My Fascination for Political Marketing (+ 19 Ways to take your political marketing to the next level)

My fascination for political marketing was rooted in 2014 when Mr. Narendra Modi came to power. It was the first time when I witnessed the real power of a brand. Back then I was not a student of marketing but always had an appreciation and aspiration to make a career in it. I always wondered about the kind of creativity one requires to come up with ideas of portraying the products, services, or anything a customer wants to buy.

Fast forward to today, 6 years of Modi government and 6 years of me trying to decode his way of communicating with the masses. Although, in these years, I learned marketing basics in my MBA class but saw live examples in form of BJP's political campaigns. The importance of 5W1H (Why, Who, What, Where, When, and How) was clearly visible, the art of storytelling and gamification was aptly used, and the use of technology and social media was smartly leveraged. It was something out of a playbook to win masses. It was surreal to see the magic Mr. Modi had on the people.

The Indian political campaigns taught me political branding and political marketing and made me understand how it is no different than any FMCG product branding or marketing. In politics, it just takes a more grand and extravagant avatar. Thus, I believe a political marketing campaign is one of the best platforms for anyone to learn the golden basics of marketing.

Having decoded BJP's campaigning style and observed Mr. Narendra Modi's way of communication, below are some of the ways through which one can boost their political marketing campaign.

18 Ways to take your political marketing to the next level:

1. Know your voter
2. Build a communication campaign
3. Tell a story
4. Talk about the existing problem and empathize
5. Empower, Inspire, Motivate the voter
6. Talk in 'You' rather than 'I'
7. Do the good deed
8. Spread it across via multiple channels (to boost credibility)
9. Be visible where the voters are
10. Adopt different communication styles for a different set of voters (educated vs non-educated)
11. Resonate your communication style according to the psyche of the voter (aggressive, civilized, calm)
12. Include emotion/nostalgia/futuristic vision in your communication
13. Choose a theme and stick to it
14. Involve everyone in your party to augment your communication effort
15. Conduct townhalls, public meetings, and talk to media
16. Gamify your whole communication to involve the voters in your campaign
17. Use methods/media where less effort (physical or mental) is required from the voters (songs, videos, clips, msgs, missed calls)
18. HAVE A SLOGAN.

Although this may seem very obvious to you, the execution of it matters a lot and would define the end result of your whole effort. Finding the psyche of the voter, choosing the right communication style for the targeted voter, and choosing what to say, when to say, and who to say are some of the challenges faced. Problems, like these, are bound to arise in every campaign, but the alignment of political strategy with the communication strategy is equally important to get the desired results.

In case you happen to run a business and want us to relook at your communication style and design a long-term communication strategy for your business, feel free to contact me.

Or in case you believe that this article can benefit someone, help them by forwarding this article to them. I am always happy to help. :)

Email: bigtreemarketingconsultants@gmail.com

Until the next time...

Before you go... Subscribe to this blog to get email notifications whenever I post awesome content like this. Will you?