The political marketing planning process: improving image and message in strategic target areas

A marketing planning framework to aid political parties in improving their image and co-ordinating election campaigns has been developed to reflect the changing nature of electoral campaigning in the developed world towards the need for more long-term planning; together with the development and implementation of marketing models in a wider sphere of social situations. The planning model has been developed using both a hypothetico-deductive and an inductive approach, incorporating recent developments in US and UK political campaign management and depth interviews with political strategists in the UK. Suggests that national political parties need to co-ordinate their election campaigns more effectively in order to strengthen their image among key citizen and voter groups by determining which target areas are most in need of resources. Further research is needed to determine how to position the party and to select and place advertising in the relevant media. Concludes that local election campaigns are becoming more co-ordinated by national parties but that such coordination neglects to provide local area research and telemarketing campaigns, and post-election analysis exercises to monitor strengths and weaknesses in party strategy and campaign plan implementation. The arguments that political campaigns cannot run on a strategic level fail to recognise the significant efforts of the US Republican Party in the 1980s, and the British Labour Party in the 1990s ± both of which had had poor party images ± to rebuild their reputations and improve their electoral success through the combined use of polling, qualitative research, coherent advertising themes, and effective strategy teams focussing on message development and deployment, and party re-organisation. The timescale of conducting such campaigns stretches beyond the formal election campaign period (four or five weeks in the UK, one year in the USA). The UK Labour Party put together a campaign management team in 1985 for the 1987 election (Smith, 1994). Not surprisingly, there are aspects of the political campaigning process that are described more effectively using concepts from political science rather than marketing. Particularly pertinent examples of these phenomena include: ticket-splitting (where voters vote for a different party for two or more political offices, i.e. the USA especially); traditional, personal and tactical voting behaviour from a consumer behaviour perspective (phenomenon particularly associated with the UK); canvassing (particularly in less developed countries such as Namibia); and comparative and negative advertising from a communications standpoint (stronger in the USA). From a competitive perspective, political parties operate in situations which are relatively more akin to an oligopoly than the general consumer marketing perspective generally (though not necessarily) associated with more perfect competition. Nevertheless, there are many similarities between political marketing and traditional fast moving consumer goods marketing (FMCG) and it can be argued that the differences have been overstated (see Egan, 1999). Nevertheless, in the light of these apparent differences between the two subject disciplines (Butler and Collins, 1994; Lock and Harris, 1996), and the fact that there appears to be a high degree of synergy between political campaigning and marketing (Mandelson, 1988; O’Cass, 1996), there is a need to determine the area of overlap between marketing and political campaigning as techniques for informing, communicating with, `̀ connecting’’ with, persuading and reaching the electorate (and citizens generally) inside and outside an election cycle. Earlier political marketing models (such as those described by Newman (1994) and Maarek (1995)) have neglected to emphasise the importance of local campaigning and its organisational implications; a particularly important process in political campaigns operating with constituency-based systems. Both models assume that segmentation and targeting takes place within the national context only. Local campaigning has been neglected in the political marketing literature, despite political scientists’ estimations that such efforts can affect the vote significantly, particularly in marginal constituencies (see Curtice and Steed, 1980; Norton and Wood, 1990; for opposing views on the importance of local campaigning). Local campaigning is becoming increasingly important in first-past-the-post electoral systems (which operate in the UK and the USA) since the priority is not to get an overall majority of individual votes but to obtain an overall majority of individual seats. Local campaigning is also important in other electoral systems such as those using single transferable vote (STV) and alternative vote (AV) systems. Thus, the implication that one area is more important than another gives rise to the need to target those areas that are more likely to change their allegiance (see Niffenegger, 1989; for a discussion of this concept from a US perspective). Any electoral system which relies on constituencies as the primary electoral unit has this in-built facet that some constituencies may be more important than others in determining the election outcome. McDonald (1989) describes the purpose of marketing planning as `̀ the identification and creation of competitive advantage’’. Political marketing planning[2] aims to determine how to generate and retain public support for party policies and programmes. The creation of competitive advantage occurs through the determination and conduct of the party’s positioning strategy and the consistent communication of this strategy in defined key areas of the country in the local context, as well as nationally through the broadcast channels (press, radio, television). Table I has been developed using five factors associated with strategic marketing planning (Palmer, 1994) and illustates how marketing planning is being used for political campaigning. The framework for co-ordinated local campaigning, put forward in this article, attempts to incorporate these five key requirements of marketing planning into a cohesive framework. It is likely that coordinated local campaigning will become an area of growth in what could transpire to [ 7 ] Paul R. Baines, Phil Harris and Barbara R. Lewis The political marketing planning process: improving image and message in strategic target areas Marketing Intelligence & Planning 20/1 [2002] 6±14