Labour,Political Marketing and the 2005 Election: A Campaign of Two Halves

Labour's 2005 election campaign was extensively underpinned by political marketing. This resulted in a campaign of unequal halves; generic and populist at national level; focused and individualised at local level. This article describes the text of Labour's campaign, and its response to its environment, focusing upon its image management strategies in response to the political and media environment within which it operated. This also included the Conservatives and an increasing overlap between politics and celebrity culture. This campaign saw a continuation and sophistication of marketing strategies and technologies, enabling parties to target individual, strategically important, voters. A specific personalised message was presented to 2% of the electorate, while a broad image was promoted to the rest of the populace. With an election focused on a targeted minority of the electorate, it is argued that far from being a force to enhance democracy, marketing at the 2005 election challenges the ideals upon which the democratic process of politics is premised.     

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.     

An Exploration of the Advertising Ambitions and Strategies of the 2001 British General Election

This paper reports on one element of our wider study investigating the 2001 British General Election national advertising, and the attitudes and perceptions of the young British electorate to the campaigns. The discussion presented here explores the strategies and ambitions of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats' 2001 national advertising campaigns. Our analysis is based on indepth interviews with key members of the three parties advertising agencies; content analysis of the national posters, press and party election broadcasts; and secondary source information e.g. coverage in the marketing and advertising press, newspaper, radio and TV reporting. A number of issues emerge including the key role of the advertising in agenda setting and agenda control, evidence of media misrepresentation of the central advertising themes, the poor use of the Internet, and the rather limited ambitions for the advertising itself.     

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.     

Political PR in the 2005 UK General Election: Winning and Losing,With a Little Help From Spin

The public relations of the UK general election of 2005 is examined in the light of the active promotional culture of British politics, a culture that is especially active at election time. The PR or 'spin' can be seen as a presentational trellis offering to voters, mostly via the media, glimpses of policies and politicians which are favourable to the originating party. The purpose of the trellis for the parties is to maximise their electoral advantage and to minimise their disadvantage. The major obstacle to their success is the capacity of the media to brush aside the trellis and to report on the 'other side'. Whatever the benefits and costs for democracy of this tension between partisan presentation and journalism, there is little evidence that voter disengagement with electoral politics is caused by these public relations shows. Political PR is part of the UK's promotional culture; voter disengagement relates to other systemic and more causal features of contemporary British society. A small purposive (but unrepresentative) survey of campaign observers showed key features of political PR servicing the fundamentals of party, policy and personality.     

Cause-Related Marketing: Keys to Successful Relationships with Corporate Sponsors and Their Customers

SUMMARY

An increasingly popular method for nonprofits to raise awareness, educate the public, and receive financial support from corporations is through cause-related marketing. The distinctive feature of cause-related marketing is the corporate sponsor's contribution to a designated cause being tied to customers' participating in revenue-producing transactions with the sponsor. The sponsor benefits from favorable publicity and increased sales. This article discusses factors contributing to the potential success of a cause-related marketing campaign: the sponsor's product quality, fair pricing, and customer traits; the nonprofit's and the sponsor's reputation, shared values, good communication, and commitment; a well-planned and executed campaign, and specific terms that protect both party's assets and clearly outline each party's responsibilities.     

Positioning Political Parties: The 2005 UK General Election

After identifying the paucity of positioning research relating to political marketing the construct is defined and practical examples of its application in politics provided. The analysis of the 2005 election starts by considering the long term framing of political issues and concludes that this, overall, provided Labour with a competitive advantage. Next the positioning dilemmas facing the three national parties in British politics at the start of the campaign are highlighted. Using a basic positioning model, the positioning strategies followed during the campaign itself are then discussed, both in terms of policies and image/emotional positioning approaches. The attempts by the opposition parties to reposition Labour and the latter's defensive reactions are discussed at this point. Then, the way the wider positioning of the parties was targeted at electoral segments is considered. The paper concludes with an attempt to explain the election result in terms of the relative success or failure of the positioning strategies adopted.     

Party time: recreation rituals in the world of B2B

Abstract

We examine the role of business parties in business markets: why do B2B companies spend such large amounts of money to sponsor events meant for public consumption, such as sporting events, when most of their activity involves selling to other organisations? Drawing from extensive qualitative fieldwork in the world of tennis tournaments, we detail the specific universe of parties that happen backstage, between companies sponsoring these events. This context helps illuminate the critical role of business parties in business networks. Far from being mere recreation at the company’s expense, business parties are important opportunities for executives to develop and manage their relationships. We show that a business party functions as a particular kind of ritual by creating a distinct universe with its own language, gestures, and other modes of interaction.

Summary statement of contribution Our theoretical contribution to the literature on relationship marketing is to detail the unifying function of business parties in local business markets, where relationships with a variety of organisations are key to a company’s success. Our methodological contribution is to illustrate the relevance of anthropological approaches and concepts, such as rituals, to the world of B2B.     

Interpreting discourse: a critical discourse analysis of the marketing of an extreme right party

Viewing marketing as an ideological discourse that places consumption in a central position in people's lives provides further insights into the construction of political marketing discourse. Politicians and political parties now follow the 'logic of the market' in their attempts to connect with voters. Critical discourse analysis can be used in general to study the nature of political marketing discourse and specifically to document the web of identities and power relations that this discourse reproduces. To illustrate this application of theory we examine the marketing of the Vlaams Blok, a successful Flemish extreme-right party. The Vlaams Blok provides a good example of how the adoption of a marketing approach is used in politics, especially in the way a political party communicates to a wide audience using market logic. The analysis echoes approaches used by advertising and marketing communications scholars and highlights the strategic use of lexical, rhetorical and other linguistic devices to brand, sell and differentiate the Vlaams Blok from other political products. The analysis demonstrates that the Vlaams Blok creates a ready-to-consume product that achieves success at the electoral 'checkout'. We set the stage for marketing scholars to help both further understand how marketing methods are deployed with increasing sophistication outside the traditional domain of marketing, and to consider the consequences of a marketing discourse in the civic sphere.     

APPLICATIONS TO SELECT SERVICE SECTORS

The authors report the findings of a survey of architecture firm principals concerning the status of marketing in the architecture profession. Among other key findings, the vast majority of responding principals consider marketing essential to new business development, and believe marketing's importance to firm success is increasing. However, fewer than half of the responding firms have a marketing plan in place. Architecture firms are more oriented toward public relations than marketing, and large firms are more involved in marketing than small firms. Overall, the results suggest a somewhat limited understanding of marketing's role and potential, and the need for architecture firms to either develop better internal marketing expertise or rely more heavily on experienced marketing consultants.     

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.     

Images of Freedom and Equality: A Values Analysis of Hungarian Political Commercials

Abstract

In Central Europe's first free election, Hungarian campaign architects created a genre of television advertising designed to communicate political party values by linking them with values of national importance. Using Rokeach's two-value typology, this culture-based study analyzes the political commercials produced by the nation's predominant parties in 1990 for their values-related content. Hungarian scholars, media experts and party officials contributed to this interpretive analysis of the campaign's visual images for their reflection of national and political values. Results suggest that political commercials are useful for identifying prevailing values and can contribute to an understanding of a nation's culture. The study has particular importance for advertisers in countries which are undergoing the transition to a free-market economy.     

Kynecting the Dots: How Kentucky’s Willingness to Loosen the Reins Sparked a Health Insurance Enrollment Race in the Bluegrass State

The development of health insurance exchanges within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) legislation is one of the hottest health policy issues of this decade. With the surprise enrollment success of Kentucky’s exchange called “Kynect,” the influence of how marketing and branding have contributed to the embrace of the policy has garnered interest from scholars and practitioners alike. Driven by the utilization of in-depth interviews, this study found that Kynect’s success was aided by three emergent themes: frequent communication between the outsourced marketing firm, Doe-Anderson, and relevant stakeholders; the willingness to delegate all marketing and branding control to Doe-Anderson; and a multiparty commitment to developing and executing a campaign that would simultaneously adhere to public values and accentuate a feeling of localness to constituents across the state. The paper contributes to existing literature by providing an inside look at how a government can find marketing success against historical odds.     

The impact of firmspecific capabilities on the amount of capital raised in an initial public offering: Evidence from the biotechnology industry

Going “public” has a magical sound to most entrepreneurial managers. By going public the firm increases its legitimacy in the business community, improves access to debt financing, and creates a means of exit for major shareholders. However, by far the most important reason for going public is to infuse a significant amount of investment capital into the firm. It is well documented that small businesses frequently fail because of insufficient funding and heavy debt loads. Issuing an initial public offering (IPO) allows entrepreneurial firms to overcome these pitfalls. Clearly, if access to capital is the major goal of going public, then the success of an offering is measured by the amount of capital raised by the firm. This study presents a model of the total amount of capital raised by a firm through an IPO. The explanatory variables include several indicators of the scientific capabilities of the firm including the location of the firm, the quality of the research staff, the number of products under development, the number of patents held by the firm, and the firm's prior spending on research and development (R&D). The model is empirically tested on a sample of 92 biotechnology IPOs. The results provide strong support for the hypothesized positive relationship between the total amount of capital raised by a firm's IPO and the scientific capabilities of the firm.Our results have important implications for entrepreneurs. First, an entrepreneur needs to develop and send credible signals indicating the value of the firm's intangible assets to the market. Second, the market values as deep a product pipeline as possible given a firm's resource constraints. Third, choice of location is a key strategic decision that should not be overlooked. Fourth, the market values firm-specific capabilities and will increase the capital it is willing to invest in a firm accordingly. Finally, the amount of capital a firm raises in its IPO can be influenced by entrepreneurial managers' strategic decisions.     

The role of the third party in trust repair process

To examine the role of third parties in trust repair processes, this study uses a policy-capturing design. The third party's tactics (persuasion, guarantee) and characteristics (relational closeness between third party and victim, power of third party) relate strongly and positively to trust repair and specifically to a victim's willingness to reconcile with a trust violator, which ultimately leads to continuance of collaboration intentions. In addition, persuasion is more effective than guarantees in this process. The effects of tactics and characteristics also interact to influence the outcomes. This article concludes with some practical implications of these findings and recommendations for future research.     

Using Social Marketing Strategies to Reform Social Policy: A Lesson from British History

ABSTRACT

This article presents a general framework for the social marketing process. An example from British history is used to demonstrate an effective model for gaining public and government support for a social marketing initiative. The historical analysis illustrates a key issue: public interpretation of the importance of the social marketing cause is dependent upon its core values and that its values may differ from the group advocating social action. The advocacy group's effectiveness in obtaining support for its cause will hinge upon its ability to strike a resonant chord with the social values of society and its cause.     

The effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions in reward-based crowdfunding

This study explores the main and interaction effects of framing messages and cause-related marketing on backing intentions by manipulating frame types, frame valences, and cause-related marketing in the message narratives of crowdfunding projects. We conduct an online experiment for a crowdfunding campaign and analyze data using independent-samples t-test and ANOVA. This study's findings show that negative messages lead to higher backing intentions than positive ones regarding attribute and goal framing messages. Narratives with cause-related marketing in crowdfunding projects had a more significant effect on increasing backing intentions than those without cause-related marketing. Positive attribute framing messages combined with cause-related marketing had significantly higher backing intentions than messages without cause-related marketing; for negative attribute framing, there was no significant difference between with and without cause-related marketing. This study theoretically advances the literature on reward-based crowdfunding, which provides scholars with insight into the effects of the written narrative design of crowdfunding projects on backing intentions and extends to the applications of framing effect theory and cause-related marketing. Practically, this study provides project initiators and crowdfunding platform operators with new perspectives on proposal copywriting content design and project operation.     

CASE: Mozilla vs. Godzilla — The Launch of the Mozilla Firefox Browser

The case describes an interactive marketing campaign used to launch the open source, Mozilla Firefox browser. The case highlights key features of the campaign and the facilitating conditions that enabled product success. The sustainability of the community marketing effort in light of product maturation is the central marketing challenge that the organization now faces.     

Integrating public service and marketing differentiation: an analysis of the American Express Corporation’s “Charge Against Hunger” promotion program

Dating back to the 1980s, American Express (AMEX) has been a corporate leader in successfully applying cause-related marketing (CRM) to boost membership and credit card usage in troubled markets. During a downturn in the mid-1990s, AMEX and Share Our Strength (SOS), a nonprofit organization tackling the problem of hunger in the United States, formed a strategic alliance to create one of the best known and most highly touted CRM campaigns. AMEX implemented an innovative cause branding (CB) effort to convince its cardholders to “Charge Against Hunger” (CAH) by utilizing their AMEX credit cards more frequently during the holiday season. Over the 4-year life of the program, the issue of hunger in the United States was put somewhat higher on the public agenda as more than US $21 million were raised for SOS projects. This study assesses how AMEX’s public relations efforts contributed to the success of the CAH campaign.     

Targeting Young Voters in a Political Campaign: Empirical Insights into an Interactive Digital Marketing Campaign in the 2007 Finnish General Election

At general elections across Europe, turnout among young people tends to be significantly lower than among older voters. Therefore, this article examines a digital marketing campaign that was targeted at young voters in the 2007 Finnish general election. More specifically, this article aims to provide insights into the creative development process of a political marketing campaign and the nature of the client-agency relationship in political campaigns. The methodology adopted in this article consisted of in-depth interviews with key informants involved in the campaign planning and implementation. The results provide new empirical insights into the challenges that political campaigner may face when they target political marketing at young voters. In addition, the results suggest that there are differences between commercial and political marketing also in a digital marketing context. Finally, the results support the view that marketing professionals have a strong role in a creative development process of a political marketing campaign. The ideas put forth herein can certainly help advertising professionals to plan political marketing campaigns that engage young people in future elections and therefore aid candidates in their quest to achieve electoral success.