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Political Marketing Project
Political marketing strategy is typically controlled by one person, typically a candidate. The candidate tends to be as closely aligned with (or opposed to) party platforms as the candidate deems necessary, and is in significant part directed toward major contributors, which puts campaign strategy closer to the wholesale component of marketing, while basic political marketing is typically directed toward voters, making it the retail element of selling a candidate or political position ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"e1u1q4yU","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Cwalina et al.)","plainCitation":"(Cwalina et al.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":952,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/U6M4R2SR"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/U6M4R2SR"],"itemData":{"id":952,"type":"book","title":"Political Marketing: Theoretical and Strategic Foundations: Theoretical and Strategic Foundations","publisher":"Routledge","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Political Marketing","author":[{"family":"Cwalina","given":"Wojciech"},{"family":"Falkowski","given":"Andrzej"},{"family":"Newman","given":"Bruce I."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Cwalina et al.). For any individual politician whatever the reason was for getting into politics, it becomes a struggle to stay in office, as ‘when you’re up to your armpits in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp. A politician has to have a following, a constituency. To simplify the situation, there are two ways to get a following:
Convince the “have nots,” who are a majority of the voters these days, that you will work for them.
Convince the “haves” that you will work for them, and depend on their control of the media to persuade the voters that you will work for the “have nots” ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"JI8OKoiI","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Reeves)","plainCitation":"(Reeves)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":956,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/YKDDNIUM"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/YKDDNIUM"],"itemData":{"id":956,"type":"paper-conference","title":"Understanding how political parties manage their volunteers in the political marketing process","container-title":"Proceedings, Academy of Marketing Conference 2018","publisher":"Academy of Marketing","source":"Google Scholar","author":[{"family":"Reeves","given":"P."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2018"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Reeves).
The same is true of political parties and other political organizations, as well as government agencies. The way an individual stay in office, or continue to be politically relevant or to continue to exist as a government agency, is to gain approval from those who have control over your status. That is marketing. This essay intends to delineate the political marketing strategy of a candidate. The essay will figure out how the client will be represented and put on sale.
What Politics is?
politics nowadays mainly revolves around power-grabbing. Next on the priority list is staying in office. For that, rhetoric and slogan culture creep in. political parties and personalities collude and jointly share their specific agendas on that. Since politics is the game of ‘haves’, they are fully aware that ‘have nots’ are their bunnies. There is no need for having a struggle; they just dupe them and virtually kill them with machination better known as taxation. Despite claims that per capita will improve people’s purchasing power, onus and most of the fatalities are thrown to lower tiers ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"ik6Ladhl","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Cwalina and Falkowski)","plainCitation":"(Cwalina and Falkowski)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":951,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/W3HKLJC9"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/W3HKLJC9"],"itemData":{"id":951,"type":"article-journal","title":"Political branding: Political candidates positioning based on inter-object associative affinity index","container-title":"Journal of Political Marketing","page":"152–174","volume":"14","issue":"1-2","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Political branding","author":[{"family":"Cwalina","given":"Wojciech"},{"family":"Falkowski","given":"Andrzej"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Cwalina and Falkowski). The unfortunate capitalist system pulls the upper tier further up and all the stress and strain are borne by the intervening tiers, especially middle tiers. fudged figures are brought to show economies progressing. Stock Exchange is used as a tool. Have nots stay as such. Only 1 out of 1000 may be able to wriggle out of suffocation and find somewhere in upper tiers. There could be some malpractices succeeding due to bad governance and rampant corruption with particular reference the third world countries, without naming.
Political Marketing Strategy
If Obama won the 2008 Presidential Election using social media, in 2012 he and his team took a step forward involving analytics to rout the opposition winning the battle of hearts and minds. From trump’s point of view, it’s all marketing. He’s still trying for a Nobel prize. Remember it was he who started up this whole thing. He’s the guy who would start a forest fire to get photos of himself “bravely” fighting the fire. Remember little rocket man. Trump started that fire and he just hoped he could put it out. The man is dangerous beyond belief. I’m talking about both trump and Kim.
The use of popular music could be very effective in political marketing. Sometimes, owning artists even issue desist orders to campaigns requesting their songs not be used by a particular candidate they don't support. However, we have very few politicians that sing or play well enough to publicly perform. Bill Clinton got some mileage out of his Saxophone playing in his 1992 Campaign. Richard Nixon would sometimes publicly play the piano. It is a bad mental image to think of Donald Trump, Barack Obama, or George W. Bush rapping! Singing the National Anthem or America is as far as they need to go. George W. Bush would have probably worked playing the banjo or acoustic guitar. Reagan could have got away well with a few show tunes. Jimmy Carter the spoons or jug.
In political you can get benefit by leveraging digital marketing in many ways: By advertising about your political party on social media like Facebook you can get more reach to the people eight locally or globally, you can analyze the which type of people you should target and then you can do that which will turn in profit for you ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"FdLpXMBm","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Williams)","plainCitation":"(Williams)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":957,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/SMNNJDLZ"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/SMNNJDLZ"],"itemData":{"id":957,"type":"book","title":"Introduction: Social media, political marketing and the 2016 US election","publisher":"Taylor & Francis","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Introduction","author":[{"family":"Williams","given":"Christine B."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2017"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Williams). The world is changing and the days of offline marketing are gone, nowadays people are more active on social media like Facebook and YouTube but most of the people are not changing their way of advertising and those who are doing it getting the awesome results. So finally, I want to say that by digital marketing you can get more benefit then offline marketing in the political field. Irrespective of whether you own a big-shot brand or a political party, everyone wants to promote their brand and market the products and services. But the question is how? The answer is via digital marketing.
Finding a way to speak directly to people. Knock on doors. Attend state fairs. Town halls. Find a way to stir something up to make the news cycle. The news outlets are free airtime. Free campaigning. Trump occupied 90% of our news. He called in at will and they put him on blast. Politics and marketing are connected in myriad ways. As Marx said the economy is the base of every society and the other superstructures are based on the economy of a society. Now, marketing is the key factor in competitive markets and politically a bastard of capitalism, to sustain markets or to introduce products often we don't even need. Let's take an example, fairness products, they hardly do anything to lift your fairness to Photoshop levels and critically saying, they're not even needed, the amount of your fairness can't be a measure of your beauty. Still, they sell it with film actors and actresses marketing it ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"rF20i2Oz","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Speed et al.)","plainCitation":"(Speed et al.)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":950,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/I48ZMXYR"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/I48ZMXYR"],"itemData":{"id":950,"type":"article-journal","title":"Human branding in political marketing: Applying contemporary branding thought to political parties and their leaders","container-title":"Journal of Political Marketing","page":"129–151","volume":"14","issue":"1-2","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Human branding in political marketing","author":[{"family":"Speed","given":"Richard"},{"family":"Butler","given":"Patrick"},{"family":"Collins","given":"Neil"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Speed et al.). The politics here is simple and irresponsible, it is promoting a fine shade of racism as well as a ‘marketed’ sense of beauty just to sell you crap. Marketing is often a form of tactful manipulation, it shapes the ideas of consumers, it is a powerful business as well as a political tool. There are many other examples to back this idea. In India, a perfect example of political marketing is 'Patanjali', it essentially sells Hinduism and the awe of Ayurveda that comes with it.
Student Loans and Political Marketing
Forgiving student loans could not only be feasible for the long term but also beneficial for political marketing. The money will have to come from somewhere, though. The plan intends to institute a wealth tax on citizens with over $50 million of assets. They will pay 2% on all wealth above those $50m. In other words, if they own $60m of assets, they will pay 2% x (60 million - 50 million) = 2% x (10 million) = $200,000. She’s done calculations that this is enough to forgive most student loans (I believe up to $50,000 per person) and have money left over. The people would ask two questions from any candidate. The first one is, is the plan feasible – the answer regarding the feasibility of forgiving student loan is mentioned above. The second question could be about the candidate’s value. Some people might prefer that the multimillionaires get to keep their money, and young people remain saddled by debt. It’s fine if someone has different values, but let’s not get confused by people who just don’t agree with her goal, and claim it isn’t feasible instead of being honest that they don’t want to redistribute a small portion of wealth from the very rich to the poor and middle class.
Role of Pivit Political Markets
Pivit appears to be a wholly different beast from what FiveThirtyEight does, or what I do, or what The Washington Post or The New York Times does, or even what Sam Wang does. Each of our models is largely poll-based, and to varying extents, it also includes what Sam Wang at Princeton University dismisses as "special sauce"--state partisan behavior, fundraising, candidate quality, etc. (Incidentally, Sam Wang is in the overwhelming minority in his disdain for "special sauce".) What they have in common is a reliance on collectible data. Pivit does not involve real money, so in reality, it is about as harmful as a fantasy football league. It's a lot like the stock market, as CNN says it is: there's an element of prediction to it, in that you are ultimately betting on an event ("a company becomes more profitable"). But it's also like the stock market in that there's also an element of social psychology. You may not be betting on a company doing well, but you can bet on other people thinking a company will do well, so you can buy low, sell a little higher, and make a profit ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"yn5brUik","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Williams)","plainCitation":"(Williams)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":957,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/SMNNJDLZ"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/jsvqEXt1/items/SMNNJDLZ"],"itemData":{"id":957,"type":"book","title":"Introduction: Social media, political marketing and the 2016 US election","publisher":"Taylor & Francis","source":"Google Scholar","title-short":"Introduction","author":[{"family":"Williams","given":"Christine B."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2017"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Williams). On Pivit you can see a certain probability attached to an event: the probability is based on what other people have been betting and "Pivit experts’' analysis". We can place points on whether the probability of the event will go up or go down. If it moves in the direction you say it will move, you'll earn points if we cash in, but obviously, you earn the most points if what you say happens actually comes to pass.
A lot of people are playing on Pivit right now, so similar thought processes are going through a lot of people's heads. Right now, the 93% chance of a McConnell victory ostensibly means that 93% of bets placed on the Kentucky election have McConnell winning. It looks like he will--but if you're in the 7% of bets that have him losing, you could win big if you're right. That's all there is to the Pivit system, really. At the bottom, it seems to be driven by a market force where 93% is the win probability where there are as many people willing to bet on McConnell winning as there are people willing to bet on him losing.
Conclusion
Political parties are, by nature, divisive. The issues they raise are less important than their ability to attract adherents. Quite often, the most effective issues are those that pit the 'have more' against the 'have less'. So, while that may appear to be the heart of politics, it's really not. It's a bastardization of the political process. Neither, a vote is a form of payment, the customer is the voter and the service provider are the politician. A vote is a special kind of currency where you have to pass a certain threshold for it to be worth anything, namely, enough votes to get or keep your job. much will have to do with the result of the dynamic being played out at this very minute regarding the use, misuse, abuse and corruption of social media platforms by those with political agendas. The essence of democracy - and its challenge - is not to divide the public into blocs. It is to find the best advocates of the public interest and raise them as the people's representatives in their government.
Works Cited
ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Cwalina, Wojciech, et al. Political Marketing: Theoretical and Strategic Foundations: Theoretical and Strategic Foundations. Routledge, 2015.
Cwalina, Wojciech, and Andrzej Falkowski. “Political Branding: Political Candidates Positioning Based on Inter-Object Associative Affinity Index.” Journal of Political Marketing, vol. 14, no. 1–2, 2015, pp. 152–174.
Reeves, P. “Understanding How Political Parties Manage Their Volunteers in the Political Marketing Process.” Proceedings, Academy of Marketing Conference 2018, Academy of Marketing, 2018.
Speed, Richard, et al. “Human Branding in Political Marketing: Applying Contemporary Branding Thought to Political Parties and Their Leaders.” Journal of Political Marketing, vol. 14, no. 1–2, 2015, pp. 129–151.
Williams, Christine B. Introduction: Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 US Election. Taylor & Francis, 2017.
