Marketing lessons for political parties

This 13th October,2009 I performed the duty of responsible citizen of democratic India. I casted my vote for first time for Maharashtra state election after having missed it during last two occasions. Was I excited? Not sure about that but certainly wanted to feel the experience. So what did I discover? Nothing significant about elections but lot of lessons for political parties though. These are the various marketing lessons for them. I know I should not compare the business to election but still MBA cannot think anything other than that I guess. This post I would dedicate to my all marketing friends at B-school with whom I have fought relentless battles, that typical Finance Vs Marketing once.

Consumer behavior:-
I think political parties need to undertake this course for sure. They need to understand shelf space concept from HUL and P&G. Now what has it to do with elections? Let me explain. It is known fact that FMCG companies fight for the ideal shelf space in retail store to ensure that their products are sold more. Even in election the same principle applies. The person who is not sure about his vote would not go through entire list of 20-25 candidates. He tends to view the candidates from 3rd-4th to maybe say 9th-10th in the list. This set of candidates fall right under his eyesight by default. These candidates have more probability to being voted by undecided candidate. So I believe political parties must fight for the order of their candidate in the list.
Parties must also understand the simple concepts like person tends to favor the product whose advertisement he sees just at time of buying. It is very important marketing concepts and that is why one finds lot of advertisement by companies in shopping malls. So what should political do? They are not allowed to put posters in 100 mts or so near election center but they can cover entire area before that with their advertisements, billboards etc. I didn’t find it at all.
STP :-
I know our political parties have been very good at this. They have segmented people based on religion and have accordingly targeted them. But is this only segmentation possible? These segments were identified by British or maybe even before that. I think there is further scope to even segment each of the segments to yield better results. In fact past experience also confirms that. The success of Rahul Gandhi targeting youth in last Lok Sabha election, the success of BJP targeting middle and upper class in previous elections. In fact present demographic clearly indicates the age group 20-40 can clearly win election for any party. I believe marketers can really help in this pursuit.
Branding:-
Let us compare our election with American Presidential election and you would clearly note the difference in this aspect. Obama’s slogan “We can” and his brand was very strong which made Americans vote for him. Did we notice anything like that in this election? Certainly not. Parties still persisted with old icons and old slogans. They didn’t even package old stuff in new wrapper. At some places ‘gas’ really works.
Analytics :-
This has become integral part of marketing and political should fast catch up with this. There is some level of win-loss analysis being done but analytics would help to solve most of their problems. No efforts are being made in this direction.

I know this post would not go in national interest and I am not sure whether these suggestions are ethical to be implemented. Further they would not have any bearing if citizen has firm belief on particular candidate. But I believe there are good numbers of people who go to vote without being strongly aligned to any party and this suggestion can certainly influence them. I have identified need of marketers in political parties and it’s up to these marketing graduates who are searching for job to create demand for them in this altogether new industry.

This post is one more evidences about the way management studies have shaped my thinking. I could not have gained these insights without the help of the marketing courses undertaken by me during my course of study. The fact is that I am also shocked that pro-Finance guy like me also can write so much gas.