (in a Western sense) left-wing, socialist or post-material positions which
somehow contradict business-type practices of marketing (Kavanagh 1996).
Catch-all parties are less prone to use populist communicative strategies – which might alien-
ate large portions of their prospective voters – than niche or clientele parties attracting specific
voter segments.
As a consequence, young parties, lacking ideological burdens and expectations, with strong,
internally undisputed leaders who publicly ‘stand for’ the party almost exclusively, and with a
strong marketing or sales orientation (Lees-Marshment 2001), backed by sufficient financial
resources, are most likely to turn to populist techniques. Even more so if they start from an
oppositional, at best non-parliamentary position, which facilitates the use of attack strategies,
undifferentiated simplifications and popular critique against ‘the political class’.
With regards to the macro level, the most important factors facilitating populism are:

 Candidate-centered democracies (i.e. presidential and semi-presidential systems): a high degree of

polarization and a weak fragmentation of the political party system supports the rise of
populist actors. In such an environment with only small numbers of political competitors the
probability of getting a spot on the political landscape is much bigger compared with already
crowded, highly fragmented and extremely polarized party systems (Wring 2002; Strömbäck
2010: 20). However, there are some exceptions that prove the rule, such as Jörg Haider
(FPÖ) in Austria, who managed to enter the political stage, backed by a clear-cut populist
communicative strategy in a parliamentary system with proportional representation and a
seemingly established and polarized multi-party system.
 Countries with strong traditions of a subject culture, i.e. societies with a dominating focus on
the political output (achievements and performances of the political elite) and low levels of
internal or external efficacy of the people (Almond and Verba 1963; Balch 1974) such as
Austria, tend to be much more open to populists than participation or civic cultures. Ulti-
mately, as recent victories of populist parties in the Netherlands or Belgium have shown,
even post-industrial and democratically stable societies are not immune to rising populism,
especially when growing skepticism towards established political elites and parties, declining
partisanship and growing electoral volatility come together with strong national or regional
sentiments and latent fears of being overrun by globalization or modernization processes
(including rising immigration, unemployment, etc.).
 In liberal, highly competitive media systems (e.g. the US, UK), in which political actors are
exceptionally urged to adjust to media logics, populist communication strategies would have
a better chance to prevail than in democratic corporatist media systems (e.g. Germany) or
polarized pluralist media systems (e.g. Spain). In such media environments governmental
actors can directly control the media organizations (and sometimes even their coverage). In

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addition to that, television-oriented societies (e.g. the US, Italy) tend to be more open to
populist communicative strategies than newspaper-oriented societies (e.g. Scandinavian
countries) because of the specific constraint of the audiovisual medium which asks – more
than other media – for personalization, simplification, visualization and reduction (Mazzoleni
et al. 2003; Mazzoleni 2008): the exact components of populist leaders’ communicative
strategies. With the advent of the Internet they have gained yet another audiovisual plat-
form – independent from journalistic gatekeepers – which has been rapidly sprawling
throughout society. As a consequence, it is likely that the dissemination of populists’
thoughts will become easier in the future.

Populist political marketing in practice

To test the impact of each of such a broad set of party-related and environmental factors we rely
on three case studies that cover not only three different geographical regions (North America,
South America and Europe), but also three kinds of political cultures – respectively, three stages
of democratization. The US is a long-established democracy and ‘civic culture’, Venezuela is an
emerging, still unstable democracy and ‘subject culture’, and Austria is a relatively young, but
fairly stable democracy, with a political culture somewhere between civic and subject. While the
two American countries represent presidential systems, Austria is a parliamentary political regime
(with a tendency to semi-presidentialism). Finally, with regards to media systems, these countries
cover the whole spectrum from liberal (US), democratic corporatist (Austria), to polarized
pluralist (Venezuela).

The US: the Perot phenomenon

In the US, the majoritarian electoral system has been an important obstacle to the establishment
of a national populist party, as it has been for the emergence of other parties beneath the
Democrats and Republicans. Populism has therefore always been located primarily on the
individual level of candidates and not on the meso level of political parties, which are traditionally
weak in the US. However, a recent exception to this was Ross Perot, an entrepreneur and self-
made billionaire from Texas who ran as an independent candidate for president in 1992 and as
frontrunner of his own Reform Party in 1996. It was above all Perot’s electoral campaign in 1992
that caught public and academic attention (e.g. Post 1995). It had a direct impact on the
campaign as a whole and especially on Bill Clinton’s campaign and first presidential election
victory. Ultimately, Perot’s campaign affected and mobilized 18.9 percent of voters in a pre-
sidential system with two historically strong parties.
Perot’s communication strategy in 1992 fitted perfectly into a time in which Americans were
disillusioned with their political elite and frustrated after 12 years of Republican governance.
Against this backdrop and respective market intelligence efforts, Perot repeatedly stressed his and
‘the American people’s’ disaffection with the way the ‘political class’ exercised their political
power (Black and Black 1994: 162). His anti-establishment discourse primarily focused on economic
and financial policy issues that he claimed were urgent and needed action on. As a successful
businessman he could present himself as a strong leader, who was indisputably competent in eco-
nomic and financial affairs and thus capable to balance the national budget. Issue and candidate
image were perfectly integrated into one message. In addition, Perot benefited from his politically
fresh, aggressive, but rhetorically skilled appearance. This made it easier to enter free media plat-
forms such as the CNN talk show Larry King Live, in which he announced his candidacy, presumably
motivating Bill Clinton and subsequent candidates to enter this free media platform too.

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Despite his personal wealth, Perot’s campaign was effective in presenting him as in touch
with ordinary people’s needs and fears (inclusion) and against the ruling class (exclusion). This
case illustrates the potential for populist marketing techniques even in traditionally ‘closed’,
polarized electoral markets, and especially on the federal state level. His messages well reflected
the growing dissatisfaction and cynicism among the people. However, Perot’s campaign also
stands for a rather sales-oriented approach, as it did not have an enduning impact, either for him
or in the political landscape, as a market-oriented approach might have had.

Venezuela: populism as a presidential phenomenon

Populism in the Latin American context dates back to the 1930s and 1940s when the first populist
leaders, namely Getulio Vargas (Brazil), José María Velasco Ibarra (Ecuador) and Juan Perón
(Argentina), entered the political stage in response to deep-felt social and economic crises and
political deadlocks (Coniff 1999: 7). Their early success, partly supported by military upheavals,
was not least a consequence of not yet established democratic structures and missing democratic
traditions. Since then, populism has remained an integral part and omnipresent phenomenon of
Latin American politics.
One of the most prominent examples is the rise of a new ‘anti-party movement’ (Hawkins
2003: 1137) built around the figure of Hugo Chávez. Although the way in which Chávez came
into political power in 1999 (military coup) cannot be considered related to any marketing
techniques, the efforts that he has made to maintain and institutionalize his political power since
then do meet the criteria. Hugo Chávez Frías undoubtedly comes close to what can be described
as the epitome of a populist charismatic leader (Weyland 2003; Roberts 2003). Since the first
day of his reign, his rhetoric has combined elements of an anti-elite discourse (against the eco-
nomic elites within Venezuela) and an anti-system discourse (mainly directed against capitalism
and US imperialism). In addition, he has repeatedly presented himself as an instrument (‘the
humble soldier’) that will unselfishly fight for the rights of the people (he refers to them as
‘el pueblo’) in Venezuela and in other Latin American countries. Claiming to represent the
voice of the people, Chávez has called several times for voter support in referenda that funda-
mentally target the institutional setting of the Venezuelan political system, including the
annulment of the president’s limited term of office and a strengthening of governmental rights.
Although not all of these constitutional changes gained sufficient support, overall Chávez was
successful in strengthening his own position as president. Accordingly, both national and inter-
national criticism about the democratic progress in Venezuela has been increasing (Hawkins
2003: 1156).
Chávez’s popularity and three electoral victories have been based strongly on his capacity for
gaining support and mobilizing voters in a kind of ‘permanent campaign’. In that campaign, the
political product, i.e. policies, promises and constitutional transformation, has been connected
closely with the leader himself. It has been Chávez and a handful of his advisors who have
designed the product and developed the campaign strategy that gained public support. In a
political marketing sense, Chávez’s approach has slowly turned from product orientation to sales
orientation. There are three main factors that have facilitated his ongoing success:

 The political culture in Venezuela, as in many other Latin American countries, is rather
subject-oriented and is not yet consolidated. Venezuelans traditionally ask for a strong state,
they look for strong leaders, they are mainly focused on the political output and are seldom
party-aligned (Lagos 2006; Dalton et al. 2007). As a consequence, the floor is wide open to
charismatic, populist leaders.

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Georg Winder and Jens Tenscher

 Chávez has successively expanded control over the most important media in Venezuela.
Therefore, large, constant and mostly positive coverage has been guaranteed.
 Chávez’s political record has been convincing due to enormous investment in social programs
funded by earnings of the state-owned oil company.

In sum, Chávez’s populism can be considered highly successful. The Venezuelan presidential
system, media control, a sedated opposition and the country’s political culture have simplified a
product- and sales-oriented marketing approach for a strong leader. In such a democrati-
cally transitory and unstable context, clear-cut marketing orientation seems unnecessary and
inappropriate.

Austria: the Haider phenomenon

In the European context, populism is a rather new phenomenon that emerged in the late 20th
century as a result of an increasing number of constituents who no longer felt represented by
established political parties (Taggart 2000: 73). The majority of the European neo-populist parties
have taken rightist and often nationalist positions. This also applies to the Austrian Freedom Party
(FPÖ), one of the most successful and persistent populist parties in Europe ever. Founded in
1956, the FPÖ initially positioned itself as a protest party against the two catch-all parties, the
Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the conservative Austrian’s People Party (ÖVP). Until the 1980s,
however, the FPÖ’s impact on Austrian politics remained marginal (Betz 1994: 11; Riedlsperger
1998: 32).
That changed substantially when Jörg Haider took over the FPÖ’s leadership in 1986. He
immediately started a process of rebuilding and centralizing the party’s organizational structure.
Lean and hierarchical structures, led by Haider himself and a handful of his loyal associates,
made the introduction of modern political marketing techniques easy. Step by step, Haider
transformed the FPÖ from a formerly product-oriented party to a market-oriented one
(Lederer et al. 2005: 132). With regards to issue positions, Haider’s FPÖ trusted in a variable
mix of anti-establishment and anti-EU discourse in combination with nationalist-xenophobic
standpoints. Haider, a young, charismatic and rhetorically skilled politician, set a new tone in
Austria’s political discourse. He was successful in presenting himself as advocate of the
people, pointing out the most important socioeconomic and political grievances. A strategy of
continuous, but unreckoned populist communication including simplifications and personal
attacks finally led to the best result a populist radical right party in Western Europe could ever
achieve (Mudde 2004): it was in 1999 when the FPÖ got 26.9 percent of the vote in the
national elections, coming second (after the SPÖ) and entering into a coalition government
with the ÖVP – an unprecedented event that caused national and international protests. In its
governmental role, which was prolonged in 2002, the FPÖ had to readjust some of its original
populist ambitions giving concessions to its governing partner, and it lost significant support in
state and European elections. Finally, Haider and his associates separated from the FPÖ and
founded a new party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ) in 2005. While the FPÖ’s
new party leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, copied Haider’s leadership style and market-oriented
populist strategy, Haider received a last and unanticipated victory in the snap elections of 2008:
the FPÖ gained 17.5 percent of the vote and the BZÖ – basically a leader-oriented, sales-
oriented movement at that time – got 10.7 percent. However, just two weeks later Haider
died in a car accident. Not surprisingly, this marked the beginning of the BZÖ’s rapid dis-
appearance from the political landscape, culminating in internal conflict between leading
members in 2010.

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Populism as political marketing technique

In conclusion, the Austrian political environment turned out to be a fertile ground for the
rise and enduring success of populist parties. Its political culture is still a mixture of subject and
civic orientations, with strong xenophobic tendencies including a widespread aversion to the
European Union. Those tendencies have become even more vivid in the 1990s due to the
parallel processes of modernization and Europeanization (rising numbers of unemployed,
immigrants, etc.). Relying on up-to-date market intelligence, a long-term strategy and a
handful of professional marketers, the FPÖ has turned into to a marketing-oriented party and it
has been successful in filling the gap that the SPÖ and ÖVP left open (Kickl 2008). In doing so,
Haider and Strache, two strong, charismatic and eloquent leaders, have put populist discourse
on the political stage in Austria. A media system in which the tabloid Kronen Zeitung possesses a
universally unique scope has alleviated this process. Today, it seems very likely that the FPÖ
will hold its position as the third strong force and that the FPÖ’s techniques of populist political
marketing could serve as a role model for other populist parties in Europe.

Advice for practitioners

Although it is widespread, populism is still not a universally applicable marketing technique. It is a
universally reoccurring, non-lasting phenomenon. There are numerous environmental factors
that have to collude both on the macro level and on the meso level. Still, we assume that chances
for populists are increasing, even in consolidated liberal democracies. There are three main factors
that might facilitate a rise in populism: (a) people are departing from ‘old-fashioned’ political
parties, instead opening themselves to short-term influences and convincing products; (b) fun-
damental changes in the media environment have just begun and in future rhetorically skilled
populists will be able to reach consumers directly and interactively via hybrids of mass and new
media (Mazzoleni 2008); (c) marketing strategies are becoming more accepted in politics, and
political actors have started to look for approaches that have proven successful.
Populism has repeatedly turned out to be an efficient way to get the message out and
to attract a notable share of voters. However, in most cases populism has been a short-term
phenomenon and populists have failed to build up stable relationships with their supporters. We
assume that such failures reflect the insufficient information held about potential supporters and
their needs, the inadequate way in which cohesive and convincing political alternatives are
developed and implemented, and – probably most important – the continuous effort needed in
market orientation, self-reflection and evaluation. Thus, if we were to advise politicians on how
to use populism as a political marketing technique, we would suggest starting with professional
market analysis. As a next step, qualitative research (i.e. focus groups) might help to create the
right ‘products’ and develop the most appropriate communication mix. A special focus should
be placed on the political leader himself/herself – you simply need an internally undisputed and
externally assertive politician with charisma and excellent media skills. Finally, as the Austrian
case demonstrates, populist actors are able to build lasting relationships if they do not cease their
activities on election day. Backed-up by market and opinion research, a continuing process of
product readjustment has to be structurally guaranteed.

Impact on politics
An evaluation of the impact of populism as a political marketing technique depends on the
political context on the one hand (i.e. the political system and political culture) and our
understanding of democracy on the other hand. Taking the position of participatory or deliberative
theory, populism must be considered dysfunctional, since it undermines equal participation of the
people as well as rational discourse. Only the liberal, representative model of democracy, which

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Georg Winder and Jens Tenscher

stresses the importance of intermediary forces such as political parties, would consider populism as
a generally acceptable mode of political communication. In that sense, the effects of rising
populism are ambivalent. On the one hand, it could spoil democracy and political culture, as it
threatens not only established political parties but also public cultures of constructive controversy
which are vital to any liberal democracy. On the other hand, rising populism might have a
positive impact on politics: populist parties have always been an integral element of modern
democracy and they are often seen as a necessary barb for competing political parties, which tend to
readjust in response and thus move closer to people’s demands more quickly (e.g. Decker 2006).
The democratic issue for the future will be whether populist parties move closer towards the
market-oriented model and thus achieve longer-term success. Populists’ adjustment to market
orientation could prolong their existence compared with product- or sales-oriented populist
parties. In the long run, we would argue, it is only market orientation that could guarantee
lasting success for populist parties here too, particularly when control over the media is fading.
After all, compared with ‘old’ democracies, populism is not only more accepted in most tran-
sitory societies, but it is also one of the biggest obstacles to democratization. Ultimately, it is this
normative dimension for democratization and the people that has to be taken into account
when we look at the spread of populism as a political marketing technique in the future.

The way forward

Although we assume that populist actors have been increasingly keen to adapt political marketing
techniques, our assumption has been until now primarily based on single case studies. There is a
major deficit in empirical analyses that would either longitudinally or cross-sectionally compare
culture-specific variants of populism (e.g. Betz 1994; Mény and Surel 2002; Albertazzi and
McDonnell 2008). This deficit becomes even more obvious when we look at populism from a
political communications or marketing perspective. Therefore, our integrative approach is rather
novel. To back our argument, some empirical research would have to be done. Such research
should take the complexity of potentially relevant macro and meso variables into account. Thus,
we need empirical studies that use a most dissimilar design when looking at the independent
variables. Ideally, those studies would look at the dependent variable, i.e. the development and
transformation of political communication of populist parties within and between countries. We
are not interested in explanations for the rise and disappearance of populist actors, but we need to
sharpen our understanding of the impact that communication matters have on populist parties.
Such empirical findings are indispensable when it comes to the practical applicability of our
concept. Practitioners simply need reliable information about the conditions under which a
populist approach to political marketing might ensure political success. They have to be aware
of the risks with which successful populists are confronted, both politically and publicly.
Therefore, we not only have to strengthen our empirical research in that field, but also our ethical
and normative considerations. It will not be enough to provide practitioners with a ‘how to do
populism as political marketing technique’ kit. What is also desperately needed are theoretical,
ethical and normative discussions about the practical relevance of populists and their marketers’
actions. We hope that this chapter has opened the field for further research and discussion.

Note
1 We would like to thank Iris Höller, Lore Hayek and the two anonymous reviewers for their input on
an earlier version of this chapter. This research was carried out under the auspices of the Austrian
National Election Study (AUTNES), a National Research Network (NFN) sponsored by the Austrian
Research Fund (FWF) (S10904-G11; S10905-G11).

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Populism as political marketing technique

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19
Something old, something new?
Modelling political communication in the
2010 UK general election

Jenny Lloyd

The topic: political communication

It might be argued that political communication is one of the primary drivers of an effective
democracy (Cook 1998) and, as such, an understanding of the political communication process is
essential to those seeking to work within one. In its most simple form, ‘political communication’
has been defined as the transmission of political messages between government and voters (Baek
2009). However, it is clear that the contemporary political communication landscape is much
more complex than this. According to Manheim (2011), in addition to conventional sources,
modern political communication has also evolved to include messages from non-governmental
sources such as advocacy groups, corporations, international organisations and even insurgent and
terrorist groups. These touch every aspect of contemporary political life with their aim to not
only inform but to influence and persuade.
It is not only the nature of the participants in the communication process that have devel-
oped; the media channels and vehicles through which political messages flow have also altered
significantly over recent decades. It has been noted that the growth and proliferation of digital
technology has resulted in an increasingly fragmented media landscape (Jenkins 2006) and a
greater propensity for consumers to be more selective in their media choices (Bennett
and Iyengar 2008). Furthermore, public disillusionment with political institutions (Mortimore
2002) and with conventional media and journalism (Hamilton 2004) suggests a propensity for
voters to look to non-conventional sources of information, which they believe have greater
authenticity.
It is thought that the structure and organisation of the media affects political actors’ ability to
diffuse their messages amongst the voting public and, as such, has the potential to negatively
impact upon the voters’ ability to cast informed votes (Bennett 1990; Bennett et al. 2007;
Bennett and Iyengar 2008). This being the case, it becomes imperative that those who see the
media as an essential pillar in the support of effective democracy understand the logistical
implications posed by the new media landscape so that they can plan their media campaigns in a
way that can target specific voter groups but also can proactively respond to the non-conventional
political influences in the contemporary communication environment.

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Jenny Lloyd

Previous research: conceptualising the communication process

In political marketing literature, scant attention had been paid to modelling the contemporary
process of political communication (see Lloyd 2009). Even in the broader field of marketing
communication, there appeared to have been only limited attempts to model pathways of
message transmission.
Where references to the process of communication do exist in political marketing literature,
they are limited and tend to relate to Katz and Lazerfeld’s (1955) two-step flow process of
communication with a focus on the content (i.e. influence) as opposed to the physical, logistical
transmission of a message.
Discussions pertaining to the physical transmission of messages tend to draw upon classic
models of the communication process such as that of Shannon and Weaver (1949) (see Figure 19.1).
This model is very reflective of its era in that it conveys the physical and mechanical process of
message transmission. Despite this, it clearly underpins many of the subsequent developments in
the field, none less than that of Westley and MacLean (1957) (see Figure 19.2) whose model of
mass communication not only recognises the fact that messages are often compiled on the basis
of information derived from multiple sources (X1, X2, X3), but also that messages may travel
via multiple media (A, C) before they reach their final destination (B). Additionally, it recognises
the potential existence of feedback from the receiver once the message has been received.
In the field of politics, discussions pertaining to issues of communication tend to focus on
specific areas such as the impact of communications, its role in agenda setting (Scheufele 2000),
priming (Mendelson 1996) and framing (Scheufele 1999; Entman 2006), and its link or influ-
ence on voter engagement or participation (Norris et al. 1999; Norris 2000). Alternatively,
bodies of literature consider issues in relation to the function, role or impact of emergent
communications channels or vehicles such as the internet (Best and Krueger 2005) and blogs
(Lawson-Borders and Kirk 2005; Eveland and Dylko 2007).

Figure 19.1 Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) model of communication

Figure 19.2 The Westley and MacLean (1957) model of mass communication

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Something old, something new?

New research: using constructivist grounded theory to create a

contemporary model of political marketing communication
To address this apparent theoretical gap, a constructivist grounded theory approach was adopted
to explore and interrogate the political communications process by considering the receiver
perspective and interviewing the voters themselves. This approach clearly coincides with a
political market-oriented approach (Lees-Marshment 2001), places the ‘market’ (i.e. the voter) at
the centre of the research and reflects Shimp’s (2000) view that when working within the context
of an integrated marketing communications process, one should start at the consumer and work
backwards towards the communicator.
Grounded theory was thought the most appropriate for this study because of the paucity of
current models and its acknowledged ability to generate new theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967;
Charmaz 2000; Goulding 2002). By taking a ‘constructivist’ perspective it was hoped that issues
and criticisms associated with apparent methodological conflicts of positivism versus objectivism
(Goulding 1998; Allen 2003) might be addressed.
Prior to the 2005 general election, twenty-four respondents were interviewed using a political
‘life history’ technique. According to Goulding (1998) the number of interviews required for any
single study is arbitrary as it should be determined by that point at which subsequent interviews fail
to yield new insight, known as the point of ‘saturation’. However, depending upon the focus of
the topic, Riley (1996) suggests that a sample size of between eight and twenty-four interviews are
likely to be sufficient to reach a point of saturation and this was proven to be the case in this instance.
Mariampolski (2001: 53) defines ‘life history’ interviews as ‘a mode of in-depth interviewing
which focuses on the evolution of behaviours and attitudes over the life course’. It was the
research method of choice in this case because its long-term focus not only lent insight into the
current media consumption behaviour and preferences of the respondents, but also their evo-
lution over time, thus giving some idea of the potential trajectory of consumption changes. The
assumption of a clear political focus in the interview meant that it was possible to avoid one of
the frequently cited problems associated with both grounded theory and life history interviews:
unmanageable volumes of data (Chicchi 2000).
Transcripts of interviews were analysed on an ongoing basis throughout the research process
and the results were used to inform subsequent sample selection. This process is in line with the
theoretical tenets of grounded theory, which state that respondents should be purposefully
selected on an ongoing basis according to category development and emergent theory (Goulding
2002). Following each interview, the transcript was analysed and coded on a line-by-line basis
and the results were grouped together under the headings known as ‘conceptual codes’.
Recurring themes were identified and the conceptual codes were further grouped into the ‘core
categories’ which were used to underpin the creation of the theoretical framework and, ultimately,
a model of contemporary political communication, depicted in Figure 19.3.
Following the 2010 UK general election, eight of the original respondents were contacted
for follow-up interviews. In the period between 2005 and 2010 there had been a number of
significant events that had the potential to affect the electorate’s interaction with the political
communication process. The emergence of broadband and increased access to computer tech-
nology had broadened the channels of communication whilst the worldwide recession and the
collapse of the banks together with scandals pertaining to MPs’ expense claims and other alle-
gations of political corruption had potentially affected the electorate’s ability to accept and
process political communications once transmitted. Therefore, the aim of this additional
research was to check the validity of the original model and also to determine whether devel-
opments in the economic and technical landscape had altered political communications’

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Figure 19.3 The UK general election in 2005: A model of political communication

structure and behaviour. These interviews were conducted in a similar ‘political life history’
fashion using constructivist grounded theory. However, in this instance the respondents were
asked to give an account of the period starting from the 2005 UK general election until the
present day.
The model generated on the basis of the 2005 data showed that many of the basic character-
istics of the classical models by Shannon and Weaver (1949) and Westley and MacLean (1957)
still applied. It was clear that the communication process possessed five key characteristics.

Lack of direct contact

None of the respondents interviewed had experienced unmediated contact with their MPs,
prospective parliamentary candidates or any member of local or national government. None had
received a visit from canvassers or the electoral candidates themselves. The closest thing to direct
contact that the respondents appear to have experienced was political interviews and speeches on
television or radio, but their credibility as political messages appeared undermined with
respondents repeatedly used words like ‘false’, ‘stage managed’ or ‘spin’. Further, it was felt that
the credibility of political interviews often undermined the personal agenda of the interviewer
and the overly forceful style of interviewing by journalists and presenters like Jeremy Paxman was
particularly disliked. According to one respondent:

It’d be all right if he’d let them get their answers out – but he won’t … he just keeps on
interrupting them and goes on and on. You lose track. I just feel like screaming ‘will you
shut up’ … but I just switch off instead.

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Multiple media stages

Instead of direct contact, political communications received by respondents have generally tra-
velled via multiple media before reaching their final destination. Respondents said that it was
often the case that the communications they received and gave most credence to were actually
commentaries or editorials that were themselves commenting on news reports. These, it was felt,
offered clarity in an information landscape considered by most respondents to be complicated and
ambiguous. One respondent particularly liked ‘Littlejohn’, a correspondent in the UK newspaper
the Daily Mail:

I always read Littlejohn. He’s for people like me and you know where he stands. I like it
simple and to the point – none of this fannying around – simple and straight to the point.

The impact of noise

A factor of particular importance to emerge in the contemporary communications process is the
impact of ‘noise’, defined as factors that may inhibit the effectiveness of the communications
process. There are a number of different types of noise but the research suggested that they can be
broadly divided into two: internal factors, which relate to the individual’s psychological state and
ability to process communication; and external factors, which originate from factors outside of
the individual.
The data analysed in this study supported Wu and Newell’s (2003) proposition that an indi-
vidual’s state of mind can affect their ability to process information. In particular, it became clear
that the emotions of fear, stress and anger surfaced during elections, particularly amongst the
older respondents, as political parties discussed policy platforms pertaining to social security,
national security and pensions. When talking about pensions policy and her savings, one elderly
respondent felt desperate:

I don’t know how I’m going to cope. One party says one thing and another says another.
I can’t make head nor tail of it, you see. All the time I see my little income dwindling
and I don’t know what to do.

These results concur with the findings of Mundorf et al. (1991) which suggest that
intense mood states of all types, and particularly negative ones such as anger, can result in
the creation of ‘blocks’ upon stimuli. The impact of such blocks, or internal noise is that,
potentially, certain messages are only partially received or, at times, their reception is blocked
completely.
With regard to external noise, it became clear that one particular form, ‘clutter’, had a major
impact upon the respondents’ ability to receive and accurately process information sent to them,
particularly during election time. Clutter is defined by Tellis (1998: 354) as the ‘proliferation of
ads that compete for an audience’s attention within a particular time period or printed space’.
Quite simply, the greater the number of communications received by an individual, the less
time he or she has to give to process each one. Within the context of a general election, the
sheer volume of media coverage together with the leaflets, posters and other promotional
material issued by each of the parties, naturally creates clutter. In this study it was clearly the
case that many of the respondents felt overwhelmed by the volume and sometimes contra-
dictory nature of the communications and, as a result, looked for information shortcuts such as
the aforementioned Littlejohn, or simply decided to ignore the communications completely.

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Another form of external noise, ‘semantic’ noise, was identified by the research as a
potential barrier to communication. Defined by Fiske (2002) as the extent to which meaning
is distorted during the course of the communication process, semantic noise can occur either
intentionally or unintentionally. In political communications, the research results support
Watson’s (2003) proposition that semantic noise can be the result of the use of ambiguous
language, overly technical terms or jargon, or a simple lack of explanation. One respondent was
adamant:

I can’t understand it. New Labour? New Labour? What’s new about it? I simply don’t
understand. [Respondent’s own emphasis.]

A final type of external noise identified by the study is that of external distraction. According
to Watson (2003), because of the high quality of modern-day message transmission, this type of
noise has replaced the ‘mechanical’ noise originally identified by Shannon and Weaver (1949).
The busy lives of the respondents resulted in almost all stating that they did not have the time
or the inclination to read party manifestos, campaign leaflets or sit down and watch party
political broadcasts. In particular, the two youngest respondents, aged 17 and 18, respectively,
felt that politics had no relevance to them. This was evidenced by one of the respondents who,
when talking about the eventual election result, said:

Like, I’m not a home owner and I don’t have a job so it really doesn’t matter … does it?

The importance of reference groups

On receipt of a message, it became clear that reference groups had a major part to play
when determining whether the receiver accepted the message as originally intended by the
information source. In this study, ‘reference groups’, defined as ‘an actual or imaginary indivi-
dual or group conceived of having significant relevance upon an individual’s evaluations,
aspirations, or behaviour’ (Cohen and Golden 1972: 54), generally took the form of family or
close friends for the younger respondents. In these cases, referents tended to be seen to possess
what Cohen and Golden (1972) term ‘information power’ – the power to give meaning to
the message by filling in any gaps in knowledge or understanding. However, as the respondents
grow more knowledgeable it appears that there was a greater tendency to seek reinforcement of
their existing views by referring to people or bodies they felt to be credible commentators on the
subject and thus possessed ‘expert power’. One young respondent reflected on the regular
references made to past Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher during the election
campaign:

I know stuff about her … but because I was too young, I don’t know. Loads of
people have said different things, like my family who said she was good because she
did all this stuff. But now I’m at work, I’m hearing that she did other things and I’m
not sure.

The lack of feedback

An interesting feature of the model was the perceived lack of opportunity for feedback.
Respondents felt that they were subject to communications from politicians and political parties

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but there were few if any opportunities to respond. The lack of opportunity for feedback was
frequently cited as a source of frustration. This feeling was typified by one respondent when
discussing his feelings regarding government policy and, in particular, the Iraq War:

I will be quite angry and it’s just sickening. But what can you do? I don’t think there is a
way of showing your dissent any more.

Political communications in 2010: the findings updated

Analysis of the voters’ 2010 transcripts revealed that two of the basic principles of the 2005 model
still remained. First, it was clear that the multisource, multistage model still applies. Responses indicated
that information about the 2010 election was gleaned from multiple sources and that the multistep
model of mass communication applied to the majority of the information consumed. All of the
respondents stated that they formed their opinions through the assimilation of information from
multiple sources and that the majority of these sources took the form of reporting and editorials.
Older respondents tended to favour the more traditional media. For example, one respondent stated:

I liked the BBC and The Telegraph. Sometimes I listened to the radio too. That John Pinaar
is nice … I like his voice. He explains things.

Whilst younger respondents also assimilated information through the traditional media, it was
more incidental and the information derived took the form of ‘soundbites’. However, if they
encountered a topic of interest, they would actively research it, usually through the internet.
Second, there was still a distortion of message transmission by noise. A consistent theme to
emerge from the transcripts was the increasing impact of noise, both internal and external, upon
the effectiveness of political communications. Four of the respondents said that they felt over-
whelmed by noise in the form of clutter through the sheer volume of coverage that the election
achieved in the media, together with leaflets, posters and other promotional material. One
respondent was adamant:

It’s too much. Every time you turn on the telly they’re there saying the same old ‘yak yak’.
They don’t say anything new. I don’t listen … I just switch off.

The presence of internal noise was also apparent in this study. The recessionary economic
climate and debate about cuts in public spending had a clear effect upon the respondents’
willingness and ability to listen to and process messages. In analysing the transcripts, the
respondents expressed fear and anger in their response to economic discussion in the media.
‘I don’t want to listen but I feel I have to …’ and ‘It’s so scary …’ and ‘I just want to bury my
head in the sand or run away’ are typical of respondents’ expressions of fear, whilst anger was
directed at politicians on all sides for their apparent impotence.

They should have known what was happening … it’s their job, isn’t it? And now … the
bankers, they walk away scot free and they’re not doing anything … none of them. It’s
disgusting.

However, analysis of the transcripts revealed some interesting developments that appear to
emerge as a result of the introduction of a series of televised party leaders’ debates, technological
developments and environmental factors.

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Perceived increase in ‘direct’ communication and dialogue

The televised debate made a big impression on all of the respondents and, without exception, it
was felt to be a very positive addition to the election campaign. In particular, the opportunity for
‘normal’ people to visibly pose questions to the respective leaders and for the leader to imme-
diately respond was perceived not only as a form of direct communication but of dialogue. One
respondent put it succinctly:

It wasn’t so much us watching them talk … it was like us talking to them and them
talking back.

Perceived opportunity for feedback

Unlike the 2005 UK general election, most of the respondents felt that there was far greater scope
to respond to both politicians and political parties. ‘Talk’ radio and the radio ‘phone-in’ were
identified by all of the respondents as media offering potential for feedback. All but one cited
both the telephone and email as offering vehicles for immediate feedback, whilst the youngest
two respondents also cited Twitter. Interestingly, Facebook and the political parties’ own
websites were not seen as particularly useful. In the case of the party websites, none of the
respondents had considered even accessing them for information let alone using them as a vehicle
for feedback. When party websites were suggested as a potential vehicle for feedback, the general
feeling appears to have been that party websites were not a useful vehicle for two-way com-
munication. In contrast, three of the respondents had tried to access Facebook pages on one or
more occasions, but found them unsatisfactory. Finding the right pages took more time than the
respondents were willing to give up, as there were a number of ‘spoof’ pages. In addition, two of
the respondents commented on the apparent lack of dialogue or reasoned discussion on the
Facebook pages. According to one respondent, when he finally found the page he wanted, he
gave up because, he said, ‘it was just full of idiots with an axe to grind’.

Active creation of perceptual barriers

A recurring theme to emerge from the data was that respondents found the intensity of the media
campaign associated with the general election to be overwhelming or, as one respondent put it,
she felt ‘positively stifled’. In light of the sheer volume of coverage that the election received in
the media paired with the length of the campaign, several of the respondents actively sought to
avoid anything directly related to it. Television coverage, in particular, was singled out as being
particularly invasive.

Every time you switched it [the television] on it was someone talking election this or
election that … I just got to the point where I couldn’t stand the sight of it.

Perceptual selectivity, defined by Solomon et al. (2002: 587) as ‘the process in which people
attend to only a small portion of the stimuli to which they are exposed’, is a natural and
unconscious defence mechanism employed to stop individuals being overwhelmed by stimuli.
However, far from being unconscious, what became clear was that the respondents reached
a tipping point at which they consciously established barriers to avoid unsolicited political
communication.

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The impact of novelty

Whilst it became clear that there was a tendency amongst the respondents to actively enforce
barriers against what they felt to be an intrusive level of media coverage, what also emerged was
that where an entity was perceived to be ‘novel’, not only did it successfully overcome perceptual
barriers, but many of the respondents actively sought it out.
There were three elements to the 2010 UK general election that were perceived as novel.
The televised ‘leaders’ debates’ were particularly well received. As previously stated, not only
did respondents feel that they provided a direct channel of communication between the main
political parties and voters, but also that they provided a simple vehicle for comparison between
their respective offerings. The ‘hype’ surrounding the fact that it was the first time that a three-
way televised political debate had taken place in the UK also heightened the novelty, which
made it a ‘must watch’ event for almost all of the respondents.
An outcome of the first debate that provided an additional source of novelty was the emer-
gence of the Liberal Democrats as a viable third option. Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s
strong performance made a positive impression on one of the respondents in particular:

I’ve never thought much of the Libdems. Too soft. But he [Nick Clegg] was like a breath
of fresh air … he talked straight and he made sense … like he actually knows what he was
doing.

The presence of a third option was seen as a particularly positive development because the
respondents felt that it gave them an option they previously hadn’t considered useful before.

I never bothered with the Liberals. Bit of a waste of space, really. A wasted vote. Might as
well not have bothered getting my coat on … not going out to vote. Now, though, you
think ‘they might just do it’. It’s worth a punt just to put one in the eye of old Cameron.

The outcome of the 2010 UK general election provided the final element of novelty: the
coalition government. Interestingly, despite the perceived negative coverage in the press, most
of the respondents saw its existence as a sign of hope. This was clearly expressed by one of the
respondents:

The man on the telly said it would never work … that we might have to have another
election in the autumn. But I don’t see why … why can’t they get along … work together,
like? I think it’s good.

For the female respondents, the youthful appearance of Conservative leader David Cameron
and Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg also proved a draw. When talking about their
appearance, one of the oldest respondents commented:

Such nice looking boys … yes, it might actually be worth tuning into Prime Minister’s
Questions!

In addition to breaching the perceptual barriers erected by respondents, another effect of the
perceived novel aspects to the communication process was an increased level of engagement.
All of the respondents alluded to the fact that the debates had prompted them to think about
the issues discussed and the parties’ relative responses to questions posed. Further, all of the

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respondents said that they had discussed the content of the debates with friends or family, who
themselves had discussed the debates with other people. After the debates, half of the respon-
dents said that they had actively sought to read or listen to coverage and the media reaction, and
particularly sought out editorials or broadcasts by journalists and other sources that they trusted
or liked.
The result of this research suggests a new, post-2010 model of political marketing commu-
nications, which is illustrated in Figure 19.4. The updated model accommodates voters’ per-
ception that ‘direct’ channels of communication exist between political parties, politicians and
voters, together with the potential for voters to return feedback, have been added to the ori-
ginal model. In addition, a perceptual barrier has been added to reflect respondents’ strategies
when trying to reduce their exposure to the volume of election coverage by the media. Finally,
the number of ‘referents’ have increased and the interrelated flows of communication have been
highlighted to reflect the communal nature of the respondents who, post debates, spent time
discussing the content with friends or family or gained perspective from other individuals and
sources whom they saw as referents.
Obviously, some of the technology that has become so central to much of today’s commu-
nication processes may be seen to be new in a ‘new to the world’ sense, but these relate to the
mechanical processes of communication. As such, the question must then arise: how and in
what way is this updated model of the communication process itself ‘new’?
In truth, one must say ‘very little’. None of the components in the model depicted in Figure 19.4
are new to the world, as they have long existed in other fields such as marketing, communication
studies and psychology. Instead, the ‘newness’ of this model comes from the components’
assemblage and application within the context of the field of politics.

Figure 19.4 The 2010 model of political marketing communications

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Furthermore, what became clear over the course of the study was that the true source of
novelty in the 2010 UK general election came largely from the televised series of leaders’
debates. Whilst political debate can hardly be considered new, newness did stem from the fact
that, in this election, there seemed to be greater capacity for dialogue. Unlike previous elec-
tions, the respondents felt that they had experienced a form of communication from party lea-
ders that actually appeared to address the issues that were important to them. The presence of all
three main parties gave them a clear, simple and accessible vehicle with which to compare the
‘brands’ of politics on offer, and the presence of an audience of ‘normal’ people together with
interactive digital media meant that avenues for meaningful and immediate feedback were
perceived to exist. Ultimately, what was truly new about this election was that, for the first time
in many years, the electorate was offered political debate in a format with which they could
actively engage and respond, and they appeared to grasp the opportunity with gusto.

Advice for practitioners

At party level, the high volumes of communications involved in any electoral campaign together
with voters’ resulting tendency to selectively access and process information, means that the more
broadly based communications – those lacking in a ‘hook’ – are unlikely to engage the receiver and
are thus unlikely to reach their destination. In a tough economic climate where party finances are
restricted, this is a complete waste of time, effort and money. Therefore, this research suggests that,
when constructing a political communications strategy, the following principles should be observed:

Insight is everything
Effective political communication depends upon a message actually being received and under-
stood by its target audience. A programme of voter insight will not only reveal the most effective
combinations of media, but lend valuable insight into what aspects of the communications
process are most important to specific target groups. Starting from the voter and working
backwards through the communication chain, a clear understanding should be established as to
which combination of media is consumed, which is considered the most credible and what
aspects of noise disrupt the passage of communication at every stage.

Composite profiles enhance segmentation strategy

When segmenting the political market it is essential to go beyond the classic bases of demographic and
geographic data. Voters’ media consumption patterns and preferred sources of information are often
driven by lifestyle factors which are best analysed using the traditional bases paired with attitudinal and
behavioural data. Undertaken effectively, segments profiled using composite data have the potential to
generate insight in support of a variety of communications functions, from the formulation of message
content and creative approach to the most effective media combinations to ensure message delivery.

Use targeting to support the provision of tailored information packages

Within a multisource, multistage communications landscape, it is essential to establish the relative
role and value of each member of the communications chain either individually or in tandem
with other sources. Individual members or groups can then be targeted with tailored commu-
nications packages that correspond specifically to their information needs in terms of both content
and format. This will reduce the need for ‘editing’ and thereby increase the likelihood that the

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message will move along the communications chain in a form intended by the information
source.

Keep it simple, keep it real, keep it relevant – and don’t patronise

During elections it is extremely difficult for voters to draw clear comparisons between the variety
of political options on offer. Simple vehicles like the televised leaders’ debates proved extremely
popular in the 2010 general election as it allowed comparison of the political leaders and their
party policies side by side.
In addition, voters are more likely to pay attention to a political message if they think that it
has relevance to their everyday lives. Political messages that have resonance locally as well as
nationally are likely to draw the attention of the voter. To maximise engagement, the language
used should be clear and unambiguous and the use of political clichés avoided wherever possi-
ble. When explaining the benefit of political policies, it is just as important to address voters’
fears or concerns. Where politicians dismiss or ‘gloss over’ concerns, such behaviour is likely to
be perceived as patronising and result in the erection of perceptual barriers against future
attempts at communication.

Don’t be afraid to be different

Novelty proved to be a major vehicle for voter engagement in the 2010 UK general election.
The opportunity to try something different – from a new forum for televised political debate to a
new coalition government – excited interest amongst the media and the electorate alike. Going
forward, political parties should show themselves more willing to embrace change and engage the
electorate in conversations as to what the nature of that change should be.

Build meaningful mechanisms for feedback

It is clear that, given the opportunity, the electorate want to engage with the electoral
process. However, channels for feedback must be accessible, meaningful and, ideally, enjoyable
to access. Voters’ perception that direct, two-way communication exists is very important to the
process. Whilst relevance appears an essential requirement in order for a message to breach
perceptual barriers, the opportunity for recipients to respond not only potentially engages them,
but appears to empower them. To this end, political communication strategies should be
designed in a way that offers the recipient the opportunity to offer meaningful feedback and some
acknowledgement that it has not only been received but reflected upon and, ideally, acted upon
in some way.

Impact on politics
Whilst the model cited here offers little that is truly revolutionary in the fields of politics or
political marketing, it does highlight a potential strategy to address the political malaise that has
plagued UK democratic processes over recent years. The model as it stands behoves political
agents to obtain a deeper and more powerful understanding of the people who they seek to
govern. It requires that they understand their issues and concerns and make a genuine effort to
establish a positive and meaningful dialogue. In turn, such a targeted communications strategy has
the potential to foster a clearer understanding amongst the electorate as to the complexities and
challenges faced in government and the potential political choice on offer. The creation of

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channels for two-way communication offers voters a voice where previously it was felt that none
existed, and the opportunity for those in power to hear the unmediated response to their political
actions. Ultimately, what this model signals is a potential system that not only fosters greater levels
of informed political debate between the political elite and the political electorate, but is also
likely to result in greater levels of political engagement and participation at both local and
national levels.

The way forward

In the UK the 2010 general election gave many voters a perceived, if not real, taste of partici-
patory democracy and they appear to have responded positively. Moving forward, political
establishments should seek to build upon this through the development of local and national
dialogues. Using old established media and what may be considered truly new technology, there
is now great scope to explore and develop the concept of participative democracy and the
creation of dialogue at local, national and international levels, with the aim of encouraging civil
engagement and political participation. From an academic perspective, there is significant scope
to develop knowledge in this field. It is clear that larger-scale tests should be undertaken to
establish the generalisability of this model. Additional work on the nature and process of voter
engagement with political messages is clearly also needed to identify how effective political
dialogue can best be fostered. To conclude, whilst it is clear that the basic mechanics associated
with the process of communications have little changed over decades, technological advances
offer great prospects to reverse the trend towards falling political engagement and participation.
It is now up to those involved in the process of political communications to make it a reality.

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20
Interacting leaders
Claire Robinson

The topic: interaction with leaders

For most people interaction with political leaders is not physically experienced. It is largely at a
distance and mediated, generally through news and internet channels, but also through forms of
advertising and by the opinions of others. While it would be ideal for every citizen to have a one-
on-one relationship with their leader, this is difficult in contemporary politics. The greater the
physical distance between an incumbent or aspiring head of government and others, the more
likely it is that people’s experiences of political leadership are influenced by what they see, hear
and read about a political leader. How do people translate the messages they see, hear and read
into attributes that enable them to form a judgment about a political leader? Bean and Mughan
(1989: 1176) point to people receiving stimuli that trigger pre-existing mental images or schema
of ‘what a leader should be like’. To arrive at these schema ‘voters abstract from their experience
of past [leaders] those features and behaviors they associate with political success, and then
evaluate other candidates with respect to these same characteristics’ (Miller et al. 1986: 535).
Leadership characteristics that have been found to matter to voters include effectiveness, trust-
worthiness, strength in leadership, attractiveness, likability, integrity, reliability, listening to
reason, caring, sticking to principle and competence (Banducci 2002; Ballew and Todorov 2007;
Bean 1992; Bean and Mughan 1989; Leathers and Eaves 2008; McAllister and Bean 2006; Miller
et al. 1986). What is not widely understood, however, is how citizens arrive at assessments of
competence or trustworthiness, for example, when so much of the stimuli they receive about a
political leader or potential leader are messages about the state of their marriage, what brand of
clothing they wear, or whether they cook and clean at home – personal, often trivial, information
that on the surface has very little direct relevance to the qualities of leadership that matter. This
chapter combines recent shifts in leadership theory with relationship marketing theory and
research into nonverbal behavior and political persuasion to contextualize the importance of the
leader image, defined here as the mediated presentation of a political party leader or leadership
candidate. It offers a social interaction framework to contextualize how media audiences translate
what is being observed in a leader image into a leadership judgment. The chapter proposes that
leader image is fundamental to the offer, exercise and acceptance of political leadership in today’s
political environment.

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Previous research
Over the past 40 years politics has become increasingly personalized. Television and other mass
media changes including greater newspaper competition, tabloidization and the popularity of
newer digitized forms of social networking have enabled the news media to give greater coverage
and scrutiny to the appearance, behavior, private lives and narratives of political leaders and
leadership candidates. Alongside this has been the rise to prominence of professional image
consultants and brand strategists – people employed to manage the image of political leaders.
Scholars have been increasingly worried that this ‘personalization of politics’ has become more
important than ever before, to the point of taking precedence over principle, policy and the
rational deliberation of objective information, in determining the outcome of democratic elec-
tions (Brader 2006; Dean and Croft 2009; Erickson 2008; Mutz 2007; Postman 1987; Street
2004). Despite the attention accorded leaders’ personal lives in the media, however, researchers
have found that leadership personality factors are still not as significant an influence on voter
decision-making as party predisposition and policy preference (Bean 1992, 2003; Bean and
Mughan 1989; Hayes 2009; King 2002; Senior and Onselen 2008; Vowles and Aimer 2004;
Poguntke and Webb 2005). Having said that, King’s (2002) study found that it is possible for
even a small leadership effect to influence an election outcome in extremely close and compe-
titive elections, and Poguntke and Webb found leader effects on voters significant and/or
increasing in 11 out of the 14 countries examined in their 2005 study. Outside the campaign
period leadership effects have the potential to inflict even more damage, with the public’s
reported opinions of the traits and popularity of political leaders affecting leaders’ levels of support
from within their own party. Over the past few decades, for example, a number of New Zealand
and Australian party leaders (most recently Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2010) have
been ‘rolled’ by their own caucuses outside election campaign periods, with a decline in their
personal popularity measured by public opinion polls often cited by caucuses as justification for
the leadership change (Robinson 2009).
What does political marketing offer to this discussion? Where political leader image is dis-
cussed in the literature it is principally in the context of political marketing management
(Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy 2007); that is, in relation to the processes and tactics political
parties and strategists devise to satisfy voters. Leader image is regarded as part of the marketing
mix, a ‘tool’ in the armory of political strategists (Kotler 1975; Lees-Marshment 2001; Newman
1999); a product controlled, packaged and styled to appeal to the electorate (Campus 2010;
De Landtsheer et al. 2008; Scammell 1995; Smith 2009). Somewhat problematically, this concept
of packaging implies that there is no intrinsic content in a leader image. This devalues the
contribution that political marketing can make to an understanding of contemporary political
leadership, a subject that is normally claimed for study by political science. Henneberg and
O’Shaughnessy (2007: 21) have called for more theory and concept development in the area of
leader image, writing that ‘political marketing can succeed with repackaging, repositioning, and
makeovers … but we lack a clear conceptual understanding of how this affects voters, the media
and other stakeholders. Political marketing theory needs to address this issue and the specific
impact that leadership perceptions have.’

Relational leadership
However, recent business leadership studies literature does provide a way to conceptualize the
link between the political leader image and leadership judgment. For a long period leadership
studies was dominated by the need to define the qualities and characteristics that business leaders

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should have: the traits, behaviors, intelligences, skills and competencies needed to lead, and the
extent to which certain leaders possess these qualities. While this shed light on the ‘what’, ‘why’
and ‘who’ of leadership, researchers and scholars have recently begun to question the ‘how’ –
how leaders enact leadership behavior, and how those experiencing leadership recognize and
judge leadership qualities from that behavior. Studies have focused on such areas as the practice of
leadership (Carroll et al. 2008; Crevani et al. 2010), aesthetic leadership (Duke 1986; Hansen et al.
2007; Ladkin 2008; Smith 1996), relational leadership (Uhl-Bien 2006) and embodied leadership
(Sinclair 2005). While nuanced differently (and there is not the space here to detail each area),
there are commonalities in the way these researchers and scholars conceptualize leadership. Theirs
is a social constructivist view (Fairhurst and Grant 2010). They argue that the behavior of a leader
does not constitute leadership until it is perceived to be so by a follower. That perception is generated
in the interaction between people and a leader over time. There is a relational aspect to this
interaction that will be embodied, experienced and/or sensed through communicative practices.
There are parallels between this conception of leadership and theories of relationship mar-
keting (RM) and customer relationship management (CRM). The field of marketing has in
recent times shifted to a greater appreciation of the relationship between suppliers and customers –
equivalent to leaders and followers – as it recognizes that customers rather than suppliers
determine the long-term worth of a product or service. According to these theories customers
look to a supplier’s desire and efforts to enter into a relationship with them before they put their
trust in, and make a long-term commitment to, that supplier, their product or the services they
offer. It is the quality of interactions between customer and the supplier over time that determine
the extent of a customer’s satisfaction with a product or supplier. Businesses that are alert to this
put effort into the development of long-term relationships with existing customers, considering
this to be of greater economic value than constantly chasing new customers (Aurier and N’Goala
2010; Finne and Grönroos 2009; Grönroos 1999; Gummesson 2008; Harwood et al. 2008).
What happens when these ideas are applied to political leader image and political leadership?
Political leadership is more commonly thought of as a power, rather than a social relationship,
so considering it through the lens of social interaction is a novel approach. However, social
interaction provides a useful framework for appreciating the significance of the images that
citizens are observing and from which they are generating leadership meaning. A cursory scan of
leader images in any media channel will show that audiences are in constant exposure to images
of leaders interacting with and relating to others: be it with a child, a partner, a voter, another
politician, a celebrity, an official, a journalist, a photographer, a world leader, a competitor, an
audience, party members, colleagues, or protestors. Most leader images also have a relational
aspect, be it as friend, foe, guest, guide or messenger, and most images contain a sensed aspect:
whether it be a leader listening to someone speaking to them, chairing a meeting, talking down
the barrel of a camera to an audience at home, or shaking hands with people at a rally. Framing
leader image in terms of social interaction enables evidence-based research into nonverbal
behavior to be drawn upon to help explain how people relate their understandings of the rules
and conventions of social interaction with political leadership schema when processing and
negotiating meaning from leader images. The next section will set out a new framework,
building on this literature.

New research – proxemic interaction framework

The framework presented here provides for analysis of the nonverbal messages conveyed by
leader images. Nonverbal messages are the primary method by which relationships are com-
municated in the still or moving media image (Adler et al. 2007; Remland 2004; Surawski and

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Ossof 2006). Recognizing this is an increasing body of research into the connection between
nonverbal cues and political perception and decision-making, particularly the link between
appearance-based trait inferences and voting (see Grabe and Bucy 2009; Olivola and Todorov
2010; Riggio and Riggio 2010; Stewart et al. 2009).
The framework is divided into four categories based on proxemic zones, or the distances
people maintain between each other in social situations that signal their degrees of interest,
involvement and attraction to others in Western cultures. Each of these spatial zones lends itself
to the enactment or embodiment of different social behaviors and actions and each carries a
distinctive set of meanings that people interpret using their understanding of the conventions of
social interaction (Adler et al. 2007; Leathers and Eaves 2008; Remland 2004). The idea of
proxemics was developed by anthropologist Edward T. Hall (1966). Hall identified four types
of proxemic distance: Intimate distance – beginning with skin contact and ranging out to about
18 inches (0cm–45cm); personal distance – defined as anything from 1.5 feet to around 4 feet
(45cm–1.2m); social distance – extending from approximately 4 to 12 feet (1.2m–3.7m); and
public distance – running outwards from 12 feet (3.7m). Hall’s proxemic definitions were
devised in the 1960s as a method of understanding relationships when people were in the same
physical vicinity as each other. To apply them to the messages of social interaction presented by
political leaders in a mediated environment, awareness of the actual physical distance between
leaders and observers has to be suspended, and in its place a mimicry of interpersonal distance
has to be applied. This is a phenomenon created by the moving or still camera shot length
minimizing the actual distance between audience and presenter (Meyrowitz 1985). Once a
mimicry of interpersonal distance is applied, it is possible to equate each proxemic zone with
the social situations in which a Western political leader will be most commonly observed in
mediated images interacting with people – in face-to-face, one-on-one, small and large group
contexts.
In the section below the following questions are examined for each proxemic zone: How is
the leadership message enacted nonverbally? Through what form of communication and media
channel is the message transmitted? What is the mimicked interpersonal distance and role of the
observer? How much control does a political leader have over their image? Between whom is
the observed relationship? What is the leader’s/strategist’s intent? What are audiences looking
for? How does this translate into a leadership judgment? What is the relative importance of this?
Each proxemic zone is illustrated with an empirical example.

Intimate distance: face-to-face

How is the leadership message enacted nonverbally?

At face-to-face distance, the leadership message is most commonly conveyed in a close-up head
and shoulders image of a leader making a direct appeal to the audience down the barrel of a still
or moving image camera. Messages are primarily communicated through eye contact, appearance,
clothing, facial expression and body posture.

Through what form of communication and media channel is the

message transmitted?
The image may be found in a television address or election broadcast, a web video, social
networking site, poster, billboard, newsprint advertisement, brochure, newsletter or book cover.
In the 2010 British general election campaign, leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron

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utilized the face-to-face address as his primary means of communicating with British voters in
two of the party’s five election broadcasts. He spoke direct to camera in a front-on head and
shoulders camera shot. He wore a blue shirt with no tie and the top button undone, suggesting a
conservative but relaxed and friendly nature. He was located in a tidy backyard with symbols of
middle-class domestic aspiration – children’s wooden play equipment and trees in blossom –
visible in the background. He also utilized the direct address in videos posted on the Conservative
Party website, under the heading ‘webcameron’, where he would pull aside from events on the
campaign trail and talk to viewers about matters of the day (see www.conservatives.com/Video/
Webcameron.aspx). It was a significant point of difference between Cameron and Labour leader
Gordon Brown, who did not engage in any face-to-face address with voters in Labour’s election
broadcasts, and very little in any other social media.

What is the mimicked interpersonal distance and the role of the observer?
The actual distance is between the leader and the camera lens, and the transmitted/published
image/screen and the receiver. The mimicked distance is directly between the leader and the
audience in their homes or offices.

How much control does a leader have over their self-presentation?

Leaders and their media strategists have total control of the leader’s appearance, words, setting,
length of broadcast and choice of transmission channel.

Between whom is the observed relationship?

It is a direct relationship between a leader and individual members of an audience. At this distance
the audience is both an active participant as well as an observer, which makes it harder for
audiences to be detached.

What is the leader/strategist’s intent?

To convey the leader’s desire for an honest, friendly and trusting relationship with individual
members of an audience (Messaris 1997). They want audiences to like them.

What are audiences looking for?

Subconsciously, audiences are looking for physical signs that establish whether a leader is benign.
The more attractive the appearance of the leader, the less of a threat they are perceived to be.

How does this translate into a leadership judgment?

Researchers have found that people use appearance to make instant and instinctive trait judg-
ments of politicians and that physical attractiveness exerts a major influence on impression for-
mation, strongly affecting the personality traits and qualities that are attributed to people (Leathers
and Eaves 2008). Attractiveness has a ‘halo effect’, causing observers to infer other positive
behavior and personality traits like competence from a good looking political candidate (Ballew
and Todorov 2007; Riggio and Riggio 2010; Surawski and Ossof 2006).

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What is the relative importance of this?

While appearance is perhaps the most contentious aspect of personality politics because it attracts
much public attention and has the least direct connection to issues or policy, it is not as influential
on most people’s voting behavior as is assumed. Researchers have found that, when faced with no
information, when partisanship is weak and when voters are low involved, appearance may be
used by audiences as a heuristic so that they can make instant and instinctive trait judgments of
leaders. When an election becomes more controversial and contentious, however, and with
greater voter involvement and partisanship, appearance becomes less important as an influence on
voter behavior (Ballew and Todorov 2007; Miller et al. 1986; Riggio and Riggio 2010; Riggle
et al. 1992).

Personal distance: one-on-one

How is the leadership message enacted nonverbally?

At personal distance relationships between political leader and others are manifest in one-on-one
television interviews. The interviewer and leader will usually be facing each other, both at the
same height. The background setting is usually visible. Camera shots are mid to close-up. Tone of
voice, facial expression and hand gestures help carry the message.

Through what form of communication and media channel is the message

transmitted?
Interviews may take place in a television studio, on a talk show set, or at a radio station; they may
also take place in informal or stand-up press conferences. Interviews may be published on news
media websites and may virally spread to blog and social networking sites. Edited versions will
appear on television news.

What is the mimicked interpersonal distance and the role of the observer?
Individual members of an audience are normally at a substantial physical distance from the event
(except for members of a live studio audience). However, they will observe a relationship enacted
at personal distance between interviewer and leader.

How much control does a leader have over their self-presentation?

At this distance there is substantial media framing of context, and control over timing of
broadcast. Leaders and strategists have little control over interviewer attitude, production and
editorial decisions, which camera shot is used, what is edited in and out, and what happens to the
media clip after publication. They do have control over the leader’s appearance, verbal and
nonverbal responses to questions. They also exercise control over acceptance of interview
and interviewer, time, location and subject areas for discussion, and will often agree to interviews
when it suits their longer-term objectives. In July 2010 US president Barack Obama agreed
to appear on The View, a US daytime talk show broadcast on ABC. This was the first time a
sitting US president had appeared on a daytime talk show. Obama presented himself as relaxed,
and engaged in much friendly banter with the female presenters. It was a strategic move on
Obama’s part, who needed to re-engage with a demoralized US public dealing with the

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aftermath of the BP oil crisis, the worsening of the situation in Afghanistan and the faltering US
economy. It became the most-watched episode ever, with 6.59 million viewers, and the most
watched telecast of any daytime show on ABC, CBS or NBC (Buckman 2010).

Between whom is the observed relationship?

Despite the interaction taking place between leader and interviewer, the relationship that conveys
the meaning is between the leader and the viewing audience.

What is the leader/strategist’s intent?

The leader wants the audience to consider them as relaxed, credible and knowledgeable about
the subject matter, prepared for difficult and unpredictable questions. Leaders sometimes invite
interviewers into their homes to demonstrate their affinity with the lives of ordinary people.

What are audiences looking for?

Audiences are looking for reassurance that the leader is able to select appropriate coping behaviors
in a situation they do not ostensibly control (Stewart et al. 2009). As they observe interviews over
time people will look for signs that the leader is able to retain a sense of balance and awareness of
appropriate behaviors, despite the pressures of office.

How does this translate into a leadership judgment?

Assessments of a leader as socially aware lead to judgments of strength in leadership, sticking to
principle and competence (Stewart et al. 2009).

What is the relative importance of this?

After the direct address, one-on-one interviews are any leader’s primary means of communication
with a mass audience. While audiences may learn a lot about a leader in a single interview, and
may find a leader’s characteristics on that day endearing or appalling, the overall impact or
relevance of the interview is a longer-term phenomenon. The more an audience is exposed to
leader interviews, the more familiar they will be with the leader’s body language, verbal language
and facial expressions. As time goes by leadership judgments are more likely to be based on signs
of change from the norm – out-of-character behaviors and responses that might signal a lack of
coping with the responsibility of leading the nation.

Social distance: small group

How is the leadership message enacted nonverbally?

At social distance leadership is enacted in images of political leaders meeting with small groups of
people: usually family, members of the public, staff, colleagues, supporters and other leaders. The
small group could number anything from one to ten, depending on how many people can fit
within the camera frame. Leadership will be communicated through the leader’s use of hand
gestures (like handshaking, waving), physical contact (patting a shoulder or knee, hugging, kissing),
and facial expressions (smiling, laughing together, frowning) (Bucy and Grabe 2008; Knapp and
Hall 2006).

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Through what form of communication and media channel is the message

transmitted?
The mediated image will most commonly be a full or three-quarter body camera shot, most
commonly transmitted in a still image in a newspaper, on a media website, on a party or social
networking website. It could also be in a political campaign advertisement, or on the television
news.

What is the mimicked interpersonal distance and the role of the observer?
Audiences are observers of a relationship enacted between leader and small groups of people.

How much control does a leader have over their self-presentation?

Leaders and strategists have significant control of appearance, verbal and nonverbal behavior; who
and where the leader meets people; who is permitted to photograph or film them and from
which angle; and which images are published on their own party websites and advertisements.
Leaders do not have control over editorial choice of which image or clip or part thereof is used by
a news outlet or what happens to the media clip after publication. They do not have control over
the response of some of the people they meet.

Between whom is the observed relationship?

On the face of it this is a relationship occurring between leader and people in small groups, but
this is still very much a presentation of themselves for evaluation by their more distant audience.

What is the leader/strategist’s intent?

The leader wants to convey their ability to have empathy, to relate socially to and to care
for others.

What are audiences looking for?

Humans are instinctively primed to look for caring body language to assess whether a leader is
friend or foe. They are seeking reassurance in a leader’s ability to relate to ‘real’ people. Touch
becomes an important signifier of this.

How does this translate into a leadership judgment?

Small group relationships communicate important information about a leader’s affinity with and
orientation towards people. These assessments translate into judgments of caring, likability,
trustworthiness and effective leadership (Riggio and Reichard 2008), compassion and benevolence
(Grabe and Bucy 2009).

What is the relative importance of this?

Images of leaders interacting at small group distance are important for the communication of a
leader’s ability to relate to real people. Although strategists like to control these situations, it is the

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gaffes and unscripted moments that often convey more meaning: when the leader meets someone
on the campaign trail who says something unexpected, when they make an inappropriate gesture,
when someone throws something at them. In the 2010 British election campaign, a television
station caught then Labour leader Gordon Brown with his microphone still on, in his car, calling
a member of the public a ‘bigoted woman’ after a chat on camera in the street, surrounded by a
large media entourage. Brown visibly crumpled, head in his hands, when he learned of the gaffe
as he was being filmed taking part in a live interview at a radio station later that day. Although the
British media described the episode as a disaster for Brown, Labour’s percentage vote did not
decline further as a result of this particular incident. While some observers would have seen his
behavior as duplicitous, others would have appreciated that the ‘real’ Brown was simply
expressing his frustration at having to regulate his behavior in a situation in which he had been
tested by someone with whom he did not have empathy.

Public distance: large group

How is the leadership message enacted nonverbally?

At this distance leadership messages are conveyed in images of public events like leaders’ debates
during an election campaign, and large public meetings, to which audiences choose, are invited
or pay to attend. Camera shots move between long range, at which members of the audience are
seen, and medium close-ups on the speaker.

Through what form of communication and media channel is the

message transmitted?
Debates will be televised and streamed live on television and internet news sites. Public meetings
will be covered in news stories or included in campaign advertising.

What is the mimicked interpersonal distance and the role of the observer?
Camera length of shots and angles will mimic the point of view of a viewer actually attending a
live event. Audiences at home have the added benefit of being able to see close-up camera shots
of leaders that live audiences may not see in detail. In a debate, the audience’s role is not as benign
observer. Audiences at home are active participants judging the competition.

How much control does a leader have over their self-presentation?

Leaders and strategists have significant control over the clothes leaders wear, the tone and manner
in which they deliver an address, the setting and presence of cameras. In a debate they have
control over their self-presentation and acceptance of the debate format. They will have advance
knowledge of question themes and will have rehearsed their performance, but they will not
always know in advance the precise questions asked. They will not have control over the actions
and responses of the other debaters, nor of the audience.

Between whom is the observed relationship?

In public addresses the relationship observed is between the leader and the live audience. In
debates the relationship observed is between a leader and their competition.

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Claire Robinson

What is the leader/strategist’s intent?

In debates leaders want to communicate that they have the confidence and strength to fight off
any ‘pretenders to the throne’. Ultimately they want to be judged the debate winner. In public
addresses the leader’s intent is to communicate their popularity – that they have the charisma
to attract and control a large group of followers.

What are audiences looking for?

Debate audiences will be looking for signs of how leaders respond to threat from a competitor;
who handles a complex and stressful social confrontation the best (Baker 2009; Leathers
and Eaves 2008) in a situation where there is a live audience and nowhere for the leader to
hide. In the 2008 US presidential debates Obama, on the whole, demonstrated better control
over his nonverbal responses to threat than his Republican rival Senator John McCain. Sum-
marizing this in a post-debate analysis on CNN, communications coach Bill McGowan
explained:

what you’ve seen from [Obama] in the first two debates is no great risk-taking, no big
chances he’s taken. I think he’s played it pretty safe, he’s not trying to fix what’s not
broken, and what I think he’s done extremely well is, when he’s under attack from Senator
McCain he’s sat very serenely, very placidly on the front of his chair, not twitching, not
fidgeting, not wincing, not scribbling notes, but looking him directly in the eye with a
confident look on his face. He has seemed really unflappable under attack … Obama has a
strategy on what to do physically when he is under attack.
(CNN 2008)

How does this translate into a leadership judgment?

Presentation of a confident self in relation to competition directly influences assessments of
credibility, strength in leadership (Leathers and Eaves 2008; Remland 2004), competence,
character, composure and sociability (Seiter et al. 1998 cited by Remland 2004).

What is the relative importance of this?

Relationships are not always benign. They can also be threatening. Just as people make trait
assessments from the direct address about whether a leader is going to be a personal threat, they
also want to know if the leader can be trusted to protect against threat to themselves and others.
Being judged as not coping with threat, manifest in assessments of who lost a political debate, can
be very damaging to someone’s political leadership aspirations.

Advice for practitioners

Recognize that enacting leadership behavior requires a leader to relate and be

seen to relate to people
Leader image is much more than simply packaging. It is fundamental to the establishment and
maintenance of a relationship between leader and people, which is necessary if people are to put

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Interacting leaders

their trust in, and make a long-term commitment to that leader or their party in today’s mediated
political environment. It is through the leader image that most people experience leadership, and
recognize and judge leadership qualities. Political parties will increasingly need to select leadership
candidates for their ability to sustain meaningful interactions with publics.

When relating to people, ensure that all proxemic zones are covered
As social beings audiences are attuned to reading social behavior in all proxemic contexts. The
more the leader is seen to relate in each context, the broader and deeper the leadership impression
will be. Leader images at intimate distance covey information about whether the leader is a
personal threat; at personal distance leader images demonstrate the leader’s ability to relate to
another, allowing observers to choose whether they, too, want a (mediated) personal relationship
with that leader; leader images at social distance convey the leader’s ability to relate more widely
to and care for others; and public distance images allow audiences to gauge how well the leader is
able to fend off challengers, and assess whether they have the skills to overcome threats and
become leader. Leaders need to demonstrate their ability to relate to people in all four proxemic
zones, in a wide variety of media contexts, in order to be accepted by as wide an audience as
possible.

This is a long-term phenomenon

To be properly appreciated the expression and impression of leadership needs to be considered as
something that builds over time and is experienced in a wide variety of contexts, not simply in
election campaigns. Those who consult on leaders’ images need to accept that their task is a long-
term process to create and maintain a positive relationship between leader and people over
time, rather than see it in terms of singular events and the use of certain tools. As leaders
become busier with the business of running countries, they tend to become less focused on being
seen out and about. It is a gift for challengers because they can present themselves as being more
‘in touch’.

Don’t try to control everything

Ironically, the greatest barriers to leaders benefiting from the meaning that audiences attribute to
leader images are their own strategists. So aware are they of the importance of their employer
making a good impression that they spend a large amount of time trying to avoid a leader being
seen in contexts that cannot be controlled easily. The more the leader image is managed, the
more audiences will look for signs of the ‘real’ leader in the way they respond to unmanaged
moments. If the commitment to the relationship is not genuine, the public will read this in their
nonverbal behavior, and shift their attention to a candidate or party that is showing more desire
for a relationship.

Don’t worry about the odd gaffe

The reality is that gaffes are rarely sustained, and peoples’ deeper impressions of political lea-
dership are not formed over a single incident, or even a few. The longer audiences are exposed to
the behavior, careers and personalities of political leaders and leaders in general, the more likely
they are to appreciate single incidents in context – the incidents may be amusing, unusual,
embarrassing even, but not always terminal to the protagonist’s career.

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Claire Robinson

Impact on politics
Critics of political marketing will need to reassess the relative importance of what they are
observing in the media, so the next time a leader changes their hair color, goes on a daytime talk
show, or uses a social networking site it can be better appreciated in the context of the exercise,
perception and acceptance of political leadership as a longer-term phenomenon, and not as
something heralding the end of democracy and rational choice, or as a symptom of the dumbing
down of politics!

The way forward

Further cross-disciplinary research should combine marketing theory with recent leadership
theory to enable a broader discussion about political leadership, and increase the value that a
marketing perspective can make to a subject normally considered as belonging to the more
established field of political science. The relationship concepts discussed here could be taken
further into the study of social media. Facebook and Twitter, for example, are newer vehicles for
the communication of a social relationship at intimate or personal distance. Observation to date
suggests that these channels are not well used to sustain relationships once a leader is incumbent,
so there is un-mined potential for the study and practice of relationship-building in social media spaces.
Practitioners are advised to prepare for further predicted technological changes in large-
format, high-definition (Bucy and Grabe 2008), 3D and eventually holographic in-home media
display systems. Relationships that are currently perceived at a tele-mediated distance will soon
be perceived through immersion in an experience that realistically and intimately mimics an
embodied relationship between political leaders and individual citizens. Expressions and
impressions of a relationship enacted between a leader and others are going to become more,
not less, important as time and technology march on. This will not enthuse scholars and com-
mentators, who think that there is too much emphasis on personality politics already in the
media. However, the potential for new technologies to lessen the physical distance between
leader and others is far reaching.

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21
Underused campaigning tools
Political public relations
Nigel A. Jackson

The topic: public relations

The use of public relations (PR) enables the sender of a message to identify who to target, how to
reach them and the appropriate message. It therefore constructs persuasive messages, enters into
dialogue and builds relationships to raise interest in a product, organisation or idea. Political PR is
not restricted to promoting a specific political product, but also includes building and maintaining
positive relationships with key audiences. It can include developing dialogue, considering the
receiver of the communication, raising interest in a candidate or party, and managing reputations.
This chapter will outline a model of political PR and explore to what extent it was used during
the 2010 UK general election at local candidate level. We will then suggest how it could be
developed, assessing the broader potential of PR to create more positive long-term relationships
between government and the public.

Previous research
Public relations is a well-established discipline in its own right, but Strömbäck et al. (2010) suggest
that previous references to it in political marketing do not fully understand the concept. Where
political marketing has addressed political PR, it has largely done so by equating it primarily with
media relations (Gaber 2000; Esser et al. 2000; Xifra 2010). The focus on spin and media
management (Heffernan 2006), suggests that the role of public relations is merely to gain visi-
bility, and hence relegates it to a minor short-term tactic. A more useful approach is to divide
public relations into marketing PR (MPR) and corporate PR (CPR) (Moloney 2006). MPR is
the view of political PR outlined above, namely to gain visibility by using, for example, media
relations, pseudo-events and events management to gain attention for what political actors have
to say (Brissenden and Moloney 2005). This is a legitimate use of PR, but one that is narrow,
tactical and short term. CPR supplements political marketers’ use of MPR, because it is much
more strategic, longer term and seeks to influence corporate reputation (Fombrun 1995) through
tools such as issues management, crisis management and internal communication. Whilst there is
a considerable body of academic work on the meaning and use of public relations in general,
there is very little on how it applies to the political sphere.

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Nigel A. Jackson

Previous research has only explored a rather narrow conception of PR in the political sphere,
hype and persuasion, with the latter the single most popular, with broader concepts such as
relations in public and community building being largely absent within political PR literature.
For example, Xifra (2010) interviewed the professional communicators for Spain’s political
parties and identified two key findings in their use of public relations. First, respondents stressed
the tactical nature of their work, relying on MPR techniques. Such one-way, publicity-led
tactical communication was, Xifra found, consistent with Grunig and Hunt’s (1984) press
agentry model. Second, the other model that his respondents reflected was personal influence.
This might imply a relational approach, but it did not because their focus was primarily with
journalists. Both findings reflect that his respondents, all paid employees, viewed media man-
agement as their prime job. This chapter seeks to address this omission by creating a broader
conceptual model of the tools or approaches that can be used in politics, drawing on non-political
PR literature, and then testing it empirically.

New research: political public relations conceptually

and in practice

Conceptual framework: a new model of political public relations

A number of definitions of public relations exist, with Harlow (1976) identifying 472, yet the
meaning of political PR has attracted far less attention. Indeed, a number of authors have used the
term political PR without actually defining it (Davis 2000; Strömbäck et al. 2010). Whilst media
relations is stressed (Moloney and Colmer 2001; Froehilch and Rudiger 2006), some authors
have attempted to construct a useable meaning of political PR. Strömbäck and Kioussis (2011)
suggest that as a management process, political PR aims to shape relationships with key publics to
help achieve political goals, so that Jackson (2010) notes that political PR reaches a much wider
range of audiences than political marketing. Political PR presents the views of political actors to
other political publics in a positive light. It does so by raising awareness, engaging in dialogue and
building relationships.
To assess how political actors might use political PR, we shall apply Jackson’s (2010) theo-
retical framework based upon eight different possible approaches (Table 21.1). To create a
model of effective political PR we will identify and evaluate core concepts within this framework,
using four features: purpose; tools used; where applied; intended effect.

Relations with publics

Public relations is about the relationship that political elites have with their publics, and thus
public relations practitioners should identify, reach and manage the relationship with their key
audiences. They can apply situational theory, to seek to identify who and why will be active
communicators seeking information, and therefore more likely to respond to messages received
(Grunig 1997). One obvious example of this situational-type analysis is market research, and
political marketing literature has shown how political parties have increasingly sought to collect
data on voters through polling and focus groups (Lees-Marshment 2001). The use of polling was
believed to have helped re-position Clinton in 1994 (Worcester and Baines 2006), and make the
UK Labour Party electable in 1997. Research can also be used to ascertain voter response to an
existing position, so that Sherman and Schiffman (2002) suggest that in the US 2000 election this
was not so much parties researching their key audiences, as trying to make sense of what the
electorate were thinking and their likely voting behaviour.

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Table 21.1 Model for effective political PR

School of Purpose PR tools used Application Intended effect

thought

Relations with Identify, reach and Research – the focus To support all forms To use finite
publics communicate with is not on the PR tools of PR activity, both resources efficiently
key audiences. but matching the strategic and tactical. and effectively.
The management of most appropriate Neutral in terms of
relationships message to the effect on wider
between an correct segmented society.
organisation and audience.
its publics.
Grunigian Mutual Symmetrical two- Research-focused. Win-win.
paradigm understanding. way communication Relational. Develop
Mutual benefit? based upon Strategic. conversations.
feedback. Encourage a
strategic approach
to PR.
Inclusive culture
(internal and
external).
To benefit society as
well as the
organisation.
Hype Reaching consumers Media relations. MPR. Increase awareness.
by ‘making a noise’ Online PR. Getting bums on Increase sales.
through publicity. seats. Short term.
Press agentry. Benefit essentially
the organisation.
Persuasion To inform and then Media relations. MPR – tactical To represent an
change attitudes Promotional CPR – strategic. interest.
and/or behaviour. campaigns. To inform the wider
Lobbying. public.
Community affairs/ To primarily
CSR. benefit the
Issues management. organisation, but
Uses both logic and logic-based
emotional messages. campaigns may also
benefit wider society.
Relational Develop influential Target key Issues management. Long-term benefits.
relationships. influencers. Crisis management. Build reputation.
Mutual benefit. Build networks. To benefit wider
Personal interaction. society as well as the
Sponsorship. organisation.
CSR.
Online PR.
Media relations.
Lobbying.
Corporate
communications.
Quanxi.
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Nigel A. Jackson

Table 21.1 (continued)

School of Purpose PR tools used Application Intended effect

thought

Reputation Manage Corporate CPR – shape all Build reputation.

management corporate image, communications. audiences’ Create competitive
brand and Investor relations. perspectives of an advantage.
reputation. Lobbying. organisation. Enhance profitability.
Shape public CSR. Ensure long-term
opinion. Community affairs. survival.
Issues management. A side-effect of
Crisis management. enhancing
Media relations. reputation may
Online PR. be benefits for
wider society.
Relations in Relations in the Issues management. Strategic – internal Increase the
public public (sphere) Internal and external public sphere.
and of the communications. communications Free flow of
public (sphere). Persuasion based (but probably information.
Encourage a on negotiated not customers). Encouragement of
free flow of connection Business ethics. freedom of speech.
information between audiences. Minority opinion
to society. Boundary spanning is heard.
Development of role. Reflective.
the public sphere. Uses both
communication and
relational tools.
Community By helping to Concept of To subjugate Enhancement of
building create a broad ‘general public’. interest and a communitarian
sense of Interaction. segmentation to approach.
community, this in Community affairs. enhancing Increased social
turn benefits CSR. community. capital.
organisations. Issues management. Globalisation. Improved
Two-way Multicultural commercial sector
symmetrical societies. within a more
communication. stable community.

Grunigian paradigm
PR can also be used to establish mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics
(Newsom et al. 2000), and also, to create mutual benefit (Grunig and Hunt 1984). This involves
not so much communicating to the public, but developing dialogue. Despite the dominance in
the generic PR literature of the Grunigian paradigm, there is as yet limited evidence of dialogical
PR in politics. The one exception is the internet (Jackson and Lilleker 2004).

Hype
Hype is perhaps the most commonly known aspect of public relations, creating publicity
that makes ‘noise’ through media relations to generate interest and therefore reach consumers. As

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a result, it is mostly associated with unethical ‘press agentry’, but the internet can be another
means of gaining publicity through viral marketing, as can MPR. Hype can help increase the
visibility of products (see Grunig and Hunt 1984; Xifra 2010), but without it having to be simply
spin, which attracts criticism (see Esser et al. 2001; Heffernan 2006).

Persuasion
The purpose of persuasion is to reach, inform and then change the attitudes/behaviour of key
audiences, and to make it effective, practitioners consider the source of the message, the message
itself and the personality of the message receiver (Perloff 2004). Persuasive techniques and
messages need to be ethical to be distinguished from propaganda (Messina 2007). Whilst clearly
political actors seek to use rational argument to persuade, there is evidence that they use a much
wider range of persuasive techniques. Many political messages are couched in emotional terms.
Indeed, Westen (2007) suggests that the emotional side of the brain is more influential in
determining voting behaviour than the rational side. Within a plural system, political actors use
persuasion to represent an interest.

Relational
Public relations can also be used to build relationships with key, influential stakeholders (see
Ferguson 1984) to help build the reputation of an organisation (Ledingham and Bruning 1998).
This approach is often used by pressure and lobbying groups who seek to influence government
policy (Kovacs 2001). A relational approach, by maximising ideas, contacts and political ‘muscle’,
can be the means by which individual activist groups become part of the policy community. It
could also be used by government, political parties and individual politicians.

Reputation management
This approach focuses on identifying, managing and changing the reputation of an organisation.
Whilst it is a rather intangible concept, it could have a tangible effect (Fombrun 1995; Griffin
2008). In politics, political parties that have lost a series of elections often turn to reputation
management as the solution to their problems. Studies of political market orientation and
campaigning have observed how the UK Labour Party, for example, sought to repair its image,
which could be seen as reputation management (Lees-Marshment 2001). Having lost four
elections, Wring (1998) suggests that the Labour Party developed new policies and organisational
reforms to make it electable by changing its corporate reputation. Individual elected representatives
also seek to develop their reputation (Negrine and Lilleker 2004), driven by a belief that it may
help develop a personal vote, and so buck any national voting behaviour trends. Reputation
management may be particularly useful in politics where there is crisis, scandal and delivery
problems.

Relations in public
The historical background to this approach is discussions in the 18th and early 19th centuries
concerning political representation. This European approach, therefore, is consistent with
pluralism (Ihlen and Van Ruler 2007), and is closely associated with the concept of the public
sphere (Vercic et al. 2001). The purpose of relations in public is to encourage the flow of

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information within society, and consider relations within the broader public sphere (Ruler and
Vercic 2002). There are few examples of this in politics.

Community building
Community building is about creating and maintaining a sense of community, and enhancing
and improving society by reducing conflict (Kruckeberg and Starck 1998). There is limited
evidence that political PR has been used to encourage community building. Taylor (2000)
noted that media relations was used to assist relationship building between groups and
individuals within Bosnia. She suggests that media relations, by encouraging a free press and
debate, can help developing countries to build civil society. Thus, so far at least, the ability
of public relations to build political communities seems to be more one of potential than
actuality.
These concepts are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and political actors could apply several
at the same time. Considering the literature on political PR, only some of the approaches have
been applied to public relations activity within the political sphere. The two most dominant
approaches, in terms of amount of literature, are hype and persuasion, with the latter the single
most popular. Four of the approaches appear to occupy a political niche: relations with publics,
Grunigian paradigm, relationship management and reputation management. These four
approaches tend to be applied for either specific purposes, or to meet the needs of those who
have limited political power and influence. Two approaches – relations in public and community
building – are largely absent within political PR literature.

Empirical application: political PR in practice in a local campaign in the

UK 2010 election
In terms of methodology, a pilot study was conducted during the 2010 UK general election
of parliamentary seats in the county of Devon. Interviews of prospective parliamentary
candidates (PPCs) were conducted from July to September (see the list of interviewees at the
end of the chapter). There were 75 candidates standing in the 12 Devon seats, and Table 21.2
shows that the 14 interviewed, representing just over one in five of the total, reflected a range
of factors. The sample was slightly weighted towards the bigger parties and marginal seats.
Marginality was decided using Finer et al.’s (1961) percentage of majority model, where
seats were divided into those that were safe (11 percent of votes over the next highest
candidate), near-marginal (5.1 percent to 10.9 percent) or marginal (5 percent or under). The
interviewer was unable to arrange interviews with any of the candidates from the English
Democrats (1), British National Party (5), Communist Party of Great Britain (1), and Socialist
Labour Party (2). This did limit a little the ideological range of parties, but in all cases none of
these candidates generated enough votes, or had a presence, to effect either the campaign or
its results.
The data were operationalised using Jackson’s four features: purpose; tools; application; intended
effect. Factor analysis was applied to respondents’ communication objectives, communication
channels used and impact on their campaign.

Purpose of communication
Not unsurprisingly, two approaches appear to dominate: hype and persuasion. Several candidates
made reference to gaining visibility or making noise. For example, Peter Milton, challenging to

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Table 21.2 Breakdown of sample interviewed

Factor Number of respondents

Incumbent 3
Conservative 3
Labour 5
Liberal Democrat 2
Green 2
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) 1
Independent 1
Marginal 5
Near-marginal 1
Safe 8
First 3
Second 5
Third 2
Other 4

Note: Devon Central, a new seat, was based on the notional 2005 result provided by ukpollingreport.co.uk.

win, said ‘This reflects the belief, especially in close run contests, that reputation of the candidate
may have an effect’. Luke Pollard used noise to help another candidate: ‘I wanted to use symmetric
communications as much as we could to make noise, and to appear bigger than we were. We
wanted to detract some Conservative activity moving into Linda Gilroy’s seat’. A theme common
to most interviewees, irrespective of whether they could expect to win the seat, was the desire to
win votes. Therefore, candidates tried to persuade voters to actually vote, and then to choose
them. For example, Oliver Colvile, who beat the incumbent MP, noted that ‘I had to com-
municate with the electorate in order to give them a reason to vote for me’. Persuasion was not
just to external audiences, but also to motivate activists, so Darren Jones wanted ‘to build up a
local organisation’. Essentially, candidates sought to gain attention as an important component in
persuading people to vote for them.
After hype and persuasion, the next most used approach is reputation management, where
several candidates suggested that they wanted to promote particular aspects of their character.
Typical of this was that candidates wished to stress that they were local, so, for example, Vernon
Whitlock noted that ‘our communication was primarily about promoting myself as someone
who was born and bred in the local area, and understood local issues’. Similar sentiments were also
stressed by John Underwood, Peter Milton, Luke Pollard and Gary Streeter. The three
incumbents all stressed the amount of constituency work in which they had engaged during the
previous five years or more. There was limited evidence of both relations with publics and
the Grunigian paradigm. Whilst it may be inherently implied that candidates will seek to iden-
tify, reach and manage their relationship with their publics using finite resources, this was not
mentioned overtly by the sample. In terms of identifying and reaching publics, candidates seem
to have divided these into two different types. First geographically, so that they would focus on
particular wards, towns or villages in the seat, usually where their strength was. Second
they focused on voting behaviour, for example Alison Seabeck commented that they ‘wanted
to reach out to core Labour support’, though it is worth noting that Labour candidates
reflecting that they represented the incumbent government were more likely to focus on their
core vote. Some candidates were also aware of publics in future elections, so that Lydia

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Somerville focused her efforts in two target wards for the 2011 local county council
elections: ‘so I was trying to find out how many people would vote for the Green Party’. The
purpose of communication for candidates was weighted towards being heard rather than
listening.

Tools used
We might expect that if the tools used are indicative of hype and persuasion, media relations
might dominate. In fact, all candidates believed that the two most important means of com-
munication were knocking on doors and putting leaflets through doors, suggesting little evidence
for hype. The next level of tools, but lagging far behind, was the internet and media relations;
moreover, there was a consistency of view on face-to-face communication and leaflets, which
was not the case with the second-level tools. Some candidates, typically in the more rural seats,
where the local print media showed an active interest in the campaign, did invest time and effort
in media relations. However, an almost equal number, especially in the suburban and urban seats
with different local media, did not. Similarly, candidates’ use of the internet varied from the
pioneers, such as Luke Pollard, Linda Gilroy and Peter Milton, through to the laggards, including
two who did not even have a website. Candidates relied upon a small range of channels that they
could control.
Given the focus by candidates on direct communication, the two most commonly found
approaches were the Grunigian paradigm and persuasion. All candidates knocked on doors or
telephone canvassed, but this was especially important for those hoping to win, do better than
in 2005 or build up their strength in targeted areas. For example, Phil Hutty’s parliamentary
agent believed that his candidate knocked on 9,000 doors during the four weeks of the cam-
paign. Although canvassing might appear a form of opinion polling, it inherently encourages
two-way symmetrical communication. As Alison Seabeck notes, it is ‘about finding out …
people’s voting intention, what issues are important to them’. Luke Pollard made such senti-
ments central to his campaign: ‘the message (on the doors) was we are here and listening’.
Indeed, all of the candidates who invested time in knocking on doors recounted examples of
in-depth, two-way conversation. At a far lesser level, the internet encouraged some interaction,
but candidates suggested that this was essentially at the margins. For example, a typical response
of those using Facebook was from Darren Jones, who stated ‘a lot of people on this were
family and friends, but it did help me engage with some people’. Similarly, Twitter does not
appear to have encouraged significant levels of mutual understanding, so that Colin Matthews
said: ‘I tweeted on issues I thought were interesting, and hoped would build up dialogue.
But they did not lead to much dialogue, which was disappointing’. The levels of interaction
encouraged by canvassing, and to a lesser extent the internet, were inherently persuasive
as candidates tried to get core voters to vote, or undecideds to vote for them. Indeed,
Linda Gilroy appeared to suggest that her key role was a persuasive one: ‘the job of the team
was to work across the constituency and to get our voters to turn out on the day. My role
was to speak to the swing voters’. Dialogue was at the heart of candidates’ campaigning;
the difference was whether this encouraged mutual understanding, or sought to ‘sell’ the
candidate.
Hype is at best the third most identified approach, reflecting the fact noted above that media
relations and the internet were a secondary channel. There was evidence of relationship build-
ing from most candidates prior to the campaign. For example, when selected, Oliver Colvile
deliberately sought to have a presence with the civic and business community in his local
church, the local professional rugby club and a yacht club. Yet, once the election campaign

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began such targeted relationships were less important, whereas number of individual voters
contacted mattered. Labour candidates tended to build relationships with those within trade
unions and local community groups. All of the serious candidates who were running an active
campaign, as opposed to ‘paper candidates’ (candidates who although they may do some work
locally, are by and large standing just so that the party has a presence), also sought to build
relationships with local print journalists. Only one respondent – Colvile – explicitly made
reference to relationships during the campaign, but we can assume that it was based on work
beforehand.
There is evidence of relations with publics amongst only a few candidates, such as Luke
Pollard, Oliver Colvile and Linda Gilroy. The last two used software (Mosaic) to identify pos-
sible supporters, though with more financial support from headquarters Colvile probably made
the most use of it. Prior to the election Pollard conducted surveys to identify where best to
focus his efforts, and as a result changed his target both geographically and socially. Reputation
management can be inherently assumed to be present and we return to this shortly, but in terms
of communication tools the main evidence is that of internal communications to mobilise sup-
porters and activists. There is virtually no evidence for relations in public and community
building.
In terms of the six tools we identified that might indicate either an MPR or CPR approach,
there is very limited evidence. Of the three MPR tools on which we focused, only
media relations is a common tool, but even here only six of the respondents took an active
approach and sent out press releases. Most waited for the media to contact them. Whilst all
candidates attended hustings (where all the candidates are brought together in one meeting
to discuss their policies and answer questions from members of the public), organised by local
civic groups, very few organised events themselves during the actual campaign. One held a
rally in a local shopping centre and several had candidate launches for party members, intended
to raise funds. Only Dr Steven Hopwood appears to have given a high priority to events,
when he arranged a number of public meetings. This probably reflects the fact that as an
Independent he had no party organisation. Only two appear to have constructed pseudo-events
designed to gain media coverage. Lydia Somerville paddled in a canoe to canvass some
constituents as a photo opportunity, and Dr Hopwood ‘stormed’ the local castle to launch his
campaign, and gained considerable local media coverage. In terms of CPR, there is no overt
evidence of either issues or crisis management, though we note the importance of reputation
management. All the party candidates viewed their internal audiences as very important;
this was especially the case with those who needed to mobilise volunteers for leafleting and
canvassing.

Application
If we assume that ‘strategic’ includes seeing the bigger picture and putting each individual
campaign in context, then there is some evidence for it. For example, the two Green Party
candidates were clearly following national party strategy in two key areas. First, their messages
deliberately stressed non-environmental issues, because the party was less well-known for these.
Second, following the party’s Target to Win strategy, both focused their efforts in target wards for
local elections in 2011. Several candidates, irrespective of their result in 2005, saw this campaign
as part of a much larger one. For example, Jonathan Underwood, in second place, wanted ‘to
build up our strength for future campaigns’. There is also clear evidence that Gary Streeter, Luke
Pollard, Darren Jones and Peter Milton had half an eye on the effect of their campaign on another
key target seat, with at least three sending helpers to campaign in nearby seats. Conversely, if

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‘tactical’ means focusing on immediate issues of vote winning, then clearly this was the norm for
all candidates, as it effectively comes with the territory. All candidates appear aware of tactical
issues, and most also considered strategic issues.
There is some evidence of MPR, in terms of seeking to get their voters out, so Oliver
Colvile was typical when he stated: ‘our first priority was to identify who our supporters were,
and then the second priority was to get them out to vote’. However, as noted above, few
candidates relied upon press agentry high-visibility tactics. There is evidence of CPR in terms of
trying to manage overall reputation. This was fairly obviously the case with those hoping to
win, so that incumbent Gary Streeter noted:

the reputation of Gary Streeter PLC is very important to me. I think I know what it is,
that I am local, works hard, is a committed Christian and people know what this means in
terms of principles and he gets things done.

Reputation was also important to other candidates, so challenger Phil Hutty commented
that, ‘as a candidate there is a lot of pressure as the face of the party’. Candidates also sought to
tackle long-held images of their party, so Lydia Somerville said: ‘I do think that people tend to
label the Green Party, and have this view of sandals and beards. So I wanted to address this’.
This implies that party candidates believe that their own personal reputation impacts voting
behaviour.
Overall, the level of activity amongst our sample appears weighted towards the tactical and
MPR, yet a number of candidates also took a strategic and CPR approach. Overall, this suggests
evidence of relations with publics, persuasion and probably the strongest being reputation
management, and there is less evidence for hype and the Grunigian perspective. Whilst clearly
an election campaign encourages participation and may support enhanced communities, there
is very limited evidence of relations in public and community building. It could be argued
that Dr Hopwood’s whole ‘outsider’ campaign was based on ethical objectives which would
enhance communities, but only Darren Jones, when he mentioned in his election address that
he wanted people to vote whether for himself or not, might be taking an overtly ethical
approach.

Intended effect
The two strongest approaches are hype and persuasion. All candidates clearly seek to raise
awareness of themselves and their policies; this is an inherent component of being a candidate.
They certainly all want to gain votes and although several, as noted above, have long-term goals,
all are concerned with the immediate campaign. Whilst all candidates would argue that their
policies would ultimately benefit society, they view the impact of their communication primarily
in terms of the benefit for themselves and their party, not wider societal concerns. We can assume
that candidates are largely concerned with using finite resources effectively, implying some use of
relations with publics. Several candidates view reputation management as providing them with a
competitive edge. It is arguable that within a pluralist society candidates’ use of direct com-
munication (leaflets, canvassing and the internet) does help to increase information within the
public sphere, though this may only be at an individual not a community level. There is no
evidence that social capital will be enhanced. The intended effect is on candidates’ own campaigns,
rather than any wider questions affecting the body politic.

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Conclusion
Political PR essentially represents an interest, but it also encourages a rich interaction at a range of
different levels between those active, interested or even uninterested in political discourse. As
Figure 21.1 shows, the data support existing literature that there are three categories: the
dominant, the niche and the unused. Far and away the dominant approach is persuasion, which is
either the single strongest or in the strongest group on each of the four features. This suggests that
candidates view elections as essentially a battle in which there is one winner, and so political PR is

Figure 21.1 Political PR hierarchy

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used to support one interest at the expense of another. Just below persuasion is hype, which is
clearly limited by the fact that media relations plays less of a role at a local as opposed to a national
level. The second niche level is relations with publics, the Grunigian paradigm and reputation
management. There is evidence that candidates seek some understanding of their audience, but
respond with asymmetrical communication to enhance their brand. The third grouping, with
very limited evidence, is the relational: relations in public and community building. However, it
would be too simplistic to suggest that candidates use only one approach. It could be argued that
relations with publics and the Grunigian perspective by focusing on the needs of the audience is
the direct opposite of the persuasive. Yet there is clear evidence that candidates follow a number
of different strategies and these may appear contradictory.
The data suggest that at a local level politicians have an awareness of the value of CPR. With
an absence of a reliance on mass media channels, local politicians have to be more adaptive in
how they reach their audiences. Hence, they appear more likely to use a wider range of approaches.
They use MPR, but are also aware that some CPR approaches, especially reputation manage-
ment, open up a space that they control in which they can reach voters. The enhanced use of
direct communications at a local level has two effects. First, it changes the nature of persuasion
as it is primarily one to one, rather than one to many. Second, it also encourages candidates to
consider a wider range of approaches. Local candidates may be leading national campaigners in
their application of political PR.
Xifra’s (2010) sample at a national party level, encompassing a narrow role and with limited
freedom of action, leads to very different conceptual findings from our data. There may also be
a cultural and political difference between Spain and the UK. A more local nature, during
elections and with politicians who are effectively their own boss, leads to a much broader and
strategic use of political PR to reach a wider range of audiences directly. This suggests that our
understanding of political PR will be shaped, to some degree, by the nature and role of the
sample, the characteristics of the political and electoral culture and systems they inhabit, and the
political context. However, we can assume that there is common ground between both samples, in
that they view political PR as essentially persuasive.

Advice for practitioners

Our model of political PR, although essentially descriptive of current practice within a narrow set
of political circumstances, may provide political practitioners with a template. The model suggests
two key lessons which might direct political actors’ communications behaviour. First, whilst they
may rely on a particular approach, they would be wise to supplement this with a niche strategy
which might add to any dominant approach. Second, we suggest that the hierarchical structure
identified within the confines of this research project will be different within different political
contexts. In an election situation candidates and political parties may well be advised to focus on
using PR to present their campaign in the best light in a primarily monologic way. In such a
situation the purpose of political PR is essentially to provide information and persuade. However,
between elections the same actors would be better advised to use political PR in a very different
way, in encouraging long-term dialogue. Political PR would then utilise more interactive two-
way communication as with relationship building and the Grunigian paradigm. For governments,
political PR also offers a range of opportunities based on purpose. Where governments try to
build support for their policies, then the relational and dialogic approaches should be dominant,
to build-up support for policies. This implies that governments should encourage, listen and
respond to such feedback. However, once governments are seeking to implement agreed policies
where the purpose is to inform and bring about changes in behaviour, then persuasion and hype

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should be dominant. By using the appropriate dominant and niche strategy at the right time,
political actors are more likely to gain political support at key times, and at the same time avoid
unnecessary crisis.

Impact on politics
Political PR used by prospective parliamentary candidates is primarily persuasive in nature,
reflecting their need to gain competitive advantage. It provides politicians with a means of
reaching, and sometimes interacting with, citizens and voters in a range of different ways. Political
PR encourages political actors to reach a wider audience including internal audiences, compe-
titors and even those not necessarily overtly interested in politics. As a result, candidates recognise
the value of combining both the tactical (MPR) and strategic (CPR) uses of public relations.
Political PR is perhaps more capable of presenting the human side of politics than political
marketing alone. Where political marketing tends to use MPR as a means of shouting in a loud
voice, political PR can also use CPR to effectively apply a ‘softer’ approach to communication.
The impact of political PR, then, is centred upon a human face to politics, namely under-
standing the impact of policies on individuals, and then knowing how best to communicate
this. We would suggest that most politicians are unlikely to fully follow the political PR model.
They may in the context of elections, but potentially lack the sophistication to switch approa-
ches to non-election situations. Political PR is not then a single rigid model; rather it can help
politicians consider what is the appropriate communication approach in different situations.
Using the right combination of political PR approaches may not just help win elections, but
also potentially encourage better governmental decisions and ultimately build trust in politics.

The way forward

This is a small exploratory project designed to test a new conceptual framework. As such, there
are limitations to the project. First, it was of a small sample, and a much wider one geographically
would open up new data. Second, it focused at the local level, and a comparative with national-
level strategies would provide a clearer picture. Third, it was conducted during the ‘wartime’ of
an election campaign, and the results in ‘peacetime’ may well be different. This might explain the
slightly surprising fact that the relational approach played such a limited role, as might addressing
other political actors such as pressure groups. Fourth, although an initial comparison was made
with existing data from Spain, a comparative study is required across political and electoral
systems. Further tests of the model are required to apply it to different political situations such as
policy development and implementation, different countries and at different levels. However,
overall this project suggests that political actors, in trying to reach key audiences both during
peace and wartime, should make greater use of political PR.

Bibliography

List of interviewees
Colvile, Oliver (2010) British Conservative Party MP, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport. Interviewed
9 August.
Gilroy, Linda (2010) British Labour Party, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport. Interviewed 7 September.
Hopwood, Stephen (2010) Independent, Totnes. Interviewed 19 August 2010.
Hutty, Phil (2010) Liberal Democrat, Devon Central. Interviewed 17 August 2010.
Jones, Darren (2010) British Labour Party, Torridge and West Devon. Interviewed 10 August 2010.

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Matthews, Colin (2010) British Green Party, Devon Central. Interviewed 29 July 2010.
Milton, P., private correspondence, 7 September 2010.
Pollard, Luke (2010) British Labour Party, Devon South West. Interviewed 13 August 2010.
Seabeck, Alison (2010) British Labour Party MP, Plymouth Moor View. Interviewed 26 July 2010.
Somerville, Lydia (2010) British Green Party, Totnes. Interviewed 11 August 2010.
Streeter, Gary (2010) British Conservative Party MP, Devon South West. Interviewed 30 July 2010.
Underwood, Jonathan (2010) Liberal Democrat, Tiverton and Honiton. Interviewed 30 July 2010.
Whitlock, Vernon (2010) British Labour Party, Tiverton and Honiton. Interviewed 17 August 2010.
Williams, Hugh (2010) UKIP, Devon South West. Interviewed 15 July 2010.

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22
Political marketing in an online
election environment
Short-term sales or long-term relationships?
Nigel A. Jackson, Darren G. Lilleker and Eva Johanna Schweitzer

The topic: online political marketing

The practical application of both political marketing as a concept and the internet as a campaigning
tool share a similar time frame, with both gaining attention in the 1990s. However, apart from a
few individual authors (Bowers-Brown and Gunter 2002; Jackson 2006), the two have not been
generally pulled together conceptually. Indeed, Coleman (2001) was quite dismissive over the use
of the internet in the UK 2001 general election, implying that because it only appeared to have
been used for marketing purposes, and not to enhance democracy, that this was a less worthy use.
Yet the construction of the so-called Web 2.0 era, which is based on a more interactive, bottom-
up approach (O’Reilly 2005), opens up new marketing possibilities. This chapter will seek to
assess whether the internet is supporting an essentially sales-based political marketing strategy, or
one based on longer-term relations that encourages dialogue and public expressions of opinion.
We will do this by considering the relevance of the concept of online political marketing, a child
whose parentage is conceptually political marketing and at a campaign level the internet. We will
first outline the relevant literature on political marketing and the internet, then introduce our
methodology for examining how the internet was used in four elections between 2007 and 2010,
covering four different countries: France, the US, Germany and the UK. The main findings are
summarized in the conclusion, and discussed with regard to their implications for the current state
of online political marketing.
We suggest that online political marketing describes the sustainable, goal-oriented and strategy-based
management of relationships between political actors and their stakeholders, by the means of new
information and communication technologies. In essence, political marketing is a curious mixture
of the application of marketing practice to politics online and offline, especially electoral behaviour.
It has been criticized for being neither true to politics nor marketing, but it can also be viewed
as a discipline in its own right (Lees-Marshment 2009). In fact, the link between the two was
first made by Kotler and Levy (1969), who famously suggested that candidates used the same
principles as marketers selling commercial goods. This principle has been debated for some time;
we suggest that of relevance to our debate is an understanding of political marketing practice.
Political marketing practice is not uniform; rather we can identify two different approaches to
how political actors use marketing. The first is transactional marketing where the political party

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Political marketing online

or candidate focuses on the immediate sale, or gaining the vote, which appears to be the
dominant approach of politicians (Mauser 1983; O’Shaughnessy 1990; Johansen 2005). Indeed,
Wring (1997) noted how easily traditional marketing applied to politics. This form of political
marketing would use the internet as a one-way promotional tool. Transactional marketing has
been challenged by relationship marketing, where the emphasis is on building longer-term
relationships, which inherently requires two-way communication. Bannon (2005) suggests
that as a service industry, politics applies a relationship marketing approach. Moreover,
Henneberg (2002) argues that political marketing is moving away from a sales orientation,
towards one which seeks to build long-term relationships with voters. This form of political
marketing would use the internet as a means of facilitating such dialogue (e.g. in blogs, discus-
sion forums or chats). Potentially, the internet provides a simple and cost-effective means of
reaching external and internal audiences over a long period of time. This can have positive side-
effects on political participation in general (see Hardy and Scheufele 2005; Mossberger et al.
2008), which Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy (2010) suggest may encourage citizen re-engagement
with politics.
From a conceptual viewpoint, the linkage of the internet to a transactional marketing
approach is associated with the static content of websites used within the Web 1.0 era (e.g.
information about the candidate, party or election programme, campaign paraphernalia, etc.).
However, the inherently more interactive approach implied within the Web 2.0 era suggests
that relationship marketing is more achievable. The rationale is that with Web 2.0 the stress is
on gaining feedback, and interacting within an ‘architecture of participation’ (O’Reilly 2005).
Web 2.0 makes it easier for parties to encourage interactivity, since they can build on the
technical infrastructures and services that are already established, such as Facebook, Twitter and
MySpace. This is a ‘rational choice’ for them as they do not have to rely on inventing anything
from scratch. Recent literature suggests that in the era of Web 2.0 the internet offers a means of
enhancing the relationship between those seeking election and voters (Anderson 2007; Chadwick
2009), though often the reality is that participation is used for the purposes of endorsements,
aiding brand management as opposed to relationship management (Jackson and Lilleker 2009).
It is through private and targeted communication by email or e-newsletters where attempts are
made to build relationships with supporters (Jackson 2006). To assess which forms of participa-
tion are currently employed in American and European elections, we will summarize the pre-
sent state of the discipline and explore ways of measuring different approaches in online political
marketing.

Previous research
Online political marketing can apply to both the ‘peacetime’ in legislative periods, when it is
often associated with the permanent campaign, and the ‘wartime’ of political competitions. Our
focus is on elections due to their societal relevance, higher adoption rate of campaign innovations,
and the greater focus by parties and candidates on political marketing as a vote-winner.

Empirical work
The internet has become a standard marketing tool in modern election campaigns. Its rapid
diffusion around the world is attributed to the unique technical features of online communication
(i.e. capacity, efficiency, hypertextuality, interactivity, multimediality, topicality and ubiquity),
which provide political actors with new strategic options to respond to today’s electoral chal-
lenges (e.g. unparalleled degrees of political cynicism, voter de-alignment and civic apathy in the

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Western democracies) (see, for example Dalton and Wattenberg 2002). Social scientists are
interested in questions of how these features affect the style and substance of modern political
communication. To this end, they conduct quantitative and qualitative content and structural
analyses of e-campaigns in different electoral settings and various political cultures (for an
overview, see Ward et al. 2008).
Their results are astonishingly similar: they prove a standardization, a professionalization and a
normalization in online political marketing. Parties and candidates increasingly rely on the same
web-based features and successively integrate new formats (like blogs, Twitter and social net-
working sites) into their overall e-campaigns (standardization) (e.g. Kluver et al. 2007). The US is
said to be a role model in this international standardization process since the sheer number and
frequency of their elections, the competitiveness of their political system and the advanced
consultant industry foster technical campaign innovations (Chadwick 2009). These develop-
ments inspire similar adoptions in other countries (Howard 2006; Schneider and Foot 2006).
Moreover, e-campaigns have been found to become more professionalized over time (professio-
nalization). In different electoral contests, parties and candidates advance their existing web
presences by including more information, offering more multimedia content, and providing
more sophisticated means for user involvement and navigation (Druckman et al. 2007; Carlson
and Strandberg 2008; Schweitzer 2008a). This increases the overall usability, readability and
design of the web presences, which in turn has been found to positively affect party and can-
didate evaluations and voter knowledge (e.g. Hansen and Benoit 2005; Rittenberg and
Tewksbury 2007).
These qualitative advancements, however, have not changed the traditional focus of online
political marketing. All around the world, party and candidate websites have been found to rely
on traditional offline campaign strategies that override any internet-specific style of commu-
nication (Rohrschneider 2002; for an overview see Schweitzer 2008b). In particular, political
actors refrain from employing extensive interactivity and bottom-up features that could
encourage a genuine two-way dialogue with citizens (e.g. Kluver et al. 2007). Instead, they
continue to focus on information-heavy, centralized and neatly presented top-down web con-
tent so as to retain their message control and save human and financial resources (Stromer-
Galley 2000). The current use of the internet as a political campaign tool thus resembles a
transactional marketing approach that remains locked into styles and modes of communication
synonymous with the Web 1.0 philosophy of ‘we will build it and they will come’ (Birdsall
2007).
With the emergence of Web 2.0 and its successful utilization in the 2008 Obama campaign,
however, this normalization in e-campaigning might be under threat. The integration of the
social web features demands a ‘they will come and build it’ philosophy, which prioritizes
interactive co-production and empowers the user as civic producer (‘produser’ or producer-
user). To effectively adopt this new means of political communication thus implies that parties
and candidates need to move from a transactional to a more relationship approach of online
political marketing. To test whether this assumption holds true, we will review past conceptual
works on how to measure different paradigms of e-campaigning.

Conceptual work
Historically, the internet has played a set range of key functions within election campaigning.
These can be related to either the transactional or the relationship mode of political marketing
(Gibson et al. 2003). Based on Gibson and Ward’s (2000) established schema, the following tasks
can be distinguished:

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 Information provision both on civic issues (e.g. on the electoral procedures) and on the
campaign (e.g. candidates, programme or the party);
 Promoting persuasive messages to mobilize supporters and undecided voters: this could be a
discrete message written for the site, or it could be linking, and so amplifying, a message
within other media such as advertisements or policy documents;
 Negative campaigning (see also Schweitzer 2010): that is, the deliberate attacks on opponents so
as to cast doubt on their suitability for office;
 Generating resources: usually donations but also encouraging activism so as to increase the
logistical power of the organization and its competitiveness;
 Networking, providing spaces for supporters and activists to discuss issues and tactics and for
the party to communicate directly to their supporters: historically this has taken place on
password-protected intranets or via email to closed lists (Norris 2000); and
 Encouraging participation, traditionally limited to getting out the vote.

These functions are not exclusive, but the first three imply a transactional marketing
approach, the sixth a relationship marketing approach, and the fourth and fifth could be central
to either.
Web 2.0 challenges these functions; the philosophy underpinning the technologies (O’Reilly
2005; Anderson 2007; Chadwick 2009) suggests that the internet presents opportunities for the
user as well as those who create websites. Web 2.0 technologies enable the building of partici-
patory architectures, which provide space for individual production and user-generated content.
Users are able to easily upload comments, pictures and videos with minimum effort and tech-
nological ability, and these can all become part of an online milieu of campaign communication.
Parties can harness ‘produsers’, first identified by James (1991), to enhance the campaign as
creators of supportive material and endorsers through comments and sharing. Harnessing the
power of the crowd enhances activism, creating a win-win situation for both organizations and
supportive publics. Thus, theoretically, the internet becomes one huge archive of co-created
data which is open and accessible to everyone. While this data can meet campaigning functions,
Web 2.0 is bottom-up and non-hierarchical; the opposite is traditionally the case with political
communication.
The existence of such data encourages interactivity, a process by which face-to-face com-
munication is replicated through the use of online tools. These can be asynchronous, such as
email, discussion forums and the participatory spaces within social networks; alternatively they
can be synchronous chat facilities that allow one-to-one or many-to-many conversations to take
place. While technologies that facilitate using the online environment are often discussed in
terms of being interactive, Stromer-Galley (2004) offers a useful distinction in types of inter-
activity. Interactivity-as-product refers to the ability of the user to click links, play videos and
dovetails neatly with McMillan’s (2002) definition of user-to-document interactivity, where
users have choices over reading only. Interactivity-as-process replicates conversation and is con-
tiguous to definitions of user-to-user interactivity. While this dual distinction is useful, Ferber
et al. (2007) suggested a refinement of definitions of online communication. Supporting notions
of user-to-document and product-driven interactivity, they discuss the notion of one-way, top-
down communication. Asynchronous and private communication is two-way, but the host
retains control over the process of communication. In contrast, three-way participatory com-
munication can involve multiple users in an open forum and conversations can be either
synchronous (ideally), or asynchronous with users contributing at numerous points within what
some refer to as a global conversation. One-way clearly links to transactional marketing while
three-way is clearly relational; two-way communication offers some degree of hybridity

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depending on feature usage. Asynchronous communication such as email can be highly rela-
tional, yet features such as frequently asked questions or aggregated data from offline or online
interaction are essentially one-way, as they are packaged in a persuasive format for consumption.
Our intention is to assess the extent to which candidate and political party website use of
interactivity encourages a transactional or relationship management approach.

Case study: US, French, German and UK elections 2007–10

Our methodology will apply Ferber et al.’s (2007) model (Figure 22.1), as operationalized by
Lilleker and Malagon (2010) to test for conversations taking place within the selected four
countries, and to consider the outcomes of such interactivity. The first step in the data collection
was to archive the websites so that they could be analysed later in the research. For this purpose,
the content of the websites was converted through PDF Professional and Web Dumper Software
at a key point towards the end of the campaign when the sites were fully mature.

Operationalization
As outlined above, Ferber et al. suggest that there are two key dimensions to understanding the
use and impact of the internet within politics. First, they assess the direction of communication.
One-way is traditional promotion; two-way involves some level of interaction, but it is largely
held in private between user and political actor; and in three-way such dialogue is held in public

Figure 22.1 Ferber et al., six-part model of cyber-interactivity

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Table 22.1 Scale for measuring levels of receiver control

Category Scale Definition

Low receiver 1 One-way hyperlink with unclear destination

control 2 One-way hyperlink with defined destination
3 Hyperlinks created with user input, language is dynamic using second
person
4 User has control over read and link options, video play is optional,
content can be downloaded
5 Users have control over interfacing with content (above) and can
send information
6 Users can send and receive information, i.e. debate forums
7 Users have multiple options to send and receive information, their
input has transformational power – can be seen, i.e. text-only chat
High receiver 8 Users can upload content, questions, including videos, and can
control receive answers from receivers
9 User can choose time, type and amount of information sent and
received; the information sent is transformed by the receiver and the
transformation is transparent. Communication is asymmetrical
10 Sender and receiver have equal levels of control; communication is
conversational

and open to all. Second, within each direction they suggest that the internet user has different
levels of control, from low to high. Table 22.1 identifies a 10-point scale for the measurement of
receiver control. This was based on a slightly revised form of Gibson and Ward’s (2000)
methodology, which sought to code 51 elements present or absent in websites across four
functional groups (downward information flows; upward information flows; lateral information
flows; interactive information flows). High-level two- and three-way communication indicates
evidence of a relationship marketing campaign; low-level one- and two-way implies a purely
persuasive transactional sales approach (see indications in Figure 22.1). Both suggest the existence
of political marketing, but of different styles.
Through a comparison of feature use, and the user experience potentiated by their inclusion
within the architecture of the site, we are able to assess progression in the use of the internet as
a campaign tool by our sample, as well as the adoption of new communication technologies.
Furthermore, we compare the overall averages for the sites to assess the extent to which website
visitors in each of the four countries are encouraged to participate, and the extent they allowed
control over the ways in which they participated. This is mapped onto an axis which measures
the degree to which the websites offer an open participatory structure, or remain propagandistic tools.
The former, by helping to build relationships through interaction, is indicative of a relationship
marketing approach. The latter, by stressing one-way, top-down, content-heavy information,
indicates a transactional marketing approach.

Sample
We will apply this methodology to four elections: the 2007 French presidential election; the
2008 US presidential election campaign; the 2009 German national election; and the 2010 UK
general election. We will specifically assess to what extent these four campaigns provided voters

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with space to talk to one another and talk to the campaign, and to what extent a collaborative
campaign diegesis was presented to website visitors. The style of this communication will then be
used to assess the nature and type of online political marketing, as employed by the primary
political actors in these four election campaigns.
The nations were selected for comparison on the basis that the elections were a standard
distance apart, were national contests and would see a high degree of professionalization
(Negrine 2008). The countries – France, the US, Germany and the UK – are all advanced
industrial nations with high internet penetration rates1 and established democratic institutions.
The US and France share a presidential system with a separately elected lower chamber. We
therefore chose to analyse the main candidate websites in these countries (i.e. of Ségolène Royal
and Nicolas Sarkozy in France; Barack Obama and John McCain in the US). The UK and
Germany, on the other hand, are parliamentary systems where the party or coalition with
the most seats builds government. Here we focused on the websites of the main parties in
the election (i.e. the Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU), the Christlich-
Soziale Union (CSU), the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), the Freie Demokratische
Partei (FDP), Gruene (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and Die Linke in Germany; the Conservative
Party, Labour Party, Green Party, Liberal Democrats, British National Party (BNP) and United
Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in the UK).
In general, the countries have independent traditions of campaigning, with specific national
constraints as regards the electoral system, the respective laws for political advertising or the
overall political culture (Plasser 2002). However, there has also been a significant amount of
cross-fertilization of ideas and practices. For example, the Americanization debate has been
related to all four nations within research articles (Swanson and Mancini 1996; Negrine et al.
2007). There has also been a crossover of personnel working within nations. One of Sarkozy’s
online strategists, Loic le Meur, went to work with the US Democratic Party in 2007; Blue
State Digital, the creators of Obama’s website, were prominent in the UK and worked with
both the Conservative and Labour parties in an advisory capacity; similarly, a number of stra-
tegists from the US were present in Germany in the years preceding the campaign, with all the
major parties showing an interest in what lessons could be learned from the Obama campaign.
This cumulatively suggests that looking across these elections is a useful way to understand the
evolution of online political marketing in practice.

Results
Table 22.2 shows the percentage of features that fit into the five categories identified by
McMillan (2002) and operationalized for the purposes of website analysis (Gibson and Ward
2000; Lilleker and Malagon 2010; Lilleker and Jackson 2011). This data refutes the expectation of
a gradual evolution towards a more Web 2.0 style, showing neither an overall progression, nor
stasis in terms of online political campaign communication. Instead, this evidences an ebb and
flow in adoption of Web 2.0 features, with party and candidate websites showing a range of
differences and similarities in the overall design of website architectures. What we suggest is that
innovations in the use of website features are adopted in order to fit with a strategy and the
campaign context, with resources appearing to have a strong mediating role.
To take a sequential approach we see the lowest level of interactivity, and consequently the
most transactional marketing strategy, within the French presidential contest of 2007. This is
perhaps consistent with the lower levels of internet penetration in France as well as greater
reliance on modern, as opposed to postmodern (Norris 2000), tools of campaign communica-
tion. In 2008 Obama, building on innovations from the 2003–04 Howard Dean failed bid for

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Table 22.2 Features present across websites 2007–10 by category (in %)

Party/candidate Downward Upward Lateral flows Asymmetrical Symmetrical

flows flows flows flows

Royal (FR) 94.3 0.1 0.3 5.4 0.6

Sarkozy (FR) 94.7 0.1 0.1 4.1 0.9

McCain (US) 78.3 0.2 1.7 2.8 17.1

Obama (US) 3.6 <0.1 0.2 0.1 96.0

CDU (DE) 4.6 0.2 85.1 0.7 9.3

CSU (DE) 4.2 0.4 93.3 1.1 0.9
FDP (DE) 61.0 0.8 21.8 2.6 13.8
Gruene (DE) 36.9 1.4 54.9 3.8 2.9
Linke (DE) 62.1 1.3 8.5 4.0 24.1
SPD (DE) 12.0 0.5 68.9 1.4 18.2

BNP (UK) 1.1 <0.1 0.3 0.8 97.9

Conservative (UK) 58.9 <0.1 0.5 0.8 39.7
Green (UK) 70.9 0.1 5.3 4.1 11.2
Labour (UK) 29.4 0.3 34.1 5.1 31.1
Liberal Democrat (UK) 18.8 <0.1 6.1 3.1 71.6
UKIP (UK) 94.2 0.3 3.9 1.7 0.0

the Democrat party nomination, made a significant step forward in allowing participation
within his website. Key innovations adopted were community-based tools of mobilization
within his bespoke network, my.barackobama.com (MyBO), and his leveraging of social networks
to promote his campaign – in particular Facebook but also a range of other niche networks
popular among ethnic minority, same sex or political interest groups. Obama’s delivery of all
campaign news in weblog format, presenting literally thousands of participatory opportunities
alongside his network, forum and social network presences, clearly offered new dimensions to
campaigning and relationship marketing in online environments. That Obama reached out to
different communities online probably reflected his background as a community campaigner as
well as his more left-wing ideological position and branding as the outsider and people’s
champion. McCain, though traditional in comparison with Obama, equally made attempts to
leverage online networks as well as adopting a range of weblog tools.
The parties in Germany and the UK show rather mixed approaches to online campaigning,
and so a more diverse approach was adopted within both nations. While in Germany hyperlinks
dominated many sites compared with the number of other features included, one can see a
range of both transactional marketing tools alongside Web 2.0 innovations. Communities such
as www.meineSPD.de and www.team2009.de were used to draw supporters closer to the SPD
and CDU, respectively. CDU leader Angela Merkel, in particular, tried to leverage social net-
works to increase communication reach and levels of support. Weblog tools also were promi-
nent, with the Linke website being dominated by this feature. Similarly, in the UK parties
created a range of communities, though unlike their German counterparts most were public
throughout. The largest was the Liberal Democrat Act area (www.act.libdems.org.uk), but both
www.myconservatives.org.uk and Labour’s www.members.labour.org.uk represented large areas
of the party’s websites and replicated to varying extents the relational concept behind Obama’s

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site. Interestingly, the far-right BNP was the most interactive, providing spaces to participate
within every aspect of the site from the news weblog to sharing facilities on every page and
providing a forum. The site, www.bnp.org.uk, acted as a hub for a minority with marginalized
ideas, and so provided the party with an active group who co-created their campaign to a far
greater extent than Obama or any other of the party community sites.
Comparing the overall architectures one finds that the websites that predominantly supplied
information were those of Sarkozy and Royal, where little else was provided; UKIP, McCain
and the British Green Party, then Linke, the FDP and the British Conservative Party. Except
for the sites of the Conservatives, Linke and John McCain, all these sites contained few Web
2.0 features and so offered little opportunity for interactivity. Royal apart, these also presented
the greatest number of negative arguments, in particular UKIP and the German opposition
parties, the FDP, Gruene and SPD. Linke and John McCain both had small weblogs that did
allow site visitors to add comments and interact with one another and the host. This provides
the sense of being at the centre of a websphere, and the Labour Party in particular used
hyperlinks to network with a range of supportive groups from internal associations to trade
unions and other non-governmental organizations and pressure groups. These sites tend to
adhere to traditions of political communication and serve only campaigning functions, paying
only lip service to philosophies of Web 2.0. The websites offering symmetrical information
flows has the BNP ranked first, closely followed by Barack Obama; these were true Web 2.0
participatory architectures. British parties the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Labour
demonstrated a mixed strategy of supplying information balanced by features that offered
interactivity. In all three cases the size of the network created within the website determined
the number of opportunities to interact, and so the overall percentage of symmetrical commu-
nication permitted. The reason that the use of StudiVZ profiles and other German social net-
work communities such as meineSPD and teamDeutschland did not increase the extent to
which the sites offered symmetrical communication was due to them being protected by
registration procedures and passwords. Obama’s MyBO area and all the British party commu-
nities were visible to all visitors, although posting and commenting was limited to members
only. This positions these communities as fundamental features of an impression management
strategy, as well as having a mobilization function and so demonstrating the dual function of
Web 2.0 within the context of a campaign. This mixed strategy combines campaigning with
co-production and suggests a shift away from a purely transactional marketing strategy.
In Figure 22.2 we compare the political marketing approaches of parties and candidates
testing for relational or transactional strategies and the extent to which sites are informational or
interactive. As expected, Figure 22.2 shows that Obama’s website was both interactive in terms
of receiver control and highly participatory in terms of communication direction. Less expected
is the fact that the BNP also followed a relationship marketing approach, though this was very
controlled and to a very small internal audience. There is, then, a series of parties in the UK and
Germany that can be found in a middle ground, Web 1.5 (Jackson and Lilleker 2009), which
offer the architecture for a relationship marketing approach, but seek to project sales messages.
We then find candidates such as Sarkozy and McCain and parties such as UKIP and Gruene in
a purely Web 1.0, transactional marketing space.
The unexpected level of adoption of Web 2.0 by Barack Obama represents an outlier in
terms of all other parties and candidates within this study except for the BNP; though Obama
sought to build relationships with a mass network, the BNP maintained a conversation among
their minority of like-minded supporters. Mainstream German and UK parties created com-
munities based around their existing members and supporters, and the latter, in particular,
appear to have drawn ideas from MyBO. They also built on their existing uses of databases and

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Figure 22.2 Use of transactional or relationship marketing 2007–10

email lists, and whilst this implied some level of relationship marketing, it was targeted at
internal audiences. The outreach to the general public was closer to a transactional approach.
This implies that the two basic modes of online political marketing (transactional versus rela-
tionship) can in fact co-exist, depending on the type of stakeholders that will be addressed on
the internet. Obama, in contrast, used the internet to gain new supporters. His relational style of
online political marketing thus encompassed both internal and external audiences. However, he
did not start with a blank canvas. After his 2004 speech to the Democrat Party Convention a
Facebook group was created independently called Obama for President. Its membership
increased to almost a million over the three years prior to Obama declaring his intention to
stand for the presidency. This was a clear indicator that there was a supportive, online crowd
whose power the campaign could harness. This was not the case elsewhere; Royal built a net-
work slowly around her Notebooks of Hope which were co-created in the two years prior to
the contest but also had a party network in place. German and UK parties have similar tradi-
tions of mass membership and, though in decline, these remain the lifeblood of the organizations.
Thus networks were created to draw these members closer as opposed to focusing on reaching
out to the masses.
Moreover, the French election was at a time when the ideas of Web 2.0 were nascent and so
Sarkozy’s and Royal’s approach reflects both this fact and the political outlook. In fact, of our
sample, Sarkozy is the only one whose approach is essentially transactional to both internal and
external audiences. In the wake of the Obama success, though, there seemed to be a shift in
European elections towards relational modes of online campaigning. While Web 2.0 features
may not have been embedded, as for Obama, parties in Germany and the UK clearly sought to
embrace social networking. In Germany, this happened in a rather restrictive manner so as to

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retain the party’s overall message control. As a consequence, the public response was rather
meagre. Whilst we cannot fully compare the number of fans on candidate and party sites, they
provide an interesting snapshot. Chancellor Angela Merkel could only gain 14,000 fans to her
Facebook site during the campaign, suggesting that there was limited interest. In the UK the
Conservative Party’s Facebook profile gained 70,732 fans, suggesting that there was a stronger
response to the more open-minded Web 2.0 approach of British parties. However, Obama had
an online audience in place, and his number of fans was millions strong, topping 8 million
globally by election day. Such levels of support enhance an external relationship marketing
approach.

Advice for practitioners

The data across our four countries suggests that there is not a single answer as to what works, and
hence no simple universal lesson as to how politicians and campaigners should direct their online
activities. This absence of one size fits all reflects in part differences between these countries in
terms of their electoral procedures, political systems and cultures. The lack of uniformity in our
data also reflects factors individual to the key players in each country, such as resources and skills
available to make use of marketing knowledge and internet technology. However, we suggest
that there are certain lessons which may have a practical impact upon political marketing strategies
and tactics. First, practitioners need to take into account national approaches to politics and the
internet. There is some evidence that political campaigners in Germany and the UK tried to
adopt Obama’s campaign, but we suggest that campaigners need to cherry-pick from how the
internet is used and not import it wholesale. Start with an understanding of the national political
scene and apply the technology to this, not the other way around. Second, we would suggest that
there is some evidence that political campaigners would extend their understanding and use of
political marketing principles to include a discrete online approach. This would not mean dif-
ferent aims and objectives, but would recognize the potential unique benefits that the internet as
a communication channel offers them. In particular, we would suggest that as a marketing
communication channel the internet provides political campaigners with flexibility, so that it can
be used as both a broadcast and narrowcast tool at the same time. Third, we suggest that political
campaigners would be best advised to use different marketing styles at the same time as they meet
different audience needs. The discussion has been primarily whether the internet is being used as
part of a transactional marketing strategy or a relationship marketing approach. Normatively, we
might suggest a relationship marketing approach, but the evidence suggests that both are perfectly
acceptable. The persuasive and information-based transactional approach is probably most
appropriate for reaching external audiences who know little about the party or candidate. In
contrast, relationship marketing is probably more effective for internal audiences, such as
members or stakeholders with strong party identification and high levels of knowledge and
political interest. We suggest, therefore, that the ebb and flow data we identified indicates that
political actors should be marketing agents using a range of approaches, depending on the
circumstances.

Impact on politics
The impact of online political marketing can be described in three ways: in a communicational
dimension; in a logistical dimension; and in a civic dimension. As a communication channel the
internet has helped political actors to deliver persuasive and alternative messages to the public
without journalistic interventions or presentational constraints. This increases their message

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control and provides a compensation for the lack of attention in the traditional mass media.
Another impact on politics is found in the options to generate new funds and to mobilize and
coordinate activists. This applies not only to candidate-centred systems where there is more
scope/need, but also to party-centred systems. In this way, the internet has become a vital
logistical backbone in modern political marketing that increases the competitiveness even of
smaller organizations. Finally, the interactivity we identified within Web 2.0 has the potential to
transform the relationship between political actors and citizens. In particular, parties and candi-
dates are able to rely on direct voter input as regards their policy standpoints or their campaign
strategies. In turn, they can provide opportunities for lasting civic participation so as to enhance
the responsivity and legitimacy of the democratic system. This is especially so if a long-term
relationship marketing approach is applied between elections which encourages an ongoing two-
way dialogue. At present, however, the external impacts on democratic discourse between
governed and governing is more a theoretical construct than a reality. For now, the evidence
suggests that the internet is primarily affecting the communicational and logistical dimensions of
political communication, and less so the civic foundation.

The way forward

This project used the same methodology to assess four different elections at the very beginning of
the Web 2.0 era. For finesse, the analysis requires a wider sample as regards the number and type
of political actors and the countries that are included. Moreover, research should strive to cover
both election and routine periods to learn more about the conditional factors that influence the
adoption of different marketing styles. Finally, longitudinal comparisons are warranted that allow
for conclusions about the development of online political communication in relation to their
offline environment. Apart from these scientific desiderata, there are also future considerations for
the practice of e-campaigning. At present, political consultants are actively looking at the
technology, but are primarily interested in its vote-winning potential within a transactional
marketing approach. We suggest that not enough practitioners are considering the wider con-
ceptual issues of how they can use the internet to enhance democratic participation within a
relationship marketing approach. We suspect that most believe that elections, in particular, are
not the time to consider wider participation. However, we suggest that the embeddedness of the
internet within political marketing communication strategies, both before and during elections,
may actually bring powerful electoral benefits to parties and candidates.

Note
1 According to the database www.internetworldstats.com, France had an internet penetration of 51.8
percent in 2007. In the US 74.7 percent of all citizens were online in 2008, while in Germany 75.3
percent used the web in 2009. In the UK internet penetration was 76.4 percent in 2010.

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Routledge Handbook of Political Marketing

Jennifer Lees-Marshment

Delivering in government and getting results in minorities and coalitions

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policy and leadership

Government marketing – delivery,
Part V
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23
Delivering in government
and getting results in
minorities and coalitions
Anna Esselment

The topic: delivery in government

A key component of political marketing principles is the ‘product’. In the ideal market-oriented
party (MOP), the product has been carefully crafted based on market intelligence gathered from
extensive consultation with both the public (through focus groups and polling surveys), and party
members and volunteers (Lees-Marshment 2001). The product itself is multifaceted and can
include, among other aspects, the image of the leader (for example, open, accessible, trust-
worthy), type of party candidates (competent and responsive), the logo of the party, and policy
commitments contained in the campaign platform (ibid.). While much of the literature on
political marketing has focused on its techniques to help parties win elections, less emphasis has
been placed on whether, or how, the product (particularly election promises) is delivered in
government. Considering the design of the product has been informed by market intelligence,
success in power is often dependent on the ability to implement the identified policy preferences
of voters. In other words, if a party wishes re-election, delivering on commitments is crucial.
The focus of this chapter is on product delivery. First, it will provide an overview of the
literature on delivery in government within the political marketing context. Express attention
will be devoted to ‘delivery units’, specialized structures within the centre of government
initially designed by the British New Labour Party to oversee the implementation of policy
priorities. Have these implementation units been successful in translating electoral commitments
into government policy? If so, are they a new necessity to the machinery of government,
particularly for a MOP that wants to maintain its market-orientation in power?
Second, this chapter will analyze product delivery in a minority government. A minority
parliament (or ‘hung’ parliament as it is called elsewhere) occurs when no political party has
won a majority of seats in the House of Commons (the lower House in a bicameral parlia-
mentary system). In this type of parliament usually the party that has won the most seats, but
not a majority, forms the government. That party must govern with the help of opposition
parties in order to pass legislation. If important legislation fails (for example, supply measures),
this is considered a loss of confidence in the government and, in most cases, Parliament is dissolved
and new elections are called.

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Canada has had a succession of minority governments since 2004. By comparing product
delivery under Paul Martin’s Liberal minority (2004–06) with that of Conservative prime
minister Stephen Harper’s first term (2006–08), we will learn that product implementation can
be successful even without commanding a majority of parliamentary seats. The sheer prospect of
an unexpected election appears to galvanize minority governments into action and assists in
maintaining a tight focus on accomplishing their goals. What differentiates the Liberal minority
from the Conservative minority is not so much implementation per se, but the ability to
effectively communicate that delivery. On the other hand, MOPs that form majority and coa-
lition governments could benefit from the use of implementation units in order to stave off
‘drift’ for the former, and keep the latter connected over the course of their coalition agree-
ment. The chapter will conclude with lessons about the nature of marketing and delivery in
government that can be more widely applied to other countries with similar political and
electoral systems.

Previous research
Studies of policy implementation are plentiful. Scholars in the field of public administration, in
particular, have a fascination with how policy is delivered, although interest has admittedly ebbed
and flowed (Bardach 1977; Gunn 1978; Hill and Hupe 2002; Howlett 1991; Mazmanian and
Sabatier 1983; Pressman and Wildavsky 1984). Apparent in this literature is the lament that
problems of implementation identified in the 1970s are still posing challenges to governments
today. Governments must wrestle with issues that transgress departmental boundaries, thereby
requiring a greater degree of horizontal coordination (Bakvis and Juillet 2004). In some cases,
governments are no longer the direct provider of services, which also contributes a layer of
complexity to the issue of delivery (Hamburger 2007). What does this mean from a political
marketing perspective? Since the structure and processes of government have changed little, a
MOP, despite its intent to remain responsive to voters, faces the same implementation hurdles as
parties in the past. Unlike the 1970s, however, voters take the commitments made by parties much
more seriously. There is an expectation that ‘governments need to identify commitments and
demonstrate results’ (Lindquist 2006: 430). As a consequence, campaign platforms have become
serious documents, evidenced by the Liberal Party of Canada’s ‘Red Book’ in 1993, the
US Republicans’ ‘Contract with America’ in 1994, the UK Labour Party’s ‘pledges’ to Britons in
1997, and the Conservative Party of Canada’s ‘five commitments’ in 2006. Voters are invited to
toss out the government if it fails to achieve its goals.
Lees-Marshment’s study of the UK and New Zealand governments demonstrated that the
difficult and slow pace of delivery tests the ability of MOPs to remain that way in power (Lees-
Marshment 2009a: 533). Implementation has also hampered market-oriented leaders in the US,
such as Bill Clinton, who had the political will to resolve certain problems facing the middle
class but faced institutional and financial restraints (Newman 1999). The gap between the
expectations of voters from a new government and the form a promised policy may actually
take after its roll out can also work against the market orientation of parties if voters are dis-
appointed with the final outcome (Newman 1999). Marland (2005) has noted that some MOPs
revert to being sales-oriented parties (SOPs) after time in government, perhaps in order to ‘sell’
what it was they were able to accomplish even though it may differ substantially from what
they had initially promised voters. Because of these difficulties, the management and commu-
nication of product delivery must be a priority of any MOP in power (Lees-Marshment 2009b:
212–13). Creating greater capacity at the centre of government – that is, directly in the office of
prime minister – is one way in which parties, particularly MOPs, have addressed the issue of

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Delivering in government

delivery. By linking the first minister’s office to the bureaucratic level through an oversight role
that assists in identifying and solving delivery problems, party leaders are able to track their
progress on key election commitments.

Delivery/implementation units
The advent of a ‘delivery unit’ to assist governments with their implementation goals was first
created by the Labour Party under Tony Blair. Labour became a savvy, market-oriented party
prior to the 1997 election and used market intelligence to shape a product responsive to voters’
needs (Lees-Marshment 2001). New Labour shaved most of its hard left ideological edges and
embraced a ‘third way’ of doing politics in Britain (Labour Party 1997). Wildly successful in its
first election, New Labour also garnered a second and then a third majority government. In 2001,
despite the party’s second victory at the polls, Prime Minister Blair noted that a number of the
government’s initiatives had not been achieved. In short, delivery had stagnated. This was perhaps
unsurprising since, as elsewhere, academics have observed that ‘[t]raditionally in British gov-
ernment, there has been a sharp separation of responsibilities for developing policy and delivering
it’ (Boaz and Solesbury 2007).
In the context of political marketing, however, the lack of delivery was especially concerning
since it contributed to a public perception of the government as ‘out of touch’ and unable to
follow through on its promise of public service reform (Richards and Smith 2006: 333). As part
of a larger effort to reconnect with voters and demonstrate new capacity for policy imple-
mentation, Prime Minister Blair created the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit (PMDU). This
dedicated political unit at the centre of government was staffed with 40 individuals and reported
directly to the prime minister. It was tasked with monitoring the implementation of policies
that the prime minster himself had identified as personal priorities, such as health, education,
crime and transport (ibid.: 338). The primary focus of the PMDU was to ensure that the gov-
ernment met its targets in these policy areas through early identification and anticipation of
potential implementation problems at the bureaucratic level (ibid.: 338). If problems did arise,
the PMDU would work with the department responsible for the policy and help resolve issues
of delivery. The Delivery Unit was successful in the sense that it created new capacity at the
centre of government to drive implementation. It also renewed and strengthened relationships
between the centre and the departments on matters pertaining to delivery and achieving policy
outcomes (Barber 2007: 285–86). As a result, a number of the government’s policy targets were
either achieved or had vastly improved (in literacy and numeracy in public schools, for example,
and in managing road congestion). The largest impact of the PMDU, in Barber’s view, was that
of momentum in government:

the longer 2004 went on, the more it became clear that we had that intangible but vital
force of change – momentum. Indeed, in modern government – as with aircraft – the only
alternative to moving forward is falling out of the sky. Advance or fail. Momentum or
drift … [w]e were able to review thoroughly every area of delivery in our portfolio and
assist in removing blockages and generating results.
(Barber 2007: 213)

The delivery unit in the UK was a valuable tool for New Labour because it assisted the party
in government to generate tangible results. It kept the government focused on its priorities and, to
a great extent, staved off second- and third-term drift that can work against a market orientation
in government.

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Anna Esselment

Governments in other countries took a favourable view of the PMDU. In 2003 John
Howard, the prime minister of the Australian National/Liberal coalition government, created a
Cabinet Implementation Unit (CIU) with the hope of emulating the delivery successes of the
UK PMDU. Prime Minister Howard’s interest in a CIU was due to several factors, not the least
of which was a concern that coalition governments can disintegrate after several years because of
‘indecision and a lack of ability to make decisions stick’ (Wanna 2006: 350). Like the PMDU,
the CIU was placed in the centre of government and charged with tracking the progress of key
government commitments. Unlike the PMDU, the CIU was staffed by civil servants, not
political advisors (ibid.: 363). Furthermore, Australia’s CIU was not focused on ensuring
that specific policy targets were met, but instead on anticipating implementation problems in
cabinet submissions and highlighting them using a traffic light signal system. Initiatives with
amber or red lights posed implementation challenges (because they involved sensitive issues, for
example, or were expensive, or involved the agreement of sub-national units) and were
monitored carefully, with reports made to the prime minister and Cabinet on implementation
progress every few months (Shergold 2007: 13; Wanna 2006: 359). In general, the effect of the
CIU has been viewed positively. The traffic light system is a simple way of monitoring and
reporting on difficulties in delivery. Prime Minister Howard noted that the CIU is ‘one of the
necessary central mechanisms to assist a mature government to focus on forward strategy and on
implementation’ (Wanna 2006: 364). This is perhaps especially important for a long-term coa-
lition government that must, as do all multiple-term administrations, continue to deliver on its
promises, thereby ensuring a fruitful and effective partnership.
The UK and Australian governments are not the only jurisdictions that have created a
delivery unit model to assist with policy implementation. This unit has been replicated at the
sub-national level in Australia (Queensland in particular), as well as in Indonesia, Malaysia, the
US state of Maryland and the city of Los Angeles, among others.

New research
The greater capacity for implementation and delivery provided by the ‘units’ described above is
relatively clear. They have, to greater and lesser degrees, provided parties in power with an extra
tool to ensure that promises made in an election have a better chance of being delivered because
of central oversight of critical commitments.
That delivery units have not been replicated in most representative democracies suggests that
implementation problems may vary depending on the strength of other coordinating depart-
ments and agencies already in place, and the type of administration in power. Tony Blair, John
Howard and Premier Peter Beattie of Queensland led either majority or coalition governments.
These types of governments face two major challenges: first, the mid-term or multiple-term
‘malaise’ can result in policy drift because of detachment from voters due to a variety of factors,
including daily crises and constraints with which the government must contend (distracting
them from their main policy agenda), and longevity in power that can lead a party towards
arrogance and complacency with regard to the public (Lees-Marshment 2009a: 533; Kent 2006: 14;
Tiernan 2006: 371; Wanna and Williams 2005). Second, coalition governments must ensure
that their agreements hold firm in order to form a more perfect partnership. These agreements
can be quite detailed, particularly with regard to the policy initiatives to be pursued (Müller and
Strøm 2008: 159–60). Delivery units can thus keep a majority government focused, even in its
second or third mandate, and can assist coalition partners by doggedly pursuing the imple-
mentation of its agreed-upon agenda, thereby minimizing conflict between the parties and
contributing to a productive government partnership.

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Minority governments and delivery

What happens if the government is in a minority? Since 1920 Canada has had 13 minority
governments, three of which have been in power since 2004. This section will examine the
ability of the Liberal minority under Paul Martin (2004–06) and the Conservative minority under
Stephen Harper’s first term (2006–08) to deliver on their commitments in government.
Paul Martin and the Liberal Party were reduced to a minority government in the 2004
election.1 The party had previously won three straight majority governments in 1993, 1997 and
2000 under leader Jean Chrétien. While majority governments also face delivery constraints,
they have at least two advantages over minority governments: the luxury of time between
elections and control over the Commons. Having governed with some ease in Parliament for a
decade, the Liberals now found themselves in newer parliamentary territory. The 2004 Liberal
campaign platform was styled similarly to previous Liberal Red Books containing detailed pro-
mises for what a Paul Martin government would accomplish. Of the 42 election promises,
arguably only a few were memorable, set out in Table 23.1.
While none of those particular promises was easy to achieve, Martin’s minority was still very
productive. On the big campaign promises, such as a national system of childcare (which required
the cooperation and consent of the sub-national governments), the Liberals were able to bring
all 10 provinces on board and had started to flow the funds for the expansion of childcare spaces
by the end of 2005. On the democratic deficit, the government passed whistleblower protec-
tion legislation and allowed a greater number of free votes in Parliament (Clarkson 2006: 27;
Seidle 2004). The government also signed a health accord with the provincial premiers that
included an additional C$41 billion from the federal government over the course of the ensuing
10 years (CBC News Online 2006). In its 2005 Budget, C$600 million was diverted from the
federal gas tax to cities in order to fulfil the promise of the ‘new deal’ for cities (Department of
Finance Canada 2005a: 14). Martin’s minority also facilitated the legalization of same-sex mar-
riage, the inclusion of tougher provisions of the criminal code, and improvements on Aboriginal
issues (Clarkson 2006: 27).
Several reasons contributed to the productivity of the Martin government, even in the
absence of a dedicated ‘delivery unit’. First, Prime Minister Martin had experience in power. As
the finance minister to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, Martin had skilfully eliminated
Canada’s deficit in the 1990s and the exercise gave Martin and his staff an intimate knowledge
of the machinery of government. When the Liberal majority was reduced to a minority, the
prime minister’s familiarity with government assisted in strategic planning vis-à-vis delivery.
Second, his long tenure as an elected member and then minister also meant that he had built
relationships with the leaders of provincial governments. These personal relationships helped the
government in its negotiations on the childcare agreements, particularly with provincial gov-
ernments led by Liberal administrations (Esselment 2009). Third, money helped. The government
did not lack for financial resources and spreading the wealth around, particularly to the pro-
vinces, garnered support from Parliament for certain initiatives such as greater funding for

Table 23.1 Liberal Party of Canada key campaign promises, 2004

1. Eliminate the ‘democratic deficit’

2. A national, publicly funded childcare system
3. Fix healthcare ‘for a generation’
4. A ‘new deal’ for cities to assist with transportation and infrastructure costs

Source: Liberal Party of Canada, 2004.

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healthcare, enriched equalization for two Atlantic provinces and reduction of the ‘fiscal gap’ in
Ontario (CBC News Online 2006; Department of Finance Canada 2005b; Goar 2007).
Managing competing demands and following through on spending pledges is easier when the
government has a budget surplus.
Fourth, the Martin government quickly learned that working with the opposition parties
would be an integral part of staying in power. The prime minister and Cabinet accepted a
number of revisions from the Bloc Québécois to the government’s first Throne Speech in fall
2004 (Axworthy 2004: 1) and the 2005 Budget won the support of the New Democratic Party
(NDP) because of the inclusion of new spending measures important to the NDP’s socially
progressive constituency (CBC News Online 2005). In May 2005 the Liberals were able to
survive a non-confidence measure by wooing Belinda Stronach, a Conservative MP, across the
floor with the promise of a cabinet position, and her crucial vote kept Parliament in session.
Finally, a government in a minority situation often results in greater political pressure brought
to bear on the public service to implement key items from the party’s election manifesto. The
PM and Cabinet themselves become a ‘delivery unit’ of sorts; time is of the essence to
demonstrate the ability of the government to be efficient and effective in implementing the
product it promised.
Unfortunately for the Liberals, productivity in government did not equate to longevity in
power. Within 17 months of winning its minority, the government fell on a motion of non-
confidence. The party’s downfall was not due to a lack of delivery of their promises; indeed, in
their short time in power the Liberals were able to achieve much of their agenda (Clarkson
2006). Instead, the Martin government failed to effectively communicate its agenda, a critical part
of delivery overall (Lees-Marshment 2009b: 213). This misfiring can be largely attributed to the
‘sponsorship’ investigation, a scandal from the previous Liberal administration involving mis-
appropriated funds from a government program that were filtered into the bank accounts of
Liberal-friendly advertising agencies in Quebec (Canada 2006). The judicial inquiry into the
scandal hung like an anvil around the necks of the Liberals, detracting from the policy successes
achieved under Paul Martin while simultaneously eroding the Liberal ‘brand’ of being compe-
tent fiscal managers. Other mistakes, such as ignoring the input of the opposition for the fall
2005 economic update, led to the government’s collapse on 28 November.
With the black cloud of sponsorship hanging over the Martin government, Stephen Harper
and the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) were victorious in the 2006 election.2 The party’s
platform document contained numerous commitments but focused on five main priorities, set
out in Table 23.2.
As an untested government viewed sceptically by many Canadians, the new prime minister
was keen to demonstrate to Canadians that his government was competent, legitimate and
trustworthy by moving quickly on a few campaign promises. Immediate action would help to
move public perception in this direction. Fortunately for the Conservatives, disappointed and

Table 23.2 Conservative Party of Canada key campaign promises, 2006

1. Reduction in the goods and services tax (from 7 percent to 5 percent)

2. Childcare allowance for families with children aged five and under
3. Stronger government accountability measures
4. Criminal justice reform
5. Patient wait times guarantee

Source: Conservative Party of Canada, 2006.

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Delivering in government

exhausted opposition parties had less appetite to mobilize against government initiatives so soon
after an election.3 The initial GST point reduction and the childcare allowance were put into
the government’s first Budget (which passed through Parliament with the support of the Bloc
Québécois) and took effect 1 July 2006 (Department of Finance Canada 2006). The Federal
Accountability Act (FAA) was the Conservative government’s response to the sponsorship
scandal and it was one of the first pieces of legislation introduced in the legislature. Among
other changes, the new legislation reduced limits on financial donations to political parties,
placed strict parameters and rules around lobbying the government, and strengthened the role
of the ethics commissioner and auditor-general (Government of Canada 2006). Because of the
political salience of that particular issue with all the parties, the FAA passed quickly through the
legislative process and was enacted into law in December 2006. It is noteworthy that within the
first year of power the Conservatives were able to pass three major policy items. These ‘quick wins’
gave the minority Conservative government a record of achievement on which it could rely if
an unexpected election were to occur.
The CPC government had more difficulty delivering its two remaining promises of criminal
justice reform and a patient wait times guarantee. The justice reforms, introduced as 11 separate
pieces of legislation, became bogged down in the committee system. In a minority Parliament,
opposition parties hold the majority of seats on committees and this can be a stumbling block
for government, particularly on contentious issues. To face this challenge, the government
repackaged the 11 separate bills into one large bill called the Tackling Violent Crime Act.
Playing a much tougher legislative hand, the government then framed the issue as either ‘for or
against’ crime in Canada. Introduced in October 2007, the bill was given royal assent just four
months later (Government of Canada 2008).
Arguably, the patient wait times guarantee was never fully realized. Dependent on the
agreement of the provincial governments (which are responsible for healthcare in Canada’s
federal system), the Harper minority was unable to fully realize the commitment it made in the
election. Instead, the government allowed some flexibility on the ‘guarantee’ portion of the
promise, asking the provinces to meet just one wait time guarantee from a list of five areas.4
When this agreement was secured, the Harper administration declared the promise delivered
and moved on to other items in its agenda (CTV.ca 2007). Thus of the five main promises,
three could be characterized as delivered ‘cleanly’. While the Conservatives had promised action
on many other items that were ultimately left unfulfilled, they went into the 2008 election with
a record of achievement in their minority government and won re-election, albeit with a
second minority mandate.
Both of these minority governments – the Liberals and the Conservatives – have been praised
for being unusually productive. At least one (the CPC) has also been characterized as a market-
oriented party and thus, by extension, should want to remain responsive to voters while in
government (Paré and Berger 2008). Part of being responsive in power is putting the party’s
policy agenda into effect. While both minorities obtained relative success in their task, neither
the Liberal nor the Conservative government chose to emulate the UK’s ‘delivery unit’ model.
How were these minorities different from either majority or coalition governments?
Paradoxically, much of these governments’ electoral agendas were achieved because of their
minority status. It makes intuitive sense that, without majority control of Parliament, passing
legislation and delivering on campaign promises should be more difficult. At the same time,
delivery takes on heightened importance since the government is at the mercy of Parliament; a
vote of no confidence is a continuing threat and, should the governing party be thrust into an
early election, a record of some achievements is critical to a new campaign. In other words, a
minority government does not suffer as much as majority governments from fatigue, inaction,

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or lack of momentum; instead, time itself is the precious resource that must be maximized in
order to fulfil key commitments. Other factors came into play too: both the Liberal and Con-
servative governments had policies that appealed to at least one opposition party in order to
secure passage of legislation and stave off defeat in the House of Commons; both governments
had to be flexible on some issues in order to ensure their delivery; both governments had ample
financial resources to put their promises into effect and secure ‘quick wins’ should an election
be called; and both governments kept a watchful eye on the strategic manoeuvres available to
their opposition and pounced on weaknesses to strengthen their own position, such as wooing
members to cross the floor.
The differences between the two minority administrations also impart valuable lessons for
students of political marketing interested in delivery. Influential factors in successful delivery for
the two governments are listed in Table 23.3.
As a fully fledged MOP, the Harper government was able to maintain its market orientation
throughout its first term in power and was more adept at doing so than the Liberals under Paul
Martin. In particular, the Conservatives rarely underestimated the strength of the opposition,
trod carefully in Parliament, made splashy announcements when campaign promises had
been fulfilled (CityNews.ca 2007), used the Privy Council Office (PCO) as their own ‘imple-
mentation-driving machine’,5 and continued to gather market research while in government
(Ottawa Citizen 2007).
The Liberals were responsive to the opposition at first, but by the fall of 2005 they ignored
the other parties in Parliament and had difficulty communicating the delivery of their priority
policies because of the prominence of the sponsorship scandal. Policy achievements by gov-
ernment were often hijacked by reporters wanting to know more about the scandal and

Table 23.3 Influential factors in successful delivery

Paul Martin Liberal government Stephen Harper Conservative government

Prime Minister Martin had extensive experience The government moved quickly to implement
in power. campaign promises, which gave it a record of
As an elected member and finance minister, achievement, a perception of competence and
Martin had built relationships with provincial greater legitimacy in the eyes of the public.
premiers – this helped with some policy The Privy Council Office became an
commitments that required sub-national implementation-driving machine, the
coordination. equivalent of a delivery unit. This helped the
The government worked with opposition government maintain focus on its priorities.
parties on budget matters, which later aided Important government legislation was
delivery. consolidated and clearly framed (‘for’ or
More pressure was put on the public service to ‘against’ crime, for example) to increase its
implement key platform items. chances of passage through the Commons.
The government was in a strong financial The government always assumed opposition
position. strength, not weakness.
Implementation of campaign items was
communicated effectively through staged
photo opportunities so that Canadians would
know that the Conservatives had ‘delivered’.
Gathering market intelligence continued when
in government.
The government was in a strong financial
position.

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Table 23.4 A political marketing model of successful delivery

1. Create a separate ‘delivery unit’ or focus a central agency on driving implementation. This is
especially important for coalition governments in order to ensure the most fruitful partnership.
2. Ensure that a few campaign promises can be delivered almost immediately for ‘quick wins’
and an early record of achievement if an election is called.
3. Work with opposition parties and always remember that they have the upper hand in Parliament.
4. Communicate delivery of policy promises with memorable events and photo opportunities.
5. If necessary, repackage promises and frame them in terms that make opposition to them
publicly unpopular.
6. Continue market research while in government to monitor public perception of delivery progress,
stay responsive to voters and develop new policy ideas – the goal is to form a majority government
in the next election.
7. Build relationships with key figures in government departments, opposition parties and lower
levels of government such as provinces, states or devolved parliaments, as many of these relationships
will be leaned on to ensure effective implementation.

Martin’s role in it (Gregg 2005). Due to different perceptions of the proper role of the PCO,
Paul Martin did not wield it in the same way as Stephen Harper. As Lindquist (2006: 431)
warns, ‘having an implementation unit working out of the cabinet office might be inconsistent with
its mission as a pure co-ordinating agency’, and thus using it as a quasi-delivery unit was unappealing
to a party that had long governed with the aid of the PCO solely in a coordinating function.
Finally, while the Liberals consulted polls and focus groups, the investment in and use of market
research was not to the same degree as the Harper Conservatives in their first years in power.

Advice for practitioners

From the examination of these cases, several recommendations emerge vis-à-vis delivery in
minority governments, as set out in Table 23.4.
This model of delivery, while not exhaustive, provides a base from which further research
can develop and cases across jurisdictions can be compared. A key component is the use of some
kind of implementation tool, but if we recall that a minority situation, and the electoral uncer-
tainty that comes with it, is itself an impetus to keep a government focused on delivery, where
do mechanisms such as implementation units best fit? Arguably the UK and Australian examples
demonstrate that delivery units are uniquely suited to majority and coalition governments. This
is not to suggest that greater capacity is unwarranted in a minority government, but imple-
mentation units as part of a political marketing model of successful delivery appear to provide an
additional focus to governments that are either more susceptible to policy drift, or those that
need to keep a partnership together. For market-oriented parties in these two types of government,
delivery units can assist by concentrating on the implementation of priority commitments,
identifying potential problems and assisting with horizontal coordination where commitments
overlap departmental areas.

Impact on politics
Failure to implement campaign commitments can have negative reverberations for democratic
government. Peter Shergold, former secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and
Cabinet in Australia, observed that:

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Poor delivery … risks public dissatisfaction. It can reduce trust not only in public service
but in the government it serves. The quality of the implementation of government policy
is central to community support for the institutions of democratic governance.
(quoted in Tiernan 2007: 116)

Shergold views the Cabinet Implementation Unit in Australia as ‘a vehicle for communicat-
ing more effectively between those implementing government policy, public service leadership
and government’ (Shergold 2007: 14). Strengthened relationships between these branches
leads to better delivery in government and, by extension, improves citizen confidence in their
government. This can have a positive impact on democratic government.
At the same time, ‘delivery units’ are located at the centre of government, directly under the
auspices of the prime minister. The centralization of control in the PMO is a concern for
scholars (Savoie 1999) and delivery units appear to add another layer to the power of the centre
which privileges downstream decision-making. If the implementation unit is staffed by political
advisors (as it was in the UK PMDU), this also raises questions of accountability and answer-
ability since we know little about the role of partisan staff in government (Savoie 2008; Blick
2004; Eichbaum and Shaw 2010). Viewed this way, implementation or delivery units con-
tribute to the growth of the centre of government and this squeezes the notion of democratic
government.

The way forward

Political marketing examines how parties use market intelligence to design a product that
responds to the needs and wants of voters. How market-oriented parties are able to deliver that
product in government is deserving of more attention. There are a few complicating factors to
this task, however. First, becoming ‘market-oriented’ is still a new concept to many parties and
the stages involved have only been embraced by a small handful. Second, a party that sets out to
be market-oriented may not remain that way in power (Marland 2005). Third, even if a MOP
maintains its market orientation in government, it faces the same implementation obstacles that
challenge all parties in power. The crucial point is whether a MOP will take advantage of tools
such as a ‘delivery’ or ‘implementation’ unit to help ensure the success of its priority initiatives.
Last, the use of such a unit may turn on the type of government in place – minority, majority or
coalition.
The Canadian example of minority governments has demonstrated that such units may be
superfluous. Working under severe time constraints, minority governments do not appear to
lose sight of their goals or experience policy drift. On the other hand, as demonstrated by the
UK and Queensland examples, majority governments appear to have difficulty staving off
malaise, and a delivery unit provides needed focus and oversight to their product delivery.
Coalition governments, such as in Australia under John Howard, can also make use of imple-
mentation units. The ability to cooperate is of benefit to both partners in a coalition and a
delivery unit can help to ensure that agreed upon policies come to fruition.
More research along these lines is sorely needed. The new UK coalition government
between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats is one place to start. David Cameron has
brought an end to the PMDU in an effort to ‘decentralize’ decision-making (Cameron and
Clegg 2010). Whether such a move will facilitate implementation and hold the coalition toge-
ther is debatable. Observers are already questioning the stability of the coalition (O’Sullivan
2010) and without a delivery unit to keep the parties focused on the key aspects of their
agreement, their time in office may not be viewed favourably. Likewise, the Australian federal

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government should also be monitored closely. The Labour government won a minority in the
August 2010 election. The Canadian example suggests that an implementation unit may no
longer be necessary – Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Cabinet should have enough
momentum to keep policies on track because of the parliamentary situation alone. Arguably,
the Cabinet Implementation Unit has become institutionalized at the federal level. Will its role
still be of benefit to the new minority government? New lessons regarding the benefit or det-
riment of an established implementation unit for a minority government could be learned from
this case.
It is evident that there is much work to be done in political marketing regarding the delivery
of the party’s product. Further examination of implementation units as well as other means of
keeping promises is particularly important, including the consequences of non-delivery, or
delivery in the context of weakening brand values (as faced by the Liberal Party of Canada,
for example, from which it has yet to recover). Further exploration in all of these areas will
continue to broaden this particular branch of political marketing studies.

Notes
1 The Liberals won 135 seats, the Conservatives 99, the Bloc Québécois 54, and the New Democratic
Party 19.
2 The CPC won 124 seats, the Liberals 103, the Bloc Québécois 51, and the New Democrats 29.
3 This was not true after the 2008 federal election. The ‘economic update’ from the Conservative
government included items that were unacceptable to the opposition. This resulted in a ‘constitutional
crisis’ where the opposition parties threatened to topple the Conservatives and form their own coalition
government.
4 The five areas were cancer care, hip and knee replacement, cardiac care, diagnostic imaging and cataract
surgeries.
5 Personal interview with a former senior advisor to the prime minister.

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24
Advocacy coalitions strategies
Tensions about legitimacy in
environmental causes

Émilie Foster, Raymond Hudon and Stéphanie Yates

The topic: marketing and advocacy coalitions in environmental causes

In a context where authorities are pressed worldwide to maintain a balance between ever
growing demand for energy and resources and the preservation of natural areas (Aldrich 2008: 6),
public infrastructure projects raising environmental concerns, such as nuclear installations or
dams, have sparked off, in the last decades, a series of popular protest movements (Hudon et al.
2009). In most instances, protesters, increasingly reunited in amateur advocacy coalitions, have
been quick to claim that they represent the general will and promote the common good with the
objective of influencing decisions to be made. In this perspective, they have occasionally relied on
political marketing techniques.
In this chapter, we examine the extent and the form of political marketing techniques used
by advocacy coalitions, through five cases raising environmental concerns that took place in
Quebec (Canada) over the recent decades back to the 1970s. First, we briefly develop our
theoretical framework. Second, we introduce our five cases and sketch our methodology.
Third, we analyze and compare the political marketing techniques used by each of the advocacy
coalitions involved in our cases and assess their impacts in term of the coalitions’ legitimacy.
Finally, we draw general lessons from our cases, and assess the impacts of political marketing on
politics.

Previous research
Political marketing has traditionally been studied by reference to parties and elections, but a few
researchers have recently expanded the field to include interest groups (King 2006; McGrath 2006;
Lees-Marshment 2003), associating political marketing with lobbying by interest groups. For
Mack (1997: 4), both marketing and lobbying aim at persuading policy-makers. Andrews (1996: 79)
argues that businesses are successful in influencing public policy not because they buy influence
but because they apply appropriate marketing strategies in their lobbying activities. For his part,
McGrath (2006: 108) notes that ‘the persuasion function of lobbying can be bound into political
marketing theory’. Despite these close links between the two fields of practice, Lock and Harris (1996:
318) observe that political marketing techniques are still neglected by scholars studying lobbying.

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Advocacy coalitions strategies

Even if they pertain to a comparable logic, political marketing strategies elaborated by

interest groups remain different from those used by political parties. Interest groups have no
ambition to govern: they are rather empowered to represent certain values (and interests) and to
persuade rulers and the public that their stand is legitimate and socially (and politically)
acceptable (Foster and Hudon 2010: 5). Accordingly, groups are prone to think of their
strategies in terms of political compromises to prevent being subjected to unilateral solutions
imposed by political authorities and to attract and retain members and donators. So,
they regularly, in relation to ‘upstream marketing’ mechanisms, have to build compromises
internally before attempting to influence the rulers. Since parties aspire to become the rulers
themselves, they have broader incentives to attract members and supporters and, structurally,
they appear to have an advantage over interest groups in their strategies to influence policy
outcomes, referred to as ‘downstream marketing’. Similarly to parties, interest groups can be
considered as offering a ‘product’ (in fact, a message or a position) in competition with other
groups’ ‘products’. Comparatively, however, they must establish their legitimacy and the valid-
ity of the claim that they speak for a majority of citizens and, by extension, promote the
common good.
The multiplication of advocacy coalitions (Hudon et al. 2008; Hula 1999) since the
beginning of the 1980s has played a significant role in the articulation and aggregation of
citizens’ interests and their translation into political demands. We define advocacy coalitions
as at least two organizations, sometimes joined by lay citizens, working together, often on a
limited basis, to influence a specific policy outcome (Hudon et al. 2009: 7). By their very exis-
tence, coalitions can encourage political dialogue and compromises both internally – between
the members of the organizations involved – and externally – with public authorities.
The legitimacy of groups (and coalitions) relies, on the one hand, on the proceedings
allowing internal discussions and expressions of dissent prior to their downstream strategies to
influence policy outcomes and, on the other hand, on mechanisms and dialogue intended to
making arguments or action accepted by the members of a society (Guibentif 2005: 262). In this
context, legitimacy can be understood as ‘a sense that an organization is lawful, proper,
admissible and justified in doing what it does, and saying what it says, and that it continues to
enjoy the support of an identifiable constituency’ (Edwards 1998: 258).
Political marketing techniques can powerfully contribute in establishing a group’s or an
advocacy coalition’s legitimacy. Lees-Marshment (2001: 1074–76) has developed a
comprehensive political marketing model, (CPM) accounting for the extent to which an
organization has included political marketing techniques in its operation. She emphasizes that
‘[m]arketing concepts as well as techniques can be applied not just to how political
organizations communicate with their market, but how they determine their behavior or
product’ (Lees-Marshment 2001: 1074–76). In her model, she makes a distinction between a
‘product-oriented’ approach, a ‘sales-oriented’ approach and a ‘market-oriented’ approach.
As for political marketing theory in general, these concepts were developed first and foremost
to examine political parties’ strategies and positions. However, it turns out that they also appear
particularly relevant for the analysis of interest groups’ tactics and actions. The three approaches
(Table 24.1) make it possible to classify groups on the basis of their strategic thinking and, more
specifically, of their use of political marketing techniques. They also make it possible to
compare groups between themselves by referring to the different steps that characterize each
approach.
In a first category, we find groups adopting a ‘product-oriented’ approach. These groups
typically put their ‘cause’ at the forefront of their decisions and stick to the initial message
promoting this cause. Indeed, these groups, ideological in nature, appear especially reluctant to

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Émilie Foster, Raymond Hudon and Stéphanie Yates

Table 24.1 Ideal types of political marketing approaches used by interest groups

1. Product-oriented group 2. Sales-oriented group 3. Market-oriented group

Step 1: Product design Step 1: Product design Step 1: Market intelligence

Step 2: Communication Step 2: Market intelligence Step 2: Product design
Step 3: Campaign Step 3: Communication Step 3: Product refinement
Step 4: Delivery Step 4: Campaign Step 4: Communication
Step 5: Delivery Step 5: Campaign
Step 6: Delivery

Source: (Lees-Marshment 2004: 99–105).

fit their message to their audience, which could be helpful to increase their membership, obtain
financial support, or heighten public awareness about their cause. In fact, it seems that they do
not care about developing long-term strategies to ensure larger support.
In a second category, ‘sales-oriented’ groups also tend to stick to the message promoting their
cause, regardless of the demands emerging from ‘their’ political market; however, they appear
more prone to resort to marketing techniques. According to Lees-Marshment (2004: 99), groups
generally choose this approach to cope with highly competitive conditions for raising funds and
holding public attention. Furthermore, the decline of traditional social networks (Putnam 2000)
makes it plausible that a number of groups have realized that mass communication has become the
most profitable means to reach a maximum of potential supporters.
Finally, in a last category, ‘market-oriented’ groups try to find ‘the best means by which to
attract and maintain supporters’, using ‘market intelligence’ to ‘identify supporters’ demands,
design a “product” to reflect the results, and communicate campaign progress to retain their
support’ (Lees-Marshment 2003: 359). Despite the relevance of the comparison between the
business and the interest groups’ universes, there are non-trivial limits to this exercise. While
market-oriented businesses create products that meet the needs and requirements of their
potential clients, interest groups do not create products per se: they rather react to given situa-
tions (such as a public infrastructure project). This reaction mainly consists of a message, the
formulation of which can follow a market-oriented approach (i.e. that groups articulate their
message according to the results of a preliminary market intelligence exercise). Hence, these
groups can identify the new circumstances they face, through focus groups, surveys, or media
monitoring, and adapt their strategy accordingly in order to secure their support. Therefore,
they devise strategies very different from the traditional ‘product-sales-market-orientation cycle’
(Keith 1960, in Lees-Marshment 2003: 360) by making market analysis a central factor of their
decisions.
The objective of this chapter is to explore in greater detail how Lees-Marshment’s
CPM model can be applied to interest groups and, by extension, to advocacy coalitions,
through five cases of public infrastructure projects marked by tensions over environmental
concerns.

New research: advocacy coalitions’ strategies in five cases

Our five cases took place between 1972 and 2009 and involve amateur advocacy coalitions
opposing developers’ infrastructure projects. The five cases are presented in greater detail
in Table 24.2. For each case, our data were collected by means of an extensive survey of media

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Table 24.2 Details of the five cases

Case Project outline Protest movement Outcome

Beauport highway Build a motorway A coalition of citizens The highway layout

project between Beauport (then a called Sauvons les battures! was substantially
1970–78 suburban municipality (Save the strands) was modified to take into
east of Quebec City) and formed in 1978 on the account
downtown Quebec City. initiative of the Association environmental
des biologistes du Québec concerns.
(Quebec Biologists
Association).
Champigny project Build a power station in As soon as the project was The developer
1972–73 the Jacques-Cartier River announced, residents withdrew its project.
Valley, north of Quebec from local communities at
City. the outskirts of the site
created the Comité pour
la conservation de la
Jacques-Cartier (Jacques-
Cartier River preservation
committee), to prevent
the destruction of a
unique natural heritage.
Mont Orford project Develop a pedestrian In Spring 2006 the The developer
2002–07 village with coalition SOS Parc Orford withdrew its initial
condominiums at the foot urged the government to project.
of the Orford mountain, stop the developer’s
within the Mont Orford project in order to protect
National Park, located the provincial park from
near Sherbrooke (about residential developments.
150 km from Montréal).
Rabaska project Build a liquefied natural A few months after the Governmental
2004–08 gas (LNG) terminal on the developer presented its authorities have
south shore of the Saint project, opponents joined approved the
Lawrence River, in front of under an umbrella project, which is still
Quebec City. coalition called Rabat-joie, pending for gas
determined to stop supply
the project. considerations.
Sept-Îles uranium Prospect for uranium at In December 2007 about The developer
exploration project Lac Kachiwiss, located 20 a dozen citizens formed a withdrew its project.
2007–10 km north from Sept-Îles, a coalition, Sept-Îles sans
small town on the north uranium (SISUR, or
shore of the Gulf of Saint Sept-Îles free of uranium),
Lawrence. which called for the end of
the project and ultimately
a provincial moratorium
on uranium exploration
and exploitation.

Note: Information and data about our cases were collected in the context of a research grant from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Raymond Hudon and Christian Poirier, Coalitions et groupes d’intérêt au
Canada. Dynamiques, enjeux et reconfigurations de l'action politique).
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Émilie Foster, Raymond Hudon and Stéphanie Yates

coverage and of interviews with selected stakeholders. The press clipping was made of more than
1,600 articles for the Orford case, 1,000 articles for the Rabaska case, 170 articles for the Sept-Îles
uranium project, 50 articles for the Champigny case and about 30 for the Beauport case. Some 32
interviews were also conducted from February 2008 to July 2010, with an average of five or six
interviews for each case. Three additional interviews were done with ‘general observers’, selected
on the basis of their in-depth historical knowledge of environmental issues in Quebec. The
interviews were recorded and transcribed (except for the Sept-Îles case), and interviewees were
guaranteed anonymity.
For each case, we examine the advocacy coalition’s use of ‘market intelligence’ (research,
strategic positioning/targeting), the message developed by the organization (the elaboration phase),
and the means deployed to persuade citizens (the ‘communication’ phase). As already seen, a given
organization gives more or less importance to these various elements, and tackles them in a different
order, depending on its approach to political marketing. We conclude each case by highlighting
the links between the advocacy coalition’s approach to political marketing and its perceived
legitimacy, which is closely linked to success or failure to stop or modify the developer’s project.

Beauport project opponents’ strategy as a ‘product-oriented’ approach

In the Beauport case, the group called Sauvons les battures! (Save the strands) appears to have
adopted a ‘product-oriented’ approach. In terms of market intelligence, opponents were on a
reactive mode, intervening belatedly in the process – the highway was almost completed! – to
mitigate the anticipated impacts on the environment. Their organization was mainly ‘amateur’,
composed of about 30 people, academics and members of different environmental groups, who
gathered once a week in a restaurant to discuss the actions to be undertaken. There was no official
leader or spokesperson.
In their message, opponents focused on the protection and preservation of the strands;
however, their slogan, Sauvons les battures!, was not strongly echoed in the population. In a vast
majority, citizens in the region were rather enthusiastic about finally being given the possibility
to drive freely to the city. In fact, opponents did not devote resources to get information about
their political environment, like surveying public opinion or monitoring the government’s
actions. Having done so, they would have found that their message was going against the tide
of public opinion: back in the 1970s, the construction of a highway was considered an essential
asset to foster regional economic development.
In terms of communications, opponents did not specifically target publics who would
likely sympathize with their message. They gave a few interviews to media and benefited from
some press coverage, but again, without a clearly devised strategy. In fact, it appears that the
cause was insisted on alive in the public with the help of two local journalists who had insisted
on questioning the government’s plans. The fact that the issue of the environment was still a
new item on the political agenda in Quebec at the end of the 1970s (a Ministry of the Envir-
onment was created in 1978) could explain their professional interest in the cause: the protest
offered them a good occasion to establish their own reputations and make alliances with this
new movement.
On that basis, the project became highly salient. The rightfulness of the project began to be
doubted and the government agreed to organize public consultations. More than 300 people
showed up at the audiences organized by the newly created environmental public hearings
office, the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE). Hence, the degree of local
mobilization did not mainly result from action orchestrated by opponents, but was due to the
media coverage.

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Indeed, protestors never claimed to be representative of citizens and, as such, never put for-
ward upstream marketing techniques that could have helped them to recruit supporters. At one
point, they produced a poster showing their slogan (Sauvons les battures! ) which could have
created the impression that the movement was well organized. In reality, protesters called upon
people who were part of their own network, such as university professors, public servants, or
intellectuals active in a few learned societies. They gathered, in so doing, different types of
expertise that provided them with some legitimacy in the eyes of the two local journalists
already mentioned.
In view of the number of participants at the BAPE public hearings, public authorities could
not help but acknowledge that the protestors’ claims were representative of lay citizens’ views;
accordingly, they modified the highway layout. Hence, despite their weak marketing approach
and thanks to the credibility granted by two journalists, the opponents won their battle.

The Rabaska project opponents’ strategy as a ‘sales-oriented’ approach

Opponents of the Rabaska project formed a coalition called Rabat-joie. Their action seems to
have corresponded to a ‘sales-oriented’ approach, since they mainly focused on the promotion of
their message – or product – without developing a coherent strategy in terms of market intel-
ligence. With several spokespersons and, generally, a weak coordination between the different
groups within the coalition, opponents were mainly on a reactive mode that led to some
muddled actions. Given their lack of market intelligence, the opponents had no particular
targeting or positioning strategies: they just opposed the project, multiplying their commu-
nications, but generating little impact, if any. Apart from some efforts to document the risks
associated with natural gas terminals (as exemplified by similar projects around the world), the
opponents did not have the resources to conduct reliable research and analysis.
Rabat-joie had a central message and stuck to it for the most part of the protest. As such,
the coalition’s main argument revolved around security concerns such as risks of spills or
explosion. From the outside, this message was repeatedly interpreted as a typical NIMBY
(not in my backyard) syndrome. This impression was reinforced as one prominent organizer
resided on the Orleans Island, a natural heritage area well known for its tranquility and its
stunning view.
Nevertheless, opponents of Rabaska tried everything they could to promote their cause
and disseminate their message: they multiplied media contacts and interviews, organized
concerts to raise funds, created a website, wrote many opinion letters in newspapers, distributed
pamphlets to citizens and circulated a number of press releases. In brief, they used many
‘media-attention-seeking campaigning techniques’ (Lees-Marshment 2004: 99) to ‘sell’ their
message.
At the end of 2007, with the help of national environmental groups like Greenpeace,
opponents modified their approach by adopting some principles pertaining to ‘market intelli-
gence’. Hence, they tried to operate a ‘rise in generalization’, a process that turns an argument
or an issue that is essentially local and limited into a phenomenon having a general impact,
whether at the local, regional, national or international levels (Trom 1999; Lolive 1997). The
rise in generalization also enables actors to ‘politicize the singular’, or to expand the political
arena, multiply the actors interested and mobilize more supporters. In that perspective, oppo-
nents claimed that the project presented a real danger for the region as a whole, and that it
should be an issue involving all Quebec inhabitants. Opponents also argued that Canadian
sovereignty in the energy sector was at stake, since the project would require a foreign supply of
gas, most likely (if ever) from the Russian Gazprom. The very energy needs of Quebec were

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Émilie Foster, Raymond Hudon and Stéphanie Yates

further questioned in the climate change context. The rise in generalization was also reflected,
finally, by pointing to foreign counter-examples: according to the opponents, the project
would never get approval elsewhere, especially in the US, because of its proximity to residential
areas.
However, the generalization process appeared severely impaired by the highly complicated
nature of the Rabaska project, with experts hired by the developer bringing a counter expertise
to the opponents’ argument. Moreover, as often observed in this kind of collective action
(Chetkovich and Kunreuther 2006: 161), there was strife among environmental groups, some of
them giving their support to the natural gas industry, viewed as an acceptable alternative to
more polluting energy sources. Finally, as the rise in generalization came very late, it appeared
difficult to block decisions already made.
As a result, despite the fact that the population was mainly distrustful of the project during
the first year and a half in which it was discussed, Rabaska was later accepted by a majority of
citizens (according to all polls realized in 2006–07 in the Quebec region). The developer, who
could be considered the winner in this struggle, finally obtained, in early 2008, all the approbations
required from local, provincial and federal authorities.
In retrospect, it appears that in the first months of their protest, opponents tried some
upstream marketing strategies to recruit supporters, such as the distribution of pamphlets;
however, because their main argument, pertaining to security concerns, was viewed as a typical
NIMBY reaction, they were not able to make their claim legitimate in the eyes of the public
authorities. They did not succeed in being considered representative of the ‘silent majority’.
Even though opponents relied on volunteer experts to put their arguments forward, their ama-
teurism could not counterbalance the expertise of the developer, well prepared to discredit any
opposition to the project.
The shift in the opponents’ argument, which followed the market intelligence analysis
brought in by national environmental groups, allowed them to make some gains in terms of
legitimacy, their struggle having become associated with broader environmental concerns and
relying on more solid expertise. As a result, opponents received greater and more positive media
coverage and more citizens rallied to the cause. Combined with the huge amount of briefs
(more than 600) presented at the BAPE, the protest movement made significant gains in terms
of perceived representation.

Champigny, Orford and Sept-Îles uranium exploration projects: examples

of ‘market-oriented’ approaches
The Champigny, Orford and Sept-Îles uranium exploration projects seem to have adopted a
market-oriented approach.

Champigny
From the beginning, opponents to the Champigny project demonstrated a position that
took account of the limited environmental concerns in the population at large. In such a
context, they focused on the importance of preserving the Jacques-Cartier national park, arguing
that the developers were infringing the National Parks Law (Loi sur les parcs). This message was
easy to understand, and movement leaders did everything they could to control it. They also
looked for allies, obtaining support from important and credible political or social actors such as
the mayor of Tewkesbury (municipality located near the Jacques-Cartier park), who was directly

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concerned by the project, and the Corporation des ingénieurs forestiers du Québec (CIFQ, or the
Quebec Forest Engineers’ Corporation).
A group of about five people orchestrated the whole protest campaign. They planned
concerted actions, using the diversity of their expertise to gather different kinds of information
and to target a variety of stakeholders and publics prone to hearing their message. In terms
of market intelligence, opponents proved to be constantly conscious of their political environ-
ment, seizing every opportunity to quickly react to every move from the developer. With his
own international scientific network, one of the opponents helped to build a credible
argument. Contrary to Rabaska, the developer was not ready to fight back with proper
counter-expertise.
In terms of communication, opponents to the Champigny project were among the first in
Quebec to make a systematic use of the media as part of a political strategy aimed at blocking a
public infrastructure project raising environmental concerns. One of them was particularly
instrumental in ensuring privileged access to local and regional media. In fact, one journalist in
the local media was personally involved as an unofficial opponent! He organized – and cov-
ered – a press conference that resulted in a decisive shift in the protest campaign: on that
occasion, the CIFQ presented a scale model that ridiculed the developer’s plan of nature
preservation.
Since the Champigny project took place in a context when citizen mobilization in defense
of the environment was only just emerging (the BAPE was created a few years after the
Champigny case), lay citizens did not appear especially concerned by the preservation of this
natural area. In fact, opponents had to struggle against a popular tide of sympathy for
the project and its developer (Hydro Quebec, the state-owned enterprise in charge of devel-
oping hydro-electricity in Quebec). In reality, despite some upstream marketing techniques to
drum up support, such as circulating a petition to visitors in the park, opponents in the
Champigny case remained mainly local and confined to interest groups concerned with nature
preservation.
Although citizens were not directly involved in the protest, opponents succeeded in creating
the impression of general disapproval, and of a huge protest movement supported by public
opinion. These downstream marketing strategies increased the legitimacy of the protestors’
claims, particularly in the eyes of some public office holders (elected and non-elected), who
were paramount in the decision to stop the developer’s project. Since citizen involvement in
the policy process was only emerging in the 1970s, the protestors’ representation was not
thoroughly examined by public authorities to shed light on their decision.

Orford
From the outset of its protest action, the coalition SOS Parc Orford made use of techniques
characteristic of market intelligence by forming a committee in charge of strategic planning.
Thus, a few people made all the decisions pertaining to protest actions and citizen mobilization.
These decisions were based on public opinion ‘surveys’, realized through open meetings held on
a regular basis with local citizens, wherein the opponents’ official position was discussed and
debated. Opponents made a thorough analysis of their position in the political environment.
Based on this analysis, they set up sub-committees and, relying on volunteer experts from
different fields, developed environmental, economic and legal arguments. Fully aware of
their insufficient financial resources, they also formed a strategic alliance with Nature Québec, a
provincial ecology group, which gave them access to more funding.

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SOS Parc Orford adapted its message from the outset to rally a broader array of citizens,
including those living outside the immediate region in which the project was planned.
Through a rise in generalization, the coalition claimed that the Mont Orford Park was public
property and that all people of Quebec should feel concerned by the project. Then it was
suggested that the privatization of a part of the Mont Orford Park would inevitably lead to the
privatization of other national parks. Furthermore, there were efforts to stretch the debate
across the Canadian scene by referring, for instance, to the problem of climate change (due to
increased automobile traffic). The fact that the Mont Orford Park is geographically close to
metropolitan Montreal likely helped the rise in generalization, by ‘montrealizing’ the case,
which brought about broader support for the opponents, notably from national environmental
groups.
In terms of communication, the coalition strategically involved well-known personalities
with the intention of winning a friendly attitude towards the cause from citizens, which was
witnessed by two successful public demonstrations, a petition signed by thousands of people and
concerts organized to raise funds. The coalition also developed an exemplary media strategy that
ensured steady coverage, with arguments regularly renewed. In retrospect, SOS Parc Orford
achieved success in ‘selling’ its message both locally and on a provincial scale.
The coalition’s legitimacy relied essentially on a perceived representation of a vast array of lay
citizens opposed to the developer’s project. Indeed, in its analysis, the BAPE stated that the final
approval of the project was conditional upon getting support from environmental groups,
municipal authorities and citizens in the region. Thanks to a market-intelligence analysis,
opponents were able to develop different types of arguments and elaborate an upstream mar-
keting strategy. Consequently, they were able to recruit thousands of supporters and make it
convincing that they were representing a vast protest movement, gathering citizens from across
the province. In terms of downstream marketing strategies, opponents went as far as having one
of them elected mayor of Orford. Thus, they got a direct say in the authorization process (for
zoning, for example), and exerted a great influence on other elected and non-elected public
office holders.

Sept-Îles uranium exploration project

From the beginning, opponents in the Sept-Îles uranium exploration case, united under the
SISUR (Sept-Îles sans uranium) umbrella, were well organized in terms of market intelligence. On
a daily basis, the coalition’s founder and a few collaborators were making decisions, but a small
board of ‘governors’ was holding monthly meetings to confirm or modify all these decisions.
Thus, the opponents’ leaders were making sure that they were in-tune with citizens in the region.
In terms of messaging, SISUR’s leaders wanted to make it clear that they were not against mining
development in general, but against uranium mines in particular. They attempted a rise in
generalization when appealing to a provincial moratorium on uranium development activities
(this appeal was rejected by governmental authorities).
SISUR devoted resources to monitor its political environment and, in particular, to figure
out who had to approve or reject the project. The coalition also kept an eye on every gov-
ernment move concerning the project, and based its decisions on this socio-political watch. The
opponents rapidly entered into an alliance with other provincial groups concerned by the
mining exploration project in Sept-Îles, such as the Coalition pour que le Québec ait meilleure mine,
Radon and Fondation Rivières. Physicians from the Sept-Îles regional hospital were also of
invaluable help.

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Benefitting from these allies, SISUR gathered the expertise necessary to put together a
solid scientific background to its stand; however, with the aim of having as much media
exposure as possible, SISUR deliberately chose to publish its own press releases, hence
multiplying the possibility of being noticed by journalists. Hence, in terms of communication,
the coalition’s leaders were very active in the media, targeted them according to their high
visibility, and made sure that they had regular coverage every week or every two weeks.
Opponents managed to be heard and seen by using, apart from press releases, a broad array
of tools such as press conferences, petitions, demonstrations, creation of an official website,
extensive use of social media (Twitter and Facebook), and dissemination of videos on
YouTube. These websites allowed opponents to segment their public by regularly collecting
data from their visitors.
The results of this communication strategy were quite impressive: in December 2009,
according to a Leger Marketing survey commissioned by the Sept-Îles municipality, 100 percent
of people surveyed were aware of the uranium exploration project, and 91 percent expressed
their opposition to it (Dupont 2010). Thus, the opponents were successful in raising the public
attention and winning citizen support. As such, they won the battle for legitimacy over the
developer. Their credibility arose, on the one hand, from the physicians of the region, who
rallied to the opposing forces: their argument that uranium exploration poses a threat for citi-
zens’ health – and that of children in particular – could hardly be set aside. On the other hand,
the collaboration with provincial environmental groups like the Fondation Rivières and Nature
Québec also allowed another set of credible arguments revolving around environmental concerns
to be put forward. Furthermore, the opponents’ legitimacy was strengthened by their main
spokesperson becoming advantageously known in the region, while being also well-articulated
and liked: witness the mailing of Christmas cards by citizens who encouraged him to keep
fighting against the developer. Finally, SISUR’s legitimacy was reinforced by the apparent
representativeness of the coalition: the street demonstration against the project, which gathered
thousands of people, including the children and babies who were more vulnerable to health
hazards caused by uranium, being a tangible sign that the coalition’s view was shared by a great
portion of the Sept-Îles population.
By contrast, the developer, though sufficiently credible to be allowed by the government to
start the exploration phase, was virtually absent in the region. No communication plan was
implemented, to the point that interviews solicited by in the media to explain the project were
declined. In the end, the project did not arouse any significant support within the Sept-Îles
region, with no groups speaking in favor of it. The developer finally discreetly moved away
with all its machinery.

Advice for practitioners

Even if our small-n study precludes us from overly generalizing our conclusions, our cases
show clear tendencies from which we can draw general lessons to be learned by opponents of
other public infrastructure projects that raise environmental concerns, in Canada or elsewhere.
We believe that a market-oriented approach provides advocacy coalitions with the legitimacy
required to influence the decision-making process, while purely sales-oriented or product-
oriented approaches seem inappropriate to provide this legitimacy. From this assumption,
we suggest that advocacy coalitions could find it advisable to follow five principles relating to
market intelligence, organization, message and communication. These principles, presented
in more detail below, would enhance their chances to reorient the course of decision in their
favor.

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Émilie Foster, Raymond Hudon and Stéphanie Yates

First, market intelligence (segmenting, targeting and positioning) should always be prioritized.
Before elaborating their message and undertaking communication actions, opponents should
review existing polls and the press coverage on the issue at stake. They should also make an
assessment of their strengths and weaknesses and identify their potential allies and enemies. After
these preliminary operations, opponents should be able to define the most attractive message to
rally as many people as possible to their cause.
Second, in terms of organization, leadership should be centralized to be more efficient.
Advocacy coalitions should designate a small group of people, ideally fully dedicated to the
cause, in charge of orchestrating the whole protest campaign with the mandate to make stra-
tegic decisions when necessary. As long as it has the legitimacy to act on behalf of the whole coali-
tion, this ‘executive core’ is paramount in order to avoid internal disagreements and to manage
more or less fierce disputes between big ‘egos’, thus saving precious resources, energy and time.
Third, opponents should develop a credible message based on thorough expertise in order to
counterbalance that of the developer. As shown in our case studies, developers have devoted,
over the years, a growing amount of resources to build expertise about their projects. Since
opponents’ resources are generally more limited, coalitions should take advantage of building a
solid network with other environmental groups, which could provide expertise thanks to their
larger financial and technical resources.
Fourth, again in terms of messaging, opponents should aim at generalization by pointing out
that the project has an impact larger than immediately envisioned, with broader consequences
regionally or nationally. If they neglect to do so, opponents are at risk of being tagged with the
NIMBY label, which makes it more difficult to gather support from citizens and public officials
who are not directly concerned by a given project, a condition to be perceived as a vast protest
movement.
Finally, in terms of communication, opponents should be constant in their media appearances
by feeding journalists weekly – if not daily – with diverse material (press releases, announcements,
presentation of a new study, demonstrations, etc.). Equally important, a coalition should prevent
multiple and sometimes contradictory messages by designating one spokesperson. Combined
with an effective rise in generalization strategy, continuous contact with the media should lead
to national media coverage. The involvement of national media usually marks a point of no
return where advocacy coalitions are granted enough legitimacy ‘to appear on mainstream
political and cultural agendas and register in the collective mind’ (Castells 2000: 365), hence
being in a position to exert tangible influence.

Impact on politics
The general use of political marketing techniques by interest groups and advocacy coalitions
concerned with public infrastructure projects that raise environmental concerns, and the ‘market-
oriented’ approach in particular, can be seen as having both positive and negative impacts on the
decision-making process.
On the one hand, a political marketing approach leads interest groups – and coalitions – to
care not only about the needs and interests of their own members, but also to take into account
trends in the general public and among other social (and political) actors. As already seen, the
legitimacy of a group mainly relies on its ability to demonstrate that its claim corresponds with
the views of a broad array of citizens. In that sense, we could assert that a ‘market-oriented’
approach is instrumental in making sure that lay citizens are genuinely represented by advocacy
groups, the work of which can help to find a better balance between economic development
and environmental considerations when reacting to a new public infrastructure project.

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On the other hand, a well-thought out political marketing strategy can also have some per-
nicious effects, by blurring the dichotomy between general and particular interests (Jordan et al.
1996: 72). As such, ‘what is done in [supposedly] everyone’s interest was harmful and disastrous
consequences and is contrary to the ultimate goal pursued’ (Hirschman 1991: 67). Indeed, the
defense of special interests can be easily hidden beneath the virtuous claim to defend the
environment and thus the public good. In these cases, an advocacy coalition’s legitimacy follows
its ability to make decision-makers believe that it speaks for the majority of citizens, often
referred to as the ‘silent majority’. As seen above, marketing techniques can help to ‘sell’
this idea of a broad representation. However, one could be left with the impression of an
instrumentalization of the so-called silent majority.

The way forward

In exploring how Lees-Marshment’s CPM model could be applied to advocacy coalitions
intervening in public infrastructure cases raising environmental concerns, we found that the
model is relevant to characterize the political marketing approaches used by these groups. Of
course, many avenues could be further explored to refine and develop this type of analysis.
First, our results remain limited since none of the organizations we have examined fits
entirely into one or the other of the three ideal types of political marketing approaches (product-
oriented, sales-oriented or market-oriented). Future efforts should be devoted to developing
more refined indicators to associate an approach with a given organization, based on its actions
and positioning.
Second, our five cases pertain to advocacy coalitions opposing infrastructure projects that
raised environmental concerns, which is quite a specific field of investigation. Further research
could explore the use of political marketing by advocacy coalitions opposing – or supporting –
other types of political decisions in different fields: health, economy, education and so on.
Extending the field of research into other countries could also provide a useful comparative
perspective.
Finally, it could be interesting to study the impact of political marketing on the survival and
transformation of advocacy coalitions. Indeed, groups do not aim only at influencing political
decisions; they are also preoccupied with their own continuity as an organization in recruiting
new supporters and finding funds (Hudon and Yates 2008: 388). Political marketing could be
an efficient tool to foster and consolidate these precious assets.

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Branding public policy

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25
Branding public policy1
David Marsh and Paul Fawcett

The topic: branding public policy

Branding is often thought of as being about the branding of politicians and parties, but in this
chapter we explore the branding of public policy and what this means for democracy and
governance.
Branding has attracted relatively little interest even in the field of political marketing,
although that may be changing (see French and Smith 2008: 210). Holt makes this point most
effectively:

Today branding is a core activity of capitalism, so must be included in any serious attempt
to understand contemporary society and politics. Yet, despite its social significance, branding
has rarely been subject to concerted empirical examination and theoretical development
outside of business schools.
(Holt 2006: 300)

Even those, like Savigny (2008), who argue that marketing and branding hinder democracy,
nevertheless recognise that we should aim to develop a better and more critical understanding
of how these techniques are used, given their increased popularity amongst political actors.2
However, before we examine this link in further detail, one other point is important here,
namely the relationship between marketing and branding, which is not an entirely unconten-
tious issue in the marketing literature.3 Whilst the branding of a city, party or policy is a key
feature of the marketing of it, this is a relationship that is not as straightforward in the public
sector as it is in the private sector. In the private sector, branding is probably best seen as a
marketing tool designed to increase a company’s market share/sales revenue. To an extent, the
same is true of country and city branding where, in part, the aim is to market a country/city to
increase revenue from tourism. However, in the case of the branding of politicians or parties,
the aim is to market them to increase support and, particularly, vote share. Finally, the branding
of public policy is different again. Policies are marketed, but the aim is usually not to increase
revenue, but rather to ensure the adoption and success of a particular policy.

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Previous research: branding and politics

The limited literature on politics and branding is not systematic and most of it is, in essence, a
sub-set of the political marketing literature, concentrating upon the branding of parties and
politicians. In contrast, we develop a heuristic, which identifies four different areas in which
branding and politics intersect. A summary of this heuristic is shown in Table 25.1 below (for a
fuller development of the heuristic see Marsh and Fawcett 2011).
In what remains of this chapter, we focus on the branding of public policy.

Table 25.1 Four areas wherein politics and branding intersect

Public sector organisations Branding countries, sub- Branding parties, Branding public policy
that use branded products national governments and leaders and
and services government departments/ governments
agencies

Description
Public sector organisations Successful place branding The branding of Public policies are
have developed both their is increasingly viewed as a parties, politicians sometimes, perhaps
own branded products key competitive asset and and governments is increasingly,
and services, and have can be linked to the move a key concern of the branded either by
used products and towards a post-modern or political marketing international
services that have been late-modern world. Its literature, which has organisations or
branded by the private increased importance is grown rapidly in the government
sector, particularly in the reflected in Anholt-GfK last decade. departments and
HR, IT and finance sectors. Roper’s decision, in 2005, agencies.
to begin producing an
annual Nation Branding
and City Branding Index
based on 1,000 interviews
with respondents in 20
developed countries.
Government departments
and agencies also
increasingly brand
themselves and their
activities.
Examples
Examples include: Examples of place Two of the most Examples include:
the Investors in People branding are frequent and prominent examples the Truth Campaign
Standard, which is now range from the national are Clinton and Blair, in the US;
used worldwide in over 20 (Australia, Canada and who are noted for the World Health
countries, and Singapore) to the local not only branding Organization’s
the European Foundation (South Australia). themselves, but also (WHO) Direct
for Quality Management The branding of their parties and the Observation of
Excellence Model, which government departments governments that Treatment, Short-
was first developed by and agencies is just as they led. Course
industry in 1988, but frequent. To choose one Chemotherapy
which has since been example, the Office of Programme (DOTS)
adopted by a number of Government Commerce for tuberculosis
public sector agencies. (OGC) in the UK is control;

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Branding public policy

Table 25.1 (continued)

Public sector organisations Branding countries, sub- Branding parties, Branding public policy
that use branded products national governments and leaders and
and services government departments/ governments
agencies

branded and has also used the UNAIDS Red

branding to promote its Campaign; and the
activities, including its Gateway Review
‘Best Practice Portfolio’. It Process, which we
owns the intellectual discuss below.
property and trademarks
to the generic swirl logo
that is used in all of its
promotional material.

Example sources
Civil Service College Singapore 2006; Emberson and Winters 2000; Evans et al. 2005; George et al. 2003;
Hides et al. 2004; Nabitz et al. 2000; Nimijean 2006; Ogden et al. 2003; Sanchez et al. 2006; Temple 2005.

New research: policy transfer and branding – the Gateway

Review Process
Branding appears to play an increasingly important role in the development and implementation
of public policy, but it can also feature as part of the process of policy transfer, which is an
increasingly important development in public policy (see Dolowitz and Marsh 1996, 2000; Evans
2009). In this section, we examine the case of the Gateway Review Process (henceforth Gateway),
which was first introduced by the UK’s Office of Government Commerce (OGC) in February
2001 (for more detail on Gateway see Fawcett and Marsh forthcoming; Marsh and Fawcett
forthcoming). At the time that interviews were conducted for this chapter, the OGC was an
independent office of HM Treasury with responsibility for, amongst other things, public sector
procurement and project management (from 15 June 2010 the OGC was based in the Efficiency
and Reform Group in the Cabinet Office). Gateway was introduced with the aim of improving
the public sector’s capacity in both of these areas. It is a particularly interesting case in the context
of this discussion because it is an example of a public policy that has been branded and franchised
to other jurisdictions both within and outside of the originating country. In addition, whilst
the focus of the policy transfer literature has been on why and how a country imports policy
models from another country to solve a policy problem, the Gateway case turns our attention to
why and how a country tries to export its policies and the role of branding and franchising in this
process.4
Three critical reports focused on the issue of public procurement policy between 1995 and
1999, including the Gershon Review, which was published in April 1999 (Gershon 1999). In
response, the government created the OGC in April 2000 and introduced a new set of best
practice guidance for the procurement of major projects in the public sector, which became
known as Gateway. In its initial stages, the Gateway process involves the creation of a risk
profile, which determines whether the Department can conduct its own review or has to call in
an independent team of reviewers nominated by the central Gateway Unit. All reviewers are
accredited by the OGC and many are drawn from the private sector. Each project is then

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David Marsh and Paul Fawcett

assessed at six key decision points or ‘gates’: start up; business justification; procurement strategy;
investment decision; readiness for service; and benefits evaluation. At the end of each review,
which lasts between three and four days, a short report is produced for the Department’s Senior
Responsible Owner (SRO). Initially, these reports would grade projects Red, Amber or
Green, although that process has subsequently changed. The report is discussed with the SRO
and forwarded to OGC within seven days, with all actions agreed before the Gateway team
departs.
Gateway was conceived as a brand from the outset, after a brand consultant gave a three-
hour presentation to its first head, Ian Glenday, and his colleagues (Glenday 2007). Given that it
was branded, it is clear that it was intended to ‘market’ Gateway, initially to UK partners and
then overseas. As such, franchising was also a key element of Gateway’s strategy. These two
features of Gateway are clearly reflected in both the trade-marking of the Gateway brand and in
the quality of the promotional literature that they produce, which is adopted, but also adapted
to varying extents, by all the franchisees.
In the UK, Gateway is overseen by the Gateway Unit in the OGC and operates in central
government, local government, the National Health Service (NHS), the Ministry of Defence,
the police force, and in the sub-national governments in Scotland and Wales. It is widely seen
as a success in the UK (see Fawcett and Marsh forthcoming for a discussion of its putative
‘success’), and has been transferred to Australia, first to Victoria and, subsequently, to the
Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. There has also been
transfer to other sub-state jurisdictions in Australia, notably Brisbane City Council, which has
established itself as a leader in this area and is attempting to market itself as a centre of excel-
lence among councils in northeastern Australia. In 2008 it was introduced to New Zealand and
the Netherlands.
However, we argue here, and it is a point that we develop at further length elsewhere (see
Fawcett and Marsh forthcoming), that there is strong prima facie evidence that, other factors
notwithstanding, the way in which Gateway has been branded and franchised helps to explain
not only the success of the policy itself, but also the success of its subsequent transfer to other
jurisdictions. Certainly, our interviewees in the Gateway Units in the UK and Victoria
emphasised this point (see Fawcett and Marsh forthcoming). Interestingly, however, Gateway
wasn’t branded and franchised in order to raise revenue, as would clearly be the case in the
private sector. Rather, the initial intention was to ensure that Gateway was used in a consistent
and comprehensive manner as it spread to different parts of the UK public sector. Subsequently,
as the transfer became international, franchising was regarded as crucially important to ‘preserve
the brand’ and to ensure that: first, failures, which might reflect back adversely on the process
in the UK, were less likely; and second, best practice could be exchanged within a common
framework.
The importance that the OGC attached to Gateway, as a brand, was most clearly
demonstrated in 2007 when it established a Brand Assurance Team. The Brand Assurance Team
was created to protect the integrity of the brand, deal with requests for information about
Gateway from other jurisdictions, and encourage the exchange of best practice, or lesson
drawing from hubs, including the international hubs. In addition, the Brand Assurance Team
was also responsible for conducting a review of each of the hubs every three years. To date, of
the international hubs, only Victoria has been reviewed. This occurred in 2007 and it was a
light touch review. The franchisee bears the cost of the review, but no other payment is
involved.
As emphasised, Gateway is also franchised. Again, franchising is more common in the private
sector. Alon (2005) argues that franchising in the private sector is most successful in companies

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Branding public policy

with strong and continuing profitability and for businesses that can be easily duplicated. There
has also been considerable work identifying the putative advantages and disadvantages of fran-
chising for both franchisors and franchisees. Most of these factors are not relevant in relation
to franchising in the public sector, but some are important. So, it is argued that franchisers
benefit from the opportunity to spread their business model at limited cost and from the fact
that franchisees have more incentives than employees to make a brand work. The main dis-
advantage is that franchisers lose control unless they have a careful vetting procedure and regular
checks on performance. As far as franchisees are concerned, they are seen as benefitting from
the knowledge of, and training by, the franchiser, but the main disadvantage is the loss of control,
compared with the option of launching their own brand.
These arguments about franchising have some, if limited, resonance in the case of Gateway.
Franchising has enabled Gateway UK to spread the model with limited cost, but the benefits it
has enjoyed have not been financial. In most cases, what franchising has helped Gateway UK to
do is reinforce its claims about its success and, to a limited, if growing, extent, gain from the
exchange of best practice. As far as the borrowing jurisdictions are concerned, the benefits
are more obvious. Their costs have been reduced by the fact that the Gateway model and the
accompanying documentation were already available, and indeed tried and tested. In addition,
the fact that it was widely seen as a success in the UK made it less of a risk. At the same time,
borrowing jurisdictions have also retained significant control as UK Gateway has, to date, given
then significant flexibility over the way in which they have implemented the model enabling them
to adapt it to suit local circumstances.

Advice for practitioners

Measuring the success of branding in the public sector is much more difficult than it is in the
private sector. In the private sector, success is judged in terms of factors such as sales, profit and
market share, but in the public sector indicators of success are much more problematic. In the
case of parties or politicians, the success of branding might be measured at election time or by
opinion polls between elections. However, the problem is, perhaps, more complex in relation to
the branding of public policy. A public policy may be branded and marketed in order to ensure
effective implementation or greater take-up, but it is not usually sold or charged for, so we cannot
assess success in monetary terms. Overall, this raises a set of broader questions about how to assess
policy success, but this is an under-analysed area within public policy (for attempts to address the
issues involved, see Marsh and McConnell 2010; McConnell 2010). However, our key argument
here is that success in the public policy field, whether or not branding is involved, is a contested
issue. This point can be briefly illustrated by returning to two cases, one based on our research
into Gateway and the other based on Ogden et al.’s research into the World Health Organiza-
tion’s (WHO) Direct Observation of Treatment, Short-Course Chemotherapy Programme
(DOTS) campaign, which was referred to briefly in Table 25.1.
Ogden et al. (2003) examine how branding was used by the WHO as part of their DOTS
programme for tuberculosis control, which was introduced in the early 1990s. DOTS was
strongly contested and resisted by academic and scientific communities, despite Ogden et al.
(2003: 184) argument that the policy package was explicitly developed with the aim of making
it ‘simple and marketable to policy makers and programme implementers’. This meant that:

a strongly political approach characterized what is usually thought of as a technical health

policy process. The DOTS campaign was extremely successful in emphasizing advocacy
and the marketing of an idea. … [T]he Global TB Programme managed effectively to

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exploit an important window of opportunity (a TB outbreak in New York) in order to

come up with a branded solution by which to solve it. Their success can be measured in the
number of countries adopting the DOTS policy to date – 127 out of 211.
(Ogden et al. 2003: 186)

Ogden et al. focus on programmatic success: whether the policy achieved its intended
outcomes and whether it was implemented as per its objectives. This is perhaps the most
common measure of success. For example, it is the same measure used by Evans et al. (2005) in
their study of the Truth Campaign, which was launched in the US to establish an anti-smoking
brand with teenagers. They note that: ‘There was a marked decline in youth tobacco use
associated with the Truth Campaigns in the states of Florida and Massachusetts’ (Evans et al.
2005: 188). Again, success is equated here with whether the outcomes of the programme have
been achieved.
However, Ogden et al.’s analysis also highlights other measures of success (or, to be
more accurate, lack of success). For example, they point out that: ‘While the marketing of
DOTS was, in many ways, hugely successful, in terms of attracting attention and resources for
TB, branding had disadvantages and led to further contestation’ (Ogden et al. 2003: 185).
They continue: ‘the overt political approach of branding and marketing DOTS led to
considerable contestation within a normally technical and relatively consensual policy commu-
nity, with disagreements between academic, scientists and programme managers at WHO’
(ibid.: 186). This suggests that other aspects of the programme were less successful. Hence, the
lack of success to which they refer here is less about whether the outcomes of the programme
were achieved (indeed, on most counts it appears that they were), and more about process
success, or, in other words, the extent to which the programme had legitimacy amongst rele-
vant stakeholders. It is therefore insufficient to concentrate only on financial output measures,
or even the outcomes of a programme, when it comes to assessing the success of branding in
public policy.
Of course, the problems associated with assessing policy success mean that identifying what
makes the branding of a public policy more or less likely to be successful is difficult. Basu and
Wang’s (2009) work on the branding of public health programmes is important here. Their
main concern is to explain why branding in the public sector is less likely to be as successful as
branding in the private sector, with particular reference to public health. The weaknesses that
they identify include: ‘fuzzy brands’ that don’t sustain interest or retain sufficient loyalty; a bias
within public health communication towards one-way, top-down promotion; a reliance on
standard communication tools that lack tactical excellence and effectiveness; dominant health
control frameworks that fail to accommodate the culture and context of the target audience in
the planning, design and implementation of campaigns; and a lack of organisational resources
and managerial commitment towards the promotion, protection and ongoing success of the
brand (Basu and Wang 2009).
Applied to the public sector more broadly, many of Basu and Wang’s conclusions still
hold. For example, some of the reason for the success of Gateway as a brand can be explained
by the way in which it addressed many of the weaknesses identified by Basu and Wang. First,
Gateway is certainly not a ‘fuzzy brand’. The jurisdictions that franchise the Gateway Review
system are all well aware of the nature of the system and only adopt it after extensive con-
sultation. Second, the documentation associated with Gateway is extensive, thorough and pro-
fessional, and franchising means that it is used by all jurisdictions. Certainly, no one can mistake
the brand. Third, the quality of the documentation, along with the establishment of a Brand
Assurance Team, reflects the continued commitment of the OGC and the UK Gateway

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Unit to the brand. Here, the Brand Assurance Team plays a key role in ensuring that all of the
relevant stakeholders are involved in the process of brand development. For example,
reviewing each of the hubs every three years is one way in which the OGC can exchange best
practice. This enables policy learning and further strengthens the brand through a process of
ongoing revision to the documentation that is produced. This exchange of best practice, and
consequent brand development, is also encouraged by the UK Gateway Governance
Board, which includes representatives from the international stakeholders group. Of course, the
latter is, by its very nature, a virtual group, but this does not stop an extensive exchange of
ideas, experience and best practice from taking place (see Fawcett and Marsh forthcoming).
Finally, whilst all of these factors are important, perhaps the key reason for the success of the
Gateway brand lies in brand communication. While Gateway is branded and franchised, the
UK allows the borrowing jurisdictions to adapt the Gateway process to meet their needs, as
long as they accept the 14 broad principles of the system. As such, the management of
the brand is not top-down and takes account of the different contexts that exist across
jurisdictions.
In short, the factors outlined above help to explain the role that branding has played in
ensuring the success of Gateway as a public policy. However, what they also do is contribute
towards our understanding of the role that branding has played in ensuring that Gateway’s
transfer to other jurisdictions has been a success. Building on this, the following principles could
be suggested for how to make the branding of public policy effective:

 The brand should only be adopted after all relevant stakeholders are aware of its nature and
have been extensively consulted.
 Extensive, thorough and professional documentation must be provided about the brand,
especially for franchising, so that the brand is clear.
 A Brand Assurance Team should be established, so that all relevant stakeholders can be
involved in the process of brand development.
 The government department needs to show continued commitment to the brand.
 There should be a review of the policy at appropriate intervals to enable the exchange of
best practice and policy learning; this can help reinvigorate and strengthen the brand.
 Franchisees need to be free to adapt the overarching brand to meet their needs as long as
they accept the broad principles of the system, which need to be established at the outset of
the programme.

Impact on politics: branding, governance and democracy

Much of the work and growing interest in the intersection between branding and politics
has been rooted in an argument about the putative move towards a post-modern or late-modern
world. As van Ham (2002: 252) puts it: ‘The importance public relations has taken on in
public diplomacy implies a shift in political paradigms, a shift from the modern world of geo-
politics and power to the postmodern world of images and influence’. This suggests that the links
that are developing between branding and politics are probably best understood as part of a
longer-term process in which political systems and political actors adapt to the technological,
social and political changes associated with what is most often termed late-modernity. As such,
the increased use of branding in politics raises immediate questions about the nature of modern
governance and the operation of contemporary democracy. Here, we consider the two issues
separately.

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David Marsh and Paul Fawcett

Branding and governance

Sociologists argue that we have moved into a period of late-modernity characterised by increased
complexity and broad changes in economic, socio-cultural and political processes. This debate has
permeated political science, particularly in the literature on governance (Pierre and Peters 2000;
Bell and Hindmoor 2009) and its relation to late-modernity. Here, the work of Henrik Bang
(2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008; Bang and Sørensen 2001) is particularly interesting. Bang sees the
politics of late-modernity as characterised by: the replacement of hierarchy by networks as the
dominant mode of governance; the hollowing out of the state; a move from politics-policy to
policy-politics; the increased fluidity of identity, including political identities; greater reflexivity;
changing forms of political participation; the increased importance of the discursive arena for
network governance and the associated rise of the role of the media and celebrity politics; and the
changing nature and role of parties. These are crucial claims which, to the extent that they are
true, change the nature of politics and the political and, perhaps most crucially of all,
contemporary democracy.
We are not concerned with Bang’s overall argument here (see Marsh et al. 2010; Li and
Marsh 2008; Marsh 2011), but it is easy to see how branding might play a role in the changes
that he describes, particularly in the move from politics-policy to policy-politics (Bang 2007,
2008). For Bang, politics-policy was rooted in an input-output model, in which the focus was
upon how pre-constituted political agents, individuals, but also groups, gained access to, and
recognition in, political decision-making processes. In contrast, policy-politics is rooted in what
Bang terms a ‘flowput’ model, in which the focus is upon how political elites from the public,
private and voluntary sectors are networking in order to produce and deliver the policies
wanted by the reflexive individuals characteristic of late or high modernity.
Bang (2007) further contends that the contemporary governance networks that he identifies
operate in three arenas: parliamentary, corporatist and discursive. He argues that the discursive
arena is becoming more important because it is crucial for attempting to resolve the tension
between the complexities of late-modernity and the imperative involved in the need to pro-
duce effective public policy. The idea here is that contemporary states are under more pressure
to deal with increased complexity and, for that reason, incorporate more elites into the policy-
making process.
In Bang’s view, in contemporary network society, policy emerges through this networking
process, as a result of discursive engagement among the network elite, which utilises their media
expertise, in order to convince citizens that they have the answers to the problems that they
face. As such, Bang (2007: 8) identifies a shift from an input-output model of politics, in which
inputs from citizens, via parties and interest groups, are negotiated and aggregated into policy
outputs by government (in his terms a period of politics-policy), to a recursive one in which the
network elite, operating through the political system, acts ‘in its own terms and on its own
values, thereby shaping and constructing societal interests and identities’ (in his terms a period of
policy-politics).
Bang also argues that the move from politics-policy to policy-politics has led to a significant
change in the nature and role of political parties. In his view, parties are no longer channels of
representation; rather, they are the means by which governments, and, indeed, oppositions,
attempt to convince citizens that they have the best leaders and the best policies. From this
perspective, the branding of parties, politicians and policies is increasingly necessary to convince
citizens of the quality of the product produced by the party/government.
If Bang is right, then his conclusions raise important issues about the relationship between
political branding, governance and democracy. In short, if it does appear that branding is being

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Branding public policy

increasingly used to legitimise policy decisions taken in expert networks, then one might sug-
gest that this may well undermine the foundations of representative and parliamentary democ-
racy. Overall, there is little doubt that the growing prominence of political branding in politics
has implications for the nature and future of democracy and this is an issue that a number of
authors have discussed, particularly in the political marketing literature.

Branding and democracy

Moufahim and Lim (2009: 764) argue that the branding/marketing literature ‘has, for the most
part, taken an “instrumental” approach to marketing, focusing on practical, rather than
methodological or philosophical, issues’. Consequently, they contend that ‘political marketing
scholars continue to wrestle with the narrowly pragmatic nature of much of the research
conducted by their peers and colleagues’ (Moufahim and Lim 2009: 764). This is partly because
most of the mainstream literature on political branding/marketing essentially treats it as almost
totally analogous to branding/marketing in the business sector, although, as we saw earlier, that
is problematic. As Moufahim and Lim (2009: 765) put it, ‘Applied to political processes,
commercial marketing becomes “political marketing”, i.e. the application of business practices to
politics and the mindset of “voter-centeredness”’. In contrast, there are two distinct streams in
the more critical literature: authors who see branding as involving control by parties/politicians/
governments, rather than increased participation/involvement by citizens (Moufahim and
Lim 2009; Savigny 2008; Smith 2009); and authors who think that branding/political
marketing could extend democracy but, to date, does not (Lees-Marshment 2004). Most of this
work, however, has focused exclusively on the branding/marketing of political parties and
politicians.
As such, much of this literature tends to avoid the hard, but very important, question of
whether this process constrains democracy. Yet, at the same time, what also underpins much of
the same literature is the implicit view that branding makes it easier for citizen customers to
make a choice between parties/politicians/policies, etc., which subsequently helps to expand
democracy, because it engages more people in the political process. In addition, treating citizens
as consumers means that parties will be more responsive to their wishes, so branding and
marketing can contribute to a better representation of constituents (Lees-Marshment 2001).
Many authors are critical of this view and, indeed, the broader orientation of the political
marketing and branding literature. Here, Smith (2009) makes an important point by identifying
the tension between the focus on voters as consumers, which is crucial to political marketing/
branding, and the need for parties to be ‘responsible’, particularly in government. Indeed, it
could be argued, in a way that fits with Bang’s analysis, that this tension is resolved by parties
using brands as a means of control, ‘selling’ policies made in expert networks to citizens.
This argument is developed by Jansen (2008: 131), who argues that nation branding nor-
malises market fundamentalism, with few benefiting. As Jansen (2008: 134) puts it, ‘The pri-
mary impetus for branding products, companies and nations, like cattle and slaves, is control’. As
such, Jansen contends that there is little room for democratic control of a nation’s brand iden-
tity: ‘nation branding is a monologic, hierarchical, reductive form of communication that is
intended to privilege one message, require all voices of authority to speak in unison, and marginalize
and silence dissenting voices’ (Jansen 2008: 134).
This link between neo-liberalism, or economic rationalism, and political marketing/branding
is developed by Savigny (2004; see also Scammell 1999: 726). Savigny contends that marketing,
and thus branding ‘is not adopted to enhance the democratic process; rather, it is a means to an
end [the election of political parties/politicians], as such [sic] usage does not necessarily entail

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David Marsh and Paul Fawcett

democratic outcomes’ (Savigny 2007b: 133; our addition in brackets). Consequently, Savigny
suggests that political marketing/branding effectively depoliticises the democratic process.
More specifically, Smith and French, who are generally more positive, argue that:

when branding has been applied in the political marketplace, it can produce unwanted
effects such as narrowing the political agenda, increasing confrontation, demanding con-
formity of behaviour/message and even increasing political disengagement at the local level
(Scammell 1999; Lilleker and Negrine 2003; Needham 2005). For some at least, political
parties are not soap powder brands and should not be treated as such.
(Smith and French 2009: 210)

In contrast, a number of authors are less sceptical, seeing marketing and branding as capable
of extending democracy, but currently failing to do so (Smith and French 2009). Much of this
argument originates from a post-structuralist position and suggests that late-modernity, with
increased information and reflexivity, can give rise to a consumer counter-culture, in which
affluence and choice empowers consumers in the marketplace and citizens in the polity. So,
Smith and French argue that:

Even accepting that greater pluralism is possible within the system, achieving greater con-
nection (with a distant political elite), a greater sense of community (in an increasingly
atomised society) and authenticity (in a combative political system concerned with point
scoring) calls for a root and branch re-think as to what the political brand is for. For
example, for consumers to see a political brand as authentic requires it to be seen as ‘dis-
interested’. That is, driven, not by a self-serving motive to achieve power and govern, but
core brand values that are of relevance and use to consumers in living their lives and
fulfilling their ambitions.
(Smith and French 2009: 219)

As such, Smith and French’s argument is that marketing and branding can improve democracy,
but only if the focus of the political brand is upon authenticity:

The prize of a more connected electorate, involved in politics and gaining benefits at a
number of levels from their brand of choice, is critical for the democratic process. The
danger is that an increasingly alienated electorate, for whom political brands have nothing
of real value, won’t engage enough to let them.
(Smith and French 2009: 220)

To date, this discussion about the relationship between branding/marketing and democracy
has focused on the branding of parties and politicians, because this is the main concern in the
literature. However, it is worth briefly considering how the branding of public policy affects
democracy.
Again, this is inevitably a contested area. So, we might see the branding of public policy as
positive if it brings increased attention to public health issues like AIDS, or means that
the policy is easier/cheaper to implement, because it is accepted by more citizens (who ‘buy
into the brand’). However, the branding of one policy by drawing attention to that area may lead
to more finance for that policy area at the expense of another equally/more important area. More
broadly, if one follows Bang’s reasoning, policies may be developed in unrepresentative expert
networks, which are then marketed to citizens using branding: not a very democratic process.

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Branding public policy

The way forward

We conclude by suggesting three areas for further research. First, there is a need to engage
more systematically with the relationship between branding/marketing and governance and
democracy. More specifically, we agree with Moufahim and Lim (2009; see also Savigny
2004, 2007a, 2007b, 2008) that it is essential to develop a more critical political marketing/
branding agenda, which is much less instrumental in its research concerns and draws on a
broader range of epistemological and theoretical perspectives. This should start with a far more
thorough interrogation of the critical relationship between political marketing/branding and
democracy.
Second, the branding of public policy appears to be a growing phenomenon. This suggests
that the public sector, as well as researchers, need to take it more seriously. Research in this area
should start with more empirical work on the different uses of branding in public policy,
why we have seen a growth in its use, and its potential benefits and drawbacks for the public
sector.
Finally, we need more work on what it means to say that public policy is ‘successful’, as this
is obviously an essential precursor to any attempt to assess whether, and why, a branded policy
is successful or not. A better understanding of the factors that contribute to policy success will
also help us to better assess what leads some brands to be more effective than others and why.

Notes
1 We are grateful to Carsten Daugbjerg, Jennifer Lees-Marshment, Catherine Needham, Heather
Savigny and the two anonymous referees for their useful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
2 We are grateful to Heather Savigny for this point.
3 We are grateful to both Catherine Needham and Heather Savigny for drawing our attention to the
need to, briefly at least, make this point.
4 We are grateful to Carsten Daugbjerg for this important point.

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26
The use of public opinion research
by government
Insights from American and Canadian
research

Lisa Birch and François Pétry

The topic: government public opinion research

Political marketing research has previously discussed the use of focus groups and polling by
political parties, but it has neglected to consider the substantial opinion research commissioned
and conducted by government agencies. Government public opinion research (POR) is not well
publicised, but provides a significant resource for politicians that can influence policy develop-
ment, decisions and communication. Paraphrasing the Communications Policy of the Govern-
ment of Canada (Treasury Board of Canada 2006), we define government POR as applied social
science and marketing research using surveys and focus groups, commissioned by government
agencies to map the attitudes and perceptions of citizens in order to produce policy-relevant
information that will respond to the knowledge and marketing intelligence needs of policy-
makers and managers. This definition of government POR includes the gathering of information
from civil society for evaluations; however, it excludes citizen consultations involving two-way
communication between government and civil society through public hearings, web-based
consultations or memoirs, even though some political actors view these state-citizen interactions
as legitimate ways of knowing about public opinion on a given issue. Government POR is
intended primarily for internal use to improve the knowledge base on which policy-makers and
public managers conduct policy. Unlike political polling, which is not government-regulated,
government POR is regulated at the federal levels in both Canada and the US to ensure political
neutrality and methodological quality. Political neutrality requirements preclude government
polling about voter preferences for political parties or candidates. Many of the uses of market
research for a ‘permanent campaign’ presented by Sparrow and Turner (2001) would not be
acceptable uses of government POR under current Canadian and US rules and regulations. This
chapter will explore this hitherto neglected area of market research by considering government
POR within a political marketing context.

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The use of public opinion research by government

Previous research
The existing literature within the political science discipline that links public administration,
public opinion and public policy provides a basic starting point for bridging this research gap.
Overall, there have been relatively few empirical studies of how executive agencies and
bureaucracies actually use POR commissioned by the government. Instead, there is a vast lit-
erature on government responsiveness (or lack thereof) to public opinion at the macro-policy
level. Three schools of thought can be distinguished within this literature depending on whether
public opinion is seen as influencing policy-makers (see Page and Shapiro 1983 and Monroe
1998 for US evidence; see Johnston 1986 and Pétry 1999 for Canadian evidence), or as being
influenced by policy-makers (Bourdieu 1979; Chomsky and Herman 1988; Ginsberg 1986; Hoy
1989; Margolis and Mauser 1989), or whether the relationship is seen as reciprocal, with public
opinion influencing and being influenced by policy-makers at the same time (Geer 1996; Jacobs
1992; Soroka and Wlezien 2004; Stimson 1998; see Eisinger 2008 for a recent review). This
literature relies mostly on data from mediatized polls1 commissioned by non-governmental policy
actors and by the media. The problem is that there is no solid proof that policy-makers use or
trust mediatized polls when it comes to elaborate and decide public policy (the government
responsiveness literature implicitly assumes this without providing the evidence). In fact, the
evidence suggests that policy-makers do not trust mediatized polls and prefer to use other sources
of information about public opinion when they make policy decisions (Herbst 1998; Pétry 2007).
As we will see, one of the other sources of information on public opinion that policy-makers trust
is government-sponsored POR.
A more directly relevant research program focuses on the use of government-sponsored
POR by the executive branch of government for strategic communication purposes. In the US,
qualitative studies have shown how presidents commission public opinion polls not so much to
change policy toward majority opinion, but rather to better promote actions that they believe
will improve society, and to steer presidential policy initiatives through the legislative process
(Canes-Wrone 2006; Eisinger 2003; Heith 2004; Morris 1997). Cox et al. (2002) document the
way in which US presidents, members of Congress and interest groups have invoked public
opinion about social security. They conclude that these invocations often fail to be based on
evidence, and are rarely contested even when they have little factual basis. Jacobs and Shapiro
(2000) show how polls were used by President Clinton to ‘craft talk’ in ways that appealed to
the public by appearing to show responsiveness, while enabling the pursuit of his preferred
policy objectives.
In Canada, no systematic study of the strategic polling done by central executive agencies
(the Office of the Prime Minister and the Privy Council Office) has been published. Roberts
and Rose (1995) have studied how the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney used polls
to try to change public opinion about the Goods and Services Tax (GST) (but failed to do so).
Lachapelle (1996) has shown how Prime Minister Jean Chrétien used polling for strategic pur-
poses in the decision to join the 1991 Gulf War. Ponting (2006) has documented the strategic
use of POR and the subsequent invocation of public opinion by the New Democratic Party
(NDP) government of Premier Glen Clark in its campaign to ‘sell’ the Nisga’a Treaty to British
Columbia’s electorate. Work by Kiss (2009) traces the development of the ‘public relations
state’ in Alberta and shows how government POR activity became centralized and structured
during Premier Ralph Klein’s era. He argues that the Klein government used POR mainly as a
tool for public relations despite democratic responsiveness rhetoric. Finally, in his study of the
use of government-sponsored POR on constitutional renewal, the GST and gun control in
Canada, Page (2006) argued that the primary purpose of POR was to help policy-makers

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Lisa Birch and François Pétry

influence government communication. Since POR was commissioned too late to influence
policy design, he argued that the only useful role left for POR was one of marketing the policy
and informing the public about it. This begs the question of whether POR may be commissioned
early in the policy process in other cases.
While POR may be limited to facilitating political communication in some cases, this is far
from being the sole or even the primary role of government POR. Hastak et al. (2001) argue
that POR use occurs throughout the policy process, although the intensity and the nature of
use vary from stage to stage. They analyze three case studies of patient package inserts, direct-
to-consumer advertising, and environmental marketing guides. They found that US govern-
ment agencies use POR to ‘build policy mandates’ at the agenda-setting stage, during which
the government chooses which problems will require state action. They argue that policy-
makers tend to commission large-scale conventional surveys at that stage in order to match the
competing influence of polls commissioned by other policy actors. They show that US gov-
ernment officials use survey research to variable degrees at the subsequent policy formulation,
execution and enforcement stages, depending on factors such as the amount of controversy and
the degree of complexity associated with the policy initiative. Similarly, in a study of the use of
public opinion research by the Canadian Biotechnology Secretariat, Medlock (2005) finds that
POR is used in communication (to inform senior management and to shape future commu-
nication strategies) as well as in policy development (to provide background information and
context, to supply evidence to support policy decisions and to forecast areas of controversy).
Rothmayr and Hardmeier (2002) analyze polling by the Swiss government and find that public
relations is only one of four functions of the government POR utilization process, the others
being essentially information functions for planning for future policy decisions, evaluating
existing policies essentially to gather information to plan future policy decisions, and observing
the development of certain problems in a specific policy area. They found that the impact of
polls on decisions was more likely when the commissioning department had the power to
implement decisions based on poll results.
Inspired by scientific work in the field of knowledge utilization, Birch and Pétry (2010,
2011b) show how policy-makers use POR findings for strategic, instrumental, conceptual
and managerial purposes to develop, design, implement and evaluate policies and their instru-
ments. This includes a surveillance function following implementation. They find that there is a
link between POR utilization, the knowledge needs at each stage in the policy cycle, and the
nature of the decisions involved at each stage of the policy cycle, just as Fafard (2008) theorized.
Their demonstration is based on the analysis of POR utilization by Health Canada in tobacco
control. Their work in progress extends the analysis to other health policy issues. To explain
how government POR is used and the kind of impact it has on policy, future research needs to
explore explanatory factors such as the level of opposition to an initiative, the activities of
interest groups, the complexity of an initiative, the time factor and perceptions of citizens’
knowledge and competency regarding an issue as well as the organizational capacity of the
government agency for research uptake.

New research: government POR in Canada and the US in practice

and theory
Since government POR is a relatively new area of research, this section simply explains and
illustrates the nature, source and implications of government POR conceptually and also
empirically with Canadian and US examples.

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The use of public opinion research by government

Types of government POR

In practice, government POR is quite varied in nature by the research objectives pursued, the
methods used and the data produced. Government POR sometimes comes in the form of survey
questions purchased from syndicated polls. In Canada, a moratorium on new syndicated contracts
was imposed in 2008 to ensure better coordination of syndicated POR across departments to
avoid duplication. At the time of writing, all Canadian government POR comes in the form of
custom research tailored to particular objectives that are associated with specific policy needs
which range from better understanding a problem or target group, to designing possible policy
solutions then monitoring and evaluating the impact of policy decisions. Custom POR entails
quantitative, qualitative and mixed research designs, some of which can be quite sophisticated and
most of which defies preconceived ideas that equate POR with syndicated polls. The exam-
ination of hundreds of government POR reports led us to conclude that this POR is a form of
applied social and marketing research.
Unlike multi-client syndicated POR, custom POR is exclusively sponsored by single gov-
ernment agencies that own the property rights (the rights to syndicated polls are owned by
polling houses). US and Canadian regulations governing this POR activity have similar objec-
tives to guarantee the quality of the research, the transparency and the political neutrality of
government-sponsored custom POR. US regulation seems preoccupied with ‘paperwork
reduction’ and over-soliciting citizens for information, whereas recent Canadian regulation
appears focused on value-for-money considerations. Since 2008, all custom POR proposals
must have ministerial approval. In the US (less in Canada) it is not uncommon to find custom
POR reports that present a secondary analysis of POR commissioned by the media or non-
governmental actors made available through the Office of Management and Budget Information
Collection Services at the White House.
To prevent the party in power from using government POR resources to collect politically
sensitive information, periodic independent assessments of government POR are performed by
the Auditor-General of Canada or by independent advisors (Paillé 2007). In the US, the
Comptroller-General has not investigated the federal government’s POR activity. However, a
detailed examination of the content of government POR reports suggests that safeguards similar
to those found in Canada are enforced. In Canada, unlike the US, the administrative guidelines
for POR include the obligation to make all reports available to the public. There is evidence of
POR production in the Canadian provinces and US states, but research on its utilization is
sparse and what is available suggests that there seems to be considerable variation in the regulations
and disclosure rules for government-sponsored POR across jurisdictions.

Sources of government POR

POR may be conducted internally within government agencies or externally through contracts
to private suppliers. In Canada, the dominant pattern is to contract-out to private suppliers. Only
the largest agencies have the capacity to commission the data collection and then conduct their
own analysis. Private suppliers in Canada are almost exclusively polling firms. There are spe-
cializations among these firms by type of research (e.g. general POR or advertising) and by type
of clientele (e.g. youth, first nations). In the US there is a wide variety of supply options. In
addition to internal production capacity, federal departments contract-out to private research
firms according to their area of expertise as well as to university-based POR centres. In Canada,
academic research centres and think-tanks are increasingly left out of government POR activity,
at least at the federal level (it was not always like that), whereas in the US government agencies

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are more willing to share government POR with private think-tanks and university-based research
centres.

How government POR differs from mediatized POR

Government-sponsored POR seems to differ from mediatized POR by its higher overall level of
quality. For example, a systematic inquiry of over 200 Canadian health surveys sponsored by
Health Canada, private interest groups and by the media reveals that the frequency of mea-
surement errors (ambiguous survey questions, unbalanced answer choices, absence of split sample
rotation) is lower in government polls (Birch and Pétry 2011b). The difference in the level of
quality can be attributed in part to the fact that pollsters often get larger amounts of time, money
and resources to conduct government-sponsored POR than what they get to conduct surveys
sponsored by interest groups and the media. Another consideration is the credibility of gov-
ernment-sponsored surveys. The accuracy of government POR, and the credibility of the pollster
who does the research, is ultimately sanctioned by the success of the policy, program or
instrument that it helped achieve. This ultimate sanction may constitute an incentive to produce
survey results that are valid and accurate. By contrast, political polls conducted for media release
are followed by no tangible outcome. Often the results of privately sponsored polls are mobilized
in the media as ‘news’ by policy actors seeking to influence the public agenda and debate on a
particular issue. However, there is very little really to test the validity and accuracy of their results,
or to sanction the credibility of the pollsters who administer these polls, and the policy actors who
sponsor them. The incentive to achieve and maintain high quality standards may not be as
elevated in mediatized polls, since their purpose is to influence agendas, not to produce policy-
relevant knowledge for policy decisions and implementation. One last consideration is that
government polls are strictly regulated, whereas polls conducted on behalf of private actors or as a
joint-venture between a polling firm and a media network are not subject to regulations
requiring political neutrality, periodic and independent reviews of POR practices, and full
transparency through the public disclosure of POR reports.

Government POR in Canada and the US

In Canada, federal government POR expenditures have rapidly expanded since the mid-1990s.
The annual cost of POR increased from C$4 million in 1993–94 to C$31 million in 2006–07.
Since then, the POR budget has been drastically reduced by the Harper government, which has
also imposed new, stricter POR contracting rules. Regrettably, comparable data is not readily
available for the US because there is no overarching institution that gathers and centralizes
information about government POR in the US.
The rapid rise of POR capacity in the Canadian federal government coincided with new
discourses on governance, result-based management, citizen consultation and engagement and,
more recently, evidence-based policy. Organizational thinking and arrangements in the Canadian
federal government have incorporated many of these ideas into public management policies
such as the Communications Policy of the Government of Canada (Treasury Board of Canada
2006). These policies encouraged the institutionalization of POR through the development of
specialized POR units within departments and the creation of the Public Opinion Research
Directorate of Public Works and Government Services (PWGS). The PWGS directorate acts as
a broker for POR for all departments, provides best practices guidelines, offers webinar training
and publishes annual reports on government POR activity. POR institutionalization in the
Canadian public sector was seen as a means of ‘focusing on citizens, embracing a clear set of

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public service values, managing for results and ensuring responsible spending’ (Treasury Board
of Canada 2000). Despite this institutionalization of POR, the link between POR capacity and
political marketing as well as the potential of POR for political marketing and strategic man-
agement escaped most of the Canadian public officers who were surveyed by Mintz et al.
(2006). Yet the Communications Policy, which is easily accessible online, specifically identifies
government POR as policy tool in the following passage:

Public opinion research helps the government to better understand Canadian society and to
identify citizen needs and expectations. It is used to assess the public’s response to proposals
or to possible initiatives; to assess the effectiveness of polices, programs and services; to
measure progress in service improvement; to evaluate the effectiveness of communication
activities such as advertising; and to plan and evaluate marketing initiatives, among other
applications.
(Treasury Board of Canada 2006)

Recent research using a mixed method design with interviews, document analysis, content
analysis of government POR reports, and cross-analysis of POR reports relative to policy
decisions suggests that there is such utilization, although the practitioners may not employ
political marketing lingo to describe their activities (Birch and Pétry 2010, 2011a; Birch 2010).
Let us illustrate this with a discussion of salient findings from a case study of Health Canada’s
internationally acclaimed health warning messages (HWM) on cigarette packages.

The case of graphic health warning messages

Between the late 1990s and 2010 extensive, pioneering POR activity guided the development of
the first generation of HWM implemented in 2000, monitored their impact on the general
public and smokers, then contributed to the design of the second generation of HWM
announced in 2010. In this case, POR is first used conceptually to allow decision-makers to
acquire a better understanding of problems surrounding cigarette labelling and to appreciate the
range of possible solutions. There is also evidence of conceptual use during the early stages of the
HWM program, when extensive use of POR took place to understand smokers and what
motivates them to smoke and to quit. Interestingly, HWM were rated by Canadians as less
effective than smoking cessation instruments (tax breaks for cessation) and exhortation instru-
ments (information campaigns and TV advertisements). This did not deter Health Canada from
moving forward to impose new warning messages on the basis of scientific evidence of labelling
effects.
After it was decided to proceed with the HWM program, POR was used extensively to assist
in micro decisions about the design of the new graphic messages. This use of POR can be
characterized as instrumental use in which one is able to link specific POR findings to the
adoption of discrete decisions about specific policy instruments. As many as 68 distinct messages
and graphics were tested through a series of 35 focus groups across Canada in 1999–2000. The
data show that two-thirds of the messages that were favourably assessed by focus group parti-
cipants were retained, while virtually all the retained messages that had received mixed or
negative reviews were modified according to focus groups’ recommendations, which does
suggest some instrumental use of POR findings (the χ2 test for favourably reviewed messages
retained vs. negatively reviewed messages rejected was statistically significant at p = .05). The
opinion research design was carefully constructed to also study how different target groups
within the population understood and responded to HWM using focus groups, surveys and

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mixed research methods. This reflects a sophisticated understanding of who needs to be reached
if the overall policy objectives of tobacco control are to be achieved. It also shows an application
of marketing notions in policy instrument design.
There was also some strategic use of POR to justify regulatory change for tobacco labelling.
The policy actors who we interviewed all ranked the HWM among the top policy instruments
for an effective, comprehensive tobacco control strategy, alongside taxation, other retail controls
and smoking bans. Notwithstanding this ranking, comments from some non-governmental
organization (NGO) actors indicate that they would have preferred even more audacious labels,
some of which were pre-tested through their own POR. The story of Canadian HWM is cited
on the World Health Organization’s website as a ‘best practice’ in tobacco control. The effec-
tiveness of the Canadian warnings is supported by empirical evidence from their own quasi-
experimental scientific work, as well as POR commissioned by the Australian government and
independent scientific studies.
POR was also used for surveillance purposes. Successive waves of survey research preceded
and followed implementation, with the main objective being ‘to provide information to assist
in the evaluation of the impact of HWM on tobacco packaging’. Time-series analyses of survey
data trends led policy-makers to anticipate the eventual wear-out of some warning messages.
This prompted the government’s decision to begin a new regulatory proposal process in
2004. A first round of focus groups allowed the testing of a dozen new warning concepts. The
concept that came out the strongest in these focus groups inspired the creation of some 50
messages, which were subjected to subsequent testing in 40 focus groups to determine
which ones, in the words of one policy actor, ‘are the most effective, which are the most
noticeable and resonate more with smokers’. Subsequent POR studies examined the impact of
the size of warning messages and the impact of 50 mock-ups of potential health warnings and
24 mock-ups of potential health information messages. Every last detail of the content and
visual packaging of these messages was subjected to extensive testing with the target groups.
There were tensions behind the scenes as the tobacco industry lobbied against new labels and
anti-tobacco groups pressured for even larger ones. Nonetheless, on 30 December, 2010 (a year
and a half after the last POR work was completed), Leona Aglukkaq, the Canadian minister of
health, presented new regulatory submission with 16 new health warnings and health
information messages which will cover 75 percent of the cigarette packages as opposed to 50
percent, and which will be used on a rotational basis. These new messages will include more
health information with links to free cessation services by phone and internet as suggested in
the POR.
This example demonstrates how the surveillance work is linked proactively to work in reg-
ulatory development and thus overall policy management. The POR activity that led to the
successful first generation of HWM provided a model for subsequent POR to design the second
generation of messages. Again, the results of the first focus groups influenced the choice of
marketing concepts retained for the new HWM. These concepts were transformed into 50
mock-ups of health warnings and 14 mock-ups of health information messages which were
subjected to extensive quantitative and qualitative testing with smokers, who were classified into
various market segments by variables such as gender, age and language to assess the effectiveness
of these final mock-ups and their ability to resonate with each target group. Similar work is in
progress to develop warning messages for smokeless tobacco products. This case attests to
instrumental use through a rigorous, structured approach to policy development. It also
demonstrates how POR data gathered for surveillance use loops back into the policy process.
Similar stories can be told for policy initiatives for smoking cessation, second-hand smoke and
smoking bans, as well as the regulation of ‘light’ and ‘mild’ descriptors.

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Preliminary work exploring the use of POR in US tobacco control suggests very similar
patterns. We identified US equivalents of the Canadian wave surveys designed for the mon-
itoring and surveillance of smoking behaviour among adults and youth. We also found evidence
of survey and focus group work to better understand the target audiences, to design campaign
tools and to evaluate their impact in the context of social marketing initiatives. Whereas in
Canada this work is linked to Health Canada’s tobacco control program, in the US the Centers
for Disease Control is the key federal agency. In both contexts, tobacco control is a policy
matter that benefits from a permissive consensus among the electorates (Studlar 2002), which
may facilitate the utilization of POR for instrumental and conceptual purposes in policy design,
implementation and evaluation. However, POR utilization patterns may be quite different in
contexts where there is more controversy.

What does the case of graphic health warning messages tell us?
From this discussion, it is clear that governments use POR in more varied and complex ways than
to slavishly pander to or cynically manipulate public opinion as is often assumed. Granted, policy-
makers sometimes use POR to craft their messages – to promote and legitimize their own
preferred policy choices; however, they also use POR for the very different purpose of helping in
the design, implementation and evaluation of policy instruments. This includes analyses of target
clienteles for policy initiatives, customer/citizen satisfaction surveys, social marketing activities
and, occasionally, public relations tools. Second, contrary to popular belief, even if governments
still use POR commissioned by private actors for media release, governments sponsor their own
POR more and more frequently. The fact that custom government POR results are not reported
in the media suggests that this type of POR is needed less for public relations activities and more
for improving the quality and effectiveness of public policies.

Advice for practitioners

There is no guarantee that the use of government POR will improve the quality and effectiveness
of public policies as it did in the HWM case, but the case provides useful indications as to how
the appropriate use of government POR may contribute to better policy-making. If governments
are to use POR effectively as a tool for policy decisions and management, they must first formally
recognize POR as a means of producing valuable, policy-relevant knowledge. To adapt mar-
keting language, they must come to see how POR can be a powerful tool for policy (marketing)
intelligence. In other words, they must see POR as more than just a tool for improving com-
munications and public relations. Second, they must institutionalize POR in ways similar to the
institutionalization of the policy evaluation process (Furubo et al. 2002). This entails four
important elements, as follows:

 requiring that POR becomes a compulsory policy input and establishing clear standards for
the quality of research, the presentation and the disclosure of final reports;
 developing POR expertise within the bureaucracy through training, networking among
POR specialists and sharing of lessons learned through POR production and use in different
policy areas with various clienteles and target groups;
 fostering a learning-oriented organizational culture that values research entrepreneurship and
quality data gathered through rigorous methodology over anecdotal evidence about the
attitudes, opinions and behaviour of citizens; and
 last but not least, allocating adequate, reliable funding for research initiatives and programs.

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To protect democratic values by preventing the use of public funds for POR that would
confer an unfair advantage to the governing party rather than contributing to the higher goal of ser-
ving the public interest through better designed and more effective policies, government POR
activity must be subject to public scrutiny. This requires clear restrictions on partisan uses of POR as
well as easy, transparent, public access to government POR reports within a reasonable time delay.

Impact on politics
Government POR can produce highly specialized knowledge about the beliefs, attitudes, opi-
nions and behaviours of the general public as well as the specific groups targeted by any given
policy. This knowledge can facilitate bringing evidence into policy and thus developing policies
and mixes of policy instruments that are grounded firmly in the empirical reality of each particular
policy context. It can also facilitate the policy management process through enhanced monitoring
of the effectiveness of policy instruments and of general trends in the policy environment. When
government POR is carefully designed to provide data throughout the policy cycle, it contributes
to more effective, responsive and responsible policies, which in turn may enhance the legitimacy
of policy decisions. When the government must decide whether to act or not in response to a
new issue, its final decision will gain legitimacy in three cases. These arise when: (1) the
government adopts policies that reflect citizens’ preferences; (2) the government offers good
explanations for choosing a different option; (3) the government benefits from a permissive
consensus and thus adopts a policy that is within the public’s zone of acquiescence for govern-
ment intervention (Birch 2010, 2012; see Stimson 1998 for zones of acquiescence). In all
three cases, POR conducted to understand citizens’ preferences and their thresholds or comfort
zones for state action (or inaction) can provide useful input into the decision-making process.
In cases where a decision to act is rendered, legitimacy will depend on how the policy is
designed, implemented and evaluated. The legitimacy of policy decisions at these stages depends
on the state bureaucracy’s respect of accepted regulatory procedures including public consulta-
tions as required, its capacity to justify decisions regarding policy instruments, often using sci-
entific knowledge, and the subsequent effectiveness of these instruments in attaining policy
objectives (Schrefler 2010). Again, POR can generate specialized knowledge to guide the
bureaucracy in its decisions and actions by generating policy-specific data about what works with
whom in which context and what does not, as well as data about policy outcomes and ways to
improve them.
In political marketing lingo, government POR can enlighten decision-making and enhance
governance by clarifying the wants and needs of citizens, identifying the characteristics of
market segments (policy target groups) and their special needs, developing the best product
(policy) to meet those needs, determining the best delivery channels (implementation), assessing
the product’s impact, refining the product as needed, facilitating market-oriented communica-
tion, producing market (policy) intelligence and ensuring continual market consultation. To
conclude, then, government POR has the potential to contribute to policy decisions that are
both responsive and responsible – that is, responsive to citizens’ policy needs and responsible
given the presumed preference of citizens for the effective and efficient use of public funds to
attain legitimate policy goals.

The way forward

The scientific study of the government-sponsored POR and its utilization is an emerging
field of study situated at the crossroads between political marketing, political science, political

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communication, but also public administration. The study of POR has much to gain by bor-
rowing from the vast public administration literature, particularly on the utilization of knowl-
edge, scientific research and evaluation. By considering POR as one of the means of producing
applied policy-relevant knowledge for government, research in this field may also contribute to
larger questions about knowledge utilization in policy-making. In particular, we believe that
categorizing government POR use as either instrumental, conceptual or strategic opens new
avenues of research about government POR and enables comparisons with studies on the uti-
lization of evaluation, scientific research and knowledge in policy. Future studies could analyze
the production and utilization of government POR as well as the organizational capacity for
knowledge utilization and the POR apparatus of government at the executive and bureaucratic
levels. The guiding questions for these future studies could be: When, how and why is gov-
ernment POR utilized (or ignored) by public managers and decision-makers? What are the
determinants of POR utilization by government? What are the implications of government POR
utilization for the quality or effectiveness of public policies, for legitimating these policies and,
ultimately, for democracy?
Conceptually, future research on the use of government POR ought to distinguish between
macro political decisions about whether to act or not, which are usually made at the executive
level, and micro political decisions about the fine details of policy instruments, which are usually
made at the bureaucratic level. Conceptual designs must include a clear distinction between
policy instruments, such as regulations, incentive schemes and social marketing, which are
linked to specific policy goals, and communication activities focused strictly on state-citizen or
state-media relations. Finally, our early explorations of this field suggest that the following
variables may influence POR utilization: the nature of the policy area, the degree of conflict
around the issue or sub-issue, the ideological orientation of the government, POR budgets and
regulations, the distribution of competencies between orders of government, the policy envir-
onments and organizational capacity of government departments, the level of decision, the type
of policy instrument, the stage in the policy cycle, the dynamics of policy actors in networks,
issue salience and election proximity.
As for study, training and practice, while specific courses introduce students to the theories
and empirical research on public opinion and democracy, it is amazing to note that very few
political science departments offer courses on knowledge utilization and political and social
marketing. After examining the current offer of social marketing courses in the US, Kelly
(2009) suggested that this field would benefit greatly from the development of a bank of
detailed case studies illustrating the different ways in which social marketing is applied in
the real world. She found that most courses teach the methods of social marketing and require
students to produce a social marketing plan as a main assignment. Desphande and Lagarde
(2008) surveyed 477 practitioners, mainly in Canada and the US, who clearly expressed
the need for training regarding marketing basics, research issues such as audience analysis, formative
and evaluation research methods, marketing strategy, the application of the four Ps of market-
ing, and managerial issues linked to budgeting, funding and ethics. Although these studies
focused on training for social marketing, we expect that similar training needs apply for POR
when it is associated with political marketing or with public administration. If Lees-Marshment’s
(2003) vibrant plea in favour of integrating political science and management science is to
become a reality, academics and practitioners will need tailored training that explicitly shows
how to bridge the two.
Thus, the development of applied courses on POR as a tool of governance and management
may facilitate bridge-building efforts. Such courses should offer modules on POR methodol-
ogy, technical quality standards and POR utilization for policy decisions, be they in the context

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Lisa Birch and François Pétry

of political and social marketing, routine program management or policy innovation. We

would encourage the development of a bank of case studies of POR utilization with specific
examples of social and political marketing as well as a bank of decision-making simulations which
would require students to determine POR needs for a given policy issue, to assess the quality of
POR, and then to use POR results to make policy decisions at the macro and micro levels.

Note
1 By mediatized polls, we mean surveys that are publicized through any form of mass media. In most
cases, one of the primary purposes of such surveys is to gain media attention.

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27
Making space for leadership
The scope for politicians to choose
how they respond to market
research
Jennifer Lees-Marshment

The topic: leadership and political marketing

Leadership is an important part of democratic politics. Not only are political leaders a key focus of
the political offering at election time, but they are the ones who make the final decisions as a
president or prime minister with the potential to affect not just an individual country but the
world. Leadership and political marketing both encompass many different activities and concepts,
but this chapter focuses on how leaders respond to one aspect of political marketing, market
research, which is a crucial part of political marketing. Market research offers politicians the
opportunity to understand public opinion, and can help politicians demonstrate a feeling of being
in touch. However, it could also prevent them making the ‘right’ decisions on policy against the
findings of market research. Towards the end of his leadership, Tony Blair, once critiqued for
being a follower of focus groups, commented:

The easy thing to do, frankly, is to hit the button on exactly what the public wants
to hear … The responsibility, though, in the end, particularly in the case of war, is to do
what I believe to be the right thing for the country. I can’t do it simply on the basis of
the number of people who demonstrate, or on the basis of this opinion poll or that opinion
poll. You’ve got to do, on an issue like this, what you genuinely believe to be right for the
country, and then pay the price at the election if people disagree with you.
(Tony Blair, Tony and June, Channel 4, 30 January 2005)

If politicians do not feel free to act against market research, then they do not have the space
for leadership. Without entering a big debate about what constitutes leadership generally, the
issue for this chapter is to what extent leaders have scope to make a range of policy decisions in
response to market research findings, and be free to be the kind of leader they choose. Previous
literature and new concepts will conceptualise how leadership might be exercised when using

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Making space for leadership

market research, and new empirical research demonstrates how politicians and their advisors
have sought to exercise leadership in response to market research.

Previous research: political marketing is a threat to leadership

One of the previous dominant themes in political marketing research was the rise of market-
oriented politics, where politicians researched the market to identify demands and then created
political products – and policy promises – to suit them. This suggested that politicians ended up
following market research too much. Paleologos (1997: 1184) argues that ‘a poll-driven
society … ignores creativity. It overlooks new ideas. It prohibits change and true reform’. Smith
and Saunders (1990: 298) contended that ‘pandering to the prejudices of the majority might
herald a tyranny of the ill-formed. Capital punishment, forced repatriation and other lowest
common denominator issues could become important if marketing research showed a short-term
benefit in courting them.’
However, on a theoretical level Henneberg (2006: 17) explained that politicians can choose to
lead or follow; indeed, ‘leading and following can happen simultaneously as part of political
marketing management’. An empirical example of using research to achieve change is provided
by Allington et al. (1999), who demonstrate that marketing was used to help politicians sell a
policy of privatization in the UK in the 1980s. In order to gain support, communication was
aimed not at typical shareholders but at the general public, with communication designed to
appeal to their interests and perspectives. When selling British Gas the campaign used the slogan
‘Tell Sid’ to convey the message that ‘privatisation represented good news for ordinary people
because they could now get a piece of the action’ (Allington et al. 1999: 634). It was attractive to
individuals because it implied that share buying was a higher-class activity but one that was open
to all. Responsive marketing communications can therefore be used to change opinion: Allington
et al. (1999: 636) conclude that ‘marketing … has the power to change things and even to change
the world order’. Presidential studies such as Jacobs and Shapiro (2000: 11) observed how ‘the
proliferation and visibility of public opinion polling during the Clinton administration … led
many critics of American politics to fear that poll taking, focus groups and the like has perma-
nently replaced political leaders’, but their own studies concluded that generally politicians do not
pander to polls and that ‘presidents can use polls to determine how to explain and present already
determined proposals and policies to the public’ (ibid.: 13). Goot (1999: 237) studied how the
Australian Liberal leader John Howard used market analysis to make the proposal to sell the
publicly owned telecommunications company Telstra more attractive to the public. Goot con-
cluded that it is not true ‘that on every issue, or even on all the important ones, polling necessarily
commits politicians to the position of the median voter’. Murray’s (2006: 495) study of the
Reagan presidency concluded that whilst some party-driven issues were sidelined, and changes
were made if too much opposition was encountered, survey data were also used to find potential
‘overlap’ between the leadership goals and public opinion, ‘to thereby identify political oppor-
tunities where it could accomplish some of its ideological goals and satisfy some of its partisan
constituents, while staying within broad constraints established by majority opinion’. The use of
research does not dictate the decision that leaders make; it merely informs it. With the benefit of
practitioner experience, Mortimore and Gill (2010: 259) argue that despite the value of market
research, ‘the leadership function is crucial, and that leader must exercise judgement when to
follow the dictates of the market and when to defy it’. This literature provides insights into the
complexity surrounding market research and leadership, which this chapter builds on by putting
forward new theories for the different responses politicians can make to market research, and
exploring them empirically through interviews with political advisors.

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Jennifer Lees-Marshment

New research: market research and the space for leadership

On a conceptual level, it can be theorised that whilst market research and strategy are utilised in
politics by all leaders, this does not mean that they simply have to follow the public and have no
room to achieve changes. Instead, research can be used more proactively, to understand and
overcome opposition, and create space for leadership. Market research can therefore be used in a
range of ways by leaders: see Figure 27.1.
However, we still need to know to what extent this more nuanced use of market research
occurs in practice. Some 100 in-depth interviews were conducted with a range of staff in all areas
of political marketing in 2005–09 in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The
complete findings are presented in Lees-Marshment (2011), but here discussion focuses on what
practitioners said about how they conduct and use market research. The interviewees included
consultants and advisors to political leaders including US Presidents Bill Clinton and George
Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Canadian Prime Ministers Paul Martin and Stephen Harper,
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Australian Premier Bob Carr. Data were col-
lected inductively – i.e. without any starting position or theory in mind. Interviews were quali-
tative, unstructured, soft and intensive, with content led by the participant (see Lees-Marshment
2011 for further discussion of methodology).
The research found that practitioners are aware of the need to avoid relying on market ana-
lysis for product ideas. From his UK Labour experience, Carter (interviewed in 2007) said,
‘there was never a decision taken on this single fact or on that piece of research. It’s never a
focus group has said go and do this so somebody went and did that.’ Evans (interviewed in
2006) argued that:

research is essential in politics, but it can only tell you where you’ve been and where you
are. It can’t really tell you where you want to get to … It shouldn’t affect where you
ultimately want to get to but it can affect maybe how you get there. You have to believe
in something in politics before you can go out and sell it.

Figure 27.1 Leaders’ options for how to use market research in politics

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Making space for leadership

Mortimer (interviewed in 2006) explained that:

the public can’t tell you new policies because they actually don’t know much about politics.
Politicians have to be able to come up with the new answers and the new solutions … we
can tell you what percentage of the public are running around flapping about an issue, but
it’s not going to tell you what the policy solution to that problem should be.

They therefore use market research in many different ways. It can simply be used to
communicate existing decisions more effectively, thus not impacting on leadership at all. Mills
(interviewed in 2009) argued that ‘overwhelmingly, polling is used to work out how to
communicate policies or even how to prioritise which policies are communicated in election
campaigns rather than determine policy’. Mellman (interviewed in 2007) said:

we want to use the data analysis we’re generating to answer sort of three questions. And if
we’ve answered those three questions, we’ve gone a long way towards developing their strategy.
Where do we want to say it, who do we want to say it to, when do we want to say it?

It can be used to identify the most popular aspects of a product that should feature strongly in
communication. As Rennard (interviewed in 2006) explains,

the policy we had of increasing income tax by a penny in the pound to pay for more
investment in education was very successful. And market research confirmed that was a
very popular policy. Therefore we would emphasise that fairly heavily in communication
in ’92, ’97 and 2001. Market research gave us confidence that it was a particularly good thing.

More recently,

on foreign affairs, the Iraq war, our policy was very popular, particularly of course for
minority communities and for traditional Labour voters. So … the degree to which we
emphasised the Iraq war was strengthened by market research and guided us in Brent, and
in Liverpool, and in Birmingham and by-elections like that. Having tested people’s feeling
on it, it was a good card to play.

Research also helps to ensure that MPs and candidates talk about issues that local people care
about: Noble (interviewed in 2009) notes how:

you can’t just govern your principles from opinion research, but you can certainly refine
them. You might have 100 things that you stand for, but no single voter, no collective
voting block is going to be able to process them. So, we did a lot of market research to
hone in on the things that we were talking about that really mattered to people. What are
going to be their ballot drivers? What are they going to go to the polls and actually cast
their ballot deciding? What are the most important issues for them?

Research helps to communicate issues about which the politician cares: Taylor (interviewed
in 2008) recalled how in the White House:

The research was very useful in helping us communicate the messages which the president
wanted to talk about. President Bush is not somebody who was interested in sort of just,

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Jennifer Lees-Marshment

he just doesn’t take a poll and decide what to talk about; he says here’s what I’m saying, if
you can help me articulate it in a way that resonates with people better, I’m all ears … We
knew kind of instinctively what issues he wanted to talk about and then it was conducting
focus groups, doing traditional survey research and figuring out exactly what it is, the
nuances, how to communicate. How to best utilise examples.

Just because politicians use market research does not mean that they follow it blindly. Indeed,
Reid (interviewed in 2009) noted that:

even if you were wholly venal and shallow as could be, and you came to the job with no
preconceived notion of what you wanted to do and you would be more than happy to be
directed solely on the basis of what appears most popular – you actually can’t always make
that – there’s a million issues that confront you on a daily basis, a thousand decisions, and
frequently people don’t have a point of view about a particular topic.

Carter conceded the value of research but again said:

there is a gap here which is for judgment. And the leader has to make their decisions on
the basis of judgment and on the basis of good advice and sound evidence, high-quality
research – yes, but also on the basis of good judgment.

Market research can therefore be used in a range of ways by political leaders: it is a tool to
inform, not dictate, decisions.
Research does still influence decisions, however, as it can identify when politicians can’t
change opinion, with Carr (interviewed in 2008) noting how ‘qualitative polling can help you,
sometimes in identifying ideas that simply don’t work’. Politicians who ignore polls do so at
their peril: as Harris (interviewed in 2006) noted, ‘[Michael, leader UK Conservatives 2003–05]
Howard ended up running a very nasty right-wing campaign, and yet that’s not something that
anyone advising him at the beginning would have recommended’ – and they lost against the
then unpopular Labour incumbent, Tony Blair. Similarly, another politician who lost an election,
John Kerry, was noted to be anti-polls: Mellman described how:

Kerry wasn’t that interested in polls per se … the candidate wasn’t all that interested in the
polling, so it was probably less useful to him because it just wasn’t his thing … on the
message side, I mean, you know, there are certainly various points where, you know,
he was not, you know, particularly enamoured of what it is we were suggesting for various
reasons, had his own things he wanted to do, what he’s talking about, we wanted to talk
about.

Leaders need to be ‘sufficiently flexible when clearly an announcement or a policy or an issue

has not gone down well’, and have ‘the courage to acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right
issue, if the weight of the community reaction or other stakeholder reaction is such that you
know that they’re suggesting that this isn’t doable at this time’ (Tyson, interviewed in 2008).
Research helps to prevent leaders becoming too remote and dismissive of the public. Griffin
(interviewed in 2006) notes how:

what you have to do when going into an election campaign as an incumbent Prime
Minister is swallow your pride, forget you are the Prime Minister, and go back and petition

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Making space for leadership

people – you are asking people to vote for you, that’s not a mandate for you to tell them
how clever you are, and how well your Government has done. You have to engage at a
far different level.

However, this is not easy. As Callingham (interviewed in 2009) notes:

they get out of touch, they have to. They may meet thousands of people, but they’re still
meeting them as a Prime Minister. They’re not meeting them as Joe Blog in a caff; they’re
not meeting them as someone in a queue in a post-office.

Reid noted how:

incumbency becomes a real threat because it is isolating the apparatus of government … so

incumbency starts to equal complacency, and complacency starts to equal self-interest, and
you can start taking it for granted, and suddenly you don’t seem like you’re well moti-
vated, so you don’t communicate that you get it. And maybe you don’t … it is sufficiently
isolating that if you are in government for too long that people tend to conflate their own
opinion with the national interest.

Similarly Campbell (interviewed in 2005) noted how Westminster is ‘in a political bubble’,
and ‘it’s very hard’ to stay in touch; it is particularly hard to be the prime minister, as you’re
‘surrounded by security’ and ‘lots of people talking to you all the time telling you their own
ideas and agenda’. Being in power works against responsiveness: ‘it’s a trait of government that
the longer they go on, the less they remember to think about that. The more ministers become
ministers, they think as ministers rather than thinking as politicians’ (Robertson, interviewed in
2006).
However, whilst leaders need to be flexible and willing to change position if a new idea is
not accepted, this does not mean that politicians should simply follow public opinion. Research
can encourage politicians to make adjustments, rather than wholesale change: ‘more and more, I
would see candidates understanding the value of research, and then really sending the results,
and adjusting their policies, or programme-manning efforts, or their positioning overall based
on research’ (Braun, interviewed in 2009). Moreover, whilst research may point out the need to
give up on certain policies, it can also help guide leaders as to when they can sell something and
not be too cautious. Somerville (interviewed in 2007) noted how:

serious politicians have a good rule of thumb, which is, if you give me something that I
think I can sell, then I will, if it is going to make sense. But if I don’t think I can sell it,
then I won’t sell it … leadership is saying what I can sell … it is much more an instinctive
judgment – Asylum liberalization, no that’s gonna kill my party. Baby bonds – that’s not
going to be popular in certain areas, but I think I can sell that.

Research identifies the space for leadership: former premier Bob Carr said: ‘there are
some issues where the public attitude might affect you and doesn’t count; one because it’s
something you want to pursue, and two, because by leading you can change public opinion’.
Carr said:

a strong leader can shape public opinion. You might look at a bit of polling information
that shows 55–45 division, but by simply staking your case and heading the media, you can

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see that flip over. Secondly, the issue might not be in the media for that long. So even if
you’re behind, it may not hurt you.

Response to research therefore needs to vary depending on the issue, and effective leadership
includes both leading and following and somewhere in between. When discussing the Blair
government, Gould (interviewed in 2007) conceded that ‘it may be a fair criticism to say in the
early days that it was poll-driven or too much, I don’t know, public opinion-driven’, although
‘in the later stages … almost nothing Tony Blair did was popular. Everything was based on
conviction.’ However, Blair lost support when he adopted a more conviction-based strategy.
Gould argues that:

The art of politics, modern politics, is kind of being able to perfectly blend these two
together and to make them work. I mean, if you become too much of a listening party
you just get nowhere. If you become too much of a leadership government, then you start
to disconnecting your voters, which is bad also. If you’re too flexible it’s bad, if you’re too
inflexible it’s bad, so you need to balance these … it’s absolutely crucial to listen in modern
politics, but equally important to lead … you have to balance flexibility and resolution.
What I call soft-hard politics. You have to be soft, you have to be flexible, you have to be
listening … you have to be participatory. But you also have to have the courage and your
convictions. Now that’s very hard.

In practice, research is used alongside other considerations such as the party itself, because as
Utting (interviewed in 2008) explained,

politicians aren’t slaves to opinion polls because politicians are slaves to other more sub-
stantial interests like … the internal dynamic level in their party … what their support level
is in caucus, what the attitudes of some of their big donors are, the cultural institutional
things … they’re the kind of real things that they have to sort of balance.

Politicians must aim to position themselves in relation to both internal and external opinion
to both maintain support and achieve progress. Polling is more of ‘a stepping off point for
political strategy’ (Gould) – it does not set the goal itself.
Furthermore, it is also pragmatic to avoid following research at all costs. Leaders need some
kind of position and should not just follow, not least because voters want them to have some
kind of integrity: ‘it’s much better to have a consistent position and I’d say be slightly out of
centre than make that desperate dash to the centre and weaken any kind of credibility that
you’ve got’ (Utting). Harris, who was marketing director for the UK Conservatives, argued that
you need positive vision to win:

you need vision … Howard never ever created a sense of belief in what his overall vision
was and all he did was get stuck into the negatives, and then with IDS he also had no clear
sense of purpose. I think that without a noble purpose you’re sunk.

Lavigne (interviewed in 2009) recalls how he worked on Canadian New Democratic Party
(NDP) leader Jack Layton’s leadership campaign for the 2003 election, and:

when we sat down at the kitchen table at the very beginning, and we started to talk about
the kind of party we wished to build and the kind of country we wished to build, that’s

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where the vision of where you want to take the party, and where you want to take the
country, that’s where it starts.

Evans said that marketing needs to be driven:

by a vision and a set of values. As long as it is about political ideas and doesn’t become
reduced to a tactical squabble for power. Anyone involved in that game will get out-
flanked. Another party provision will come along and will get traction with vision as to
where people want to get next. Politics and marketing have a bad reputation individually,
put the two together and it is deeply mistrusted. But without that compass, you’d get
found out. You wouldn’t go to tap into people’s aspirations.

Political marketing need not result in creating politicians who just follow – not only is it
problematic democratically it is also problematic on a pragmatic level.
Practitioners suggested that any changes in position to suit polls need thinking out and jus-
tifying. Sparrow (interviewed in 2007) recalled how research tells the politicians in the UK that
the public ‘love the NHS and they want the politicians to love it as well’, and that even if it’s
not something politicians feel passionate about:

they go out and talk about it, they do what the researchers and strategists tell them to do,
but they do it without the conviction that they have for the things that they do actually feel
really passionate about. So they don’t actually get the message across.

Evans argued that ‘if you are not authentic you will fail, maybe not initially, but ulti-
mately … I wouldn’t go as far as to say there is a collective intelligence but the public tend to
figure out what’s going on’. Reid said that it is not enough to show responsiveness to the
public, the message had to be authentic. Changing position to suit polls all the time can back-
fire: Mills noted how ‘polling may show that right now 75 percent of voters favour Policy A
but if you had declared passionately against Policy A a few months back you can’t now advo-
cate Policy A without a cost to your personal credibility’. Duncan-Smith (interviewed in 2006)
commented how in his experience as a party leader ‘if we attack something one day we are
considered as hypocrites if we then go back to that position later on and say we are in favour of
it now.’
Advisors, therefore, take into account the politician’s history and beliefs. Ulm (interviewed in
2007) said that he had:

never had a candidate ask me ‘What should I believe on this?’ Never had. Never had it
once. Usually the candidate has a core history, a core set of beliefs, and you’re trying to
figure out of all those, what’s the best way to win? Is the history both good and bad?

The same works for communication: Mellman explained how ‘if your message is we need
someone who’s tough and you have a wimpy sort of candidate – doesn’t work so well. That
can’t really be your message … you have to work with the material you have’. Despite the use
of research and advice, politicians need to be genuine otherwise ‘you get found out pretty
quick. There’s no doubt about that’ (Fitzpatrick, interviewed in 2008).
Furthermore, leaders can use research proactively to help them achieve change in public
opinion, rather than just change their position. Tyson explained how research can be used to
work out how to sell something, to tailor the message, and then on a continual basis so that

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Jennifer Lees-Marshment

politicians are ‘finding out what will appease people, to get them to back down’. Similarly,
Mellman said:

my view is you shouldn’t base public policy on polling in particular. On the other hand,
sometimes politicians come to us and say well, this is what I’ve decided to do, what I need
you to do is tell me how do I sell that? How do I get people to support that, given that
this is what I want to do? That’s perfectly appropriate and responsible in my view, because
our job isn’t to dictate public policy to them, but it is to help them figure out how to sell
their policies for the maximum impact.

Market intelligence can be used to advise on a predetermined, locked-in position without

changing the product. Duffy (interviewed in 2009) said that ‘the best use of market-research, in
my experience, is … it can show you a pathway through what appears to be an insurmountable
barrier’. Research can help suggest a way forward through opposition:

it tells you ‘Well actually if you link your agenda – if you call it that you’ll have a problem,
but if you don’t call it that, if you call it something else, and if you present the motive
behind what you are doing as being conservation in aid of environmental best-practices,
then the public will buy it.’ So, that’s what market research does. It gives you some
quantifiable basis on which you can venture your opinions.

Gill (interviewed in 2007) said that his experience at Mori showed that ‘public opinion can
be led and changed very substantially on a lot of issues, because most of the time most people
aren’t thinking about these issues that politicians and government are thinking about very
much’. Research helps to understand the level of support or opposition, and who supports or
opposes, and what might make them change. Nanos (interviewed in 2009) argues that the best
politicians use research by ‘saying I have an objective, then they are on the right track. Can it be
achieved? Is it the right objective? What are the resources that are going to be needed to
achieve that objective? How relevant is it?’ It helps identify potential risks. It can predict how
voters might change or react to changes. Utting explained that although traditional research
simply researches where people are right now, more sophisticated sensitivity modelling can
explore what impact a politician changing position on something will have on public opinion: ‘you
can almost create a kind of black box situation where you can try different options within your
model, and just see how it affects things like vote choice or other outcomes you’re interested
in’. Research can help identify the potential room for politicians to lead public opinion.
Research remains useful even when leaders adopt a position that is, or becomes, anti-market,
helping politicians to understand opposition to their positions and show respect for
public opinion even if they do not agree with it. In 2004–05 more innovative research by the
company Promise for the UK Labour/Blair government identified that the problem wasn’t just
Blair’s policy on Iraq, but that people felt neglected by Blair, that he hadn’t listened to them
and became too focused on international rather than domestic issues. This then informed a
reconnection strategy, which as Carter explained,

involved taking the Prime Minister to studios after studios and putting him in front of live
audiences that could engage and talk with him and put their concerns, those events helped
to show that the Prime Minister had not moved off the key agendas that he had been
elected on, but indeed remained very focused on them, even though there had been other
things going on.

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When the public have negative perceptions of politicians who have already been elected or
are known to them, practitioners can work to offset them. When former first lady Hillary
Clinton stood for the Senate as well as president, she conducted a listening, conversation tour to
combat concerns that ‘people were weary of her, they didn’t know her, they believed in the
negative stereotypes about her, and the way to dispel them was to appear personally in small
groups that were open, so people could report on them’ (Blumenthal, interviewed in 2007). It
is important to use research to identify the real source of any weakness so that it can be mana-
ged more effectively.
Overall, this research demonstrates that, as suggested by previous literature, political
marketing does not lead politicians to simply follow market research. Instead, research is used
to inform a variety of positions and decisions. Indeed, for both pragmatic and principled reasons,
politicians should use market research more reflectively. Taking our understanding beyond
theoretical assertions, this gives us a rare insight into the thinking of politicians and their advisors
who conduct and use market research when making leadership decisions about policy.

Advice for practitioners

Practitioners would be wise to understand that market research is only part of the decision-
making process, and politicians should not simply follow the results of research. Market research
needs to be used carefully, to guide leaders to make decisions which will both maintain support
and help politicians achieve policy change: see Box 27.1.

Box 27.1 How political leaders should use market research in politics
1 Try to achieve a few changes and use market analysis to help identify how to change
opinion
2 Manage anti-market positions: continue to conduct market analysis; show awareness of
and respect for opposition; and conduct listening exercises to get back in touch
3 Use market analysis proactively to inform, not dictate decisions
4 Balance leading and following the public
5 Ensure changes are justifiable and credible
6 Adopt a proactive, visionary position: do not just follow

Impact on politics
What this means for politics is that there is still room for politicians to take a range of policy
decisions in relation to market research. Whilst political marketing is clearly a prevalent force in
politics, it need not be a constraining force in democracy that prevents politicians taking up
certain policies. Yes, they do need to stay in touch and they do need to listen, but that does not
mean they need to do everything the public wants. It is about nuance – leaders can take a range
of positions in response to research, and research can be used to find a way to create public
support for change as well as stop politicians doing something that is deeply against the public
will. There may be a maturing of political leadership which could help to create a more positive
relationship between government and citizens, but this positive impact will only happen in
practice if politicians choose to use political marketing more effectively. Ultimately the decision
rests with them.

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The way forward: for research, study, training and practice

Whilst political marketing has extensively researched how politicians follow market demands,
there needs to be more research that explores how marketing might be used to create space for
leadership decisions that go against public opinion and managing anti-market decisions more
effectively. The leadership literature itself needs to be integrated, and it would be beneficial if a
model of reflective leadership were created and tested on specific empirical cases. Practitioners
need to be aware of the need to utilise market research in a proactive way to help create the room
for leadership, and to spend time reflecting on how to respond to the public. Political marketing
will then help leaders not just win elections but help meet public long-term needs and be
beneficial for society as a whole.

Bibliography

List of interviewees
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