Political Marketing Strategy, Between Ethics and Victory
Cultivating, nurturing, and maintaining the constituent community must start now, long before the campaign period.
“I want to vote for it, not talk about it,” Ernest Lawrence, PhD. (Oppenheimer film)
The campaign period during the current election events is a time when all candidates and political parties compete to get the most votes. Campaigns are aimed at placing themselves and party representatives at levels such as the Regional People’s Representative Council (DPRD), the People’s Representative Council (DPR), and the President.
In marketing terms, a campaign is one way to attract consumers. Of course, in this context, the consumers are the constituents’ votes. A campaign is also an element of a marketing strategy when viewed from what is known as the 4P Marketing Mix: Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.
In the midst of extraordinary technological advances today, where everyone can easily access the Internet, consequently, they freely use social media as if they can do anything. This includes creating fake news (hoaxes), and currently, the relevance of creating black campaigns, both overt and covert, has increased in frequency.
As expected, the air is filled with unclear news. True news, fake news, real data presentations, and modified data according to requests or the intentions of the data presenters truly crisscross electronic media, gadgets, and even print media, confusing the masses.
The post-truth era is upon us when the truth becomes blurry and mingles with lies. Steve Tesich (1992) was the first to use the term post-truth, whereby it is a state where society no longer cares about the truth.
Who can bring back truth based on ethics and civility? The actors who are fighting for seats in the DPRD, DPR, and the presidency today. All those involved are the sources of information and data (the root of the root).
Political Marketing
It is understandable that the air is dense with data and news as a consequence of the promotion by all candidates. Promotions naturally aim to show that their product is better and greater than the others to influence consumers (the public) to choose their product, in this case, to vote for the candidate. The fervor of these promotions often leads to the neglect of one pillar of promotion, which is the pillar of marketing ethics.
Simply put, using principles and values that guide the behavior of marketers, emphasizing honesty, responsibility, fairness, and respect for consumers and society, serves as a reference in marketing ethics. Promotion, as a method of ethical marketing communication, includes avoiding activities that could mislead consumers, such as hiding information, making misleading claims, and misrepresenting information. It seems this is being overlooked during the current campaign period.
One thing that drives this behavior is the perspective that voter outreach is conducted only within a span of no more than 10 weeks. As a result, consumers are inundated with all sorts of promotions, the truth of which is often questionable. Moreover, a significant portion of the public is still emotionally influenced in making their choices (purchases), which is a normal occurrence in every election cycle.
Firmanzah (2007), in his book, suggests that the appropriate political marketing is relational marketing, where there is a relational connection between candidates/political parties and the public. Of course, building a relationship cannot be done in just 10 weeks; it requires a long time, years, for that.
It can be believed that candidates who have already done this and who have invested long-term will be chosen by their consumers. The short-term perspective of gaining votes during the campaign period, with hot promotions or flash promotions, needs to be changed to a relational marketing perspective because hot promotions or flash promotions do not create a strong bond between producers and their consumers, between contestants and their constituents.
Isn’t this for the improvement of the quality of democracy or the goals of democracy?
There are many ways to build relationships, such as accommodating the needs and collaborating with the constituent community continuously. This cannot happen if communication does not run smoothly.
The use of social media mentioned above should no longer be an arena for spreading as much promotion as possible, but its usefulness and content should become more positive. It indeed takes a long time, but what is being built is not just a relationship but, more importantly, trust.
Danger Without Ethics
The post-truth whirlwind amplifies the destructive impact on the fabric of life and democracy. The use of unethical promotions further increases its destructive power. Therefore, reducing and even stopping this destructive force must be done.
The first step is, of course, to stop the destructive force from the source of information and origin. Candidates and their teams must be able to filter what is true so that the news and information circulating in society are also true.
The relational marketing perspective should start to be implemented. Cultivating, nurturing, and maintaining the constituent community must begin now, long before the campaign period. Thus, the campaign will not be filled with hot promotions or midnight sales chasing as many votes or purchases as possible in a narrow time frame, almost at midnight, resulting in no relationship built with consumers.
Relational marketing is the most effective political marketing strategy and aligns with democratic principles. If one wants to be called a representative of the people or the voice of the people, how can one carry it out without a strong relationship between the candidate and their community? Strong relationships and built trust are long-term results that make short-term hot promotions meaningless.
Dr. Ernest’s statement quoted above can be a reflection of the noise caused by promotions loaded with information and data that may be true or false, leading to continuous conversations without knowing what is true and false or the direction of the truth. In the end, there is only one thing the consumer or the public does: buy or vote. ***
By SRI BRAMANTORO ABDINAGORO
Sri Bramantoro Abdinagoro is a professor in BINUS Business School Doctoral Program and a member of Indonesia Strategic Management Society (ISMS)
Source: https://www.kompas.id/baca/english/2024/01/03/en-strategi-pemasaran-politik-antara-etika-dan-kemenangan and ISMS