Wk4 – Marketing Politics and Political Advertising

WK4 – Marketing Politics and Political Advertising – SGM004 – Political

Communications

Dr. Carolina MatosLecturer in Media and CommunicationsDepartment of SociologyCity University London

Readings for week 4• Required:• Butler, P. & N, Collins (1999) 'A Conceptual framework for

Political Marketing', in B. Newman (eds.) Handbook of Political Marketing, London: Sage.• Negrine, R. & Stayner, J. (2007) "Marketing Politics" in The

Political Communication Reader, London: Routledge, section 4• Scammell. M. (2003) “Citizen Consumers: towards a new

marketing of politics?” in John Corner and Dick Pels (eds.) Media and the Re-styling of Politics London: Sage, p.117-137 • Additional:• Franklin, B. (2004) Packaging Politics, 2nd Edn, Arnold• Street, J. (1997) Politics and Popular Culture, London: Polity

Press• Thompson, J. (2000) Political Scandal, Polity. 

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Key issues• The changing role of political parties in democracies

• Who has more power: political actors or the media?

• Modern politics, discourse and leadership

• Political marketing: what is it?

• Citizens consumers (Scammell, 2000)

• Modern politics, discourse and leadership

• Politics and popular culture

• The “celebrity politician”

• Political scandals

• Conclusions

• Seminar questions and activities

• Readings for week 5

The role of political parties in democracies

• Main function of political parties is to provide countries with leaders (Lees-Marshment, 2001)

• One of the key transformations of the political party has been the strengthening of its leaders

• Wide range of literature on party politics discusses how parties behave

( i.e. Catch all parties (Kirchheimer, 1966)

• Downs (1957) argued that political parties are rational actors that change their behaviour to capture the middle ground

• Politicians will compete with each other to gain more voters (i.e. reach out to younger publics). Thus they will start to incorporate entertainment formats to their political platform and/or political persona

Tensions between the media (journalists) and the political world (politicians)

• The growing power of television and other media technologies means that politicians compete with various leisure activities for the attention of voters

• Commercial TV began to change the character of campaigns, with critics stressing its contribution to the crisis of political parties (Mancini and Swanson,1996;13)

• Thomas E. Patterson (1993) points to tensions between the watchdog role of the press and its constructive task of bringing candidates and voters together (in Graber, 209)

• Relationship of competition and cooperation

Politicians use the media in their struggle for symbolic power

• Thompson draws from Bourdieu’s discussion of cultural capital • “…the media become the primary means by which political

leaders accumulate symbolic capital in the broader political field. Through the management of visibility and the…presentation of self, political leaders use the media to build up a store of symbolic capital in the eyes of the electorate….”(Thompson, 2000, 105).

• Reputation is an aspect of symbolic capital - a politician’s good reputation implies that he is trusted by voters) • Shift in political scenario from politicians debating what

they want to discussing how to implement what voters want

Politics and the logic of consumption (in Scammell, 2003)

Scammell (2003) argues that there is a mismatch between confident consumers and insecure citizens

“Empowerment” of consumers, self-realization and personal values versus decline of citizenship rationales

“…consumerism in the sense of a more productive, less collective public policy choice is becoming the cause of the relationship between citizens, representatives and governments in the electoral politics of a number of nations (Scammell, 1995; Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999 in Bennett, 2003).

* Attacks on political marketing seem to imply that a “golden age” of rational political debate existed once

The Structural and Process Characteristics of Political Marketing (in Newman et al, 1999)

Structural Characteristics:

A) The product Person/party/ideology

Loyalty

Mutability

B) The organization Resource Base

Amateurism and volunteers

C) The market Regulations and restrictions

Social affirmation

The counterconsumer

Process Characteristics:

A) Value Defining Establishment of core values

Value aggregation

B) Value Developing Specification of choice

C) Value Delivering Office-policy dichotomy

Periodic market

A conceptual framework for political marketing (in Newman et al, 1999)

• Basis of the framework – political marketing exhibits both “structural” characteristics, such as the nature of the product, the organization and the market, and “process” characteristics that define, develop and deliver value.

• Person/Party/Ideology – Nominating candidates calls into question issues such as their competence and reasons, their past records and promises for the future; how much loyalty they command and their mutability in the post-purchase setting. Strategies should attempt to “brand” policies and ideas

• The political organization – Distinctive marketing characteristics of political parties include among others the resource base and the use of amateurs and volunteers. Political parties have varied resource bases.

• I.e. “In the US, the relatively liberal laws on campaign expenditure and the lower reliance on mass party membership compared to that in Europe have made money the key resource.”

• Negative Perception of Marketing - It is perceived as negative among grassroots level in many countries, and can be seen as unethical and trivializing. As Smith and Saunders (1990) point out, politicians might focus on narrow short-term issues just because they are popular.

A conceptual framework for political marketing (in Newman et al, 1999)

The political market – the electorate constitutes the political market.

Regulations and restrictions – In the US, a candidate can buy any time on TV, in most markets the amount of time on TV is restricted.

Social and Ideological Affirmation – Elections are seen as a cornerstone of civil society. Only through an understanding of the electorate - its culture, values and expectations - will the marketer be able to avoid committing gaffes.

The counterconsumer – A particular group might be interested in preventing another candidate from taking office.

The Process Characteristic of Political Marketing – the focus on delivered value is important. Parties do stress core values that they have.

“We consider value-defining processes that enable the assessment of the organization and its electorate’s concerns, value-developing processes that enable the creation of positions and policies to meet those concerns, and value-delivering processes that enable the transformation of policies into political action.” (64)

* Value-Defining, Value-Developing and Value-Delivering Processes

Marketing Politics: definitions of concepts (in Negrine and Stayner, 2007)

Lilleker and Negrine (2007, 129) argue that the term “professionalization” is multifaceted and highly subjective, and not fully able to describe the complex nature of political communications. “It can be used to identify any individual who has a basic competence in news management techniques (Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994: 14)”. Prefer the term “specialization of tasks”.

The politics of marketing the Labour Party – Wring (2007) discussed the old image of the Labour Party, and how it was perceived as old fashioned, extremist and beholden to “minorities”. There was widespread ignorance of focus groups, and selected findings were inappropriately used to analyse the popularity of certain policies.

Marketing research as double-edged sword: “The theory and practice of political marketing raises important questions about the nature of modern elections….and democratic accountability. Although it is claimed that opinion research represents the views of a silent majority who might be ignored, this…ambition conflicts with the primary motives of….private polling: the desire to cultivate support and win votes.”

Health of a democracy is called into question: “marketing tends to focus upon….short-term customer wishes….”

“Marketing” as a new concept in politics (in Negrine and Stayner, 2007)

• Scammell (2007) highlights that there is no consensus over the definition of “political marketing”, underlining the use of other terms, such as “political management” and “promotional politics.”

• Field is still in its infancy – “Political marketing claims to offer new of understanding modern politics.” It wants to explain the behaviour of political actors, and shares with political science a desire to understand underlying processes. The appropriate use of marketing is seen as being able to have consequences for democratic practice and for citizen engagement. (Scammell, 2007, 151)

• Political marketing is thus seen as a response to developments in media and communication technologies. The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines marketing as: “ those activities performed by individuals…whether profit or non-profit, that enable…and encourage exchange to take place…(Scammell, 2000, 7).

• Marketing versus propaganda: “The ‘marketing’ concept is key to understanding political marketing. Without it, we are still talking about a modern form of propaganda.

Marketing versus propaganda* Scammell underlines how Nazi propagandists adapted Roman techniques for stimulating crowds to excitement. Hitler made use of “marketing”* Political marketing covers a multitude of activities, including advertising, public relations and any political activity concerned with image and persuasion * Makes a distinction between marketing and propaganda: “It is a common misconception that marketing equals advertising or propaganda or image or brand-building, even though all these will almost certainly form part of the ‘marketing mix’. (2000, 8)Differences - such as the fact that Nazism did not borrow marketing techniques from the business community, and that their emphasis was on manipulation and on forcing people to believe what they wanted, whilst political marketing is more about attending to what people say they want. Political marketing - manipulative persuasion (individual motivation)Totalitarian propaganda – coercive persuasion (crowd behaviour and control of the media) Common ground: both seek to influence public opinion, and are concerned with ideology

Political parties and political marketing: what is it all about?

• Political marketing is a new era of research, integrating political science and management

• Lees-Marshment (2001) argues that political science and communication scholars have not fully defined political marketing

• The author (2001, 15) shows data on how party membership has fallen from both parties (Conservative and Labour)

• New social movements also pose a challenge to parties – voters turn to other forms of political participation

• The objective of political campaigning is to influence the process and outcome of governance, seeking to influence the political decision-making process by shaping public opinion through various forms of communication strategies, including the use of the Internet and the media in order to avoid paid advertising.

• Concerns: what are the consequences of this new state of things for democracy?

Designer Politics (Scammell, 1995; 2000)

What can be said of political marketing in Britain?1) Marketing is entrenched in the political process2) Does not offer magic solutions for winning elections3) Use of political marketing needs to be closely monitored

Initial reluctance of the Left in adopting political marketing: “Labour’s lesson of the 1992 general election was related to the limitations of marketing and the difficulties of changing the party’s images. For a while, it seemed as though marketing was in retreat. Labour’s team of advertising and media advisers, the Shadow Communications Agency (SCA), caught much of the backlash for defeat…”(xiv)* Author does not share the pessimism of much of the literature on political marketing and campaigning, which claims that these techniques subvert the democratic process, contributing to impoverish debate; that rational political debate is reduced to advertising sound-bites and that political image is becoming a matter of appearance.

Political parties, branding and political marketing

• Lees-Marshment work comes from a management research tradition, criticizing political communication scholars and political scientists, attempting to offer a more defined framework to discuss political marketing taking into consideration its 3 orientations (product, sales and market).

• CPM (Comprehensive political marketing) - views marketing as more than simply political communication; attempts to use marketing concepts, not just techniques; integrating political science literature into the analysis….(2001, 5)

• “Branding is the new form of political marketing. If market research, spin and advertising…are associated with the key signifiers of marketed parties and candidates in the 80’s and 90’s, “branding” is the hallmark now. (Scammell, 2000, 177)

The re-branding of New Labour and Tony Blair and the Conservatives

• Gould’s surveys found that the hostility to Blair and Labour was highest among women

• Labour/Blair in 1997 - Risks of idealizing the brand

• Promise, a commercial consultancy specialised in brand building, was hired to design a strategy to reconnect Blair with voters for the 2005 election

• Labour brand was undermined by media attacks (i.e. Iraq war)

• Blair’s image as a “celebrity politician” in decline. The last elections in the UK “re-branded” the Conservatives and David Cameron (“compassionate conservatives”)

• Video: The New Statesmen – Labour of Love

• (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2slwy1YBXMU)

Margaret Thatcher and marketing techniques in UK/US politics

* Margaret Thatcher and Reagan (“the New Right”) brought marketing into political sphere

* Hiring of Saatchi and Saatchi in 1978 by Conservative Party was big news and seen as responsible for their victory in 1979

* “Thatcher’s faith in advertising extended most controversially beyond the purely party domain into the realm of government publicity…Thatcherism put advertising on the map” (Scammell, 2)

* Labour Party slowly began to adopt similar practices (I.e. Peter Mandelson as key figure behind the “velvet revolution”)

* The growth of PR began to turn politics into an expensive business – a spin industry machine of opinion pollsters and other marketing activities

Political PR strategies and the Nixon

presidency • Nixon is seen as a pioneer politician that understood TV’s value

• 1960 presidential election was a crucial moment in the development of PR-ized and televisual politics

• Kennedy-Nixon debate became a landmark of what to do and not to do

• TV provides the perfect vehicle for politics as hype

• “Political PRs….can speak in sound-bites, sound sincere, have the discipline and theatrical abilities to follow a script. PRs train politicians to be televisual performers….They also teach them to dress appropriately and improve their appearance….Politicians have become products to be sold to “audiences” (Neuman, 1994 in Louw, 2005).

Key debates on celebrity politics and the personalisation of politics (in Street, 2004)

• Core of the critique is that is it contributes to the impoverishment of the relationship between the representative and the represented

• Anxieties concerning expert elite status of political leadership, from Plato to Lippmann and Schumpeter

• Clash between serious politics and trivial entertainment - Politicians are seen as stepping into the popular culture terrain

• I.e. Clinton was seen as a model celebrity politician at ease in front of the cameras with ability to follow scripts

• According to Postman (1987, 4,129), appearance and image have come to dominate politics, so that “we may have reached a point where cosmetics have replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control’ (in Street, 439).

Celebrities doing politics, and politicians being celebrities

Celebrity politicians and popular culture 2 (in Street, 2004)

• Street identifies two types of celebrity politicians: • 1) CP1 - The traditional politician who engages in the world of popular

culture (i.e. the German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on stage with the Scorpions… ) and

• 2) CP2 - entertainers who claims the right to represent people and causes (i.e. Bono from U2)

• “PR has also made politics a very expensive business because of the cost of the spin industry machine and opinion pollsters and other marketing activities (i.e. direct e-mail, etc), placing a burden on parties to produce money; the result is a professionalized fund-raising industry…”(Louw, 151).

The core of the critique – contributes to the impoverishment of the relationship between the representative and the represented, marginalizing issues of political substance in favour of the trivial

Celebrity politics as inevitable?

• Defence of contemporary celebrity is that it is an inevitable product of social and political change

• New symbolic realities – “symbolic templates of heroes and villains, honored values and aspirations..” (Mancini and Swanson,1996; 9)

• “To the extent that celebrity politics is a form of marketing, then celebrity politicians are simply making use of the techniques of marketing, either – as with CPIs – selling themselves, or as with CP2s, endorsing a product (a policy or a politician)” (Street, 441).

Political scandal and “negative” celebrity politics (Thompson, 2000)

• Political scandals have varied over time, but since the 1960’s they have become a feature of political life in many Western states

• Thompson (2000) attempts to articulate a more sophisticated understanding of political scandal

• “…the critical feature of any political scandal is not the degree of personal gain involved nor is it the normative merit of the ends sought, but rather it is the presence of any activity that seeks to increase political power at the expense of process and procedure….That…is why political scandals can only take place in liberal democracies” (2000, 92).

• In a liberal democracy, parties compete for power and in the struggle for electoral success, reputations matter; scandals can play into the hands of opponents and destroy careers.

Political marketing and the democratic process

Critiques of its impact on the quality of the democratic process:

* Democratic process is seen as being valuable and fragile, under threat in many parts of the world.

* Marketing is seen as having contributed to the decline of ideological commitments of parties within a Habermasian understanding of the fall of “rational political debate”

* The decline of the quality of leaders results in a shift towards an emphasis on their personality and character (“just like us”)

* Rise of political consultants, who become just as important as the leaders that they serve (Scammell, 1995)

• Political marketing can be understood as the commercialisation of politics and the extension of the relations of consumption to the political sphere (McNair, 1995)

* “The rational citizen of classic liberal theory has become “a consumer of politics and policies….the competing political parties present electors with different policy options in broadly the same way as firms offer rival products…” (McNair, 1995)

Politics and popular culture: political satire and films about politics

• Politics has been a part of popular entertainment

• Some entertainment genres that deal with politics, and which politicians use to work on their image, include:

• 1) Political satire and parody (i.e. Spitting Image)

• 2) Talk shows (i.e. Saturday Night Live)

• 3) Reality TV (i.e. Big Brother)

• 4) TV documentaries (i.e. The Trial of Tony Blair, C4, 2007)

• 5) Hollywood films which defend particular causes (i.e. Milk, Van Sant, 2008) and/or discuss political biographies and the role of political leaders (i.e. Nixon and W. (Stone); The Queen (Frears, 2006) and Che (Soderbergh, 2008)

Some conclusions and questions for thought

• Political marketing and celebrity politics are a feature of contemporary politics in advanced democracies and in many countries in the world, an inevitable consequence of social and political change

• Celebrity politics is tied to the consumerism logic and the shift away from citizenship towards consumer power

• Debate is not about opposite extremes - either to lament the decline of quality political discourse due to the entry of entertainment formats into politics, or to “celebrate” uncritically forms that can be classifed as “populist” politics

• Relevant questions to ask would be: How can celebrity politics and political marketing be of benefit for the democratic process?

• What political style is more appropriate to engage more citizens without undermining quality political debate?

• Can political marketing contribute to wider civic engagement?

Seminar activities • 1. Choose a politician from the list.

• 2. Discuss their political image and how he/her was portrayed in a particular political campaign.

• 3. Using the texts that you have read, how would your company (or party) market the candidate and/or political party better in the future? What would your communication strategy be? How would you design a political campaign for the next election?

• David Cameron

• Nelson Mandela

• Angela Merkel

• Dilma Rousseff

• Hillary Clinton

• Vladimir Putin

• Any other

Readings for week 5 Required:

•Blumler, Jay G. and Gurevitch, Michael (2001) “Americanization Reconsidered: UK-US Campaign Comparisons Across Time” in Bennett, W. Lance and Entman, R. M. Mediated Politics – communication in the future of democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 380-407

•Hallin, D. and P.Mancini (2004) “Americanization, Globalization and secularization” in F. Esser and B.Pfetsch (2004) eds. Comparing Political Communication, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.25-45

•Matos, C. (2008) “National Politics in a Global Economic World: a Case Study of the 1994 Presidential Elections” in Journalism and Political Democracy in Brazil, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books

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Seminar activities to prepare for next week

On top of the core readings for next week, choose one from the following texts to make you think about campaign practices in a particular region and/or country:

Additional:

•Espindola, Roberto (2002) “Professionalised campaigning in Latin America”, Journal of Political Marketing 1:4 65-82.

•LeDuc, Lawrence, Richard G. Niemi and P. Norris (eds.) (2009) Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in the 21st Century, London: Sage Publications

•Swanson, David L. and Mancini, Paolo (1996) “Patterns of Modern Electoral Campaigning and their Consequences” in (eds.) (1996) Politics, Media and Modern Democracy London: Praeger, p. 247-274

•Waisbord, Silvio (1996) “Secular Politics: The Modernization of Argentine Electioneering” in Swanson, D. & P. Mancini (eds.) Politics, Media and Modern Democracy – an International Study of Innovations in Electoral Campaigning and Their Consequences