The Politics of the shrinking marketplace: Marketing voter disengagement

Marketing is traditionally associated with expanding the market for a branded product in order to increase profit; brands undertake research to ensure they possess a thorough understanding of the consumer, their wants and needs. We would all perhaps expect that the brand that is closest to their consumers, most on the pulse of the market, would be expected also to be the most profitable within a competitive marketplace. While a simplification of marketing, this highlights the important irony with political marketing; that while marketing increases in use and sophistication within political campaigning and communication, voter disengagement rises contiguously. Data collected during the 2005 UK General Election, and a long term study within the political parties’ heartlands, allows us to understand the nature and causes of political disengagement, and see why marketing is one root cause. The segmentation of voters, and targeting of those voters who can deliver the greatest profit, a victory in a marginal seat, leaves the majority of the electorate metaphorically out in the cold feeling unrepresented and marginalized. Through a comparison of attitudes within a safe and marginal Labour seat we find the dichotomy between opinions is stark on questions of representation, efficacy of the democratic process and interest in politics. This dichotomy filters through to voting behaviour and attachment to the parties and candidates and will often argue that they will only turn out to vote if they are asked and that support is deserved

The consumption of political communication within a marketised society

It is a recognised fact that a key feature of modern post-industrial democracies is that they are also highly marketised, consumer societies. The implications are that citizens face a multitude of highly persuasive messages on a daily basis from a range of commercial, charitable not-for-profit and political organisations. Studies of the effectiveness of advertising and marketing communications suggest an increased sophistication in the decoding of such persuasive communication and note to some extent, and within certain sectors, a shift towards the more subtle tools of public relations using social media and ICT. The consumerisation and sophistication of the marketplace has been a key driving force behind the marketisation of politics. Political marketing is a highly contested definition, in terms of whether it refers to the development of a product (party brand, leader and policies), whether it is the communicational aspects of political behaviour that have become marketised and professionalized, or whether perspectives of marketing can simply used to explain phenomenon such as voter choices or evaluations of parties and their communication. This paper adopts a mixture of all three perspectives and approaches the subject of the decoding of political communication by suggesting that political communication is perceived as part of the clutter of the consumer society. Using data collected during a research project conducted in the weeks following the 2001 and 2005 UK General Elections, we find that there is an increasingly consumerist perspective used to evaluate political messages. Therefore promises made are often judged using a range of values and expectations that fit within our understanding of consumerism; however there are equally a range of values and expectations that are markedly different. Understanding the complexities of the voter-consumer, and the extent to which there is both a conflation and separation of the two spheres of life aids a more detailed understanding of how politics needs to be communicated and what political marketing, as a practice, should endeavour to achieve

Getting them involved: attracting and empowering supporters

The key to success for any campaign is building and maintaining support. The most valuable supporters are active; those who act as activists and advocates. This presentation offers insights into techniques for mobilising supporters by drawing on principles of psychology, consumer behaviour and examples from the field of electoral politics and charity campaigning. Firstly the presentation critiques approaches to understanding activism; these often take a critical view of small actions, such as signing online petitions or subscribing to online groups or newsletters. The critique draws on examples of two contrasting types of campaign, the election campaigns of Barack Obama, the UK Conservative and Labour Parties, and the German SPD and CDU; these political campaigns are compared with the tactics of a charity campaign designed to raise both awareness and money for breast cancer research: the UK based Wear It Pink campaign. Each of the campaigns placed demands upon their most highly involved supporters and sought to achieve both a cascading down and cascading up of activism. Put simply, they encouraged existing supporters to recruit friends to the campaign and, once these newbies were drawn to visiting the campaign website, or associated online presences, were encouraged to deepen their involvement through a range of requests from small to large. We understand low-effort actions as a small step onto a loyalty ladder, but that through tapping into the target audiences’ needs and wants we can increase interest in the party, organisation or campaign. Here we introduce the concept of involvement and how this is crucial for campaigning. Data suggests that the key to increasing emotional involvement is making the basic campaign messages have resonance with supporters’ lifeworlds. Once a rhetorical connection is made, the organisation must design communication that encourages those interested to climb further up the loyalty ladder; a concept which is developed for the context of online campaigning. A key addition is community building; a central feature of the campaigns used as case studies. All the organisations employed tactics designed to establish open channels of communication, personalise as much as possible and build up a relationship between the organisation and other supporters through two-way dialogic networks. The presentation compares the methods that Obama and the Conservatives used to build communities, their methods for asking for donations and campaigning support, with those of UK Labour and the German parties who sought to build a network of advocates and those of Wear It Pink which encourages participation through performance. Each of these different types of request has an equally different psychological impact upon the individual. The perceived goals of supporters’ actions are different as are their feelings of involvement and self-efficacy. Through an analysis of these campaigns, we can understand how organisations can develop theircommunication tactics to convert prospective supporters into passive advocates then, by connecting them to a network, encourage supporters to publicly display their loyalty and further the goals of the campaign

Local politics for local people: why communicating at the local level can reconnect the public with government

If, as the adage indicates, all politics is local, and that the public need to feel that political communication is relevant to their lives before they engage with the message (Clarke et al, 2004); it would seem to be a safe assumption that localised campaigning and communication would be prioritised. In fact the reverse is often the case..

Interacting and representing: can Web 2.0 enhance the roles of an MP?

Several UK Members of Parliament (MPs) have a foothold within a Web 2.0 environment. Some write blogs, such as Labour’s Tom Watson or Conservative John Redwood. Equally, some have joined virtual communities such as the social networking sites (SNS) MySpace or Facebook. Cumulatively this indicates they are exploring new means of promoting themselves, their politics as well as news means for interacting with their constituents or those who share their political interests. The key aspect of Web 2.0 technology that offers potential for MPs is that an architecture of participation is in place where those with Internet access can interact with one another. Apart from the Webmasters, there is no automatic hierarchy within communities and so each page within a community site is produced by its members. In sharp contrast to the ‘we will build it and they will come’ philosophy associated with Web 1.0 and the static website; Web 2.0 users work on a ‘we will come and build it philosophy’. MPs, in using this technology, must relinquish some control over their public representation in order to engage with community members; this papers asks to what extent this is occurring, what functions of an MPs role are enhanced through the use of Web 2.0, and concludes by focusing on the advantages and disadvantages for MPs of pursuing a Web 2.0 strategy. Our research analysed the content of the 42 weblogs and 37 SNS of MPs who advertise these on the personal websites. Our first set of questions related to the extent to which public conversations could take place; so assessing the extent of interactivity between the MPs and the visitors to these weblogs and SNS profiles. Secondly we focused on the extent to which interactivity was potentiated, either through site functions or the language used, such as asking questions; so assessing whether interaction could take place. Thirdly we assessed which of the MPs roles, the policy scrutiny trusteeship role, the party member role, or constituency representative role was being enhanced through Web 2.0 technologies and what relationship this had to interaction gained. Our data suggests that interactivity is taking place. But this can be in a fairly limited form with many visitors being more likely to comment without returning rather than being part of any reciprocal exchange with the MP. In our assessment, this was due to the fact that many blogs and SNS profiles are laden with too much information and insufficient opportunities to enter into conversations on matters of importance to visitors. When focusing on the functions of the MP, it was clear that many used Web 2.0 as a space to promote the party and communicate their thoughts on issues of the day however these tended to gain little interaction. However, those MPs who use Web 2.0 tools to enhance their constituency representative role did find visitors would interact with them. Within Web 2.0 we can also find a further purpose for MPs, offering insights into their background and personal life to offer a more three-dimensional perspective to visitors. Many MPs use SNS particularly in the same way as any other user, as an individual as opposed to as a professional within any particular career. Here we find MPs also benefiting from interaction with visitors and not only those that are within their offline circle of friends and colleagues. Thus we conclude that there is potential for MPs to use Web 2.0 to support their representative function and gain interaction with a broader public than they would normally. Weblogs can be used to build a community of interest around policy areas to some extent, though this is currently limited to a minority. However SNS can be used to enhance the link between constituents and the MP, if only a minority of the constituency, and can widen the MPs circle of contacts. However, the control aspect is clearly a worry for MPs. While outside of an election campaign it may not matter what is said on an MPs’ weblog or SNS profile there are dangers that during an election they can be hi-jacked by opponents. Therefore the calculation will remain one of benefit versus risk and an assessment of whether sufficient constituents can be reached, or significant numbers of contacts be made, to indicate whether Web 2.0 offers huge promise or huge dangers

Not big brand names but corner shops: marketing politics to a disengaged electorate

Does New Labour’s model of a centrally orchestrated and national-centric political communication strategy effectively engage the electorate? Drawing on interviews with those active in politics “on the ground,” this paper argues that the centralised party model has become unpopular. Furthermore, as these activists tell us, the model is also causing the electorate to reject the democratic process and become apathetic about the political system. Many in Britain, therefore, look to a more locally focussed model, one that has proved successful for the Liberal Democrat party. This model allows communication to be managed at the local level and for the candidate to interact with the local context. An effectively marketed, locally contextualised strategy allows politics to connect with the electorate and, we would suggest, will become more widespread with the realisation that top-down politics does not engage with voters