MITT ROMNEY AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

POLITICAL MARKETING PLAN:
MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

INTRODUCTION

In a summary of the study of political communication in the United Kingdom, scholar and author Franklin notes the breadth of character, the variety and lack of clearness of what branches under the concept of political communication. Franklin, in an effort to make this broad concept more coherent, provides the following definition. “The field of political communication studies the interactions between media and political systems, locally, nationally and internationally”.
Political marketing focuses on the analysis of: a) “The political content of the media b) The actors and agencies involved in the production of that content c) The impact of political media content on the audience and/or on policy development d) The impact of the political system of the media system e) The impact of the media system on the political system”

In brief it includes direct marketing, e marketing, local marketing, market oriented communication, and public relations. Marketing communications are used for many reasons aside from winning the election and these include: a) “Improve the candidates or political leaders image; b) Represent what the party or political is about; c) Persuade voters to a point of view; d) Make something clearer; e) Counter negative attacks from the opposition; f) Educate and inform voters; g) Gain or increase support for a particular piece of legislation; h) Place an issue on the agenda; i) Increase support for referendum proposition;”

This report will analyze the marketing communications of the United States Republican Party led by Mitt Romney. The report will focus direct marketing and e marketing out of the above mentioned marketing communication areas. This is because these two types of marketing was what needed improvement on the most out of the five, especially in comparison to opposition Barack Obama.

MARKET INTELLIGENCE

“Market intelligence informs the way politicians devise communications, choose which issues to focus on and present themselves”. Before we analyze different types of marketing communications, it is important to know how marketing communications are devised. Market intelligence consists of voter-based data that can help candidates modify their marketing material to suit specific demographic. Market intelligence is really vital for effective marketing communications because if you do not have a thorough understanding of your market, targeting and engaging voters will be a difficult task. “Intelligence can identify potential weaknesses and enable communication to be devised to reduce them”.

The 2012 presidential elections saw Barack Obama winning another four years as the president of the United States of America. There are diverse and numerous reasons for Obama’s victory, but they all have a common denominator to a certain extent, which can be found in the data. Romney had data too, so it is evident that it was not just data that enabled Obama to win, it was how he used it.

“The Obama camp used the data to run a more adaptive, agile and intelligent campaign. They set up a sophisticated feedback system and tested massive amounts of scenarios on potential voters. When they found key messages that worked, they adopted them wholesale into its social media infrastructure”.

Obama’s team was on point with that as well. Obama’s success was all due to taking this intelligence and distributing it through social and mobile channels. “They profiled and matched Obama volunteers with potential voters, so that they had a better chance of making a connection with the voter and were more likely to persuade them to vote for Obama”. This is so important for campaigning and market intelligence lets candidates have this type of information. Now, how could have Romney outplayed Obama when it came to using marketing intelligence