Tom Asacker

Hi Tom. I have been involved in political campaigns in my country and I think the reason why those tactics still work is quite of another sort.

People generally need to engage to a political option when elections come. If they are not engaged, they will not vote or will not feel involved in the political process.

One strong reason to engage a political program is to feel energized by it, to feel that it has a compelling movement behind it, that it awakens the hearts of the people.

I say this beacuse as organizer, it is citizens who have told me they "don't feel energized" or "feel a special atmosphere" depending on the campaign.

Politics are so bureaucratized today that many citizens feel no difference between one election process and the next.

I think this explains the need of heightening the emotional tone by political parties.

Tom, Felix, I disagree with you both on some points. But first things first: I’ve been thinking about exactly this topic, and analogies between political marketing, propaganda and contemporary branding a lot recently and my research came back with some surprising answers which I hope you’ll appreciate for the sake of diversity.

In answer to your questions Tom, the 'tactic' used in the photo works because political marketing relies very much on the old fundamentals of advertising such as frequency, reach and propositions ‘Labour isn’t working’ ‘It’s the economy stupid’ ‘You’re either with us or against us’ and so on and so forth. You call this 'Positioning' I believe. I’d suggest that it’s more of an umbrella strategy than a tactic but let’s not quibble over words at the moment, I’m guessing there lot so opportunity for that unless the U.S. is still a country of free speech.

Modern brands are trying to figure out the (cough) 'rules of engagement' and the dimensions thereof across an ever increasingly disparate, media and marketing communications topography. Political marketing hasn't got a hope in hell of achieving; let's call it 'Progressive engagement', and which I believe you’ve called 'X’. However, I'd rather call it 'Progressive engagement' than just plain 'Engagement' because Political advertising, is, even if you hate it very engaging. OK it's loud, polemical, repetitive, hypocritical and odious but nobody could say that if a person matching those qualities grabbed you by the lapels and proceeded to yell at you, that you didn’t notice them or have a clue what they were talking about. It's just engaging at different psychological levels. This is important to why I’m commenting so allow me to explain. Politics and political life are held by the people of all countries across the developed world as being in really really bad shape but it’s even worse than that, it’s not just a misconception or a general feeling of the great unwashed vis a vis the intellectual elite or the chattering classes. Politics actually is in really really bad shape, and has been since around after the Second world war when the former Military General and then President Eisenhower, witnessed the emergence of, and warned against, the Industrial Military Complex. In short Tom, Politics under no circumstances can be considered as having anything close to an authentic voice. Authenticity is a central tenet of engagement, progressive or otherwise. In fact Politics is as far from authenticity as you could hope to wish for. If any profession has adopted the double speak of Orwellian tautological manipulation, its politics. From ‘that depends on what the definition of is, is’ to ‘collateral damage’ and I need crank up the drama on my next point because it’s central to the ‘positioning’ versus ‘progressive engagement’ model, so here goes. Another gravity defying new-speak whipping boy, is the refusal to define precisely what torture and torture techniques are so that the enemy ‘don’t know our non torture techniques’ because of either option a) or b)

a) We’re actually torturing them and between you and I and a nudge and a wink, we’re ok with that, and so am I, but don’t let them Terror Terror Terror people think they can torture any captured troops from our Coalition of the Willing while we’re chilling with the Kool-Aid in the Green Zone . Oh no, double standards R most definitely not us.
b) We’ve got these new techniques that are really groovy and scare the living hell out of ‘non combatants’ and terrorists. But in the name of Allah or whatever God you choose to freak out on we really can’t tell you right now because everyone knows that open source torturing techniques never work out in real life.

I could mention ‘it was never about staying the course’ or ‘mission accomplished’ or ‘I never had sexual relations with that woman’ but I think you get my point. This is a non partisan marketing communications hypothesis. Politics uses the blunt and interruptive model of repetition, frequency and proposition because most effective political campaigning works effectively, not from the loved-up, collaborative, consumer generated, here’s my Youtube-political-two-cents- worth-upload, but from a completely different background – Fear. Nothing makes you change your awkward and unwelcome psychographics or consumer behaviour than fear.

It all started with the British Ministry of Information circa the advent of the First World War who set the tone for political advertising at the beginning of the last century. Prior to the heinous crime of sending ‘Lions led by donkeys’ to the flying-burger-patty carnage of trench warfare, most British citizens had no truck with the Germans. That’s right, in order to whip up the our young lads into pledges of dying on the field of glorious battle, the British Ministry of Information with all those new fangled mass media equipment at their disposal managed to whip up support for a war that very few people today can say exactly why. They called that the Great War. So Hitler was really dead jealous of these new techniques called propaganda which thrive on ‘fear’ so when the time was right the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag building and then blamed it on the communists to whip up his side, and ever since, politicians who took notes on these things while ducking snipers, have been using fear to whip up domestic support for everything from those Pinko Commie bastards in Vietnam threaten our way of life to (my words) There is no way on earth that the military industrial complex with companies like Halliburton and their shareholders like the V.P would ever knowingly bring forward a sensational execution judgement just prior to the day before the elections, to remind the people of what it’s all about because my dear friends without fear. You have nothing to be afraid of, which gets us Zero votes.

Incidentally that ‘Sales or Income Tax’ issue is as I understand it, about where they are going to find the money to pay for increased education spending in New Hampshire right? Given that Habeas Corpus took a walk a couple of weeks ago, arguing over who gets taxed or invoiced over what and where, seems a wee bit head in the sand. Lastly the only comparable communications model I can think of for fear is stuff like anti smoking and drink driving campaigns, you know; the ones where a big old iterative and scary message works best.

Thought of this post--particularly the Galbraith quote--upon reading Tom Friedman's assessment today of our choices for how to proceed in Iraq: The solutions we can pick are either tolerable or awful.