Marketing campaigns and politics – British experience

By gaining political power, individuals and political par¬ties at the same time gain the power to shape not only political but also public life. An accelerated growth of mass media communication has led to the development of various means and techniques of political marketing. This in turn requires certain adjustments to political campaigns and programs, out of which only those adapted to the new communication environment may succeed. Marketing in terms of politics and especially negative comparative advertising, which is becoming increasingly more present and intense in political campaigning, opens a series of ethical questions. Among others, these include whether such advertising in politics is effective, to what extent and what its consequences are. The goal of this paper is to present the main characteristics of political marketing, the effectiveness of the methods and techniques used in the course of elect¬ion campaigning, their consequences and basic differences between political marketing and products and services marketing. A special emphasis will be placed on the presentation of political marketing of Great Britain, which has a long tradition in utilizing marketing methods and techniques in the political arena. Moreover, political moves made by politicians and political parties in Great Britain certainly make a good starting point for shaping an optimal political strategy in other countries, while at the same time taking into account the particulars of a specific political and social environment. Content analysis methodology was used in the preparation of this paper and all the data were gathered from secondary sources.