How communication spices campaigns

 

NAIROBI: The campaign season is with us. Increasingly, the elections slated for next year are showing signs that they will be very competitive. The sophistication that comes with electoral campaigning has also moved a notch higher.

In more ways than one, our campaigns mirror the American campaign pitting Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, with a fair share of drama and counter offensive tactics at play.

With increased competitiveness across all the electoral slots comes the need to engage in strategic communications to win the day. Reputation management for the candidates will be a key headache subject to cultural and sometimes easy-to-ignore politically important voter dynamics.

Naturally, politicians tend to be the most dynamic consumers of public communication platforms. To survive in politics means growing a thick skin that allows you to adopt all the integrated marketing communication solutions almost effortlessly, sometimes even subconsciously.

Today’s political strategies are no longer founded on capacity to mudsling. The ground has shifted. To win a political duel, one must creatively craft a campaign that seeks to dazzle and confound as much as it seeks to sell ideals. Candidates participating in the electoral process are setting off for the grueling campaigns well aware of the need to package themselves as bankable brands; well-packaged brands that can easily arrest audiences with persuasive speeches.

The recent launch of the Jubilee Party speaks of the essence of political branding to help shape narratives.

The hiring of aptly branded Sports Utility Vehicles and an office block for example sends out an image of a solid party that will spare no effort in winning the election ahead.

To a large extent, branding and related communication efforts, including counter operations, play a key role in fundraising by enhancing support base confidence.

Such communications strategies are developed with the sole intention of providing a clear differentiation between the candidate and his opponents. The winning President, MCA, MP, woman representative, senator or governor next year will need to have created a distinct brand to sail through the crowded field.

The art of behavioural science from a communications perspective allows the candidate to design messages that resonate with the electoral audience.

These messages, however, must be founded on a distinct identity. From choice of party colours, slogans cum campaign clarion calls, all the way to campaign routes and news media option.In the current state of Kenyan political affairs, candidates will need to undertake detailed research and analysis to understand their audience.

Whereas party affiliations may matter, understanding and analysing insights touching on the audience priorities, fears, and expectations of their elected leader will be a key requirement.

Through research, the candidate is able to appreciate the opposing candidates set up, selling points, audience appreciation and traditional voting patterns.

As Sun Tzu wrote in his Art of War memoirs, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” The research and analysis element will thus allow the candidate to face the daunting task of setting up a customized campaign and electoral machinery.

In traditional campaign setups, audience targeting used to be based on a wide net casting effort. With the advent of digital communication, out of home media and a general youthful electorate, we now have to grapple with micro-targeting options in communication.

Essentially, micro targeting in an electoral campaign works by reaching out to individual political trigger points. Such points are not manifested homogenously due to personal values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles that manifest in an individual or even in a household.

Micro targeting in communication appreciates that at a household level, we may now have a CORD husband and a Jubilee wife. The husband may love attending adrenaline filled rallies even as the wife may loathe such rallies and opt to consume her political messaging via social media platforms.

Such realisation that audiences are not homogenous also helps to address voter concerns based on specific elements that may differ from ward to ward, constituency to constituency and county to county.

The functionality of some of these efforts cannot be gainsaid. Retaining a well oiled campaign machinery complete with a functional operations centre, establishment of a clear operating strategy that identifies campaign policies, manifesto, tone of voice, communication strategy among others are the contemporary lifelines for a campaign process.