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JOURNAL OF
MARKETING
MANAGEMENT
Political Relationship Marketing:
some macro/micro thoughts
Stephan C. Henneberg, Manchester Business School, UK*
Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy, Queen Mary, School of Business and
Management, UK
Abstract Relationship Marketing, and more broadly the placement of networks
at the heart of marketing theory and practice, has sometimes been seen
by practitioners and theorists alike as a universal panacea. Yet, given the
contemporary phenomenon of rapid decline in direct participation in politics,
with tumbling party membership rosters, the relevance of relationship marketing
and its capacity to re-energise democratic politics has intuitive plausibility. We
therefore seek to theorise about relationship marketing in a political context,
arguing that the development of a theoretical construct and rigorous conceptual
frameworks would invigorate current research on political marketing. We
distinguish in particular two approaches - a micro view dealing with specific
entity and exchange-oriented aspects, while a macro-perspective will look at
the interplay with the wider political structures and the overall political system.
Beyond this, the authors are also acutely conscious of the applied perspective
and explore various methods by which the concept could be operationalised and
grounded in practice. In this article we therefore seek to remedy the literature’s
remarkable neglect of relationship marketing in politics. There is a crisis in
democracy when people perceive politics as something which happens to them
rather than something over which they exert ownership, and such a crisis was
created in part by the substitution of political marketing tools for face to face
contact. These authors thus suggest how political marketing potentially can help
solve a dilemma it has helped create.
Keywords Political marketing, Relationship marketing, Campaign examples
*Correspondence details and biographies for the authors are located at the end of the article.
JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT, 2009, Vol. 25, No. 1-2, pp. 5-29
ISSN0267-257X print /ISSN1472-1376 online © Westburn Publishers Ltd.
doi: 10.1362/026725709X410016
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INTRODUCTION
Marketing theory concerns itself more and more with network phenomena (Achrol
1997; Achrol and Kotler 1999) as part of a new developing dominant logic of
marketing (Vargo and Lusch 2004). Within a network context, exchange is not seen
as happening between two entities, e.g. organisations, but as being embedded in
complex interaction structures (Möller and Halinen 1999; Ford et al. 2003). The
dictum of “no business is an island” (Håkansson and Snehota 1990, p. 187) provides
a new perspective for the underlying exchange theory of marketing (Alderson
1957; Bagozzi 1975). The shift in emphasis in marketing, one that is away from
a product-based, instrumental or dyadic view, brought with it also an emphasis
on “relationships” and “co-creation of value” within service-centred models of
exchange; thereby qualifying a purely transaction-based approach towards marketing
(Arndt 1979; Grönroos 1994a; Bolton et al. 2004; Vargo and Lusch 2004). Based
on this, “relationship marketing” has become an important and new phenomenon in
marketing theory in the last decades; not only in business-to-business settings but also
for business-to-consumer interactions (Bagozzi 1995).
However, relationship marketing and the theoretical and conceptual implications
on social and non-profit marketing is still somewhat under-explored (Hastings 2003).
This article aims at addressing this shortcoming, specifically for the area of political
marketing. It has been argued that a relationship marketing approach in the political
sphere is under-researched but is potentially fruitful from an applied as well as a
theoretical perspective (Bannon 2003). Furthermore, claims have been made about
a beneficial connection between what we will call “political relationship marketing”
and the development and legitimacy of political actors (as in parties, candidates,
single-interest groups, governments) but also for the overall liberal party system itself
(O’Shaughnessy 1990; Newman 1999a). The aim of this article is therefore to provide
an argument for the development of a rigorous conceptual framework of political
relationship marketing by discussing existing, as well as potential, applications of
relationship marketing within the political sphere. Historical and contemporary
examples will be used to exemplify our points, and so combine discussion of theory
and practice. We will distinguish two perspectives on political relationship marketing:
a micro view will deal with specific entity and exchange-oriented aspects of political
relationship marketing, while a macro-perspective will look at the interplay with the
wider political structures and the overall political system.
In the following, we will firstly introduce the area of political marketing as well
as underlying concepts, and its relationship with marketing theory. Building on a
discussion of relational concepts in mainstream marketing we will, secondly, relate
conceptually relationship marketing with a political marketing framework. Thirdly,
some macro-issues of political relationship marketing are outlined, especially
with regard to its link with liberal democracy and the need to achieve democratic
legitimacy. We will then exemplify micro-issues of political relationship marketing by
providing brief vignettes on “primordial”, “precursors” and “current practices” of its
use. Following on from this, we will close with a discussion of political relationship
marketing as a “panacea” of politics; as well as further implications and research
suggestions.
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
POLITICAL MARKETING AND MARKETING THEORY: UNEASY
PARTNERS
Political marketing is now established as a new research discipline (Scammell 1999;
Newman 2002; O’Shaughnessy 2002). Its gestation process was driven primarily
through the widespread use of marketing tools and concepts by political actors:
mainly, political parties and candidates but also governments, single-issue groups
and lobbying institutions (O’Shaughnessy 1990; Newman 1999a; Lees-Marshment
2001b). Since the beginning of the 1990s academic studies have emerged that looked
at either marketing management activities in the political sphere, or alternatively the
analysis of political activities through the use of marketing concepts and theories
(Reid 1988; Harrop 1990; O’Shaughnessy 1990; Smith and Saunders 1990).1 Within
a decade, political marketing has achieved a foothold on the academic stage through
dedicated annual conferences, the Journal of Political Marketing (Newman 2002)
and a specialist handbook (Newman 1999b); as well as numerous descriptive and
prescriptive studies published in marketing and political science journals and books.
However, political marketing as a discipline is still, in Bauman’s description of an
intellectual arriviste, “…an aspiring resident without a residence permit” (Bauman
1997, p. 72). Still more troublesome is the fact that clear and innovative lines of
research are not emerging (Scammell 1999). It has therefore been noted that research
in political marketing is currently somewhat “static” and therefore unable to provide a
rationale for being granted Bauman’s ‘residence permit’ for the academic community
(Henneberg 2004).
Political marketing is essentially an interdisciplinary subject of marketing and
political science: taking the explanandum from politics and the explanans from
marketing theory (Hunt 1983). As such, political marketing management, i.e. the
use of marketing strategies, concepts, and tools in the political exchange (LeesMarshment 2001a), is part of the “wider” definition and domain of marketing,
which claims non-economic exchanges as an equivalent research object to that of the
traditional, i.e. economic ones (Arndt 1982). Therefore, a “market” (in the sense of
an abstract concept which enhances the understanding and representation of a given
phenomenon) can be postulated where social exchanges take place (Alderson 1957;
Egan 1999). Mainstream marketing theory perceives the facilitation and management
of (social and economic) exchanges as its main research object (Bagozzi 1975; Hunt
1976; Bagozzi 1978; Easton and Araujo 1994; Day and Montgomery 1999), a view
mirrored in marketing textbooks (Jobber 2001; Kotler 2003), and thus the inclusion
of political marketing management under the umbrella of the marketing concept
(Newman 1994).
However, while the application of marketing theory to non-profit explananda
seems generally accepted (after some fierce academic debate in the 1970s and 80s), at
least in marketing circles (Kotler and Levy 1969; Kotler 1972; Enis 1973; Hunt 1976,
1982; Arndt 1982; Baines and Egan 2001; Levy 2002)2, the explanans of political
marketing constitutes the main focus of this article. Marketing provides a very rich
theoretical underpinning of different perspectives and exploratory lenses (Peattie and
Peattie 2003) which can be understood as anchored in different axiomatic assumptions
1
Earlier studies, e.g. Mauser (1980), Newman and Sheth (1985) or Thorelli (1964) were
isolated examples of the research interests of individuals.
2
For a discussion of arguments against an inclusion of non-economic exchanges within the
marketing concept see Luck (1969; 1974).
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and paradigms (Kuhn 1962). Epistemologically, (neo-) positivist studies compete with
relativist and post-modern/post-structuralist research. Furthermore, a rich tradition
of critical realist research exists in marketing (Hunt 1991; O’Shaughnessy, J. 1992;
Easton 2002; Hunt 2003). With regard to the employed methodologies, one can
distinguish several different “schools of marketing”, following the classification
made by Sheth, Gardner and Garrett (1988). This dynamic and “competitive”
environment of marketing theory building, incorporating the traditional marketing
mix perspective, the managerial perspective, as well as functional analyses (but also
relational and network-oriented concepts), provides multiple (often competing,
sometimes incommensurable) research facets (Pels and Saren 2005). During its
historical development, “mainstream” marketing has shifted emphasis frequently.
This multiplicity within marketing theory can be contrasted with the paucity and static
nature of political marketing theory, exemplified by the dominance of instrumental
and marketing mix-related concepts (in their pure or modified form) (Lloyd 2003);
and arguably to the detriment of other marketing theories. This implies that research
in political marketing does not incorporate new concepts and developments in its
“mother-discipline”. Thus, political marketing still shows an adherence to concepts
which are coming more and more under scrutiny in mainstream marketing, where
new perspectives are developed that advance marketing theory into new domains
(Grönroos 1994a; Grönroos 1994b).
RELATIONSHIP MARKETING:
A NEW HORIZON FOR POLITICAL MARKETING?
This shortcoming of political marketing and its reliance on (arguably) obsolete
marketing concepts needs to be overcome. This article explores the implications of
one of the alternative concepts for political marketing, that of relational marketing
management. We posit that political marketing theory has neglected issues around
relationship management so far (Bannon 2003). Theoretical studies on political
marketing are still crowded-out by more applied and comparative studies about
political campaigns and the deployment of marketing tools and instruments in politics
(Scammell 1999). As such, this mirrors “conventional” marketing theory, i.e. the
managerial and the instrumental school of the marketing mix and the 4Ps, developed
out of a heritage of micro-economics (Arndt 1983; O’Malley and Patterson 1998),
which have dominated the academic output (i.e. they form the “normal” science
stage) (Kuhn 1962). Having been developed in the 1960s, based on the “blending
of instrument” approach of Culliton (1948), the marketing mix, usually exemplified
through McCarthy’s (1960) 4Ps and formalised by Borden (1964), lives (unhappily)
within the marketing concept of customer-orientation (O’Malley and Patterson 1998),
and is arguably incommensurable with traditional exchange theory (Easton and
Araujo 1994)3. Nevertheless, the marketing mix lends itself perfectly to managerial
application (Grönroos 1994a; Grönroos 1994b), albeit without fulfilling essential
elements of a reliable marketing concept or categorisation scheme (van Watershoot
3
Further developments of the 4P approach, culminating in evermore inflated lists of possible
marketing instruments, e.g. the 5P and 7P approaches of services marketing, belong to
the same “school” and therefore suffer from the same problems as their methodological
antecedents (O’Malley and Patterson 1998)
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
and van der Bulte, 1992). Thus, although never totally convincing from an axiomatic
points of view, the managerial school, too, has come under considerable criticism
for practical reasons since the 1980s; a criticism that gained greater importance in
the 1990s. Its reliance on simple and “pedagogic” concepts, its “misunderstanding”
or reinterpretations of some original sources (e.g. the “blending” metaphor of
instruments), and its intellectual sterility were inevitably exposed (van Watershoot
and van der Bulte 1992; Grönroos 1994a). Implicitly, theories emanating from this
school perceive the exchange as characterised by “transactions”. The episodic and
disjointed character of these exchanges is further pronounced by a characterisation
of active sellers and passive customers, locked in antagonistic utility-maximising
goal-functions; by point-in-time related value considerations; by dyadic exchanges
between direct actants. In business-to-business as well as in business-to-consumer
marketing all these elements are representative of only a small number of marketing
management activities and exchange situations (Bagozzi 1995; Parvatiyar and Sheth
2001; Ford et al. 2003). More and more exchange happens within and between
networks of actors with indirect and direct interactions being relevant. Customers
become heavily involved in the exchange process and even in the value-creation
process in co-operative and collaborative ways (Vargo and Lusch 2004), and
boundaries between actants blur: not only do the entities merge but transactions are
perpetuated in time, forming relationships of stable interaction patterns. Activities
are dependent on relationships beyond the grasp of those directly involved, cooperation and collaboration become more important than antagonistic perspectives.
Many of these characteristics formed the main argument against the hitherto leading
paradigm of marketing theory. Consequently, “schools” and methodologies that
tackle these issues, the so-called “relational marketing theories”, developed a greater
importance and influence in marketing theory development, especially as part of a
new dominant logic of marketing (Vargo and Lusch 2004). These are based on what
Arndt (1979) described as “domesticated” market configurations. The main theories
derive from the International Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) Group (Anderson et
al. 1994; Naude and Turnbull 1998; Ford 2001; Ford et al. 2003; Leek et al. 2003),
the Nordic School of Services Marketing (Gummesson 1996), Customer Relationship
Marketing (CRM) (Grönroos 1994a; Morgan and Hunt 1994; Sheth and Parvatiyar
2000; Parvatiyar and Sheth 2001; Sirdeshmukh et al. 2002) and Contemporary
Marketing Practice (CMP) (Coviello et al. 1997; Coviello et al. 2002). All built the
main conceptual foundation of relational marketing.
Therefore, marketing theory, if one wants to use Kuhn’s terminology, seems to
be in the phase of the leading paradigm losing power in sufficiently explaining the
explanandum, while other competing paradigms develop further (i.e. a “paradigm
competition” forms) (Kuhn 1962). This might indicate a future “paradigm crisis”
or even a “paradigm shift” in marketing theory…or it might not (Pels and Saren
2005). What is important for the purpose of our argument is the fact that there exists
considerable conceptual and methodological diversity within and outside the leading
paradigm in marketing theory which makes the discipline vibrant (and just a little
chaotic) (Arndt 1985).
Exploring theory building in political marketing, a different picture emerges. Not
surprisingly, academic interest in political marketing takes the leading paradigms
of its mother-discipline for the purpose of theory building (Dermody and Scullion
2001; Peattie and Peattie 2003) and mirrors the (reductionism) approaches of
marketing textbooks (Gummesson 2002). Therefore, analyses of political marketing
instruments (e.g. Newman 1994; Butler and Collins 1996; 1999; Baines 1999; Kotler
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and Kotler 1999; Lees-Marshment 2001a, 2001b, 2003; Smith and Hirst 2001;
Sparrow and Turner 2001; Baines et al. 2002; Kaid 2002; Wring 2002; Lloyd 2003)
and subsequent managerial applications of them (e.g. Kavanagh 1995; Butler and
Collins 1996; Scammell 1996; Newman 1999a, 2001a, 2001b; O’Cass 2001; Smith
2001; Wring 2001; Lees-Marshment and Bartle 2002) dominate the literature. This is
fostered by the fact that political marketing management practice leads the way. The
momentum of the research agenda is set by new (managerial) developments in the
political market place (Baines et al. 2003). This also means that there is considerably
more “description” than “prescription” going on in the literature (Henneberg 2004).
While this seems to be normal for any young research discipline, it may cause its
development to slow down and stagnate at some point. Our presupposition is that
political marketing is presently at this point. Currently, research on political marketing
does not, in the majority, utilise state-of-the-art marketing theory and the underlying
multiplicity of schools that have become prominent in marketing. Furthermore,
political marketing theory has also neglected to incorporate major developments as
part of the leading (managerial) paradigm, e.g. market-orientation (Jaworski and Kohli
1993; Kohli and Jaworski 1990; Lafferty and Hult 2001; for an exception in political
marketing research see O’Cass 2001; Ormrod 2005) and resource-based theories of
the firm (Day 1992; Hunt and Lambe 2000; Webster 2000). Therefore, it is time for
political marketing to embrace a “second wave of research” fuelled by the adoption
of new marketing theory perspectives, as a new impetus to gain further momentum
in this field of research (in line with general recommendation for the whole discipline
of marketing) (Gummesson 2002). Relational marketing is the theory that we have
chosen because of the importance of relationships within social exchanges. Although
political marketing was initially “transaction-oriented” (O’Shaughnessy 1990), it has
recently been suggested that relationship marketing will help research and analyse
the phenomenon of political marketing (Scammell 1999; Bannon 2003; Dean and
Croft 2001). This is in line with Dermody and Scullion’s (2001) reinterpretation
of political marketing as a process of signification and representation and provides
a new metaphorical device for analysis (Arndt 1985; Cornelissen 2002). The next
section will explore which concepts of relational marketing are available in marketing
theory.
TOWARDS POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP MARKETING: POLITICAL
MARKETING AND RELATIONSHIP MARKETING
Building long-term trust and commitment-based relationships (Morgan and Hunt
1994), or alternatively interimistic ones (Lambe et al. 2000) is an interesting
proposition for political actors. Political parties and candidates, and also voters and
citizens, perceive political exchanges not merely as isolated transactions (like the
episode of actually voting for a party or a candidate) but as an enduring social process
of interactivity within which they live their daily lives (Sniderman et al. 1993).
This implies that understanding the character and the mutuality of the political
exchange processes, as stated by Kotler and Kotler (1999), is central for a marketing
orientation of political actors. Analogously with traditional economic activity, it
has been argued that we are witnessing today in politics a movement away from a
focus on instrumental exchange- in the narrow sense of transaction- and toward a
focus on building value-laden relationships and marketing networks (O’Shaughnessy
2005). Such value and trust-based “social contracts” between citizens and political
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
institutions can be fostered by political marketing activities, because “[political]
marketing can be used as a tool in a constructive manner if it follows the marketing
concepts, which presupposes that there is an implicit service contract between the
candidate and the voter” (Newman 1994, p. 151).
It should be stated that the literature on political relationship marketing is virtually
non-existent (Scammell 1999). A first study by Dean and Croft (2001) uses a relational
stakeholder model (Christopher et al. 1991) and adapts it to the political sphere.
While this provides a better understanding of the complexities of political exchange
processes and hints at a wider framing of political market definitions, the “essence”
of these relationships is not discussed. Therefore, we posit that there exists a specific
and distinct relational concept in political marketing management which we term
Political Relationship Marketing (PRM). While as yet we do not have any conceptual
foundation of PRM, we have nevertheless many examples of political marketing
management which follows the relationship marketing premise. It is these examples,
historical and contemporary, that we will use to build an initial understanding of the
construct of Political Relationship Marketing in order to facilitate future conceptual
development.
MACRO/MICRO PERSPECTIVES OF POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP
MARKETING
This section follows on with a review of PRM in practice: seeking to explain, firstly,
why PRM in theory might impact and transform politics (the macro perspective),
and, secondly, reviews both current practice, and earlier history, where anticipatory
elements of PRM have been visible (the micro perspective). For this purpose, examples
especially from the UK 2005 General Election as well as the US 2004 Presidential
Election will be used. We will also outline the current failings in political attempts to
bring in elements of PRM. Broadly speaking we review practice which falls far short
of a holistic PRM approach, but in some ways foreshadows it. We further make the
“case” for PRM at the theoretic and applied level with an outline of key contributions
it could make. We then assess the potential transforming contribution that PRM
could achieve if applied seriously, with numerous tactical and strategic ideas to give
the concept political flesh and blood. The suggestion is that Political Relationship
Marketing is intrinsically a valuable offering, potentially reducing the alienation of
voters and replacing crude manipulation with something that is less superficial.
Macro-issues of Political Relationship Marketing
At one level the proposition of PRM is commonsensical. We are more likely to
get “repeat purchases” if we conceptualise business as a search for customers (i.e.
interaction partners) rather than sales: that is the conventional wisdom (one that is
more recited than actually applied) and is bound up with ideas of trust and intimacy
(Morgan and Hunt 1994). The argument for the plausibility of PRM lay first in
the notion of added value. Key elements in PRM are seen as the fulfilment of a
promise (something of course political parties find notoriously difficult) and, related
to this, trust. The party or political candidate (in the following, we will focus mainly
on these political actors) must establish (i.e. earn) an image of trustworthiness as
a base for Political Relationship Marketing. In the case of politics the short-term,
electoral orientation of politicians makes this issue even more acute. They are more
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likely to think in terms of a short term electoral bribe, like a tax cut, than seeking
lasting relationships with either voters, subgroups of some broader electorate or even
members of their own party.
In transaction marketing the price sensitivity of customers is often high: the
electoral equivalent of price competition is an economic bribe or an emotional hot
topic such as the immigration scare of the type perpetuated by the Tories in the UK
General Election of 2005. In contrast:
A firm pursuing a relationship marketing strategy, on the other hand, has created more
value for its customers than that which is provided by the core product alone. Such
a firm develops over time more and tighter ties with its customers…… Relationship
Marketing makes customers less price sensitive
(Grönroos 1994a, p.11).
Grönroos claims organisations have the opportunity to provide customers with various
kinds of added value: technological, information, knowledge, social etc. Similarly in
politics the PRM approach offers social involvement, chances to contribute to policy
and to be heard, souvenirs and images, participation in public events and spectacles,
confidential insider information, etc. These attractions of Political Relationship
Marketing are not merely intuitive but well grounded in psychology (Sniderman et al.
1993). We are, for example, cognitive misers; so that the creation of less ephemeral
relationships becomes highly desirable:
Research has shown that consumers process information rapidly and protect their
memories from being inundated with unwanted information by erecting perceptual
barriers. One study has revealed that, on a typical day, approximately 550 advertisements
are directed at consumers, yet they pay attention to less than 1% of these
(de Chernatony 1993, p.71).
(P)RM does of course exploit the latent potential of the reciprocity principle, where
a small gift or favour done for someone elicits a disproportionate response; loyalty
being part of this (O’Shaughnessy and O’Shaughnessy 2004).
Furthermore, in politics, marginal differences matter. A commercial market
can sustain many successes but in cumulative electoral exchanges there is only
one victor: a zero-sum game. Modern elections are about small numbers of swing
voters concentrated in certain (geographical or socio-demographical) areas. Some
10 per cent of UK voters in 2005 did not know which way they would vote late on
in the campaign; and one third of those who did were still not absolutely certain
(O’Shaughnessy 2006). It could therefore be argued that the election lay in the hands
of just one million undecided voters resident in just 100 constituencies. It follows that
seeking a relationship with this group, investing all that time over all those years, is
the only insurance political actors have against their fickle political “consumerism”.
Only 4 per cent of the electorate are the swing voters who decide electoral outcomes
(Jackson 2005). In the US, Bush himself only won by a small margin (twice) (Thomas
et al. 2004). Seen in this light, the promise of PRM is significant. It may make a
marginal difference, but elections are all about margins.
Another issue of PRM relates to the nature of the exchange offering. Too often
political parties have appealed exclusively to economic criteria and therefore created
political consumers and not new loyalists; and allegiance is merely borrowed when
people will desert the party for a more convincing monetary bribe. PRM has to be
therefore, about values as well as issues. Values may be peripheral to the ethos of
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
Relationship Marketing in the commercial world, but it can be argued that they
are the essence of Political Relationship Marketing. Elections seem to be becoming
more value oriented. The last US Presidential Election in 2004, though planned as
a campaign structured round political and personality themes, became in the end a
referendum on values (see for example The Washington Post 8th November 2004;
The Guardian 5th November 2004; The Economist 2nd October 2004). Bush
demonstrated a strong belief system and clear value judgements; in fact a Manichean
world view of absolute right and wrong. Critical to this election was the role of the
non-negotiable absolutes; the symbolisation aspects of values and, in particular, the
unarticulated fear that “that which tolerates all teaches nothing”. Values are the great
mobilising force of modern politics, and liberal intellectuals ignore their salience in
voter decision processes at their peril (O’Shaughnessy 2004). Notions of a rational
voter lead merely to a leasehold allegiance and not the creation of converts: “it’s
the economy stupid” was a winning formula for Clinton. But the 2004 Presidential
Election exposed the limitations of this nostrum. The catastrophe of the Iraq war with
its stream of morbid news, or the fact that Bush had presided over the highest rate of
increase in joblessness in seventy years, were not the most persuasive arguments for
American voters in 2004.
One aspect of this value orientation is the party’s or a candidate’s private
countenance, alternately seducing and frightening sub-segments of the political
market (Britt 2005). It is this kind of intimacy that a PRM approach would certainly
seek to embody. The Internet (which is still exempt from candidate-endorsement
rules in most countries) could be employed as the “private” voice, its caustic imagery
excised from “public” (mainstream) media. Contrast George Bush’s initial suburbansafe, airbrushed 2004 campaign television advertising with this video on his campaign
website:
A woman, sitting at a keyboard, seeks information about Senator John Kerry on the
Internet. She unearths all sorts of scandalizing titbits. ‘More special interest money
than any other senator. How much?’ she says. The answer flashes on the screen:
$640,000. ‘Ooh, for what?’ she says, typing out ‘Paybacks?’ and then reading aloud from
the screen, she says, ‘Millions from executives at HMO’s, telecoms, drug companies’.
(quoted in O’Shaughnessy 2004, p.168)
This leaves the question of what is the potential contribution of PRM were it
completely and comprehensively implemented as a governing ideology of political
organisations? We argue that this contribution would in fact be significant- and
even revolutionary in the political sphere. Much of course depends on the quality
and imagination of the implementation. But, properly done, PRM could stabilise a
party’s core support, reduce the number of swing voters, i.e. the volatility of the party
system, make politics less overtly cynical and manipulative and deepen democracy
by increasing the plebiscitary element (Scammell 1999). The main thrust of an PRM
approach would be greater involvement: voters consulted more often (and not only
for election purposes), party members turned into stakeholders, a better informed
“political nation” and one that could, moreover, be actively solicited for its ideas on
policy as well as have its responses to new political suggestions intelligently regarded.
An energised, aware public that could self-mobilise would become relevant to
governing elites both as actor and reactor. This could include elements of involvement
in the policy delivery and implementation process as well, an often forgotten aspect
of the political marketing exchange as part of governmental political marketing.
The bonds of intimacy and solidarity that Political Relationship Marketing aspires
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to bring about can be created in several ways: such as giving people confidential
information and the kind of detail they would seldom get from the press. Such
solidarity can also be achieved by fostering a sense of political ownership: technology
promises a move to greater internal party democracy via opinion polling in key
referenda, and this could even be replicated for the masses. The plebiscitary internalparty democracy can be extended towards the mass public, but it is its potential for
motivating party members that is critical. They can vote for policies and participate
in policy forums; on-line electronic debates could be held (Hudson 2005) . This need
for involvement and influence is a commonly felt want: a society where we “bowl
alone” will always have a latent appetite for that social intimacy that the post-modern
social order lacks (Bauman 2000). This possibility of intimate dialogue with voters
is historically unique. Politicians might have communicated very effectively with
constituents in the past -the many studies of congressmen’s excessive use of franking
privileges testify to this (www.heritage.org/Research/GovernmentReform/BG1003.
cfm)- but it was principally one way.
Political Relationship Marketing allied to e-technology can broaden not only a
party’s membership base, but also the range of creative and policy inputs feeding into
it. There are great possibilities here; for example to test-market a party’s advertising
or policy suggestions. It can invite in the creative talents of the people – for example
in the construct of a party slogan. The response could be stronger than anticipated:
thus www.moveon.org, a cyber-pressure group, sponsored an anti-Bush advertising
contest and found 1500 commercials on its website: the two comparing Bush to Hitler
received national publicity (O’Shaughnessy 2004). Not all innovations work: in one
episode, the Republican internet invitation to make a pro-Bush poster was swamped
with anti-Bush invective (www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S.Presidential_
election/:2C2004:_Republican_Campaign_Ads#Spoof_Ads is a website that gives
examples of fictitious Republican ads). PRM could also ignite the campaign of a
self-created outside candidate or even a minority party, even in two-party systems.
Thus the Democratic nomination bid of Howard Dean pioneered political uses
of the internet in what appeared at times to be a proximate PRM campaign: the
key to the Howard Dean campaign was the new forms of direct involvement and
participation that the internet permitted (Rosenthal 2003). The campaign was the
inverse of a hierarchical approach, seeking volunteers and donations from website
conversations: ‘Blog for America’ permitted visitors to post any message they wanted
and received 40,000 hits per day; and by November 2003 there were half-a-million
e-mail addresses on the Dean data-base, while the campaign had raised $5 million
in the last days of September alone; his campaign in Tennessee was “so virtual ... it
does not even appear to have a telephone” (quoted in O’Shaughnessy 2004, p. 170).
Clearly such a campaign anticipates a Political Relationship Marketing approach even
though it does not technically constitute one. The claim is that the public are keen to
express their views once requested to do so. One UK Member of Parliament has done
just that- the Liberal Democrat Steve Webb, who gained the Channel 4 politics award
for best use of new technology to encourage political participation: apparently 3,000
constituents joined dialogue with him by text and email; and the response had been
“hugely positive”, with one constituent apparently claiming it was the “nearest thing
to democracy” he had encountered (O’Shaughnessy 2006).
Micro-issues of Political Relationship Marketing
In this section we seek to exemplify and examine the application, actual and potential,
of Political Relationship Marketing to politics to-day and in the past. Parties do not,
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
of course, tend to conceptualise any of the things they do as Political Relationship
Marketing. Nevertheless some of what they do anticipates the PRM approach, and
some of what they do parodies it. There appears to be no authentic, comprehensive
application or general managerial concept of RM extant in politics, i.e. the integration
of tactics within a strategy that derives from intellectual recognition or ideological
acceptance.
In both the US and the UK the expenditures on targeted marketing, a precursor
of relational marketing activities, relative to other forms of political marketing, are
now colossal (see for example The Economist 9th April 2005; Sunday Times 19th
April 2005; New York Times 4th October 2004). None of this can really be said to
amount to Political Relationship Marketing but the tactical understanding behind
it will inevitably drive parties in a PRM direction in time, since it embodies the
recognition that electoral success lies less in proselytising some undifferentiated mass
electorate than in the depth of engagement with specific target groups within that
mass. There has, for example, been massive growth in the direct mail operation
(Britt 2005). The UK Tories sent prime-ministerial candidate Michael Howard’s
pre-recorded messages via telephone. Newsletters were targeted via voter interest.
Much more was going on below the radar screen of the national campaign including
the manufacture of DVDs for marginal seats which featured local celebration and
dynamic, caring Labour Party candidates. Labour intended to communicate directly
to its own disaffected supporters seven times in the later stages of the 2005 general
election. Seats with majorities of fewer than 5000 voters (i.e. so-called “marginal”
seats) received personalised letters and phone calls from the party’s call centre in
Gosforth, Tyneside (O’Shaughessy 2006). Meanwhile the Conservative election
machine was in the process of contacting 2.5 million key voters. In the US Presidential
Elections the targeting of political advertising was parsimonious and precise. There
were half a million airings in only 3-6 states (60 per cent of voters were excluded from
any exposure to political television commercials) (Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy
2007).
The Political Relationship Marketing approaches seek the intimacy of the targeted
medium with its associated accents of emotion and non-compromise: echoes of this
were thus seen in the US election cycle (nomination/presidential cycle 2003-2004),
where candidates sought to speak to a select coterie by mail or internet in a more
uncompromising voice as a way of securing their loyalty. With PRM, this kind of
private voice, more emotionally partisan, more overtly sectarian, can be taken much
further, i.e. to a micro-targeted, and therefore highly differentiated, level. A dual
private and public strategy was pursued by US primary candidates. Parties’ ability
to target has now been much refined. Political agents mix-in data on consumer and
credit history purchases with geo-demographic software, telephone canvassing and
electoral rolls to “target” political suspects and turn them into prospects (‘Voter
Vault’, a software programme, helped Republicans win crucial swing states such as
Ohio in the US). The theory is that a habitual drinker of Coors beer (for example)
is more likely to vote Republican (Elliott 2005). Such political database marketing
ideally lends itself to the logical extension- Political Relationship Marketing. But it is
illustrative of the intellectual poverty of the parties’ approach and of their generally
jejune conception of Political Relationship Marketing that nobody seems yet to be
talking about this.
There is also a history and a prehistory. Parties orchestrate, but they have also
in the past carried out tactical manoeuvres which might preview PRM and would
indeed be the kinds of measures the PRM approach would author and sponsor. But
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these do not add up collectively to a PRM approach, and sometimes they seem a
caricature of it. Frequently political operatives get it wrong: the idea of having a
deep relationship with voters may be applied clumsily, or backfires through crude
tactical implementation. In fact, there is a long prehistory to the “technology” of
PRM practice, particularly targeted direct mail: an early user was the right-wing
polemicist Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s (Warren 1996). The Republican
Party re-invented it in the post-Watergate era when it was compelled to seek a mass
participation membership, and since then political direct mail has become a feature
of political life in the United States. There are of course other historical precedents
such as the handwritten address as with Margaret Bonfield in 1924; or the 1950 Tory
personalised letter to opinion formers; by 1981 Britain’s new SDP party was creating
computer generated direct mail while the first recorded use of email for campaigning
was by Jerry Brown in 1993 (Jackson 2005).
But a “direct-mail relationship” is not the only primordial form of Political
Relationship Marketing. In earlier times some parties perceived the importance of
creating relationships with key cadres by mixing politics with entertainment and
socialisation. In his book Selling God, Moore (1994) concluded that the popularity
of religion in that supermarket of churches, the United States, from an early age had
much to do with faith entrepreneurs who understood this need to mix entertainment
with religion. Similarly with the political parties, for citizens cannot accept undiluted
religion nor can they accept undiluted politics. Early examples would include the
Conservatives’ Primrose League, established in the late 19th century in memory
of Benjamin Disraeli, and more recently the young Conservatives of the 1950s
(http://www.conservatives.com/pdf/party=archive.pdf). This was ostensibly a mass
political movement which catered to its members’ social needs; entertainment took
centre stage, and this academically much neglected organisation became known as a
“marriage bureau”.
Emergent tactics of Political Relationship Marketing were thus discernible: but
they remained ideas without an ideology. By the 1980s some US politicians exhausted
multimedia in the attempt to create a permanent relationship with others that would
pay dividend at election time. In the words of one Congressman:
I am not only a news maker, but a news man - perhaps the most widely read journalist
in my district. I have a radio show, a television programme, and a news column with a
circulation larger than that of most of the weekly newspapers in my district
(O’Shaughnessy 1990, p. 70).
By the late nineties e-technology had given rise to a new kind of political intensity,
the precursor of Political Relationship Marketing:
campaign contributions can be solicited; policy papers posted for voter inspection;
interactive chat lines established, so that the campaign can respond to questions from
voters; volunteers recruited; candidate schedules publicised; and press releases and
other announcements posted
(Johnson 1997, p. 18).
Other devices such as William Hague’s “town meetings” were also tried to “connect”
with voters, but these were mere tactical ploys, while the Labour model of credit card
participation had the same limitations as single-issue group membership, i.e. nonparticipation and high turnover (Richardson 1995).
The practice is short-term expediency within some general idea of getting “closer”
to the people or “hearing” them or “communicating” to them, such as the Tory
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
mantra “Are you thinking what we’re thinking” in the UK 2005 General Election.
But these moves are seldom more than opportunistic; a concept of achieving greater
intimacy is just another electoral trigger device rather than part of some greater
ideology or strategies that might have informed and directed it. This is illustrated by a
failure even now to take e-technology seriously, or recognise its potential for creating
dialogue rather than monologue with voters. Thus Members of Parliament have
proved backward in their use of e-technology for Political Relationship Marketing
with a mere 4 per cent of Jackson’s (2005) respondents issuing an e-newsletter. Seats
with high internet participation may- this is speculative- be more marginal since their
citizens are more likely to be political consumers rather than inherited party loyalists.
The e-Society claims that fewer than 2 per cent of regular internet surfers have visited
their MPs’ websites in the past year, contrasting with the 40 per cent who have looked
for news or current affairs (Jackson 2005). Jackson comments that Labour in the UK
have the broadest range of activities that e-subscribers can undertake: twenty-four
all told, from watching PEBs to applying for job vacancies. Conservative and Labour
both provide opportunities for commentary on policy documents; an interesting
feature. This represents Political Relationship Marketing in primitive form, but so
much more could be done.
According to one argument, what parties need to do is to develop fast-feedback
facilities, a two-way communication; and also provide facilities to process, assess and
respond to that feedback: “E-newsletters so far have led only to a partial, one-way,
return to direct communication” (Gibson and Römmele 2006). Little is currently
done about this in German on-line politics:
Based on content analysis however, it is clear that local actors will need to develop the
participatory elements of their sites if they want to connect with their constituents and
realise the opportunities they offer for enhancing their local profile.
(Gibson and Römmele 2006).
There is exceptionally good evidence on the lack of an effective dialogue culture
within these party websites, especially regarding central party message control and
normative standardisation across websites (Gibson and Römmele 2006).
We must also seek to explain how the concept of PRM, so pleasing in theory,
could be made more effective in operational practice, i.e. the question of its tactical
application. The answers to this question, which we will now address, are in part a
matter of creativity, and of evolving imaginative ideas to enable the closer realisation
of PRM’s aspiration for a more involved and responsive politics. But partly also it is
a question of understanding what potential technology has, especially e-technology,
to enhance the creation of special relationships between parties, their members and
their broader publics. That such technology is under-exploited is not in doubt. That
it has potentially a transformative effect remains a possibility.
These operational details matter. They are the alchemy via which theory transmutes
into practice, and makes possible the pragmatic realisation of what would otherwise
be an abstract concept. For example Jackson (2005) provides a laundry list of “what
to do” to make e-newsletters more effective, and things to avoid (self- promotion
and puffery, campaign commercials, attachments). These are also the methods that
lead towards a truer realisation of the PRM concept; for example the possession of
a fast feedback facility and its processing. For instance, the SNP emailed members in
2003 to determine opinion (Jackson 2005). This is a very obvious use of the internet
and presents a recognisably achievable ideal of internal party democracy. But such
an event appears almost unique. This also raises possibilities of Political Relationship
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Marketing as the pathway to a better (in the sense of more responsive) form of (party)
democracy. But the content of e-newsletters, Jackson (2005) complains, is poor- a
rehash of press releases, or at best a digest of a range of sources. An e-newsletter
should be specifically created for the publication and embody the merits of topicality
and relevance to the target group, speaking to them in their language, event-driven
and consumer focussed.
Thus for all of this to be effective, PRM needs to begin with a core segmentation
strategy (Smith and Hirst 2001). Without refinement of segmentation the PRM
approach would be unintelligible as such. Its effectiveness is governed by its ability
to target the culture of some subgroup rather than that of some nebulous whole. But
in general the broader targets of a Political Relationship Marketing culture (to call
it a “strategy” is to devalue it) clearly comprise four groups: firstly, the party’s core
supporters and activists, secondly the party’s national members, thirdly, the party’s
loyal voter base and, fourthly voters in general and their various sub-segments.
These are of course different groups with different needs. They all require Political
Relationship Marketing, but not the same relationship strategies. Creative ways must
be sought to motivate and involve the activists, who are the foot soldiers and the
evangelists of any campaign. They must be distinguished- as in the case of the structure
of pressure groups (Richardson 1995) - from a potentially very broad mass of credit
card solicited members, whose function is to give money (and whose loyalty, as New
Labour found, is always tenuous; single issue groups can lose most of their members
in the space of a single year) (Richardson 1995). Incidentally, it is worth recalling that
for Jaques Ellul, the French theoretician of propaganda, membership was essential
for successful persuasion: enlist someone in a cause, get them to perform some task,
and they are the more convinced (Ellul 1973).
Voters in general might also be an important target of PRM: communicated
with by email, invited to US-style electronic town meetings, their opinions solicited
telephonically and electronically. They can be segmented almost infinitely, with each
subgroup sent regular updates, perhaps with the party leader’s voice over the web or
phone, telling the good news about what the party is doing for their specific group
or community. The idea is of more than “instrumental” exchange – it is the notion of
mutual dependency and even affection. The party must create and manage a persona.
It is relating to the vanity and credulity of people - the idea is that the party, a mere
abstract entity, really values you personally.
Such tactics might achieve the ends of PRM, but its operational effectiveness is
governed by our ability to optimise individuals’ information, and the amount of
detail a political actor can accumulate about people. It then proceeds to refresh the
relationship by continually updating them with news; wishing them well on their
graduation, provide privy information, segment them by group interest or exploit
the generational component (Smith and Saunders 1990; Smith and Hirst 2001). But
segmentation approaches can also be used to attract crucial younger generations by
fashioning appeals and modes of involvement that cater to their wants. Currently
segmentation opportunities by relationship “type” are not exploited by the parties; but
their affinities and memberships are not monolithic and this should be understood.
Thus the need is to identify ways in which parties can imagine and implement
Political Relationship Marketing tactics. What would a relationship-oriented party
look like? The answer to this question lies partly in posing another: how can loyalty
be created? For example by the minutiae of inclusion, by say, remembering members’
birthdays or wedding anniversaries, or by authentically empowering them, giving
them a say in policy or a vote in policy forums via the special property of interactivity
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
(which is a unique benefit of the internet); since PRM is at its most powerful when
co-production triggers self-persuasion. In short, by “listening” as well as “initiating”,
by “leading” as well as “following”, organisational entities must forge meaningful
relationships with their stakeholders (Henneberg 2006).
Will there be party credit cards, budget party holidays, or hotel discounts? Other
activities in the area of affinity marketing can be organised specifically through web
technology, such as holidays, the ordering of wine or gifts, outings in classic car
clubs etc. These are important ways in which the concept of Political Relationship
Marketing can be reinforced, but they cannot form the essence of a relationship. The
party would thus be conceptualised as a kind of friendly society supplying a multitude
of activities like away- breaks in country hotels and capital cities. The key is to cater
to modern tastes and conditions, seeing the “political relationship” as more than just
an electoral interaction. Alongside the offer of privileged access to political decisionmaking elites in parties and policy-implementation structures in government, the
bonds of solidarity could be reinforced by material incentives such as insurance at a
discount or offering group travel. The idea behind many of these themes would be
that of sustaining and replenishing social networks, i.e. using a holistic citizenship
concept. Thus Minister Without Portfolio and Labour Party Chairman Hazel Blears
writes in The Times 14th June 2006:
first, we need to analyse the success of membership organisations such as the RAC or
RSPB and learn how to recruit and retain members. Secondly we need to focus on local
activities- political or social- which engage people in their communities. If local book
groups can involve thousands in local discussion and debate, so can political parties.
Thirdly, we need to harness technology such as podcasting, texting and blogging,
learning from campaigns such as Make Poverty History.
(Blears 2006)
Part of this process could involve a reappraisal of the old political clubs which
exist as cosy retreats in every town in the UK and represent the various political
parties. They are specific to the United Kingdom; but they offer an austere diet of
billiards and drinking, and in theory at least are independent from the parties (see for
example www.toryclubs.co.uk). These could be developed to fit the tastes of the new
generation, for example by adding spas and dining facilities and in general upgrading
them. At one time their memberships were high and they always did represent a
potential source of campaign workers, political activists, and involved citizens.
The keys to Political Relationship Marketing are appeals to a sense of
involvement, intimacy and solidarity with others in the political and social sphere.
It must exploit our sense of involvement via participation; and this power can never
be underestimated for entertainment and socialisation are critical to the creation
of such bonds of (political) solidarity and legitimacy. Political campaigners must
recognise mass publics as fundamentally apolitical and inadvertent consumers of
political information, who look for heuristics or recognition devices as a way of
cutting through the cognitive clutter of political situations (Sniderman et al. 1993;
O’Shaughnessy 2004). Solidarity is created through the attraction of the like-minded,
where we meet people like ourselves; there is a commonality of values and these
must include political values as a basis of affiliation and attraction (O’Shaughnessy
2004). This suggests the great importance of the social dimension, whose significance
cannot possibly be exaggerated in this context. Political actors may even downplay
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the political.
A further purpose of PRM is the solicitation of contributions. Its fund-raising uses
are absolutely central and remain a principal justification for its political deployment.
PRM is as much a revenue generating strategy as it is a vote harvesting strategy. It carries
the potential of rescuing parties from what is a source of perennial embarrassment- the
dependence of their funding on a coterie of often dubious multi-millionaire donors
(as in the case of the post-Watergate Republican Party’s renaissance via computergenerated direct mail and the consequent mass-membership base) (O’Shaughnessy
1990). The promise of PRM is a mass donor-base, driven by involvement.
POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP MARKETING: PANACEA OF POLITICS (?)
Political Relationship Marketing represents a rich and neglected political opportunity
for all kinds of political actors. Parties and candidates must understand the lack of
interest in politics that is evident in most people: the alienated and disinterested
“turned off ” citizens. However, often traditional political marketing activities
contribute to voter apathy, e.g. through negative advertising and centralised policy
making (Dermody and Scullion 2003; Lilleker and Negrine 2003). It is Political
Relationship Marketing that might claim to combat that apathy, since the essence of
what it offers is a social connection and involvement. In contrast, straight political
advertising and other applications of political marketing are an act of trespass on
the consciousness. The existing consumer of political information is primarily an
inadvertent consumer, force-fed images and facts that are intrusive. It would be
extraordinary if Political Relationship Marketing could not improve on this.
But questions need to be asked about if, and in what way, the use of political
marketing concepts in politics changes or affects party systems and the functioning of
democracy itself. We have claimed before that “…political marketing can be viewed
as a means of neutralising the deeply alienated in society” (O’Shaughnessy 1990, p.
15). Such a regaining of trust, the reversal of the erosion of confidence in the political
system, hints at the necessity of creating meaningful bonds between political actors
and their constituents (Newman 1999a). Political Relationship Marketing may be a
means to achieve this re-enfranchisement. A further point is that PRM should not
lead to the abdication of leadership. The tendency of political marketing towards
more “plebiscitory democracy” (Abramson et al. 1988) has been mentioned before
(Scammell 1995). While this could be induced by an overemphasis on what has been
coined the “follower”-mentality of political marketing, exemplified in what LeesMarshment (2001b) describes as the “Market[ing]-Oriented Party”, such tendencies
have been observed in the increasing tendency of the use of focus groups, opinion polls
and plebiscitory elements (like grass-root votes on persons, positions, and political
issues) by many political institutions. However, a market-orientation in the sense
of a relational approach does not necessarily predispose companies to “follow” but
balances elements of a “customer-led” with a “customer-leading” approach (Ormrod
2005; Henneberg 2006). Therefore, a relationship-building approach of political
marketing management would provide a framework for elements of leadership which
are supposedly destroyed by a more traditional, i.e. customer-(voter-) led approach
(Scammell 1995)
The merit of PRM, therefore, is that it could reduce the perceived need for political
expediency. Politicians would seek genuine relationships. Sales (votes) would follow as
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
a by-product. This would contrast with cruder forms of political manipulation which
parties resort to in the absence of relationships with large sectors of the electorate.
For example in 2005, Britain’s Labour Party feared that young women with young
families were planning to desert the Labour Party in droves because of their disgust
over the Iraq war. For them there was fabricated the Blair-Brown “Africa” broadcast,
where the duo drink orange juice and recite platitudes about the need to “solve”
poverty in Africa (Woolf and Russell 2005). But a relationship is something that has
to be continually sought, not just fabricated at election time. So far parties have been
about hired loyalty, material appeals - we as voters and citizens want to internalise
loyalty and parties are failing to do this. Much of what occurs in elections is so
blatantly manipulative that it probably does more harm than good: solving things at
the plastic level. Voter apathy is the response (Sunday Times 13th March 2005). The
individual’s sense of powerless irrelevance is one of the defining features of the postmodern condition (Bauman 2000) and manifest in such phenomena as low voter
turnout and widespread cynicism. The extent of the voter turn off is such that more
first-timers have voted in reality television shows than were likely to bother at a UK
General Election (Sunday Times 13th March 2005).
Currently the problem is that parties merely rent the allegiance of their voters.
They know no better, appealing to voters for example on purely economic criteria,
which is an invitation to rejection, when they need to create converts and partisans,
by appealing to values so that they can weather the hard times. Political Relationship
Marketing is a critical orientation for political parties to adopt if they are to refresh
their membership lists and retain voters’ allegiance and trust as well as providing
legitimacy to the overall party system. It is probably the most important thing
marketing has to offer the politicians and other political actors. Currently they just
appeal to electors at elections, and simply impose demands on their ideologicallydriven followers and membership cadres.
It is clear that Political Relationship Marketing in general has massive untapped
potential in the political context. Yet it is no absolute panacea for modern parties’
problems. As O’Malley and Tynan (2000) point out, there remains a real difficulty
in creating emotional bonds via technology-mediated interaction. The idea has such
intuitive plausibility that we are apt to forget some of the problems, not least those
of sound implementation; for example “the employment of direct and database
marketing in operationalising R[elationship] M[arketing] may actually undermine the
process of relationship development, because what marketers call ‘intimacy’….many
consumers view as ‘intrusive’” (O’Malley and Tynan 2000, p. 808). The complaint
is that (Political) Relationship Marketing can develop into mere “technique” with
a focus on building databases rather than relationships. As O’Malley and Tynan
remark: “It may be that the metaphor of interpersonal relationships has been so
successful that the academy has forgotten that it is a metaphor which is being used”
(p. 807). Critics suggest that (P)RM too easily becomes a species of business rhetoric,
and that attitudes to the consumer continue to represent him/her as a passive target
and deny him autonomy. In politics we have to be particularly sensitive to these
considerations. In the end, “Relationship Marketing” is a slogan as well as a concept,
and like all slogans it directs us to some truths, but blinds us to others. For example
the claim is made that social exchange theory, on which the theories of relational
marketing are based, over-emphasises the role of trust, commitment, communication
and mutuality in exchange within consumer markets: “Social exchange theory ties
us into the language and rhetoric of interpersonal relationships, particularly those of
marriage” (O’Malley and Tynan 2000, p. 807). This represents only a partial view
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of exchange. Further understanding, e.g. of “interimistic” relationships (Lambe et al.
2000) will broaden our perspective of (P)RM. We therefore need to go beyond the
metaphors of relationship marketing and base Political Relationship Marketing on a
clear and deep understanding of the essence of political exchanges, be they electoral,
governmental, or otherwise political (Peattie and Peattie 2003).
CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH
More prescriptive theory building is asked for in political marketing in order to
escape purely descriptive studies anchored in existing and ossified paradigms. While
“explaining events is logically prior to explaining facts” (Elster 1989 p. 3), political
marketing needs more of the latter. For this purpose, new theory development needs
to be encouraged, based on the empirical evidence that political actors use elements
of relational marketing. As relational and service-related theories gain considerable
influence in contemporary marketing theory (Bolton et al. 2004; Vargo and Lusch
2004), it is deemed to be important for political marketing to utilise these prescriptive
theories. Political Relationship Marketing has been more or less completely neglected
by theoreticians despite a 20-year publication history in this field in marketing theory.
But PRM is conceptually a relatively new idea, and even in commercial marketing
very few commercial organisations practice it successfully. Why therefore should
parties, candidates or any political organisation do any better? To a degree, Political
Relationship Marketing has to invent relational marketing ab initio as well as conceive
its political version.
The practical case for PRM is simply stated. With the professionalisation of politics
(Panebianco 1988) has come voter detachment and disengagement (Richardson
1995). Parties have become like self-perpetuating clubs, and we reach for the language
of the old communist empires- words like cadre or apparatchik- to describe them
(Lilleker and Negrine 2003). The scale of the task is significant; high levels of nonvoting, combined with mass party membership ostensibly in terminal decline (Labour
Party membership has fallen during the Blair premiership from 407,000 to 198,000
(Charter 2006). Public cynicism has apparently become universal in democracies.
The task requires a duality of focus –voters as the main electoral exchange partners,
but also the party members and donors (actual ones need to be retained and potential
ones attracted- these are the strategic objectives). There is an urgent need to re-engage
in meaningful, i.e. longer-term and involving, interactions. Any tool that might be
useful might at least be explored, and PRM has intuitive plausibility. Of course there
is (as we have argued) no panacea. The cynicism and apathy of voters are established
and apparently immutable facts, and it is difficult to see how they could be countered
other than by some measure of relational marketing approach (but how the concept
is operationalised and implemented remains open territory for debate; our examples
above provide some vignettes for possible applications, but also examples of parodies
of a relational approach).
With the PRM concept we are in fact re-inventing the folkways of an earlier political
generation via modern technology, and for modern conditions. At one time the party
was a social identity definer, but the decline of class-based politics has entailed the
demise of the mass-membership party. The UK Labour Party forged close union links
while the Conservative Party itself was a middle-class social network, a social club
in the provincial regions. Party functions were social functions. Relationships were
mediated through this. Thus there was once indeed a kind of relationship between
Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy Political Relationship Marketing
different political actor groups, since the party performed as a social nexus at the local
level, or it was the public political expression of private trade union involvement.
All this has gone; now in a post-modern and “liquid” social order (Bauman 2005)
we seem to have substituted rented allegiance for relationships. This is a vacuum
political marketing must seek to fill and we cannot just do this through the confetti of
posters, campaign ads and such simulacra, since mass mobilisation will not easily be
achieved via media alone. It needs membership, the act of joining, and of performing
some service for the cause: since this stimulates retrospective self-justification and
therefore strengthens adherence. Historically those causes which lack a membership,
but merely float on media curiosity and the goodwill of a few rich backers, inscribe
their own obituary.
There are other more prosaic reasons why Political Relationship Marketing must
now be treated very seriously, in the practical sphere and also by research in political
marketing. If for example we move to a more value-based politics, as we seem to
have done in the US, relational concepts represents a useful way of exploiting this,
since values may embody a more effective basis for sustained relationships than
do appeals to economic self-interest. There is also the renewed recognition of the
significance of “getting out the vote”, particularly in the closer contests which now
arise from political consumerism and the demise of inherited loyalties. People expect
to be contacted. A “face” to the party in every home can only be achieved with
volunteers, the local party members and their friends. But a campaign that is fought
principally in the mass media cannot really leave people with a sense that they “own”
their government in the old way, or are responsible for what it does in their name
(as the eighty per cent of the British population who did not vote for the Labour
Government in 2005 would doubtless testify). This degree of alienation could have
interesting future social consequences, none of them, it seems, benevolent.
While the case for the importance of PRM in theory and practice can be made,
we suggest that more conceptual as well as descriptive research is needed in order to
get to grips with this phenomenon. We have attempted to provide a wide overview
of the facets of Political Relationship Marketing by putting forward some macro and
micro views. We are aware that we have maybe raised more questions than we have
answered. However, these initial considerations need to be formalised in a more
rigorous theoretical framework, underpinned by discussions of the operationalisation
and implementation of the PRM concept and its implication for the whole fabric of
electioneering and politics itself, e.g. with regard to the theory of democracy. This
should also include the question whether or not PRM may end up being as tenuous as
much of the application of customer relationship marketing has proven to be (Bolton
et al. 2004). We therefore see efforts that continue our initial discussion of Political
Relationship Marketing through more specialised studies as a necessary next step of
research.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS AND CORRESPONDENCE
Stephan C. Henneberg is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Business School,
The University of Manchester, UK. His current research interests are in the areas
of strategic marketing, relational marketing, consumer behaviour, and social and
political marketing. He publishes regularly on political marketing, e.g. in the Journal
of Marketing Management, Journal of Political Marketing, and Journal of Public
Affairs. Stephan has organised several international academic conferences and PhDcolloquia on political marketing. He has edited a book of readings on The Idea of
Political Marketing, Praeger 2002, together with N. O’Shaughnessy.
Corresponding author: Dr Stephan C. Henneberg, Manchester Business School,
Booth Street West, Manchester M15 6PB, UK
T +44 (0)161-306 3465
E [email protected]
Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy is Professor of Communication at Queen Mary, University
of London, and is a Quondam Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge University. He was
Director of the Centre for Research in Consumer and Social Marketing at Brunel
University Business School; and is the author of a number of books on marketing and
political marketing, and numerous journal articles. His book Politics and Propaganda:
Weapons of Mass Seduction was published by the University of Michigan Press and
the University of Manchester Press.
Professor Nick O’Shaughnessy, Queen Mary, School of Business and Management,
University of London, Francis Bancroft Building, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS,
UK
T +44 (0)207 723 1437
E [email protected]
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