The Republican’s recently issued an interesting competitive analysis of how the party’s marketing operations stack up. [Published in 2013]. The Growth and Opportunity Project has been dubbed the “Republican Autopsy”. This basically accepted that the 2012 national elections were a disaster for the party. So what can we learn from marketing and the Republican autopsy?
Criticism Of The Autopsy
The major criticism of the report is that it excludes policy consideration. To critics, the report is like cleaning your bathroom while someone is burning down your house. It focuses on the wrong thing. This criticism reflects wider tensions in marketing between product and presentation. Some people don’t really approve of caring about presentation. I don’t agree. The Marketing Concept is about serving voters and voters care about presentation. As such, I’d argue you need both a good product (policy) and superior presentation. Thus, I would say this project is like cleaning your bathroom while someone is traipsing mud through your front door. It is useful but not sufficient. I’d advise the Republicans to reconsider policy but they’d be stupid not to want to get their presentation and operations right too.
Policy And Presentation Aren’t Entirely Separable
Interestingly policy and presentation aren’t entirely separable. The report’s authors avoid “policy”. Still, they make it clear that appearing anti-Hispanic sets the wrong tone. This isn’t in the party’s long-term interest. They see policy change as necessary. The need for policy change reflects the marketing truism. It is a lot easier to persuade a consumer to buy a product they like than trick them into buying one that they don’t.
The marketing operations of the Obama campaign were admired by the Republicans. They have lessons for commercial marketers. Identifying your supporters and ensuring they turn out to vote matters. This isn’t totally different to securing consumer choice in the cereal aisle. Political marketing, as commercial marketing, can benefit from using big data effectively. Big data can be used to, for example, understand changing populations.
You Should Use Marketing Tactics
As a marketing professor, I’m puzzled by those who criticize the use of effective marketing tactics. I’m assuming you believe your party has the best ideas. Given this, then using the best marketing techniques available seems to me to be a civic duty. Anyone who decries the use of big data or persuasion techniques by their political party doesn’t seem to care about winning. If you don’t care whether your party wins then isn’t politics boring and pointless? At least when following celebrity gossip the people are more attractive.
To me Democrats are barking up the wrong tree when they complain about Frank Luntz. (Luntz famously “renamed” the estate tax the “death tax”). They should instead aim to beat him at his own game. The Republicans shouldn’t complain about the Obama data operation. They should, as the Republican autopsy advises, aim to improve their own data operation. Perhaps the Republican autopsy will help them improve the party’s election prospects. Perhaps it won’t. As a marketing professor I don’t blame them for trying.
Marketing And The Republican Autopsy
All marketers can benefit from reading the Republican autopsy to see an interesting competitive analysis.
For more on this see our research here.
Read: Republican National Committee (RNC), The Growth and Opportunity Project (2013), available here.