Campaign Communication and Political Marketing E-Book

Philippe J. Maarek

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 559

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Campaign Communication and Political Marketing is a comprehensive, internationalist study of the modern political campaign. It indexes and explains their integral components, strategies, and tactics. * Offers comparative analyses of campaigns from country to country * Covers topics such as advertising strategy, demography, the effect of campaign finance regulation on funding, and more * Draws on a variety of international case studies including the campaigns of Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy * Analyses the impact of digital media and 24/7 news cycle on campaign conduct

Leseprobe

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Introduction

Part I The rise of modern political communication

1 Birth and rise of political marketing in the United States

1.1 the grounds for development of modern political marketing in the United States

1.2 The main stages in the evolution of political marketing in the United States

Part II The foundations of modern political marketing

2 Political marketing: a global approach

2.1 The foundations of political marketing

2.2 Main stages of the political marketing process

3 The means of analysis and information

3.1 The general operative framework for informational and analytical tools

3.2 The different types of informational and analytical tools

Part III Political marketing tools

4 The traditional tools

4.1 Interactive tools

4.2 Unidirectional tools

5 Audiovisual tools

5.1 The complexity of practice of the audiovisual means by political communication

5.2 Principal applications of audiovisual means to political communication

6 Direct marketing methods

6.1 Direct marketing rediscovers traditional media

6.2 The use of audiovisual media for direct marketing

7 The growing importance of the Internet

7.1 The multiple aspects of the Internet

7.2 The main kinds of Internet use for political communication

Part IV The actual running of election campaigns

8 Structure and organization of the campaign

8.1 The campaign set up

8.2 Establishing campaign headquarters

8.3 The problem of finance

8.4 The staff

9 The particularities of local campaigns

9.1 The coexistence of local and national campaigns

9.2 The preferred communication means of local campaigns

Conclusion: how to use this book …

Appendix 1: Memorandum of Understanding between the Bush and Kerry Campaigns for the 2004 Televised Debates (extract)

Memorandum of understanding

Appendix 2: Internet “Final Rules” decided by the Federal Elections Commission, March 27, 2006

Internet Final Rules

Background

Final Rules

Bibliography

Index

By the same author

In English

Political Communication in a New Era (Co-edited with Gadi Wolfsfeld), Routledge, London, 2003Communication and Political Marketing John Libbey, London, 1995

In French

La communication politique de la Présidentielle de 2007 L’Harmattan, Paris, 2009

Communication et marketing de l’homme politique third edition, Litec/LexisNexis, Paris, 2007

Chronique de’un «non» annoncé: La communication politique et l’Europe L’Harmattan, Paris, 2007

La communication politique française après le tournant de 2002 L’Harmattan, Paris, 2004

Média et malentendus, cinéma et communication politique EDILIG, collection Médiathèque, Paris 1986

La censure cinématographique Litec, now Litec/LexisNexis, Paris, 1982

De mai 68 aux films X, cinema politique et société Dujarric, Paris, 1978

In Spanish

Marketing político y comunicación second edition, Planeta/Paidos, Barcelona/Buenos Aires/Mexico, 2009

This edition first published 2011© 2011 Philippe J. Maarek

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Maarek, Philippe J.Campaign communication and political marketing / Philippe J. Maarek.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4443-3234-6 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4443-3235-3 (paperback)

1. Political campaigns – United States. 2. Communication in politics – United States. 3. Marketing – Political aspects. 4. United States – Politics and government. I. Title.

JK2281.M33 2011

324.7′30973–dc22

2011001825

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDFs 9781444340686; ePub 9781444340693

To my wife and children,

so patient when I leave them for the computer keyboard

To my mother,

an example of work and dedication

And in memory of my father,

my smiling hero, my role model

Figures

Figure 2.1Commercial marketing, symbolic value and practical valueFigure 2.2Commercial and political marketing: two parallel strategiesFigure 2.3The main steps of the political marketing processFigure 2.4The role of opinion relays in the communication processFigure 2.5Segmenting the populationFigure 2.6Targeting the communication recipient by political affinityFigure 2.7The forces hindering the choice of campaign themesFigure 2.8The different stages of a political communication campaignFigure 2.9Coding and decoding: from candidate to recipientFigure 2.10Feedback and the communication processFigure 3.1The different operative stages of informational and analytical toolsFigure 3.2Diversion of political communication by opinion surveysFigure 4.1Dual media publicity (or second degree political communication)Figure 6.1The traditional fundraising circuitFigure 6.2The “diversion” of the fundraising circuit caused by direct mailFigure 6.3Political opinions and responsiveness to direct marketingFigure 7.1The exponential growth in the number of Internet websitesFigure 7.2The Internet: a versatile mediumFigure 8.1Horizontal task division in a campaign organizationFigure 8.2Vertical task division in a campaign organizationFigure 8.3Combined division of tasks in a campaign organizationFigure 8.4The media department of a campaign organization

Tables

Table 1.1Presidential debates in the United StatesTable 1.2Geographical penetration of the Internet, 2000–2008Table 2.1The distribution of media according to target typesTable 2.2The two criteria of a communication’s complexity and its intended speed

Introduction

The worlds of politics and the media seem, in recent years, to be tangled in an increasingly complex relationship. Politicians are taken to task for indulging themselves in media exposure of their personal life in an ultimate effort to please some of their communication advisors, with an eye solely on their personal interests to serve a new kind of modernized populism. Italian Prime Minister and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi epitomizes such behavior and Barack Obama’s naked torso in the Hawaiian waves, or Nicolas Sarkozy’s public exposure of his tumultuous private life, seem normal today while they would have looked improper only a few decades ago. As for the media, dominated as it is in our society by almighty television, it now appears unwieldy in the very manner it appropriates politics itself, by inflicting on it an involuntary and uncontrolled input. Finally, the influence of the new uses of “new media,” particularly the Internet, now further complicates political communication.

This phenomenon is unmistakable as much as from within as from without: confronted with unverified information (from Romania to Iraq, as well as in our own inner cities), or an exacerbated political show, the average citizen confusedly understands that media and politics often make for strange bedfellows that can harm each other. Certainly, the phenomenon is aggravated by contemporary political leaders, as well as those who covet their office, who for instance agree to be the target of insults on live talk shows that resemble more closely modern circus performances than televised political debates.

This explains the numerous critiques directed at modern political communication, held to be responsible for the banalization of modern political discourse, the escalation of campaign costs, and so on. “Due to political marketing, ideas are no longer enough to get you elected”, is something one hears all too often, in all the possible meanings of this phrase.

Paradoxically, to offset this criticism, political marketing increased its hold over politicians, and a change in modes of political communication became inevitable. The rapid development of mass media and the growth of so-called “new media” in contemporary society have relegated to the garbage can “classic” means of communication – those, in any case, which have not been backed by more up-to-date marketing strategies. Modern political communication can no longer continue, as in the past, to rely only on the literary quality of political discourse and the rhetorical competence of its orators when the growth of new electronic transnational media has provoked a now unavoidable “globalization” of mediatized political information to the public.

We can date the first genuine manifestation of modern political marketing as an organized overall strategy back to 1952, with the United States presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower. It also marked the appearance of the first of innumerable political anecdotes which would contribute gradually to the devaluation of politicians, when the latter allow themselves to be guided by communication advisors: the former Supreme Commander of NATO was instructed never to lower his head in front of TV cameras or photographers, so as to reveal as little as possible of his bald head.

Of course, political communication is not an invention of the twentieth century. As far back as Antiquity, for example, kings and princes knew how to exploit their reputation as warriors as a preliminary scare tactic aimed at potential adversaries, and as a device to raise taxes. And in the way he ritualized all his public (and even private) functions at the court of Versailles, literally “staging” every aspect, Louis XIV of France can be said to have been the first modern promoter of the notion of the politician’s image – an idea already found in Machiavelli’s The Prince, in which the Italian political theorist openly supported the idea that appearance was more important than substance for a politician.

But the notion of political communication, and, a fortiori, political marketing, are clearly products of the second half of the twentieth century. Of course, politicians were often making unconscious use of political communication methods, when, for example, they would have political notices posted around their districts. But, in fact, political communication was previously limited to basic advertising, that is using communication means in a unidirectional and unilateral way, without following any real communications strategy.

The introduction of political marketing came with the elaboration of a policy of political communication, so to speak: a global strategy of design, rationalization and conveyance of modern political communication. To devise and implement such a strategy of political marketing is necessarily a complex process, the outcome of a more global effort involving all the factors of the politician’s political communication so as to avoid any conflicts among the various modes of action employed.

Politicians, especially non-American politicians, have often harbored a kind of shame – or mistrust – as regards the use of political marketing. It is often reduced to a basic pretense of “political campaigning,” where the candidate professes to learn and practice modern means of communication only in order to enhance his or her action. In fact, this book will show that political campaigning extends well beyond what is usually claimed, which justifies our use of the term “political marketing.”

This book will deal mainly with communication strategies of the individual political figure, encompassing both the campaign for public office and the public relations campaign designed to improve that person’s public image. Thus, it does not deal with the public relations efforts of governments or public institutions, which are of a very different nature, both in terms of their form and content:

As regards content, the aim is to get a politician elected, or to improve his or her reputation, and not to support a public service action, anchored in the global nature and the lifespan of a national government.As regards form, the sense of urgency surrounding the marketing of a politician is also quite different. If the results of a public relations campaign are negative, a politician may remain in the shadows, not win a seat, or lose it. Campaigning for election is a “winner takes all” process. There is no prize for second place. A poor marketing campaign for a government policy will not have such immediate or drastic consequences: the state will remain as such, and a cabinet reshuffle may even be avoided; one of the state’s many activities will only have missed its target. This naturally explains why this book does not deal with all that relates to the communications efforts of a politician while in office apart from his or her specific efforts to maintain his or her personal image in order to be reelected in the future.

This volume is divided in four parts. The first part consists of a single chapter providing a brief overview of the rise of modern political marketing in the United States, its country of birth and early development, and, so to speak, its greatest level of achievement. The second part, divided into two chapters, deals with the foundations of political marketing: its general functional framework and the survey and study methods that help build it. The third part analyzes the main tools of political marketing in four chapters: classic instruments, audiovisual methods of communication, methods known as direct marketing tools, and the more recent new media, namely the Internet. The two chapters of the fourth and final part outline the particular aspects of the actual running of election campaigns as such, be they problems of infrastructure or the specific difficulties of local elections, as distinguished from national ones.

Part I

The rise of modern political communication

1

Birth and rise of political marketing in the United States

There can be no doubt that the genesis of modern political marketing is entirely rooted in the history of political communication in the United States. Owing, mainly, to the early development of mass media and later the Internet, the United States was the first country to experiment with modern political communication techniques, and then apply them systematically. These methods have since been imitated throughout the entire world, western democracies being the first to adopt them, as they are quick to share new improvements in media systems.1

Though the intent of this book is by no means to trace the history of political marketing across the globe, we will nevertheless devote this preliminary chapter to a brief overview of its development in the United States, where it all began.

US domination of modern political marketing was quickly established. Within less than a decade, between the presidential elections of 1952 and 1960, it became an incontrovertible practice, the recent years confirming its significant expansion. But this rapid growth owes nothing to chance. We will first demonstrate that it was fostered by several characteristics inherent to the political information system in the United States before examining the main growth stages of modern American political marketing from infancy (1952/1960), through the formative years (1964/76), to today’s relative “maturity.”

1.1 The grounds for development of modern political marketing in the United States

Three main factors explain the early development of political marketing in the US: its electoral system, its tradition of “political public relations,” and the rapid expansion of modern media.

1.1.1 The particular nature of the electoral system

One of the main causes of the fast growth of political marketing in the United States certainly has to do with the system of primaries in the early stages of presidential election campaigns.

The two major political parties that have shared the favors of American voters since the nineteenth century choose their candidates during their party conventions, the delegates of which are not selected solely by regular party supporters (few in number, except in election years). There are two ways of appointing delegates, depending on the rules that apply in a given state:

During caucuses, meetings of the local political party members or sympathizers. In the past, these gatherings received little media attention, since they were a relatively small-scale event.During the primaries, in existence in some states since 1903, which are virtually early elections. Traditionally, the first primary takes place in mid-February in the small New England state of New Hampshire, thus giving its inhabitants a vastly disproportionate influence in the country’s political agenda. Some of these primaries, including the one in New Hampshire, are “open,” meaning that any registered voter may vote for the candidate of his choice, despite the voter’s stated party preference, while in the other “closed” primaries, ballots must be cast only within the voters’ registered political preference.2

By its very nature, the primaries system encourages the consumption of immense amounts of political information: