Marketing in an Election Campaign

The Malaysian General Elections of 2008 have come and gone and the results are there for all to see. Doubtless they are being analysed with a fine-tooth comb by political analysts, but I thought it would be interesting to review a few of the marketing tools deployed - whether consciously or unconsciously - and the challenges faced by the various parties and candidates in the campaigning that are similar to those faced by marketers.

Positioning

Arguably one of the concepts that created the discipline of marketing as we know it, positioning is about placing your company or your product in the mind of the purchaser, relative to other competitors and competitor features. For BN, the banners and ads were everywhere, and every where, they said the same, consistent message: “Security. Peace. Prosperity.” BN’s TV ad campaign had “testimonial” style monologues about how Malaysia was a harmonious and free society under the BN.

Effective positioning requires an understanding of the market being targeted and your own existing image within that market. Amongst the educated urban voters of Malaysia, the videos came across as over-produced and somewhat strained. The campaign was cynically derided as scaremongering, and urban voters overall seem to have responded negatively. In hindsight, however, there seems little the BN could have done differently, thus elegantly representing a classic marketing dilemma: when you’re number 1, you have less freedom to re-position yourself and you need imagination and daring to do so.

On an individual basis, DAP candidate for PJ North Tony Pua positioned himself through speeches, blogs and interviews as an intellectual heavyweight relative to his BN opponent, that he would be an effective policy maker who would be able to bring some rigour to debates in parliament, and therefore much more than an MP who simply catered to the basic needs of the constituents. This must have struck a chord with the educated, relatively affluent neighbourhood of PJ North, given the results that came out.

Emotional vs. Rational

The BN took out numerous ads in both TV and print media, highlighting development achievements and economic statistics. Attention was drawn to, among others, subsidised health care, GDP growth and the provision of JPA scholarships to non-Bumiputras since 2000. While it certainly may have swayed some voters, it ignored a basic tenet known to experienced marketers: purchasing, like voting, is often an emotional decision. Something about the mood on the ground, especially in the states that went over to the oppposition, was misread and ignored in the churning out of statistics and figures which were un-meaningful to the man on the street. It’s like telling your customers that your new model baseline car has improved its 0-100km/h performance from 12.9 seconds to 11.5 seconds. Big whoop.

Consumer apathy

Marketers are faced with a constant challenge of consumer apathy; for politicians, sometimes even more so. As one lady commented to me during a dinner party last week, “I’ll register to vote when there is someone worth voting for.” Not a sentiment to be sniffed at: this election, there were 10.9 million registered voters, but there were still over 4 million unregistered voters. Couple that with an estimated turnout of 75% and you have about 7 million eligible voters out there who didn’t care to vote for anyone, for one reason or another.

I think the appropriate marketing analogy is about product categories prior to being ignited by product “blockbusters”. For instance, there was bottled water before there was Evian, and there were sexual enhancement drugs before there was Viagra, but look what they did to the category after they launched. In this case, a political candidate “blockbuster” combines vigour, charisma and inspiration, and it takes a politician like Barack Obama to smash both electoral roll register and donation records. In the absence of that blockbuster, the voters/consumers will simply stay at home, literally.

Marketing can only do so much

This might sound like heresy coming from a writer of a marketing column, but all marketers know that sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much is spent in a promotional campaign or how well executed it is if the product does not deliver or is perceived not to deliver on its promise. In fact, the phrase “a triumph of marketing” is often used disparagingly about a product which is successful beyond what it is entitled to be, according to objective measurements of its benefits. In this case, BN certainly needed one such triumph but the campaign that was created could not turn the tide of disaffection that had grown over the last 4 years.

Appeared (?) in The Sun (? date). Sorry, was in South Africa at the time, and didn't catch it.