Jennifer Lees-Marshment

The Marriage of Politics and Marketing

Research into major party behaviour in Britain from a political marketing perspective finds that political marketing is broad in scope and offers fresh analytical tools to explain how political organizations behave. It is nevertheless a marriage between political science and marketing. It borrows the core marketing concepts of product, sales and market-orientation, and techniques such as market intelligence, and adapts them to suit traditional tenets of political science to produce an integrated theoretical framework. A party that takes a product-orientation argues for what it stands for and believes in. A Sales-Orientated party focuses on selling its argument and product to voters. A Market-Orientated party designs its behaviour to provide voter satisfaction. Exploring these three orientations demonstrates that political marketing can be applied to a wide range of behaviour and suggests its potential to be applied to several areas of political studies.

The product, sales and market‐oriented party ‐ How Labour learnt to market the product, not just the presentation

Comprehensive political marketing informs how parties determine their policies and organisation, not just how they campaign. This article applies the marketing concepts of product, sales and market orientation, combined with tools such as market intelligence, to party behaviour as a whole. Producing a comprehensive theoretical framework, it explores how a product, sales and market‐oriented party would behave and go through a marketing process. This framework is used to analyse the British Labour Party, showing how Labour moved from a product‐oriented approach in 1983, through to a sales orientation in 1987, finally achieving a market orientation – and electoral success – in 1997. This demonstrates the potential of political marketing to deepen our understanding of a wide range of political behaviour.

Global political marketing

Innehall: 1. Global Political Marketing by Jennifer Lees-Marshment 2. A Framework for Comparing Political Market-Orientation by Jesper Stromback 3. Political Marketing in Germany by Michaela Maier, Jens Tenscher & Kirsten Schuller 4. Political Market-Orientation in a Multi-Party System: The Swedish Case by Jesper Stromback 5.New Zealand Political marketing: marketing communication rather than the product? Jennifer Lees-Marshment 6. Australian Political Marketing: Substance backed by style by Andrew Hughes and Stephen Dann 7. Political Marketing in the United States: From Market- Towards Sales-Orientation? Jonathan Knuckey 8. UK Political marketing: a question of leadership? Jennifer Lees-Marshment and Robin Pettitt 9. The Level Of Market-Orientation Of Political Parties In Greece Danis Kotzaivazoglou and Yiorgos Zotos 10. Political Salesmen in Hungary Balazs Kiss and Zsuzsanna Mihalyffy 11.The Czech Case: Social Democratic Or Social Market Party? Anna Matuskova, Otto Eibl and Alexander Braun 12. Testing the Market Orientated Model of political parties in a non-western context: The case of Taiwan Dafydd Fell and Isabelle Cheng 13. Political Marketing in Ghana Kobby Mensah 14. Political Marketing in a weak democracy: the Peruvian case Pedro Patron Galindo 15.Political Marketing Techniques in Russia Derek Hutcheson 16. Political market orientation in Japan Masahiko Asano and Bryce Wakefield 17. Implementing and interpreting market orientation in practice: lessons from Britain Roger Mortimore and Mark Gill 18. Political marketing, party behaviour and political science Mick Temple 19. Global Political Marketing: Analysis and Conclusions Jennifer Lees-Marshment, Chris Rudd and Jesper Stromback

Political Marketing: How to Reach That Pot of Gold

ABSTRACT Political marketing is an exciting new area. Research produced over the last decade has been pioneering in showing the applicability of marketing to politics. However, this article argues that the field now needs to move in a different direction if we are to reach political marketings full potential. Political marketing needs a comprehensive approach: it can be applied not just to party-electoral behaviour but also legislatures, local government, the media, and public services, with both concepts and techniques from marketing, and an understanding from political science literature as well as management studies. The article, therefore, maps out the route to be taken to reach the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold that the political marketing field potentially offers.

The political marketing game

Introduction Analyzing the Market Strategic Development Leading Responsively Marketing the Party Communicating Managing Delivery Marketing Democratically Conclusion: Political Marketing, Democracy and Partnership Academic References Practitioner Interview References

Political Marketing Theory and Practice: A Reply to Ormrod's Critique of the Lees-Marshment Market-Oriented Party Model

In this article I discuss the ‘Lees-Marshment model’ of a market-oriented party in response to the criticisms from Robert Ormrod. In doing this I note recent modifications I have made, comment on its comparative potential and put forward my own evaluation of the areas that need development such as communication of delivery, implementation and empirical verification.

Political Marketing and the 2008 New Zealand Election: A Comparative Perspective

Political marketing is a growing phenomenon and few political parties would seek to compete in an election without utilising at least some of its tools to help them understand their market and compete more effectively. The current range of tools available includes pre-election strategy, branding, e-marketing, opposition research, multiple forms of direct marketing and GOTV utilising market segmentation, tangibility tools, insights marketing and leadership re-marketing. New developments in practice transfer quickly between countries. In the 2008 New Zealand election, both major parties, Labour and National, utilised different aspects of political marketing with varied effects, showing the importance and limitations of global strategies, as well as the need for parties to utilise all aspects of political marketing for government and re-election.

Vote Compass in the 2014 New Zealand election: Hearing the voice of New Zealand voters

Vote Compass – an online voter education tool originating in Canada – was used for the first time in New Zealand during the 2014 general election. During its inaugural run, over 330,000 New Zealanders visited the Vote Compass website to answer 30 policy- or issue-based questions. In return, respondents received a report on how close their views were to 10 political parties seeking office. Due to the large sample size, these data provided Television New Zealand with unique insights into voters’ views that could also be related to party policies and campaign events by academic commentators. After explaining the nature of the tool and describing the composition of the New Zealand-based team, this article examines the implications that Vote Compass has for party responsiveness and political marketing. In particular, we note the importance of Vote Compass not just for market-oriented policy, but for the overall leadership brand, including its ability to deliver on promised goods. The article also reflects on the contribution that the tool makes to voter engagement and democracy in general. Lastly, it provides a summary of the overall Vote Compass data from the main survey items and marketing-related post-election survey data in an appendix for academics to use in their own research and teaching in future.

Knowledge sharing and lesson learning: consultants' perspectives on the international sharing of political marketing strategy

Political marketing consultants who offer specialist skills and experience in political marketing – polling, strategy, voter profiling, segmentation, micro-targeting, voter-responsive product design – travel around the world sharing ideas from one campaign to the next, raising concerns that these unelected advisors wield global power; that political products will become all the same, and political leaders are prevented from offering an appropriate vision geared to the needs of their individual country. Whilst previous literature on political consultancy generally debated whether such global activities represented Americanisation or globalisation this article presents new qualitative interview data with consultants that suggest alternative perspectives. Political marketing strategy and tools are shared, but not just from the USA but between all countries, and they are adapted to suit the particular situation of each country, or indeed, each election. Politics is truly being marketised all over the world but each election remains a unique exercise.

Marketing the British Conservatives 1997-2001

During 1997-2001 the Conservative Party utilised many concepts and techniques from marketing but this yielded little success in the general election. This article explores the story behind this result: the attempts made by the leader William Hague to use political marketing and make the Party more responsive to voters, the obstacles he faced in changing the Conservatives at all levels; the final product they offered to voters in 2001, and the Partys communication efforts in the years before the election and the campaign. Overall, analysis indicates the difficulty but also the importance of marketing political parties.