Politics Now in Canada and the USA

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Market orientation
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Product development
 Branding/position/segmentation
 Voter as consumer

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Explains the way in which parties and other political entities behave
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In response to social and technological change.
 It fits the consumerist values we have
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It fits the lifestyles people have

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It is easier to figure out how to reach the right people and what those people are concerned about than it has been
 Reaching the right people is the trick
 The current moment is one of niche narrowcasting, lifestyle communities and discussions within segments

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Advertising is a key part of marketing but not all of it.
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Marketing includes the overall strategy to design and sell the product.
 Including paid and earned media but a lot more.

 The product or offering is the party’s candidates, manifesto and emotions
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The position is the space that the product holds in the customer’s mind
 The brand is the visual and emotive representation of the product to the audience

 For political entities to market themselves and their wares much as do other entities.
 In this, they reflect the society, the technology and the politics in which they exist as much as they shape that.
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This is a global phenomenon, not just happening in
North America or the United States. See for Example
Lees-Marshment 2011.
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Consultants and partisans learn from each other on a cross-national basis

 John Howard’s “Aussie Battlers” used in Canada by the
Conservative Party to describe some of its audiences
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The third way used in the USA, Canada and the UK by
Clinton, Chretien and Blair respectively.
 “Hope and Change” became very popular globally after
2008.
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The Commonsense Revolution has been launched in multiple places around the globe.

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Understanding the audience and the marketplace become vital to building an effective political marketing campaign.
 A great deal of emphasis on polls and focus groups.
 To determine effective visuals, language, narrative and policy priorities
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And what works with which audiences.

 Much more noise than in the past . Reaching the right audience is more difficult than it once was.
 Many more channels. The proliferation of new distribution channels makes hitting the right targets more difficult than in the past.
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Citizens have longer commutes and work hours than once was the case.
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I can opt out of the political nation and join Leafs nation or build my world around family/work more easily than in the past. Less social connection

 The party as a membership organization is in trouble across North America
 More independents pay less attention means that marketing in general and branding in particular increase in importance
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They are key tools to build voter awareness of candidates and platforms
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CDN parties always have a marketing imperative that their US counterparts don’t: they have to sell memberships.

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The dominant values of the age are consumerist.
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The public expects packages, promotion and significant choice in everything else.
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When did consumerism become our values ? Gradually, during the last century.
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As Nimijean has argued, the politics of the age are neoliberal meaning that fights are over means not ends.
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Brand battles sharpen distinctions and generate interest.

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An ongoing conversation between an organization and its audience targets that includes a campaign and beyond.
 Loyalty isn’t build all at once. It can take a while of showing people why what was promised works as advertised, that those promises made were kept and that taking a next step would be a good thing to do.
 The idea of a campaign is to have a plan about that conversation

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Products
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Personality
 Positioning
 Brand
 Communications Plan
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Audience Targets

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Politics is about definition in a couple of ways
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Define yourself
 Define your opponent

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Both in terms of the party leader and
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In terms of the brand

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Inextricably linked with the brand in Canada.
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This is the same in the USA when a party occupies the
White House but is more nebulous for the opposition party.

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Can also sell the leader as being like average people
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Both CDN and USA political parties sometimes do this and they sometimes sell other personal traits about the leader like attending an Ivy League University or being a business owner.
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Or sell values such as empathy or strength.

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Campaigns talk about themselves
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Campaigns talk about their opponents
 Opponents talk about themselves
 Opponents talk about their rivals.
 In the USA, this strategic grid has four spaces and in
Canada it can have four but also up to ten.

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Of educating the consumer about what the offering is on a given party’s side
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Versus the offerings of rivals.
 One difference is that the battle is more existential than over market share a lot of the time in politics but
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In a multiparty system like Canada’s, it can be over market share as well.

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What space do you want occupy in the mind of the consumer ?
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Generally, somewhere nearer the center is better in politics but the marketing challenge is
 The center can shift and political types can’t shift with it all the time if they want to retain overall authenticity.
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Authenticity – the perception of being what one says one is in marketing.

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The total user experience with the product according to
Zyman
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The image, slogan, music and values supporting a product.
 The brand needs to fit the product’s features and benefits but also resonate with its target audience.

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USA Republicans have used the Reagan/Conservative brand since 1980 as one
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Plus the Lincoln heritage has merged with the
Reagan/Conservative one
 And the elephant is still around
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As is an emphasis on tradition

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More or less work together to build a narrative that is visually and emotively coherent
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Put the Republican Party in a specific place in the mind of the prospect
 Provide a specific set of emotions and understandings to the audience targets

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The Dems are much more muddied. Sometimes it is
Obama, sometimes it has been the Congressional leadership but it isn’t consistent and this is why their messaging isn’t consistent.

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Clearly ties to Obama
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But also looks like a target as one wag put it and
 What happens if Obama loses ?

 Ties to the Democrats’ heritage.
 They’re called the Donkeys
 The donkey logo has serious equity
 Changing to the newer logo visually throws all this away but it clarifies that the D’s are the party of Obama

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There are still individual Obama logos selling him not the party
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This is far less coherent narratively and visually than what the Republicans have done but they’ve also been doing it for longer
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Thus, the muddling of the Democratic Brand continues

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Use the logo as a key part of the brand
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And are aware that they are doing so.

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Absolutely own their colors consciously.
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This is different from the USA in which the media imposes more color discipline than do the parties.
 Fonts can also send messages but the fonts have changed over time here.

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A picture really is worth a thousand words
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The visuals associated with a brand can be the key vehicle through which its contents get distributed.

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Can be a key conduit to transfer the brand value proposition
 Two Canadian examples: “Forward Together” Ontario
Liberals and “Here For Canada” Conservative Party of
Canada
 Two US: “ Change We Can Believe In” and “Together
We Can”

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Canadian Parties are more limited in the heat they can put in their brand/ads
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They cover this in other parts of the ads
 US parties can be much hotter visually and in the verbiage than can their Canadian counterparts because

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As Westin has shown in the US case, much of the way people experience politics is emotional not analytically.
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The emotions that similar ideological parties work with around the globe seem the same.
 Thus, the emotions that a party can work with in a specific setting are limited by what the audience will respond to.

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Things that might work well in a federal election might not work so well in a provincial one because the audience demography is different.
 In the era of niche narrowcasting, the emotions that might activate one group could outrage another.

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Ontario Provincial Election 2011
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Conservative Party of Canada campaign 2011
 New Democratic Party campaign 2011

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Both USA and CDN parties freight train their paid and earned media
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The USA parties have a less regulated electronic media that they can use as well.
 For Republicans: Fox News and talk radio
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For Democrats MSNBC, a smaller talk radio segment and social media

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Prominence is given to TV coverage and paid electronic media
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The talk radio is more regulated
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The value of social media was debated within parties.
 There is Sun TV but that’s as much branded infotainment as it is a part of a partisan distribution system.
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The distribution system seems smaller and more diffuse here.

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The goal is to reach the right audience and turn it out for both USA parties for example.
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This is called segmentation and it is possible because of the proliferation of instruments that collect data about us.
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And digging deeper than that, by looking at all of the things that a consumer purchases a political marketer can build a profile of the most likely consumers for the product.

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The goal is to turn out specific audience segments in big numbers.
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Dems- visible minorities, younger voters, blue collar workers
 Repubs-evangelicals, marrieds, and professionals
 This means there’s no point for these parties spending a lot of time chasing voters they won’t probably win or campaigning in places that won’t produce wins

 Because it doesn’t seem inclusive. Hint: It isn’t but it is really efficient in terms of voter targeting
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And from the marketing and rational actor perspectives the goal is to win not just to engage in civic education
 With limited resources and the rich veins of data, targeting becomes a logical thing to do.

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Targeting – spending a lot of time try to court specific segments of the electorate.
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Audience targets will see and hear a lot from a political marketer. Other audiences will see and hear almost nothing.
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Targeting also means a marketer can have a customer hierarchy in which better customers get more attention, lesser get less and the worst get fired.

 In the USA clearly do this things and
 The R’s started doing them earlier meaning they received an advantage for early adoption and
 The R’s did them more accurately for a longer period of time meaning that they had better identified the audience and received an advantage as a result of that as well.
 The D’s were later and less accurate and lost as a result. Only when they got better did they start to win again.

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Which parties in Canada do you think are segmenting and targeting most effectively and why ?

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Seek to converse with the audience
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Seek to find new databases, metrics and analytical techniques to understand the audience
 Seek to test everything before scaling it

 Political Marketing’s negative impact on civic disengagement is probably overstated
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It can be a key tool to encourage people to take an interest in the world in which we have now
 A lot of what goes on in the USA and Canada is similar but it is also market specific.


For a wonderful semester
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For letting me into a great department and a wonderful new program in political management
 For letting me ask a ton of questions
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For giving me your help and your insights.
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Questions ?