Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bruce Newman
Introduction
The Hershey Foods Corporation sells chocolate bars, hershey kisses, Reeses candy, and other items as well. The marketing of these products is handled by a department that includes sales representatives, marketing researchers, advertising specialists, direct marketing experts, and others. The marketing department is responsible for developing marketing plans for each of the existing products and brands as well as developing new products and brands. People buy Hershey products because they have an excellent reputation in the marketplace as a consistently good tasting candy. The Hershey Corporation brings in approximately $1.8 billion dollars in annual sales.2 The president of the United States also sells something, ideas! More importantly, the president is selling himself to the American people, and trying to convince them to follow his lead. Each of his ideas is formulated into programs that he must market to the American people and to Congress. For each of his major initiatives, a president enlists the help of several marketing professionals to convince Americans to support his causes. Just as previous presidents have used the expertise of marketing experts, so has Bill Clinton. He had the help of a professional marketing researcher (called a pollster in politics) to help him choose the themes and policies he would stress in his sales pitch; advertising specialists to direct the development of commercials; direct marketing experts to help him get his message targeted to specic audiences; and of course his sales representatives, his wife Hillary, and the members of his Cabinet who y around the country making speeches and appearing on the nightly news programs to push the presidents latest agenda. No, Bill Clinton didnt rack up billions of dollars in annual sales, but instead tries to move public opinion, the currency in politics.
655
consultants and hundreds of spin-doctors (slang for consultants) representing numerous interest groups who are affected by the outcome of legislation. Marketing technology has altered the way business is conducted in industry after industry, from sports to politics. Herein lies the challenge to the president, and to our society in general, and that is the ability to control and manage the use and impact of marketing technology on politics. It is not possible to win in politics today without a market orientation, either during a campaign or after entering ofce.
Anticipating Needs
Success in marketing goes beyond the simple identication of the needs of consumers, but also includes the ability to forecast what those needs will be in the future. Marketers must not only be able to measure and identify the needs and wants of their customers, but they must also have a vision which enables them
3 For a good review of the role of marketing as a campaign tool, see B.I.Newman, The Marketing of the President: Political Marketing as Campaign Strategy, Sage, 1994; B.I.Newman & J.N.Sheth, A Theory of Political Choice Behaviour, Praeger, 1987; B.I.Newman & J.N.Sheth, Political Marketing: Readings and Annotated Bibliography, American Marketing Association, 1985.
656
Bruce Newman
to anticipate what those needs will be. Whether it is a candidate, issue or product, marketing is a critical component to understanding what voters, citizens or consumers want and need. Needs may be driven by both emotion and rationality, resulting in people desiring the same product or candidate for different reasons. Marketing is a needs assessment approach to product innovation which relies on information from the marketplace to help guide research and development. This means that the most successful products are molded around the ndings from needs assessment studies. Automobiles and gym shoes are just a few examples of product categories which follow a marketing orientation. The development of new car models and innovative gym shoes such as pumps were based on this type of research. Just as a smart marketer makes sure that there is a need for his product before he distributes it around the country, so must a politician be sure that voters are concerned with an issue before he decides to advocate it. Whether it is the budget battle or sending American troops into Bosnia, President Clinton, like presidents before him, has relied on opinion polls to help steer his policy decisions with an eye towards how the public will respond to these initiatives. What separates this president from his predecessors is his adroitness in shifting positions as the mood of the country changes. Who would have thought that the Republican revolution started in November 1994, would have begun to be declared dead one year later by political analysts? The inuence on public opinion by a whole host of actors, including the interest groups, the media, foreign leaders and others makes it very difcult to anticipate how the needs of the nation will change. This is unlike the commercial marketplace, where companies have a greater control over how their product is perceived by the public. There is of course a ne line between the actions of the President being interpreted as an anticipation or response to the needs of the electorate. The Presidents detractors have accused him of following the polls, and wafing on issues. However, a leader today must re-position his ideas and policies to respond to a marketplace whose anticipations are constantly changing, something the President has done very well.
Creating an Image
Politics relies extensively on imagery today. Presidents rely on image manipulation to keep their approval ratings up in the polls, the ultimate measure of effective leadership in todays society. So what exactly is an image? Technically speaking, it is the visual picture which appears in a consumers mind at the mention of a brand or company name. Small changes in the physical characteristics of a brand can change the image of commonplace products. For example, when Procter & Gamble introduced Cheer with a blue color, consumers associated the color with a cleaner and more effective detergent. However, the key ingredient in inuencing a consumers brand image is product positioning. Marketers try to position their brands to meet the needs of dened customer segments. They do so by developing a product concept that can communicate the desired benets through advertising and by utilizing media that will reach the target segment. When Schweppes rst came onto the market in America, it could have been positioned as a soft drink or as a mixer. Positioning it as a mixer guided the promotional direction. The use of Commander Whitehead as the dapper Englishman referring to Schweppervescence produced
657
an image of prestige for a product category that might otherwise be regarded as commonplace.4 Even when competing products and their accompanying services look the same to buyers, buyers may perceive a difference in the company or brand image. One of the best examples is Marlboro cigarettes. While most cigarette brands taste essentially the same and are sold the same way, the only way to account for Marlboros extraordinary worldwide market share (around 30%) is that Marlboros macho cowboy image has struck a responsive chord with most of the cigarette smoking public. Marlboro has been given not just an image, but also a personality.5 In politics, an image is created through the use of visual impressions that are communicated by the Presidents physical presence, media appearances, and experiences and record as a political leader as that information is integrated in the minds of citizens. Early on in his tenure, President Clinton was constantly photographed in the media in his athletic shorts, jogging, and then stopping at McDonalds to eat a sandwich. Images such as these did not help the President to convey an image of statesmanship and authority. Questions raised in electronic hall meetings (a promotional staple during the campaign) after Clinton entered the White House proved to be embarrassing at times, again chipping away at the image of the President. All of these activities were soon replaced with a more selective set of photo opportunities for the press, and usually only when foreign leaders visited the President at the White House. Along with this change in public image came the start of a gradual but steady rise in the polls for the President.
658
Bruce Newman
he tries to determine which issues to try and get passed through Congress. There are different interest groups, each with their own set of needs that a president has to attempt to satisfy. It is impossible to satisfy every interest groups needs, so careful marketing research is conducted to determine which issues are of more importance to each interest group. Clintons choice of pushing for a bill to protect gays in the military at the start of his presidency was a strange decision, as it alienated so many different interest groups that he had to retreat from the promise he made on that issue during the campaign. It is easy enough to use research to identify the needs of different groups of citizens during a campaign, but a very different challenge to get them passed through Congress after entering the White House.
659
an image of himself as an outsider who would bring about change in Washington through a series of innovative economic programs. From a competitive point of view, he was contending with an incumbent president who was sitting on an economy in recession, and not getting results from his actions. Naturally, Clinton capitalized on his strengths and took advantage of his competitors weaknesses. The opinion polls reect an electorate in America today that is not at all satised with the leadership of either of the political parties, and the President has responded to this by positioning himself as a leader who will answer to no one but the American people. This political orientation has been referred to as a triangulation positioning strategy, pitting the President at the apex of a triangle, and the two political parties at the bottom corners. This is in direct response to the polls that suggest the President has a better chance of getting re-elected if he is perceived to be charting his own course independent of the political parties. It also positions the President closer to the center of the political spectrum, a position that his administration anticipates will be the place where the most votes will be won in 1996.
660
Bruce Newman
661
were put into place during Rooseveltls time. Voters do, however, pay close attention to what politicians actually do. Promises may work to get a politician elected, but delivering is the essential ingredient for continued success in ofce, as is evident from the dramatic fall in the polls the Republicans witnessed one year after their contract was proposed to the American people. In what would become one of the latest technological advances put forth in the 1994 campaign, Republicans used a technique that was mastered in the movie, The Terminator, called morng (where Arnold Schwartenager is turned into The Terminator over a 5 to 10 second period, making it seem as if Arnold and The Terminator are the same person). Republican candidates capitalized on Clintons ebb in the polls, and morfed their Democratic opponents into Bill Clinton. The impact of this use of imagery was felt at the polls by the Democrats, who went down in defeat in what many termed the Republican Revolution of 1994. The mid-term election of 1994 was labeled by Ralph Nader as a turning point in the dissolution of the two-party system.7 Nader pointed out that it is increasingly difcult to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans, and that they in fact represent the same party with different names. Nader has even been known to make fun of the two parties on occasion by referring to them as the Demopublicans or Republocrats. Nothing could be closer to the truth as we witness leaders in both parties disregard party label in pursuit of the hottest issues that will sell in the political marketplace.
662
Bruce Newman
involvement than the Democrats do. Gore would like to see universal access to the computer system through schools and libraries. On the other hand, Gingrich has talked about giving tax breaks to help poor kids get lap-top computers. We as voters are so wired in to our federal government that interest groups have the power to change legislation in a matter of days. With lobbyists sitting in the balconies of Congress, listening to debate on issues sensitive to their interest groups, all it takes is one call on a cellular telephone to initiate a letter-writing campaign to ood a Congressmans off ice with enough mail to stop the politician dead in his tracks. The information technology industry has spawned many cottage industries, with companies entering left and right. One such company is Bonner and Associates which can send out 10,000 faxes overnight to a Congressmans ofce. When Mr. Bonner is hired by his client, he isolates the swing votes in Congress, then does a scan of the corresponding districts, and identies citizens whose proles suggest that they are sympathetic with the cause. Then, after a critical committee hearing in Congress, Mr. Bonners employees call the sympathetic citizens, explain what is happening, and through the magic of telecommunications, put them directly in touch with the Congressman whose vote is critical to blockage or passage of the bill in question. The charge is $350-$500 per call.9 The dilemma politicians face today is that through the information technology that exists, citizens hear every utterance of a politician, and nothing can be said without the possibility of it getting into the news the next day. Furthermore, through the advent of talk radio and constant polling, politicians always know what is on the minds of the electorate. If they dont respond to the opinions of Rush Limbaugh and the polls, theyre thrown out of ofce. On the other hand, if they are perceived to be too responsive, and thus seen as pandering (as Bill Clinton has been so labeled), theyre punished for being reactionary. The number of Americans who trust our leaders has plummeted from 70% in the 1960s. to around 20% today.10 It could be a reaction to the alienation fostered by the talk radio movement. Or it might be a reaction to politicians who refuse to stand up and go against the polls if they feel strongly about an issue. But most likely it is in response to a political system that has lost control of what it is doing, and reective of a loss of power of the political party. Political parties no longer carry the clout they used to. The absence of patronage armies and strong partisan leadership, as well as the advent of sophisticated, costly media strategies in campaigns, has lowered the value of the political party endorsement. In some cases, being a part of a slate assembled by party leaders could be a liability for candidates. This is the result of the mood of the electorate, and at the core of our problem as a democracy. Ever since the procedural reforms of the mid 1970s, and the expansion of the primary system, investigative reporters have been expected to inspect the candidates platforms for the voters, giving the media a more powerful role in politics in the U.S. The fact is that it remains much easier to get a negative message through the media than a positive one through. This is a situation which will continue to make it very difcult for presidents to be successful in the White House. Voters want people who arent political, even though most government pro9 Time, January 23, 1995, p.18. 10 Time, January 23, 1995, p.21.
663
cesses are political. What is alarming about todays high-tech political system is the swiftness that change is taking place. Change has become a way of life for voters. Voters are alienated and fed up with the way our two-party system operates.
Conclusion
There is no doubt that modern marketing practices have increased voter cynicism if we look at the dramatic increase in the percentage of voters who distrust politicians. As the campaigns become more slick and sophisticated, voters realize that it is increasingly more difcult to separate fact from ction. It is difcult to discern whether politicians are doing their jobs because they really care about the welfare of American citizens, or to make money. The $4.5 million book deal that Newt Gingrich struck soon after becoming Speaker of the House is evidence of this problem. Let us not forget that in marketing, perception is often the reality! Citizens can only become apathetic and pull out of the political process by not voting if they feel as if they are being manipulated. Simply witness the extremely low turnout of democratic voters in the midterm elections to understand what it means to have an apathetic electorate. Voters lose faith in a politician when his promises are forgotten after he enters ofce. Finally, can a candidate or politician even think of campaigning or governing without the use of marketing? Unfortunately, the answer is no, and dictates why something drastic needs to be done about the direction information technology is driving our political system in. Clearly the most successful corporations in the world are customer driven, such as MacDonalds, General Electric, Toyota, etc. This same focus, or what is called a market orientation in marketing has been adopted by politicians, and is here to stay.