Political Marketing: Lessons from the Mainstream

The political marketing planning process: improving image and message in strategic target areas

“…The framework put forward in this article attempts to illustrate how parties across the world can more effectively co-ordinate their campaign activity so that local campaigns are speaking with the same voice as the national campaign. Local campaign teams, particularly in countries with lesser developed political campaigning culture, can effectively be likened to franchises (Egan, 1999 reach and communicate with those voters who are most likely to change their allegiance inside and outside the election cycle, political strategists need to use a structured and planned approach. This includes amassing and analysing constituency data (from various sources), determining who are the main sources of competition, identifying and targeting individuals and groups of voters, and then performing a post-mortem to determine where the process could be modified to make it more efficient in future political campaigns.…”

“…From a competitive perspective, political parties operate in situations which are relatively more akin to an oligopoly than the general consumer marketing perspective generally (though not necessarily) associated with more perfect competition. Nevertheless, there are many similarities between political marketing and traditional fast moving consumer goods marketing (FMCG) and it can be argued that the differences have been overstated (see Egan, 1999).…”

Towards a critical political marketing agenda?

“…The many analogies between consumer marketing and political marketing have clearly been exploited by researchers (see among others Egan, 1999;O'Cass, 1996;Niffenegger, 1989;O'Leary and Iredale, 1976;Kotler, 1975;Shama, 1973). Applied to political processes, commercial marketing becomes 'political marketing', i.e.…”

To Spin or not to Spin, that is the Question: The Emergence of Modern Political Marketing

“…Sabato 1981, Maarek 1995. Some researchers see public relations as a vital component in the political marketing mix, concerned with image and persuasion (Scammell 1995) or refer to reactive public relations which is concerned with the management of damage limitation (Egan 1999),…”

“…O'Shaughnessy (1990) argues that the rise of political marketing contributes to the misperception of political processes and the ease with which solutions can be traded and implemented. Egan (1999) suggests that politicians themselves have been uneasy with the concept of marketing, complaining that it damages the political process as it concentrates on image instead of issues.…”