PSB Publications

What marketing can learn from politics
By Joel Levy - December, 2007

This article was published in Market Leader’s Dec 2007 edition and is reproduced here with their kind permission.

Drawing lessons from the political campaign trail, Joel Levy argues that companies can learn much from the ‘political model’. Both circumstances require a different style of research in the hands of key strategists to help them shape the competitive landscape, rather than simply respond to it.

IN TODAY’S WORLD, companies increasingly find themselves under similar pressures and scrutiny as politicians. To win in these circumstances, political strategists developed a new kind of research to drive a new kind of campaign. Companies that can adopt and adapt this ‘political model’ are likely to be those that win in the future.

Philip Gould, one of the key architects of the communications revolution that led to New Labour, and someone I worked with for over five years and through two general elections, always described politics as a river. I think it’s a useful metaphor. Like a river, the political landscape is always changing in response to an unrelenting flow. In politics that flow is driven by an accumulation of many forces – most of which are pretty familiar to us now:

�� globalisation, the internet and the heightened interconnectedness and interdependence that this has created
�� the rapid pace of change in society, technology and therefore in the competitive environment
�� shifting social values, which among many other things has helped to fuel …
�� the decline in deference and loyalty to political parties, and a parallel rise in mistrust and cynicism towards politicians
�� and, finally, the new glare and scrutiny of a media driven by a relentless 24/7 news cycle and what both Tony Blair and Jeremy Paxman have described as the increasing pressure to place impact before accuracy.

The key point in this is that political campaigning is about winning on a battleground of flux. To win in this environment you have to do more than just respond to the changing flow. You need to shape it. Every day. In politics you need to lead the agenda by framing the policies, events, issues and occasional crises. It is said that ‘The party that can frame the election will control the campaign’.

Framing the election means determining, however you can, what voters see as the key issues in a way that plays to your strengths and your opponents’ weaknesses. The frame needs to limit the opportunity for your opponents to determine the election agenda, and reduce the chance of you getting caught out on their territory.

In 1979 the Conservatives famously framed their campaign on the ‘Winter of Discontent’, successfully ensuring that the argument kept coming back to Labour’s key weakness and a traditional Tory strength – the economy and economic competence.

Eighteen years later, Labour turned the tables by framing the campaign on the same key issues, this time using ‘Black Wednesday’, when the government of John Major and Kenneth Clarke first put interest rates up to 15% and were then forced to exit the ERM with their tails between their legs.

Today, the main political parties are constantly campaigning. It’s not about winning an election every five years any more, but winning what Dick Morris spoke of as the ‘daily majority’. It is now the politics of the permanent campaign in which you never fight the last battle.

Business today is looking like the ‘river of politics’

If you look at business, it seems more like the river of politics every day. Not only are the competition and its products constantly changing, but the landscape against which you compete is always shifting.

No longer can you rely on old loyalties from consumers. Like voters who increasingly vote on the issues rather than on ideology, consumers are instinctively less loyal to brands, more promiscuous and sceptical.

And it’s not only politicians that have a problem with trust. Growing concerns about health, the environment, ethical supply chains, the downfall of Enron and other high-profile examples of corporate cynicism, Michael Moore’s movies, and books such as Naomi Klein’s No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, have helped to fuel consumers’ growing mistrust and scepticism of companies and brands.

In this context the ability to anticipate and respond to change rapidly is essential. And yet it seems that so much of the research in use by companies today is still stuck in the old fmcg world of the 1970s and 1980s: big, over-complicated reports, lots of ‘interesting’ findings, but few clear and credible action points. Research that leaves you and the client wondering what to do next.

The new model of political research

In the 1990s, in politics we discovered that the old-style research simply wasn’t fit for purpose. And so we ditched it and invented a new kind, which has been evolving ever since. Bill Clinton and the Democrats first used it in the US, and later Tony Blair and New Labour in the 1997 election.

More recently some companies have started to use it: global companies to reposition themselves in response to increasing regulatory pressure, others in their response to the new responsibility agenda, or simply in good old fashioned brand battles where pre-empting your competition provides the key to winning and keeping new and existing customers. So what does this new research look like? It has three main features. It’s fast. It’s about winning. And it’s about making consistent communications a reality within an organisation.

The critical importance of speed

It’s been said that ‘A lie can run round the world before the truth can get its boots on.’ In politics, when something breaks – whether it’s fuel protests, mad cow disease, a damaging attack by the opposition, or deciding not to call an election after all – it is critical to get on the right side of the argument fast.

In these circumstances, overnight reporting on focus groups and flash polls that provide a fast, clear and robust read is critical. This gives guidance on the actions and messages that will be most effective to help frame the argument, or neutralise attacks. In politics this speed of delivery is par for the course.

Delivering this kind of research requires a different kind of researcher and company. The researcher needs to be like the best internal pollsters on a political campaign: not just good researchers but excellent strategists.

In many ways, I think this person requires the core skills of the best advertising planners.

The company needs to have the systems, the technology and the culture to deliver high-quality strategic and tactical recommendations under intense time pressure.

As the competitive pressures on companies continue to intensify, I believe many more will discover and demand this mix of agility and speed.

Focus on winning

A focus on winning is the second feature of this new research. In elections the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s winner takes all. One day you can be in Downing Street with all the powers of office and the next on the pavement with none. For a politician, there is nowhere more wretched than being out of power.

I think this exchange between Lord Young and Norman Tebbit (taken from the former’s memoirs) during the 1987 election puts it pretty succinctly:

‘Norman, listen to me, we’re about to lose this f***ing election! You’re going to go, I’m going to go, the whole thing is going to go. It’s your future and my future and all our futures, and the future of the flaming country.’

The fall from power for a brand is usually less sudden or dramatic than it is for a political party. But looked at up close, you can see that the downfall for both is usually the result of an accumulation of many smaller defeats along the way.

As they say in politics, if you’re not winning, you’re losing. The best political research is therefore very focused on winning. This is most apparent in the following respects.

1. Its emphasis on winning the swing voters.
2. Its simulation of the political knockabout and debate to reveal and develop campaign messages
3. Using polls to play out your messaging in advance against the competition.

1. Swing is king

In politics swing is king. Why? As Mark Penn recently pointed out in his book, Microtrends, because it takes two new voters to get back the share of votes you lose when someone swings to the other side. And it takes three new voters to increase your share following the defection of one voter to the other side.

So in 95% of elections the swings are the core battleground. And that’s why the political research model puts so much emphasis on identifying who they are and working out the messages that will get their vote.

In business, particularly in many mature markets where market growth is at best incremental and the real battle is for share, swings are king, too. Or at least they should be. Funny then how brand messaging, and the research it is based on, tends so seldom to be focused on this fact.

2. The power of presearch

The second feature of the political model’s focus on winning is the way it replicates the cut and thrust of the campaign trail to flush out the messages that will win the swings.

A good example of this is ‘Combat Groups’ – an approach based on conflict groups, but that focuses on taking the debate to the swings. The idea is to pit loyal supporters of one party or brand against loyal supporters of another.

The most persuasive loyalists from each side debate head to head in front of a group of swing voters. Following the debate, the swings weigh up the arguments of both sides and cast their votes. This approach helps identify the range of messages and language that have real traction in shifting the swings.

Politics is like chess. To win, it helps if you can play out various scenarios before you make your move. This helps to explain why war-gaming messages have become a central component of the political model. These are messaging polls that play out the effects of the arguments, attacks and counterattacks that are part of every campaign.

War gaming is used to determine in advance what our first move should be, how the competition is likely to react and what our response to this should be. This is what you might call presearch: unlike conventional research, it looks forward, not back. It anticipates the future, and helps you shape it.

It is this kind of presearch that helped Labour stay on the right side of the immigration issue in the 2005 election. When the Conservatives read in conventional polling that immigration was an important issue they played it hard with innuendo advertising based around the slogan ‘Are you thinking what we’re thinking?’

The Conservative approach bore all the hallmarks of not properly playing out in advance how damaging the combination of their own tone and the Labour response could be. Labour was able to highlight their immigration proposals, protecting their position and helping make the Tories look mean-spirited. In the end, Labour was able to stop the attack pretty much in its tracks.

3. Organising for communications consistency

This brings me to the third and final feature of this new political research model: how it can drive message consistency and in the process elevate the place of the communications professionals within the organisation.

At the heart of a well-run political campaign is the war room. It’s where you find all the key players in the campaign, from the leader and policy people to advertising and polling.

It functions around the clock and it depends on a regular feed of intelligence from the media, organisers in the field and the lead pollster, who plays a central role in strategy and putting together the war book. This is the campaign battle plan, showing:

�� the state of the political landscape
�� the key strengths and weaknesses of each side
�� who we want to speak to
�� the strategy, messaging themes and lines
�� as well as the Campaign Grid detailing the campaign messaging and events on a daily basis.

In developing these plans, the research that I have outlined is key. Flash polls, targeting of the swings, combat groups, message war gaming, give all the key players in the war room the opportunity to test in advance the offensive and defensive strategies going forward.

The research is ultimately used to help produce one sheet of paper detailing the campaign narrative, message themes and individual lines to be used by everyone in the campaign.

In a good campaign, the organisational structure and the use of research in this way helps drive buy-in for the strategy and consistent messaging across the whole of the organisation. Communications in the corporate world are rarely so efficient, generally because the advertising, PR and sales people are usually in silos. Another disadvantage is that marketing directors are usually using oldstyle research, rather than politicalstyle presearch.

No wonder, then, that CEOs and their boards too often see little reason to heed their advice or to make the organisational changes needed to give marketing greater control over the totality of company communications.

This new world needs a new approach. And for brands that want to win in this new world, the political model and its presearch might just provide the best view of the road ahead.

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