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Creating and developing local political brand identity: a constituency focus

Abstract

Political brands are complex multilayered entities that can be segmented into corporate political brands otherwise known as Parties and individual-sub political brands often conceptualised as individual politicians and candidates (Cwalina and Falkowski 2014; De Landtsheer and De Vries, 2015; Milewicz and Milewicz 2014; Speed, Butler and Colins 2015). Research into individual-sub political brands has received little attention compared with corporate political brands with calls for more research dedicated to individual-sub political brands. This is particularly the case with studies on political brand identity. Political brand identity is seen as the internal view or reality of the organisation and focuses on how the entity projects itself to the external audience. Further, leading authors within the field call for more day-to-day and non-traditional focus within political marketing and investigate how political brands are positioned are needed (Needham and Smith 2015; O’Cass 2001; Ormrod, Henneberg, Forward, Miller, and Tymms 2007). More specifically, Pich and Dean (2015) call for more insight and understanding into the individual-sub political brands in order to ascertain and strategically utilise their potential of building long term relationships with voters. Responding to the identified gap in the body of knowledge, this paper seeks to explore how individual-sub (local) political brand identity is created and developed from an internal orientation following the 2015 UK General Election. This study highlights a distinct case study of a Member of Parliament of the UK Conservative Party. This will offer insight into the sub-brand political brand and assess consistency with the corporate political brand. Further, this study will provide unique first-hand perspectives of how identity is created, developed and maintained within the political environment. The findings have implications not only for political parties but also for politicians, candidates and other political entities. The paper will review and refine the concept of local-sub political brands and illustrate how to investigate the internal orientation of individual political brands. This study will demonstrate that individual political brands can be tailored to address the wants and needs of each unique constituency yet remain consistent with the corporate political brand

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