At the turn of the 21st century, we see how political marketing has grown in support of political campaigns. The means of obtaining political information have changed since the emergence of technology and the electronic revolution. The transition from newspapers and magazines to Twitter and Facebook has been remarkable.

Twitter is the dominating forum for political parties, politicians, and journalists to express ideas, shape public opinion, and exchange points of view in today’s world. It is now easier to reach out to the masses for political support in order to energize voters. People were not as active in sharing their views, ideas, and opinions in the 1980s as they are now.

Advertisement

Currently, everyone has easy access to large volumes of information. This provides political advertising with enormously accessible leverage to appeal to voters as well as influence their opinions through various communication strategies. It is one of the core functions of political marketers to alter behaviors and attitudes of voters for the selection of a desired political party through the electoral process.

Therefore, in order to make sure that people vote for a specific party, political advertisers use different types of advertising – issue-based and image based advertising, etc. Issue-based advertisements tend to highlight social issues that the political party promises to resolve.

This includes policy matters, matters involving public good and societal values. It shows the party in power resolving critical issues and striving for the public good. Image-based advertisements tend to focus on the personality traits and aura of political people in order to charm people into thinking how virtuous and humane they are and on that basis to choose them.

Opposition parties advertise differently. They may market those elements of the government in power that are controversial.

They point out shortcomings in a ruling party in order to persuade people that they are unfit to lead the government because they cannot properly develop and carry out policy decisions.

The major concern of political marketing has become the platform from where the voters get their information. As more people have abandoned conventional media, they tend to acquire information via digital platforms.

Digital platforms can be misused into campaigning for the desired political party in order to ensure voter support and public cooperation. Moreover, social media is widely used for pre-election impression building.

Candidates create images or videos to display a positive image of the political party or its leader. This helps in shaping the behavior of voters. Consequently, political marketing creates a space on digital media where political parties, candidates, and government officials can lead the opinion of masses into desired direction in order to generate desired results.

Another factor to consider is the budget allotted to political advertisements for self-promotion. As a result, the political party with more assets may better market its cause.

The media, being the frontline source, easily takes a stance to criticize one party while fully supporting another. As a result, because people prefer to go to digital media for any and all guidance rather than learning facts and history through their own investigation, this prejudiced media dramatically influences public opinion.

Furthermore, the media is never neutral in its coverage of political campaigns. Current political models widely used by political parties follow the three-stage marketing model introduced by Robert Keith in the 1960s. The first stage is identifying public expectations in order to create a very selective, refined product.

The second stage introduces the product to the public in order to highlight the public’s reducing issues. The third and final stage concentrates the refined product to meet customer demand, which leads to the capture of desired votes for the candidate when the media becomes successful in changing voter behaviour.

To summarize, political marketing has grown into a significant tool for influencing voter behaviour. The ways of obtaining political information and shaping behaviour have altered as a result of open access to digital platforms.

Furthermore, the strategies utilized by advertisers to promote their preferred political party ultimately results in the success of their preferred political party. In short, political marketing has become more sophisticated and intelligent than ever before.

The irony is that despite having free access to all information, the public is drawn into the tactical attempts of political advertisers to achieve desired political outcomes.

(The writer is a Research Scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi pursuing research in consumer neuroscience.)