An Exploratory Case Study Focusing on the Creation, Orientation, and Development of a New Political Brand: The Case of the Jury Team

Abstract

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

Exploring Personal Political Brands of Iceland’s Parliamentarians

“…Existing research in this specialised area highlights the diversity of political branding research (Bale 2008;Grimmer and Grube 2017;Needham and Smith 2015;Serazio 2017). For example, existing research has focused on party political brands (French and Smith 2010;Grimmer and Grube 2017;Milewicz and Milewicz 2014), human-politician brands (Billard 2018;Davies and Mian 2010;Guzman et al 2015;Jain et al 2018), cultural political branding (Smith and Speed 2011), development of new political brands (Panigyrakis and Altinay 2017;Busby and Cronshaw 2015;Nord and Stromback 2009), political brand identity (Pich et al 2018), and political brand image (Guzman and Sierra 2009;Smith 2001). In addition, existing studies have investigated political brand equity (Phipps et al 2010;Smith and Spotswood 2013), political brand personality (Guzman et al 2015;Jain et al 2018;Smith 2009), psychological profiling of politicians (de Landtsheer and de Vries 2015) and political brand positioning (Cwalina and Falkowski 2015;Smith 2005) across western (Billard 2018;Marland and Flanagan 2014) and eastern jurisdictions (Grube and Grimmer 2017;Jain et al 2018).…”

“…However, very few studies with an internal focus manage to achieve a truly internal perspective. This paucity of research is supported by calls for further exploratory research particularly focused on different typologies of political brands (Billard 2018;Jain et al 2018;Panigyrakis and Altinay 2017;Pich et al 2018;Serazio 2017). Indeed, the majority of these studies practise content or discourse analysis of speeches and published articles rather than 'first-hand insight' from the personal standpoint of the political party or politician (Busby and Cronshaw 2015;Cwalina and Falkowski 2014;de Landtsheer and Vries 2015;Milewicz and Milewicz 2014;Smith and Spotswood 2013).…”

“…It is unknown whether this is down to difficulties securing access to political stakeholders or their preferred method. However, Pich et al (2018) is one exception. explored the creation, orientation and demise of a new political 'party' brand from the perspective of the party leader.…”

“…Their study found new party brands face many challenges particularly barriers from the media and existing political system and difficulties with managing and a national-local campaign. In addition, Pich et al (2018) provided a first-hand account of how difficult it was to build a party brand particularly from self-funding, nonexistent ideology, policy and absence of a support base. Pich et al (2018) concluded future political branding research should devote attention to the exploration of the design and management of other typologies of political brands such as politician brands and investigate the relationship with the 'party' political brand from an internal brand-creator perspective.…”

“…In addition, Pich et al (2018) provided a first-hand account of how difficult it was to build a party brand particularly from self-funding, nonexistent ideology, policy and absence of a support base. Pich et al (2018) concluded future political branding research should devote attention to the exploration of the design and management of other typologies of political brands such as politician brands and investigate the relationship with the 'party' political brand from an internal brand-creator perspective. Therefore, the exploration of the development and management of politician political brands from an internal brand-creator standpoint will not only provide deep insight and first-hand accounts but also extend this under-developed area of political branding (Billard 2018;Jain et al 2018;Needham and Smith 2015;O'Cass and Voola 2011;Panigyrakis and Altinay 2017;Pich et al 2018;Scammell 2015;Serazio 2017;Speed et al 2015).…”