Political Marketing Funding and Expenditure in the UK General Election Campaign of 2005.

The 2005 UK General Election will be the second for which detailed data will be available from the Electoral Commission. Whilst this will not be published until 2006, it is possible using 2001 data and participant accounts to identify the overall funding patterns of the three major party campaigns and changes in the way that was spent. In broad terms, funding and expenditure changed little in money terms from 2001 to 2005, largely due to the impact of financial constraints and regulation on the parties. However, in 2005 for the first time, both the Labour and Conservative parties made significant use of direct marketing methods, notably telephone and direct mail to communicate with target voters in closely contested constituencies. The financial constraints on the parties and the strict restrictions on donations have put the question of significant state funding for political parties back on the agenda. The paper summarises the UK regulatory framework on electoral expenditure and political donations and considers the arguments for and against expanding state funding.     

The Gay Family in the Ad: Consumer Responses to Non-traditional Families in Marketing Communications

This paper investigates consumer responses to gay families portrayed in advertising, drawing on critical visual analysis, reader response analysis and queer theory. Twenty-five consumers were interviewed about a selection of family oriented ads. Several themes emerged from the interviews, including straightening up – reading apparently gay images as heterosexual, or straight, despite rather overt gay signals. This important interpretive phenomenon seems to "interfere" with processing of apparently gay imagery, revealing interesting interpretive strategies. Findings are discussed within the advertising as representation research tradition, and illuminate interpretive strategies that consumers use when confronted with culturally sensitive images in advertising.     

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 Party's communication efforts in the years before the election and the campaign. Overall, analysis indicates the difficulty but also the importance of marketing political parties.     

Parental Gate-keeping in Diasporic Indian Families: Examining the Intersection of Culture,Gender and Consumption

Current debates within studies of election campaign management focus on the extent to which the process has evolved, becoming more centrally-orchestrated and professional, over the last two decades. The normative account is that election campaigns focus on news management and elevate the status of party leaders; mediatised pseudo-events have replaced direct interaction with the voter. However marketing literature, as well as work on local campaigning, suggests an alternative model is more successful for electoral systems such as the UK. This promotes a more disparate set of individually tailored campaigns focusing on issues relevant to constituencies. In 2005 it seems that parties were promoting this more localised approach, however do voters value this more postmodern approach, or is it the national campaign that counts. Research among voters within three marginal constituencies finds that both national and local factors are influential upon voter behaviour; furthermore however, a not insignificant group of voters make their choice based on the service provision of their local representative.     

An Integrated Framework of Newspaper Advertising: A Longitudinal Analysis

The article develops an integrated framework for analysing newspaper advertising, based on extant theoretical and practical knowledge on the subject. The framework is subsequently used to examine changes in 100 elements of newspaper advertisements over time. For this purpose, 2,250 illustrated advertisements were systematically extracted from national newspapers published in Cyprus during the period 1900-1974. Each advertisement was content-analysed by independent coders, based on a coding frame focusing on three major parts: copy (headlines, subheads, and body copy), art (illustrations, identification marks, and typography), and layout. The analysis revealed that: (a) certain advertising elements are systematically used more frequently than others, irrespective of time; (b) there are significant variations in the use of most of the advertising elements examined among different time periods; and (c) while the use of some of these elements increases systematically over time, others show a steady decrease.     

Mobile Advertising: A Framework and Research Agenda

Mobile advertising allows retailers, service providers, and manufacturers to provide consumers with increasingly relevant offers. The success of such campaigns depends on an ever better understanding of environmental, consumer, and technological context variables; a strong focus on advertising goals; accounting for market factors related to the nature of stakeholders and market environment; and the use of appropriate mobile ad elements to improve relevant outcome metrics. This article provides an overarching framework to synthesize current findings in mobile advertising, as well as a research agenda to stimulate additional work in this nascent field.     

Exploring international cosmetics advertising in Japan

The Japanese cosmetics market is the second largest in the world and in 2003 was valued at approximately 1.9 trillion yen. The sector is also the largest consumer of advertising in Japan (receipts exceeding 35m yen in 2003). Despite its size and significance, research in this area is somewhat scant. To bridge the gap, our research reports the findings of an investigation designed to explore the impact of cosmetics advertising on female Japanese consumers. Our findings reveal that despite their frequent usage in ads, celebrities fail to influence purchase decisions. Specific reference groups, including experts, friends, and female family members have varying degrees of influence. However, the sample of female Japanese respondents appears to be unconvinced when such reference sources are adopted in advertising. There was some preference for western brands and music, but not models. Magazines represent the most suitable media for influencing Japanese women, while TV is less effective - despite its relatively high cost.     

Comments

Standardisation of international advertising campaigns and relaxed advertising regulations have led to Australian consumers being exposed to higher levels of foreign-produced advertising. The study described here assessed the impact on Australian consumers of foreign spokespersons in TV advertisements using a ‘voice-over’ technique. This technique was assessed with respect to the following characteristics: expertise, trustworthiness, professionalism, likeability, dynamism, similarity to the audience, and their overall attitude towards the advertisement Subjects evaluated either American, British or Australian spokespersons. American and British spokespersons were rated less favourably by Australian audiences than Australian spokespersons across a range of characteristics, but they did not report a less favourable overall attitude towards advertisements that used an American or British spokesperson compared to those with an Australian spokesperson. Hence, the results tend to support the trend towards standardised advertising campaigns. However, since award-winning advertisements were used, other factors that may influence overall attitude, such as message content and creative execution, may have reduced the impact of the negative source evaluations in this case. Further research is required. Yet, in the light of more favourable evaluations of Australian spokespersons, overseas firms promoting products in Australia with Voice-over' advertisements may consider using an Australian spokesperson.     

International advertising: Developmental and implementational issues

This paper reports on a study which investigated the international advertising practices of a sample of major advertising spending multinationals, and the rationales behind their policies. The objective was to obtain insights into the efficacy of international advertising standardization options. When the rationales behind the international advertising practices of the sampled companies were examined, it was found that the executives concerned brought a wide‐ranging agenda to the decision‐making process and that factors beyond the specific benefits of standardization influenced their policies. As regards their actual policies, the practice of some form of standardization was found to be widespread, but the practice of total standardization was rare. As such, the data indicate that standardization is a flexible option, with many possible variants, i.e. it can be adapted to circumstances and is not an either/or policy. The paper concludes that the focus on whether or not multinationals should practice international advertising is misplaced, if only because, just as at the local or national level, there will be good and bad international advertising. Accordingly, more emphasis should be placed on reviewing issues relating to how to improve the quality of international advertising campaigns.     

The 2001 General Election: Factors Influencing the Brand Image of Political Parties and their Leaders

This paper considers the importance of building the brand image of parties and leaders in modern day politics. Firstly, the appropriateness of branding in the sphere of politics is considered. Then, brand image research on political parties and their leaders is identified and discussed. From this, the advertising (positive and negative), events and celebrity endorsements that affected the June 2001 election are discussed. Finally, some tentative conclusions on political image management are forwarded along with the likely future developments in this area.     

Buffalo Bill' Wild West and John M. Burke

Abstract

Public relations and advertising textbooks either ignore or treat the old fashioned press agent with contempt. Yet the origin of modern day sports and entertainment promotion dates back to a group of press agents who made important contributions to the marketing communication tactics we take for granted. From 1884 to 1917, the promotion of Buffalo Bill' Wild West incorporated advertising, public relations, and integrated marketing communication strategies and tactics. Many of these tactics are still in use today. A case will be made to view Buffalo Bill as a ?brand“ By doing so, the promotion of the Wild West takes on a new meaning. Buffalo Bill' press agent, John M. Burke, for more than 30 years increased the ?brand equity“ of the Buffalo Bill product through effective and strategically sound advertising and public relations campaigns. For example, building upon the long circus tradition in American folk culture, Burke staged parade events headed by Buffalo Bill to generate major press coverage when the Wild West arrived in local communities. Although Burke might not have had the formal education and access to the latest in communication technology to promote the Wild West, he certainly had the brains and skills     

Global press ad trends

Global press advertising expenditure totalled US$148 billion in 2000, which represents almost half of total global adspend (US$315 billion). In 2001 press advertising revenues fell sharply in real terms—by an estimated 9%—as global recession took its toll. A further marginal decline is expected to take place in 2002, but the press market is forecast to return to growth in 2003. While press adspend has shown steady growth overall over the last decade, its share of the total advertising market has been in decline.     

Practitioners’ perceptions of advertising strategies for digital media

Digital advertising is set to become a serious challenger within the rapidly changing media landscape. Today there are concerns that advertising strategies based on models and experiences developed with traditional media may need to be reviewed in the digital market. To provide insights into how online advertising strategies might need modification, 21 in-depth interviews were conducted across organisations representing key stakeholders in the digital advertising market. findings identified five key trends relevant to advertisers including: a move towards permission-based advertising; higher levels of personalised advertisements; more three screen advertising campaigns; increased levels of interactivity and the development of performance-based metrics. In the context of these trends, nine propositions are posited concerning the effective formulation and management of digital advertising strategies.     

Young People's Attitudes Towards British Political Advertising: Nurturing or Impeding Voter Engagement?

SUMMARY

This article presents findings from a national survey of ‘potential’ first time voters at the 2001 British General Election–specifically their attitudes towards the print advertising used by the main political parties during this election. In analysing the data, the authors were particularly interested in examining the claim that political advertising contributes to a sense of malaise–most acutely apparent among young people. While we found high levels of claimed advertising awareness, this was coupled with largely unfavourable attitudes towards most of the print advertising used in the election. Despite these judgements, most young people considered the advertising to be at least as persuasive as its commercial cousins. Not surprisingly the evidence provides a mixed picture in terms of the role political advertising plays in the political dispositions of young people. As a familiar discourse advertising offers the political classes an entry point to establish a dialogue with young sections of the electorate. However, for many young people, political advertising appears to help reinforce their predilection about politics being something one naturally distrusts.     

The Marketing Campaign: The British General Election of 2005

Political marketing was a key factor in the 2005 campaign, but more for its ineffectiveness than for its success. The use of marketing techniques such as segmentation and targeting was prolific, however the extent to which the parties adopted the marketing concept was limited. The impact of Labour's Big Conversation and 'Team Labour' campaign approach was always going to be hindered by Tony Blair's perceived dismissal of party and voter opinion on the Iraq War and top-up fees; appointing a marketing director to work on the presentation rather than the design of policy, combined with a highly negative campaign, was never going to win the election for the Tories. The lessons of electoral history – and marketing - were proved right once again: only if parties fully embrace the marketing philosophy and comprehensively design their behaviour by reflecting and responding to public demand. Nevertheless the key to future success for UK parties is to bring back ideology: market-oriented politics should also include using party principles and leadership judgement in order to be able to produce a distinctive response to the public concerns that is both popular and credible.     

Product Attribute-Based Voter Segmentation and Resource Advantage Theory

Political parties have long since targeted the marginal constituency and floating voters using demographic segmentation approaches and the use of market segmentation techniques in general election campaigns is now well-documented (see Johnson 1971; Ahmed and Jackson 1979; Yorke and Meehan 1986; Baines et al. 2003). The actual practice of segmentation as undertaken by political parties and its relation to theory is less well-considered. This paper represents a serious attempt to outline how political parties targeted a priori segments of the electorate including gender, age and lifecycle in the 2005 British General Election when they should have been adopting a product attributed-based approach. Selected MORI surveys from April 2005 were analysed, using logistic regression to indicate the most important factors in determining how Britons vote. Principal components analysis provides an indication of how the three main British political parties are perceived. The paper discusses, using resource-advantage theory (Hunt 1995; Hunt and Arnett 2004) how political parties might use their party and leader image, and policies to build their popularity in an election campaign.     

Emerging Strategies for Sponsorship on the Internet

Internet sponsorship is a rapidly evolving communications platform at a fledgling stage for sponsorship-linked marketing. The complex and involving nature of the phenomena offers new research opportunities and the potential for innovative marketing strategies. The Internet presents the opportunity to combine aspects of traditional event/activity sponsorship and media sponsorship innovatively and to extend marketing strategy in new directions. This paper presents an overview of emerging Internet sponsorships strategies, and explores sponsorship extension strategies that relate to media, brand, channel development, consumer experience, and networking. Exploratory case studies confirm and extend the initial strategy discussion. Finally, future directions for researchers and practitioners are suggested.     

Marketing the Police – from a Force to a Service

The British police service is a highly visible public sector organisation that in recent years has come under mounting pressures from different stakeholders, including successive Conservative and Labour governments and also an increasingly demanding public. In this setting, various business and management models and concepts have been applied to contemporary policing, but only limited research has been undertaken to date on how marketing has been adopted and utilised across the police forces of the British Isles. This paper explores the context of modern policing and suggests why the police are now being compelled to address marketing more seriously than hitherto. It draws on recent empirical work conducted across the police service and situates this within the existing literature on internal marketing. The paper concludes that marketing is underdeveloped across the police service and argues that police forces should develop their internal marketing as a precursor to successful external marketing.     

Broadcasts for a billion: the growth of commercial television in China

At present, Chinese television reaches 35% of the population (80-90% in urban areas) and is used by the government as a source of education and information. In recognition of the potential market represented by 1.1 billions consumers, Western advertisers have commissioned elaborate market research studies. Drama, sports, news, and movies are consistently identified as the favorite type of programming among Chinese television viewers. About 75% of Beijing adults watch television daily, making the medium both an important target for advertising campaigns and a way for Westerners to influence Chinese business and government leaders. Western advertisers have tended to concentrate their investments in the more urban, affluent regions where products have the greatest likelihood of being sold. There has been a recent trend, however, toward industrial commercials, with British and French companies buying television time to promote their image as partners in China's modernization. Key to the future of commercial advertising on Chinese Television. In many provinces, local television stations have developed a unique character and portray different sociocultural values than the national channel. Outside advertisers have sometimes experienced problems with local networks that substitute local advertising without informing the network. To correct this situation, the government is enacting pro-sponsor regulations that forbid the preemption of the national channel and its advertisements. At the same time, efforts are being made to improve relationships with local television stations by either paying them a fee or airing local commercials on the national network.     

Advertising agency planning – conceptualising network relationships

This study investigated the networked relationships between agency parties involved in the process of advertising planning, internal and external to advertising agencies. The study provides a conceptual grounding for understanding the shift from dyadic to multiple relationships in advertising planning. It focuses on the degree of collaboration and integrative relationships inherent. Using a theoretically derived, grounded theory approach, depth interviews were conducted with twenty two practitioners spread across four dominant parties: advertising account management and creatives, independent media planners and researchers. Four core constructs were abstracted from the data forming the conceptual basis for a model. These were shared (agency) purpose and philosophy, personal chemistry between involved parties, power relations between parties with their incumbent conflictual tensions and finally trust between parties. The study provides an important bridgehead, opening up and exploring the increasingly networked foundations for advertising planning.