2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
As a footnote to consumer power, the ultimate product choice is who to vote for! Increasingly, as the old loyalties die away, politicians will be forced to recognise that what they offer is a product much like any other. This will highlight the growing need for political marketing.
Many will argue that the political parties already deploy sophisticated means of persuasion. They will also point out that this is no new development - the Catholic Church mastered the basic techniques a full thousand years before the infamous Nazi propaganda machine was created.
This is, though, to miss the point. The most important aspect of marketing is finding out what the customer wants, and then matching the product to this - a process which will prove increasingly successful, at the level of the individual, as database marketing is brought into play. Unfortunately, I have seen few politicians, and almost no political parties, who have genuinely started with the needs of their electorate. I know rather more who claim that they would like to do this - and probably would - but who argue that this is a counsel of perfection which ignores the harsh realities of politics. I, on the other hand, would argue that failing to listen to the electorate in this way ignores the harsh realities of political marketing; and, as the years go by, they will eventually have to pay for this.
The rules of marketing are well known, and are easy to apply - so there is no excuse; they need only buy one of my own books on the subject!
Political decisions are coming to be viewed, by consumers, in much the same light as any other product purchase decision. Politicians, therefore, need to deploy all the techniques of marketing - most of which they have ignored so far - unless they are ultimately to pay a very high price for their ignorance.
16 May 2003
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