How to compose a media mix to win an electoral campaign? proposing a framework for political marketing
| Autor | Mehrnaz Tajaddod Alizadeh, Mohammad Reza Saeidabadi, Datis Khajeheian |
| Cargo | PhD Student. Kish International Campus, University of Tehran. Email: mehr.tajaddod@ut.ac.ir ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8214-2939 - Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran. Email: sabadi@ut.ac.ir ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2226-4037 - Department of Business Management, University of Tehran, Iran. Email: khajeheian@ut.ac.ir... |
| Páginas | 163-194 |
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AD-MINISTER
MEHRNAZ TAJADDOD
ALIZADEH1
MOHAMMAD REZA
SAEIDABADI2*
DATIS KHAJEHEIAN3
JEL: I21, I23, M1
Received: 28/03/2021
Modified: 16/05/2021
Accepted: 23/06/2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17230/
Ad-minister.39.8
AD-minister Nº. 39 july - december 2021 pp. 163 - 194 · ISSN 1692-0279 · eISSN 2256-4322
How to compose a media mix to win an electoral
campaign? proposing a framework for political
marketing
¿Cómo componer una mezcla de mercadeo de medios de comunicación para ganar una campaña
electoral? Propuesta de un marco para el
marketing
político
ABSTRACT
This article addresses the issue of composing different media to send an integrated message to the
voters in electoral campaigns and presents a framework for managing media in political marketing. The
authors conducted deep interviews with strategy developers of the past presidential elections as well
as two parliamentary elections in Iran to extract the strategy development process for delivering the
campaign message to the target audiences. thematic analysis used for analysis of data and interviews
coded in three levels of open, axial and selective. The paper suggests a sequence of audience, message
and media to launch a successful campaign within a framework that starts with campaign structure and
strategy and accomplished with economic effectiveness measuring and success rate.
KEYWORDS
Election, Electoral campaigns, Political marketing, Media management, Political communication.
RESUMEN
Este artículo presenta un marco para la gestión de medios en campañas electorales. Se realizaron
entrevistas a profundidad con desarrolladores de estrategias en las pasadas elecciones presidenciales,
así como dos elecciones parlamentarias para extraer el proceso de desarrollo de la estrategia para
transmitir el mensaje de la campaña a las audiencias objetivo. El documento sugiere una secuencia de
audiencia, mensaje y medios de comunicación para lanzar una campaña exitosa.
PALABRAS CLAVE
Elecciones, campañas electorales, marketing político, gestión de medios, comunicación política.
1 PhD Student. Kish International Campus, University of Tehran. Email: mehr.tajaddod@ut.ac.ir ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8214-2939
2 Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran. Email: sabadi@ut.ac.ir ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-
0002-2226-4037
3 Department of Business Management, University of Tehran, Iran. Email: khajeheian@ut.ac.ir ORCID:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9913-3732
Mehrnaz Tajaddod Alizadeh · Mohammad Reza Saeidabadi · Datis Khajeheian
How to compose a media mix to win an electoral campaign? proposing a framework for political marketing
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INTRODUCTION
Democracies in modern era are mainly based on elections, and politicians at dierent
levels need to convince their target audiences to vote for them to reach the seats.
Almost in every election in every part of the world, electoral campaign is the central
place that the candidate, its party and the supporters share and coordinate their
eorts. Considering the money and number of people involved in every election,
campaigns are one of the most important marketing gatherings that in a specific
and almost short period of time, communicate immensely with the big portions of
public to convince a large number of people with their messages. Huge investments
of parties and supporters make elections the arena for a huge marketing campaign
and therefore, understanding how to be successful is a much-demanded knowledge
that candidates and parties seek to find through the political marketing experts,
campaign strategists, media managers, etc.
As an example, the controversial 2020 US election has been recognized as the
costliest election in the history of the country, setting a new record for spending for
political propaganda and large portion of this money was spent on social media.
The total cost of this election is estimated at about $14 billion. It has been said that
Biden campaign spent $1 billion and $63 million on the campaign from April 1, 2019
to November 23, 2020, to defeat his inner-party rivals, such as Bernie Sanders and
then-rival Donald Trump. Biden was able to win with about 81.271.000 votes. With
that in mind, the campaign for the next president has cost more than $13 per vote
(www.baratnews.com). In another example, The UK’s snap 2017 General Election
cost a total of $262 million according to Politico, which is just $2 million less than
the 2016 referendum cost. In fact, during referendums in the UK, there are fairly
stringent spending rules, which put $13 million limits on both the Vote Leave and
Britain Stronger parties. The country’s 2015 election that saw David Cameron win
the majority for Conservatives was a little less costly. The total paid from the UK
Government’s Consolidated Fund for the costs of the 2015 UK Parliamentary general
election was $214 million. German political candidates are only allowed one TV ad,
which means for the major parties, the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) and the
SPD (Social Democratic Party), that’s eight times on each channel over the course
of the campaign. Angela Merkel secured a fourth term as a German chancellor in
the country’s September 2017 election, despite being the CDU’s worst electoral
performance since 1949. The election cost a total of $148 million, which is miniscule
in comparison to the US (Yahoo finance). Many scholars agree that campaigns and
political communications influence individual voting behavior and election results
(Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1995; Bartels, 1996; Popkin & Kinsey, 1991; Zaller, 1992,
1996). Therefore, the study of the communication regime of election campaigns has
been a serious issue in many studies (Semetko & Tworzecki, 2017).
Due to the importance of electoral campaign from financial, political and social
aspects as well as its eect on the future of countries and societies, exploring the
elements of a successful electoral campaign is very essential, and setting media
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AD-minister Nº. 39 july - december 2021 pp. 163 - 194 · ISSN 1692-0279 · eISSN 2256-4322
strategy to eectively convey the message to the audiences is the key point. This
research addresses the media strategy in the electoral campaigns and to do this,
Iranian presidential elections in the last twenty years as well as two last parliamentary
elections were studied. In Iran, members of the parliament, as well as the president,
are elected by direct popular vote. During the particular days, the candidates and
their supporters are authorized to launch campaigns and spend huge amounts of
money to attract the voters. Significant financial, human, physical, and energy costs
have been spent on these campaigns over the years, both in terms of the economic
prosperity they create for some jobs and the enthusiasm they create among the
candidates’ supporters (Best et al., 2008; Marcus & MacKuen, 1993).
At the same time, choosing the eective media mix under the communication
regime of election campaigns is one of the serious challenges for the campaigners,
so that, the diversity in the media coverage for elections around the world has
become both a challenge and an opportunity (Elchahabi & Gallagher, 2015). Before
the advent of social media, the mainstream of the electoral media was the formal
media (Owen, 2018), but with the spread of mobile phones and the emergence of
new media and communication methods (Delli Carpini & Williams, 2020), a wide
variety of media was created that has shaped the individual media (Crosbie, 2018).
Appropriate media has increased the way it conveys the message to the audience
properly. Accordingly, election campaigns have to use a media mix in order to reach
the diverse audience. This phenomenon is called multi-platform (Doyle, 2013) and it
is so important that advertisers redesign their messages to fit the appropriate media
mix for their audience.
The importance of choosing an eective media mix and using a multi-platform
approach in these campaigns is so great and the success or defeat of the election
depends on it. The campaigns of Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016
were the examples of choosing the eective media mix that led to their success.
Since previous studies have shown that a significant part of the election campaign
in Iran is carried out regardless of the appropriate media mix and only with the
previous experiences of the campaign agents, the eciency of such eorts and the
eectiveness of expenditures and resources are undermined as a result. Considering
the above mentioned, this research seeks to identify a framework for appropriate
media mix for electoral campaigns and to answer the question of ‘How to eectively
compose media mix to transfer the message of electoral campaigns?’
LITERATURE REVIEW
1) Political marketing
The combination of two fields of marketing and politics for increasing the capacity
of political groups and their success in electoral competitions is the purpose of
the political marketing theory. Political marketing as a discipline has gradually
found its framework (Ediraras et al., 2013; Friedrichsen et al., 2017) and is a tool that
facilitates the eorts of political parties to establish long-term relationships with
voters and stakeholders (Henneberg & O’shaughnessy, 2007). Political marketing
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