There is a paucity of research that outlines how to understand the image of political brands. Responding to this identified gap in the literature, this research seeks to demonstrate the elicitation capabilities of qualitative projective techniques to explore the political brand image of the UK Conservative Party. This paper highlights that projective techniques can provide a greater understanding of underlying feelings and deep-seated attitudes towards political parties, candidates, and the positive and negative aspects of brand image. Many of the associations and perceptions may have been overlooked if other research methods had been adopted. Projective techniques may be adopted by political actors to assess how their brands are understood and, if required, make adaptations to their communicated brand identity.

Capturing and understanding the images and reputations external stakeholders assign to brands can be confusing and challenging. This is reinforced by explicit calls for more pragmatic tools and methods to comprehend the external orientation of brands. We respond by investigating the applicability of qualitative projective techniques in exploration of the external current image and long-term reputation of the UK Conservative Party corporate brand from the perspective of young voters aged 18-24 years. This is achieved by comparing and contrasting the external brand images prior the 2015 UK General Election with the findings collected before the 2010 UK General Election. We demonstrate that qualitative projective techniques are useful applications to capture, deconstruct and understand current image and long-term reputation of political brands. Organisations including those beyond the political context will be able to use this paper as a guide to generate a deeper understanding of their brands image and consistency of their reputation.

This article presents a study of young voter engagement in relation to the EU referendum—a democratic vote on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. Using the marketing concept of engagement, we examine how young voters engaged cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally with the referendum and its associated campaigns. A mixed-method study combining multiple-phase questionnaires, longitudinal social network analysis of Twitter, and sentiment analysis provides a rich empirical description of young voter engagement. The findings reveal that young voter engagement is multi-faceted and varies enormously across our sample, particularly for behavioral engagement online. We subsequently question the analytical relevance of the engagement construct for political marketing before developing a typology to classify young voters according to the variance and extent of their specific engagement profile, which we define as “Prototypical Engagement Persona.” We conclude the article by presenting an agenda for future research on young voter engagement.

Purpose The extant literature demands more insights into the elements for political branding in India. Thus, this paper aims to explore political branding in terms of the influences of political branding. Design/methodology/approach The context is the young voters in an emerging country, India. Qualitative research was undertaken, and a total of 17 focus group discussions were conducted in the leading Indian cities. Findings This study found that the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) developed a strong governance and connection with the people. This approach developed a comprehensive brand among the young voters, who emphasized on the proof of the performance by the party. During pre or post-election, the BJP and other political parties need to develop a comprehensive political branding plan to connect with the voters. Research limitations/implications This study was focused on the external perspective of political branding. Future research can focus on the internal perspective in terms of party members and politicians. This study has focused on India as a specific case. Future studies can focus on a cross-cultural and cross-national level. Practical implications The framework developed can be used by political parties and leaders to develop their political brand. The study’s framework can be used in a systematic and sequential format to verify the strength of their political branding exercise. Originality/value This study focuses on the post-election scenario. Secondly, it focuses on the non-Western context. Also, the study represents a unique combination of the best theories and observations from political marketing and digital leadership.

There are explicit calls for deeper understanding of the creation, orientation, and development of “new” political brands from an “internal relational” perspective. Responding to this gap in the body of knowledge, this study explores the establishment, orientation, and position of the Jury Team; a U.K. political brand founded in March 2008. This article opted for an exploratory case study approach. Interviews were conducted with the Party founder‐leader. Semistructured interviews were conducted from September 2012 to October 2013. Transcripts were analyzed via qualitative thematic analysis. This research presents the challenges that face new political brands, particularly the barriers from the media and existing political system and difficulties with managing candidates and a national‐local campaign. Further, this study provides a “political brand development matrix” for brands within and beyond politics; a mechanism to deconstruct their offering and make adaptations if required. Related Articles Related Media BBC News. . “Rantzen Backs Jury Team Project.” May 20. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8059333.stm BBC News. . “European Election 2009: UK Results.” June 8. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/elections/euro/09/html/ukregion_999999.stm

This paper focuses on an under-researched and under-developed typology of political branding and conceptualises politicians as personal political brands. Further, this study answers explicit calls for more research devoted to exploring the development of intended brand identity particularly from a brand creator perspective. Members of Parliament from the Republic of Iceland contextualises this study. This qualitative case-study approach reveals how personal political brands create, construct and communicate their identity. Personal political brand identities were established and managed via a clear brand mantra and offline-online communication tools, which in turn revealed a degree of alignment with their party-political brand. However, this paper also demonstrates the challenges of managing the identities of personal political brands in terms of authenticity and integration particularly with coalition partners. Our paper builds on the six-staged analytical process of personal branding and proposes the Personal Political Brand Identity Appraisal Framework as an operational tool to introspectively evaluate personal political brand identity. This framework can be used by political actors across different settings and contexts to assess personal political brands from multiple perspectives.

Purpose The creation and development of candidate-politician brands, otherwise known as political co-brands, remains an under-researched area of study. This is supported by calls for more understanding on political co-brands and how they are positioned and managed by their creators. Framed by the concepts of internal brand identity and co-branding, this paper aims to investigate how political co-brand identity is constructed and managed over time, exploring alignment between the political co-brand and political corporate party brand. Design/methodology/approach An interpretivist revelatory multi-case study approach, using in-depth interviews, was conducted with three political co-brands (candidates-politicians) from the UK Conservative Party. The three cases represented constituencies across the UK from the North, Midlands and South of the country. The in-depth elite interviews were conducted July 2015 to September 2015. Methodological triangulation was also adopted to assess the coherency of emerging themes with online and offline materials and documents. A two-stage thematic analytical approach was used to interpret the findings. Findings This multiple case study demonstrates how successful political co-brands create and develop identities tailored to their constituency, often distinct from the corporate political brand and developed several years before electoral success at the ballot box. In addition, this study reveals that political co-brands are dichotomous in terms of strategically managing a degree of alignment with the corporate political brand yet maintaining a degree of independence. Research limitations/implications This study builds on limited existing concepts such as co-branding and political brand identity as a means of critical application. Existing research on co-branding remains a “relatively limited” and complex area of study and generally focuses on fictitious brands. Political brand identity remains an under-researched area. This in turn supports the development and advancement of political branding as an area of study. This paper highlights the opportunities of using the strategic approach of co-branding to help conceptualise “candidates-politicians” as political brands’ which up until now, “candidate-politician brands” have been difficult to define unlike the extensive research on corporate political brands. Practical implications This study has implications for practice too. Organisations and different typologies of political brands will be able to use this political co-brand identity framework as a diagnostic mechanism to investigate their co-brands current identity, assess alignment and make strategic changes or reposition the envisaged identity if desired. Similarly, organisations can use this framework, key dimensions and factors as a blueprint to design and build new political brands at a corporate and/or local level. Originality/value This study has implications for brands beyond the world of politics. Brands can adopt the political co-brand identity framework developed in this study as a pragmatic tool to investigate internally created co-brand identity and explore alignment with the corporate party brand identity. In addition, this research adds to the limited research on non-fictitious co-brands and co-branding literature at large and addresses the calls for more research on brand identity in new settings.

INTRODUCTIONPolitical 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 dayto-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 localsub 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. BACKGROUND