Brand Marketing and Political Campaigns

Political marketing can be defined as the process or activities applied by the parties to create,

exchange, deliver and communicate promises of value to voter political party stakeholders and

society at large. Although the spotlight here reaches beyond the product, the product would be the politician or the policy however the brand created by marketing is intangible and psychological.

The practice of marketing and branding in politics isn’t new-found in fact it took birth long back in 1960s where it was identified that marketing can be applied beyond commercial activities. Very specifically after Anna’s movement from Jan Lokpal, we observe the emergence of political marketing and its channels increasing exponentially during each election cycle. The digital platform has become an eminent source of information feeding political news. Whether they are actual posts, articles, headlines or memes, gifs, stickers the advertisers are definitely grabbing public’s utmost attention. In the elections of 2019, social media platforms saw a jump of 150%, as compared to the general elections of 2014. The structure of political branding briefly constitutes of three parts: brand image and loyalty of political party; advertisements and campaigns; digital marketing.

The strategies curated by political parties for their branding are endless, now what can brands or marketers learn from these campaigns?

Many companies fear at the word “politics” as the first thing they think of divisive political debates however what they should focus on is the way they approach the crowd or customers in our case. Its redolent that a same word is used to describe an effort to win support, whether its revenue or votes: campaign. Political campaigns constantly analyse new ideas with various audience types, seek feedback from constituents and voters, and engage with those constituents and voters across a diverse array of platforms. They not only make engagement a priority but also build their base around recruitment of sizeable groups of supporters and this is an enduring process to find more people who are involved with the campaign. Supporters organise a bunch of activities in the favour of the campaign and do not confuse them with mere onlookers they are much likely to stay active and loyal in the long run.

If one notices, customers aren’t much different and that is why brands should think of making them bigger stakeholders in the company’s success. Don’t worry, customers would not view this as an imposition instead will feel like valued partners where the brand promotes their messages, takes their feedback seriously and create relatable content for future advertisements. Following this the marketers would not only have entered a new era of customer engagement but a new era of customer participation. Leveraging networks and talents of consumers is much more than taking feedbacks or Instagram posts. It demands focused and constant engagement from implementation of authentic user generated content in ads and marketing campaigns to amalgamation of consumer attitudes at each step of the product’s development along with increase in customer’s voices across all the digital channels. Another important factor to examine is that with the rise of social media, we see the era of television blurring whereas TV still packs the biggest consumer punch.

“Every interaction, in any form, is branding.” – Seth Godin