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doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00830.x

Political Marketing Models: The Curious Incident of the Dog that Doesnt Bark
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Heather Savigny
University of East Anglia

Mick Temple
Staffordshire University

Contemporary politics has become dominated by the use of marketing strategies, techniques and principles. An academic literature has emerged in response to these empirical trends. Much of this literature is grounded in management marketing theory, and the contention of this article is that while this may provide a useful heuristic device, the models of political behaviour it proposes are seriously awed by their assumptions of a passive or neutral role for the media. The intention here is, rst, to restore agency to the media. This is achieved by highlighting their inuence in shaping the political message, rather than simply disseminating it as implied by the management marketing models. Second, we draw attention to some of the key democratic implications of applying marketing to the practice of politics and highlight the potential role of the media as agents providing a corrective function to the democratic decits we identify.

Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention? To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. The dog did nothing in the night-time. That was the curious incident, remarked Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle, 1981, p. 347).

The stable dogs failure to bark led the master detective to the conclusion that the dog knew the intruder and that the theft of the valuable racehorse Silver Blaze was therefore an inside job. The curious incident to students of political marketing models is the equally passive role played by arguably the most powerful institutions involved in the marketing process. The inside job played by political reporters and commentators in interpreting, changing and challenging the message of the political marketers is clearly vital in any marketing campaign, as are the interests of media organisations themselves. This article seeks to draw attention to the curious omission of the power of the media from models of political marketing. Political marketing has become an important sub-eld in the discipline of politics.Whether or not its signicance has been acknowledged by academia more broadly, it is undeniable that marketing strategies and techniques play a fundamental role in the practice of contemporary politics across the Western world. There has been a proliferation of literature that charts this usage, some descriptive and some informed by theoretical frameworks derived from management marketing.While political marketing strategies have historical roots (see Wring, 2005), technological developments have meant that politicians are now, arguably, able to deploy these strategies to greater effect. One of these technological developments has been the proliferation of the media, whose active role is largely neglected in the eld of political marketing. This article takes issue with the marketing theory that informs much of the analysis of political marketing. Marketing theory does acknowledge the existence of the media, and affords it a role as a conduit through which politicians communicate to the electorate in essence, the media are effectively assumed to be tools at the disposal of
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politicians. However, this assumption negates the active role that the media themselves play in shaping the political message delivered to the electorate. As such, this analysis will concentrate on what is arguably the major weakness in political marketing approaches rooted in marketing theory, in that the media appear to be merely an agent for getting the message of political parties across. Our argument here is twofold: rst, that the media are political actors in their own right and that management-based marketing models in politics need to account for this; and second, that the media may play a corrective function to the democratic deciencies that these models logically entail. While political marketing is growing as a coherent sub-eld in its own right, nevertheless there remains disagreement within the eld about how it should be approached. We take issue here not with the eld as a whole, but with a specic strand of the literature. That is, we provide a critique of the management literature as it has been transposed on to the analysis of politics, which draws attention to the use of managerial models and frameworks both to describe and prescribe contemporary political practice (for example Egan, 1999; Kotler and Kotler, 1999; Kotler and Levy, 1969; Lees-Marshment, 2001; Lock and Harris, 1996; Maarek, 1995; Mauser, 1983; Newman and Davies, 2006; OCass, 1996; Smith and Saunders, 1990; Worcester and Baines, 2006). In this way we are seeking to make a contribution to the growing strand of critical literature in respect of political marketing (for example, Henneberg, 2002; OShaughnessy, 1990; 2001; Savigny, 2007; 2008; Wring, 1996; 2005). As Margaret Scammell (1999) notes, three disciplines inform the study of political marketing communications, management and political science. Communications-centred approaches to political marketing tend to privilege news and media management strategies; management approaches reify marketing models; while the concern of political science (broadly dened) is with the potential impact of marketing on the political process.While we recognise this simplies the eld somewhat, our aim here is not to provide a review (for comprehensive reviews of the literature, see Savigny, 2009; Scammell, 1999). What we are seeking to do here is to integrate fully the three disciplines, which at the moment run parallel in the literature rather than being acknowledged as interlinked and interdependent. Although their analysis of the active role the media plays in the political process remains undeveloped, communications scholars and political scientists are well aware of that active role. This is neglected by management marketing models, which assume that the media are passive conduits of communication (which, as will be argued, is largely the case with commercial marketing). While they provide differing perspectives, the three approaches remain entangled but not coherent. However, the aim here is not simply to conate marketing and politics, or marketing and communication, but to suggest that while these aspects may be analytically distinct, ontologically they are intertwined. Thus while models may be used to simplify reality, this simplication needs to reect this ontological integration. As such, we are suggesting that there also needs to be an element of analytical integration of the agential role of the media in these political marketing models. We begin by outlining what political marketing means in terms of the management models that have been used to describe the political process. We then provide a critique of these
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models and highlight the way in which the downplaying of the role of the media means that the models do not function as models should that is, they are not able to provide an accurate simplication of reality.We proceed to assess the normative claims made by some of the prescriptive scholars in the eld who suggest that not only should these models be used to simplify and describe reality, but they should also be used to inform it.We argue that this prescriptive component has implications that pose problems for traditional conceptions of democratic accountability.

The Study of Political Marketing

There is little dispute that political marketing is an integral part of modern politics: indeed, Bruce Newman (1994, p. 21) has asked whether it is now possible for parties or candidates not to market themselves like any other product. However, the rst thing to strike the non-specialist reader is the absence of any consensus as to what the study of political marketing entails. As noted above, there are a number of approaches, drawn from media studies, communication studies, political science and marketing literature, which take different starting points for study. For some it is about spin and media management, while for others it is about the application of business models and practices to politics. Although political marketing is generally informed by assumptions and models adopted from management studies, there is no single, unambiguous answer to the question what is political marketing? (see Scammell, 1999, p. 718). Political marketing is about more than managing the media via tactics now commonly known as spin. However, like postmodernism, while it is difcult to dene, everyone seems to know what political marketing is when they see it. The term is now generally used to describe the use of marketing techniques such as consumer (voter) research, focus groups and advertising; that is, selling a political product in much the same way as any other manufactured product or service. As many have pointed out, the use of marketing in politics at its most basic, persuading others of your right to attain and hold ofce is not new (see Franklin, 2004; Wring, 1996). One could see Machiavellis brilliant handbook for rulers, The Prince, as an early example. However, political marketing as a modern phenomenon in democracies begins with the twentieth centurys extension of the electoral franchise to the masses and the selling of parties and candidates to a mass audience. Its modern practice can be directly related to the use of television as a direct marketing tool by American political candidates. In Britain, the image of the Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher, was moulded and softened by advertising men Gordon Reece and Tim Bell in response to public opinion polls. Intensive coaching to lower the pitch of her voice, careful selection of power clothing, a series of pseudo-events and a ground-breaking series of posters and party political broadcasts ensured that British politics would never be the same again. However, the policies themselves remained relatively sacrosanct (although see Scammell, 1995). Jennifer LeesMarshment (2001) argues that Tony Blairs New Labour went beyond image to change the very nature of the product in response to consumer feedback: at the core of political marketing models is the idea of reciprocity, with voters views actually inuencing the product via feedback from polls and focus groups. Marketing has now been applied to many
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other areas of public life besides inuencing voters, with quangos, pressure groups and local government departments all employing techniques developed from business marketing. Political marketing is clearly something that is happening in practice and a literature has developed that provides political science with the vocabulary through which to analyse this. While there is clearly more than one way to do political marketing as an area of study, our issue here is with the dominant management marketing literature that informs this analysis. This management marketing approach starts from the ontological and analytical supposition that parties and voters act in ways that are analogous to businesses and consumers (for example Butler and Collins, 1996; Kavanagh, 1995; Lees-Marshment, 2001; Newman, 1994; Reid, 1988; see Savigny, 2008, for a fuller discussion of these issues). Marketing is a function of management, and the most widely used management model in politics is the three-stage model outlined below.

The Three-Stage Model

Theoretical frameworks have been developed to model the marketing process that parties or candidates go through, providing a template of stages a party needs in order to achieve a market orientation. Implicit in these models is that following these stages will lead to electoral success (for example Egan, 1999; Lees-Marshment, 2001; OCass, 2001). Robert Keiths (1960) three-stage evolutionary model has been widely adopted and adapted in the political marketing literature. For example, Dominic Wrings (1997) seminal work on reconciling political science and marketing set out a theoretical framework for analysis, and Newmans (1994) important American work uses essentially the same three-stage marketing framework as Lees-Marshment. Simply put, in the three-stage marketing model, business organisations are assumed to identify consumer demand, feed this back into the product and rene it accordingly. The next stage is to tell the consumer that they have done so. The nal stage is the delivery of a rened product that satises consumer demand and therefore produces a prot for the company. For some this is a top-down approach, and it is assumed that parties are able to establish what voters want using methods that include sophisticated polling methodology and feedback from focus groups. Conceptually, the suggestion is that parties/candidates listen to (targeted) public opinion, and provide the electorate with a product that they want, in order to achieve electoral victory (Egan, 1999; Lees-Marshment, 2001; Mauser, 1983; OCass, 1996; Reid, 1988; Shama, 1976). It should be noted that this is not uncontested: Robert Ormrod (2006) suggests that the party membership also plays a role in this process and Lees-Marshment (2001) argues that there are eight interrelated stages to this procedure. More signicantly, Darren Lilleker draws attention to the difculty of being able to provide a demonstrable link between what voters say they want, and how this is then incorporated into the product (Lilleker, 2005, p. 573). However, what all of these perspectives accept is the assumption that the key relationship here is a direct one between politicians/parties and voters. Moreover, the assumption within the three-stage model is that this information is used to rene the product and that this new product is then communicated to the voters. And it
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is here that we take issue, not only with the implication (detailed later) that this feedback process from voters is democratic, but also that the process of communication with voters about the new product is straightforward. While the models detailed above may suggest complexity within the feedback and renement process from the public to politicians and vice versa, what we are concerned with is the lack of acknowledgement of the agential role the media themselves play in this communication process. Communicating those renements and selling your product to your customers in this case, the voters is crucially different for politicians than for companies.

The Media Are the Message?

Communication of a product in a commercial setting is largely through paid media forms. Here the media simply reproduce the message that they are given by commercial companies. Messages are presented on television at a time that has been paid for and in magazines and newspapers in a place that the company has decided is cost-effective to buy. While commercial companies and their advertising may be subject to light-touch regulation (for example, by the Advertising Standards Authority), the crucial point here is that their message remains unaltered through whichever medium they present it. With rare exceptions, there is no tension between the demands of companies and media outlets. They are both businesses operating within a marketplace. In this sense, the communication of product stage for a commercial organisation is fairly straightforward: media simply replicate and reproduce the business message. They may even, and for example with newspaper advertorials frequently do, present commercial PR spin in the guise of consumer journalism (Davies, 2008). The communication of the product to consumers is part of communicating a wider message about the brand, the product and the organisation, as (of course) also occurs in political marketing. But the emphasis in commercial advertising is on the existence and usage of paid media by business companies, where the media simply relay the message provided for them. Crucially, in politics things are different. While they may make use of paid media forms (such as party political broadcasts), communication by politicians, even in the USA where paid-for advertising eats up millions of dollars from even the lowliest congressman, is predominantly through free media forms such as photo-ops, pseudoevents, press releases and the attempted manipulation of the news agenda by spin doctors. Communicating the political product to voters is perhaps the most important stage for political actors. As a Labour spin doctor said in 1997, communications is not an afterthought to our policy. Its central to the whole mission of New Labour (quoted in Gaber, 1998, p. 13). Despite the distaste with which New Labours media tactics are now often regarded, they were continuing a well-established process. In 1988, the Conservative governments Trade and Industry Secretary, LordYoung, infamously pronounced:the governments policies are like cornakes if they are not marketed they will not sell (Franklin, 2004, p. 5). Widely seen then as a cynical comment, Young was merely stating what now seems eminently sensible in a media-dominated and often hostile environment. The Phillis Report into
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government communications accepted that communications should be an equal and equally respected third in the trinity of government policy making, public service delivery and communications (Phillis, 2004, p. 31). However, while acknowledging the need for effective communication, Bob Phillis argued that the negative impact of political spin and public relations had contributed to a three-way breakdown in trust between politicians, the media and the public. The more prescriptive political marketing literature implies that the use of political marketing techniques, by listening and responding to the concerns of voters, may be a method to rebuild voter trust, or at least as a mechanism to enhance accountability (Harrop, 1990; Lees-Marshment, 2001; Scammell, 1999). However, for many observers, it is the dominance of marketing techniques, especially the seemingly pathological desire by spin doctors such as Alastair Campbell to manage the news and ensure the message is delivered as the party wishes, which has been primarily responsible (as Phillis notes) for the lack of public trust in politicians (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1995, p. 1). According to liberal theory, the media have a role to play in keeping political elites accountable by acting as a check and balance to power (Keane, 1991; McQuail, 1994). The media might sometimes act as consumer watchdogs for their audiences but they do not subject every commercial advertising claim to minute examination, highlighting the difculty of simply transposing models of management marketing on to politics. The media are also, with the arguable exception of some public service broadcasters, commercial entities beholden to other commercial organisations for their revenue. The media, including public service broadcasters, are political actors in their own right: they function to protect their own interests in addition to their theoretical role as defenders of democracy. So there is an inherent tension between these roles. Politicians cannot simply present messages about their product which are directly relayed to the public. Politicians, aware of this issue, have sought to manipulate their messages so that they can be presented in the media through the use of, as noted above, sound bites, spin and media managers. So as both political scientists and communications scholars identify, the activity of communication is fundamentally different for commercial and political organisations. And it is at this point that we suggest the need for greater renement of management models as applied to the analysis of politics. Despite Phillis recognition that media and communications strategies play a central role in marketing political policies, key aspects of the mediapolitical party relationship remain largely unaddressed or peripheral in the political marketing literature, most notably the framing role played by the mass media. In all political systems the media are not only shaping and inuencing the political message candidates wish to transmit: their activities are also impacting upon the democratic process more broadly (Street, 2001). The media are not neutral actors and that includes public service broadcasters. The BBC, which likes to trumpet its impartiality and supposed lack of political bias, is a prime example of a media company that seeks to inuence in line with its own interests (Kuhn, 2007, p. 77). The relationship between political parties and voters is mediated by media institutions with their own policy and party preferences. Rupert Murdochs business interests beneted from his newspapers promotion of both Thatcher and Blair and there are many other examples of media companies using their newspapers and television programmes to inuence changes in government policy favourable to their
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own operations (see Kuhn, 2007, pp. 768). Clearly, the processes of political marketing are more complex than political marketing models assume.While some observers do recognise the impact different media systems and journalistic cultures might have on the market orientation of parties (see Stromback, in Lees-Marshment et al., 2009), the impact of the media is far more crucial than is acknowledged. New Labours ability to portray itself to the electorate as having fundamentally changed was facilitated by a print media which, despite their largely Conservative sympathies, were unable to support John Majors sleaze-ridden and error-prone government. The sense that it was time for a change (accompanied by a young and charismatic leader who was able to convince media owners and editors that he corresponded to their own ideological concerns) was probably as crucial as New Labours market-oriented strategy. The nal stage in the marketing process, according to management models, is delivery, where political actors need to be seen to have delivered on their promises. Again, this is not a straightforward process when it is the media that play the key role in interpreting government success. Politicians can tell voters that they have delivered on their promises, but the role of the Fourth Estate is to scrutinise such claims in the public interest. However, the partiality of the media ensures that voters will receive a complicated picture of just how effective parties have been in delivering their stated aims. In all countries, the media clearly have their own agendas. Whatever the rhetoric about the protection of democracy or operating as a Fourth Estate ensuring that citizens receive accurate and relevant information and many journalists do see themselves as embodying such a role the media are also businesses operating to make a prot, with the aim of attracting an audience and therefore advertisers. This applies even to many state-sponsored or public service broadcasters. The tension between the medias roles in a democracy and their position in the marketplace brings conicts that have been largely unacknowledged and unrecognised in the political marketing literature (see Savigny, 2008).

The Media The Dog that Isnt Barking

The medias inuence, of course, goes far beyond their interpretation of party messages at election time. Voters perceptions and understanding of politics in general are also largely derived through the lters of the media. The media do not, in any political system, conne themselves to a neutral transmission function (Kuhn, 2007, p. 212). The media help both to form and mobilise public opinion and they clearly have agenda-setting and reporting roles which constrain the approaches political candidates and parties can take. The majority of media are predisposed towards politicians or parties expressing viewpoints that chime with their own ideological or market preferences. Enoch Powell once said that for politicians to complain about the media is like sailors complaining about the sea (Soley, 2005, p. 35): essentially, it is the environment you operate in, so get on with it. Powells comparison, as with so many of his pronouncements, is wide of the mark. The difference is that, while both the media and the ocean are capricious, the media can also be malicious and are nearly always partisan a political party will not be allowed to sell its product in the same way as Heinz. In most political systems, print media (especially) are notably partisan and Fox News and Russian television demonstrate that such partisanship is not conned to
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newspapers. Given this, all dimensions of the political marketing strategy are clearly not without problems, yet, for example, in Lees-Marshments examination of the genesis of New Labour (Lees-Marshment, 2001; see also Lilleker and Lees-Marshment, 2005, pp. 1438) one crucial set of actors is missing from the analysis. At no stage is there any systematic examination of the role and power of the media. The centrality of the modern media to political campaigning and marketing, while occasionally acknowledged in the literature for example, Lees-Marshment has briey noted that negative media can inhibit the ability of successful parties to communicate their delivery to the public is rarely seriously considered. Indeed, despite their overwhelming importance, the media are generally regarded as just one of many methods of conveying a message to the voters (Lees-Marshment, 2001; Mauser, 1983). Even when the importance of the media is conceded (for example, Butler and Collins, 1994; Henneberg, 2002) they are afforded a largely instrumental role and, at least implicitly, assumed to comply with the wishes of the political actors involved. To reiterate, a fundamental weakness of these models is a failure fully to appreciate that the conduit of messages is not neutral as it is in the presentation of marketing messages. So for approaches rooted in marketing and management literature the media appear to be merely a tool in the marketing campaign. This poses no problems for the traditional marketing in a capitalist society of normal commercial products such as beans, computers and car insurance. With very rare exceptions, the media are effectively neutral in their attitude to such products. But political parties are not cans of beans. Few people (if any) shout at the television their hatred of Heinz baked beans and their commitment to Crosse & Blackwells alternative product party political broadcasts, on the other hand, generate considerable passion, especially from opponents of the party being promoted. The television channels and newspapers carrying commercial advertisements may have consumer programmes and lifestyle sections in which aspects of a product are criticised (for example, hidden charges or inaccurate information) but such criticism is specic and not aimed at the process of advertising or the capitalist system. Politicians and political parties have a much tougher and fundamentally different ride in the media. On current affairs and news output, the representatives and messages of political parties are subject to intense scrutiny and criticism, while on British television and radio, entertainment programmes such as Have I Got News For You and The News Quiz hold up politicians as gures of fun who cannot be trusted. Similar programmes exist in all established democracies. This is not the place for an analysis of media power and effects, but one does not have to believe in Edward Herman and Noam Chomskys propaganda model to acknowledge that the media are, if not manufacturing consent, playing a powerful role in the way messages are transmitted to the electorate. The ownership and prot orientation of the mass media, their dependence on advertisers (and hence support for the existing economic system), their reliance on the powerful and their unwillingness to face ak (negative responses) from groups with resources, together with their general ideological preferences (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) will all impact on any political marketing campaign. Although still peripheral, more general political communication approaches at least acknowledge the importance of the media in setting the agenda and factor the importance of news
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management into their analysis: indeed, political communications scholars see modern politics and media as inextricably entwined, with the activities of one inevitably affecting the other (Scammell, 1999, p. 721). By contrast, as noted above, Lilleker and LeesMarshments communication stage fails even to mention the role the media will play, let alone the problems of navigating a hostile press (Lilleker and Lees-Marshment, 2005, p. 224). Given that it is the media through which politicians market their policies indeed through which they have to market their policies and that it is difcult to overstate the centrality of media to politicians identity (Franklin, 2004, p. 5), such an oversight in any model that claims to offer a template is surprising. Politicians themselves are well aware of the medias power over their ability to communicate with citizens. As the Labour MP John Battle put it, politicians are seeing themselves as just another consumer product and there is a temptation for my whole political existence to be determined by media coverage (Franklin, 2004, p. 5). As Bob Franklin has also noted, the packaging of politics poses a number of challenges to democracies, including the possibility that the relationship between government and media becomes essentially collusive. If so, the medias role in informing the public sphere may be substantially diminished by their failure to alert the electorate to the widest range of policy options (Franklin, 1999, p. 9), although, as we argue below, newspapers may be active in representing their readers (or consumers) views to political leaders. Indeed, such an active role may be essential in redressing the anti-democratic consequences of the political marketers concentration on a closely targeted section of the population.

The Anti-Democratic Tendencies of Political Marketing

Consumers are rmly at the centre of marketing models (Keith, 1960). Once consumer demands have been identied (which assumes that preferences are expressed, identiable and able to be accommodated), they are fed back into the product offering and, as noted above, the product is rened accordingly. In politics, this is evidenced in the political marketing literature though the extensive use of opinion research to inform the construction of the political product (Lees-Marshment, 2001). This is generally viewed as a relatively straightforward process. And this is where our second critique of management marketing in politics lies.Within the literature there are many claims that marketing makes politicians accountable and responsive to voters demands (Harrop, 1990; Kotler and Kotler, 1999; Lees-Marshment, 2001; OCass, 1996; Scammell, 1995). As Scammell (1999, p.738) puts it, marketing may actually democratise politics by making parties more responsive to voters wishes and by contributing to the design of more voter-friendly communications. In short, the normative bias of sympathetic scholars is not only that following a marketing template is essential for electoral success but that political marketing, with political parties following consumer demands, is a good thing for democracy (Lilleker and LeesMarshment, 2005; with apologies to Sellar and Yeatman, 1930). This assumption needs to be challenged. The empirical evidence in the majority of Western democracies shows declining electoral turnout and an increasing lack of trust in politicians and the very processes of politics (Hay,
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2007). Arguably, marketing has failed to provide answers to the problem of mobilising the electorate and may be in large part responsible for increasing public cynicism about the motives of politicians. If politicians really do regard voters as some of the political marketing literature implies as relatively easily manipulated actors, uninterested in the minutiae of policy and lacking deep political beliefs then it is unsurprising that many voters are being turned off by politics. The increasing volatility of electorates, with partisan attachments being weakened in many democracies, has also been presented as a problem that marketing can help solve by introducing new ways of connecting with disaffected voters for example, building brand rather than partisan loyalties. However, the claims made in political marketing for the democratic benets of marketing lack both theoretical sophistication and empirical support (Savigny, 2008). We contend that the simplistic assumption of voters simply feeding back into the product, as stage three of the basic marketing model details, neglects a far greater complexity. Parties regularly gather data about voter preferences, using methods such as national opinion polling and consumer proling from data companies such as Mosaic. More narrowly, they also use focus groups to establish public attitudes both to policy proposals and to the party as a whole, as with New Labours polling and election guru Philip Goulds extensive use of focus groups in the run-up to the 1997 election. But there are a number of fallacies in the assumption that the use of focus groups is good for democracy, as when Gould asserts that they enable politicians to directly hear the voters voices (Gould, 1998, p. 326). As has been argued elsewhere (Savigny, 2007), parties employing marketing strategies seem to be extraordinarily selective in their use of such voter feedback. Goulds search for what Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman wanted indicates an essential truth: that New Labours reliance on focus groups to deliver the electorates message challenges the normative claims to democracy made for political marketing methods because it is only the views of those key voters that matter (Savigny, 2007, p. 122). In 1997, Labour had identied 90 key target seats. By 2001 there were no key seats only key voters (Seyd, 2001, p. 54) and by 2005 only a tiny minority of the electorate Patrick Wintour (2005) says 2 per cent were considered strategically signicant by Labour. Such stratied electioneering devalues the role of voters who are permanently aligned to a political party ( Wring, 2005, p. 179) and undermines assertions that the voter as consumer is at the centre of political marketing approaches. So claims for the responsiveness to public opinion of political marketing methods have to be treated with scepticism. Labours rapid ideological move rightwards following Blairs accession was largely based on the views of swing voters: such a development undermines the very ideal of liberal democracy (Savigny, 2007, p. 134). Not only did Goulds interventionist approach inhibit some opinions being expressed in focus group sessions, but also carefully selected focus groups mean a small and unrepresentative sample of the electorate become paramount, thereby weakening notions of democratic responsiveness and accountability. As noted, Labours campaign in 2005 continued the narrow focus on a very small and closely targeted section of the electorate, adding weight to claims that the use of marketing is challenging democratic ideals (Savigny, 2005, p. 21). In addition, Stephen Coleman argues that the use of focus groups means that market-oriented parties are
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populist in that they are feeding popular prejudices in return for votes and power (Coleman, 2007, p. 181). Political marketing has also been accused of subverting democracys ideal of an engaged and politically active citizen, although the idea of the citizen consumer (Lilleker and Scullion, 2008; Scammell, 2003; Schudson, 2006) addresses some of the criticisms. Lees-Marshment argues that parties should not treat voters solely as consumers, but as both consumers and citizens; however, it is difcult to accuse even New Labour of not at least paying lip service to this. The primacy in marketing approaches of winning ofce by meeting the needs of a few key voters at almost any cost (including ditching key beliefs) does not describe Labours actions even at the height of its pre-1997 marketing blitz. This is despite Peter Mandelsons assertion in 1990 that Labour was prepared to abandon any policy for electoral expediency (see Temple, 2000, p. 304), and notwithstanding the partys abandonment of Clause Four.Whether for show or not, Labours electoral messages were cleverly designed to indicate a commitment both to change and to its historical roots; the partys traditional values still had to be integrated into a manifesto aimed at attracting back those key swing voters without jeopardising its core supporters.Tough on crime, yes, but also, in line with Labours history, tough on the causes of crime. The relationship between politicians and voters is more complex than the marketing models acknowledge and the preferences of traditional voters, interest groups, other political leaders and, as argued, the media, must be taken into consideration. The reciprocity referred to in the management marketing models reects the need for responsiveness to voter opinion research, but while market-oriented parties may tailor policies according to opinion research and focus group prejudices, they ignore other actors at their peril. For example, the ideology of their core supporters needs to be considered and may inhibit adapting policy to attract voters. The nature of the political system is also a major factor. Proportional representation systems make it less imperative for ideologically committed parties such as the Greens and Communists to tailor their product to ckle oating voters. Market-oriented parties are not a logical or natural outcome in many political systems. The continuing strength of partisan differences in the USA highlights the enduring importance of ideology and the media will tend to highlight attempts to ditch ideological baggage for electoral purposes.

The Media: Countering the Anti-Democratic Tendencies of Political Marketing?

While marketing models highlight the importance of feedback, the point we have been seeking to make is that parties listen to the public only when it is in their interests to do so. Here, the media can play a role in rectifying the deciencies of democratic accountability more broadly within these models. Crucially, incorporating a more active media into political marketing models can also highlight the medias potential as correctives for the anti-democratic tendencies of modern political marketing and campaigning tactics but perhaps only if those tendencies are rst acknowledged in the models and not glossed over or presented as enhancing democracy. As already noted, in liberal
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theories of the media, the media stand to strengthen democracy not only by providing a check and balance on executive power but also by representing the interests of their public. As Steven Barnett and Ivor Gaber (2001) have noted (while accepting this may be the medias most complex and problematic function), the best political journalism can act as a tribune of the people, representing the views of a multitude rather than those of the swing voter or the carefully selected focus group participant to politicians. Martin Conboy notes, for example, that the much-maligned red-top newspapers represent contemporary Britain to a carefully targeted popular audience and couch their relationship with their readers within an intimacy which connects them to the everyday life of their readers and which seems to say: we know who you are and what makes you tick (Conboy, 2006, pp. 110). Admittedly, their own interests may mean the media misrepresenting or only partially representing their constituency on some issues, but they do this at their peril Piers Morgans Daily Mirror discovered the circulation costs of failing to represent the views of readers (Temple, 2008, pp. 18990). The Daily Mail represents a powerful constituency of voters and Tony Blair was careful both to court and avoid offending it. The power of broadsheet commentators may be minimal but there is little doubt that politicians believe such columnists are inuential (Barnett and Gaber, 2001). Newspaper sales may be declining but they retain considerable political power and represent signicant constituencies of public opinion and representing those views can balance the wish of parties to concentrate on that narrow segment of malleable public opinion represented by swing voters in marginal constituencies. The media can also convey accurate, intelligible and comprehensive knowledge (Barnett and Gaber, 2001, p. 12) to allow citizens to formulate their own responses to political proposals, acting as a counterbalance to the barrage of political spin and marketing. In addition, the broadcast media in particular, through well-researched and entertaining output such as Michael Cockerells BBC programme Trust Me, Im A Politician (2003), have given the public greater knowledge of the processes of political marketing. An awareness of the ways political actors seek to sell themselves is a contributor to public resistance to party messages. The media can also act as a forum for debate in which citizens can share their views: arguably, new technology and the rise in user-generated content on media websites has allowed public opinion on issues to be expressed (for better or worse) much more quickly and to greater effect on some issues, to which the BBC can attest, for example in the public response to the Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand affair. How far such opinion is representative or spontaneous is debatable but it is clearly a potentially powerful inuence on organisational decision making. Despite the many criticisms they receive for example, for their alleged dumbing down of political communication and contribution to voter cynicism the media have helped to demystify the political process and empower citizens. In the process they have helped contribute to a more media-literate public which is also far more semiologically sophisticated than previous generations in decoding media messages (Kuhn, 2007, p. 264). The public is more questioning and more knowledgeable, and the new media environment has given it an easily accessible platform for its views which can act as a counter to a political partys wish to focus on just a few crucial voters.
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Conclusion
Clearly, while the liberal theory claim concerning both the ability and willingness of powerful and partial media organisations to represent sections of the electorate is highly contestable (see Temple, 2008, pp. 188205), what we are arguing here is: (a) that the media are political actors in their own right and management-based models of the political marketing process need to acknowledge this; and (b) that given the underlying liberal pluralist assumptions of these management marketing models, then the functions of the media in democracies also need to be incorporated. In this sense, the media, from a liberal pluralist perspective, can provide a theoretical corrective to the democratic deciencies of political marketing and also operate as a mechanism through which the anti-democratic tendencies of political marketing in both theory and practice may be reected upon. As Coleman notes (2007, p. 185), models of political marketing such as the three-stage model offered by Lilleker and Lees-Marshment (2005) fail to address the most signicant normative question around their analysis; that is, the extent to which democratic parties should see their role as being to satisfy consumer needs rather than supply a programme for cohesive citizenship. Elsewhere it has been argued that rather than enhancing democracy, marketing politics means that something has been lost (Savigny, 2008). At the core of political marketing studies is a belief in the democracy-enhancing capability of marketing. However, the emphasis on key voters and short-term goals means that the public sphere is less informed, inhibiting the ability of the polity to hold political elites to account, and that decisions are no longer taken in the interests of society as a whole. The modelling and prescribing of political behaviour from models and assumptions founded in product marketing is, in effect, subordinating politics to marketing. And when everyone is marketing himself or herself, changing beliefs or policies at the drop of a hat in order to attract votes, politics risks descending into populism which has the potential to alienate the electorate further. We would argue that the models fail to delineate the process of politics in most systems. Parties cannot just ditch long-held ideological beliefs in order to meet perceived (and possibly short-term) swings in public opinion. And even commercial organisations have to acknowledge their historical strengths and be careful not to misread consumer feedback the debacle of New Coke, when changes alienated traditional users and led to a massive public relations disaster for Coca Cola, demonstrates this ( Whyte, 1991). No party can (certainly not yet, anyway) be a true market-oriented party. In effect, while political parties must respond to changing times, they must respect their roots if they are to prosper in a mediated political environment. In any model of political marketing, the media must be more than one of the many factors impacting on the likelihood of parties or candidates becoming market oriented. Given the undeniable centrality of modern journalism to the successful functioning of democratic societies (Lewis and Wahl-Jorgensen, 2005, p. 99) and when the interaction between parties and consumers is mediated by actors arguably more powerful than either politicians or voters, those actors need to be central to any convincing model of political behaviour. And yet political marketing models continue to represent both the media and its audiences as
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essentially passive recipients of carefully crafted marketing messages and imply that all you need to do is get the marketing right and you will win. But a commercial market is not a zero-sum game, as British electoral politics tends to be: Heinz may outsell its rivals, but Crosse & Blackwell and other competitors can still make a good living being the second, third or even tenth-best bean seller. Come second in a British general election and your power tends to be minimal, at best. Political parties can win the campaign, as common consent believes Labour did in 1987, and yet end up powerless, their policies an unsold stack of cans of beans. As MORIs Bob Worcester wrote after that election, for Labour to win in the future would take more than being packaged like soap powder or dog food (in Beckett, 1998). Political marketing approaches have yet to address the weaknesses inherent in using marketing models to assess political behaviour and they have yet to include a satisfactory account of the agential role of the media in their explanations. (Accepted: 30 April 2009) About the Authors
Heather Savigny is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of East Anglia. She is co-convenor of the Political Studies Associations Media and Politics Specialist Group. Her publications have appeared in The British Journal of Politics & International Relations and the Journal of Political Marketing, and she is author of The Problem of Political Marketing (Continuum, 2008). Heather Savigny, School of Political Social and International Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK; email: h.savigny@uea.ac.uk Mick Temple is Professor of Journalism and Politics at Staffordshire University. He is the elected Chair of the Association for Journalism Education and co-convenor of the Political Studies Associations Media and Politics Specialist Group. His single-authored books include How Britain Works: From Ideology to Output Politics (Macmillan, 2000), Blair (Haus, 2006) and The British Press (Open University Press, 2008). Mick Temple, Faculty of Arts, Media and Design, Staffordshire University, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DE, UK; email: m.temple@staffs.ac.uk

Note
We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.

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