Political 'brand-builders' tackle decline in voter loyalty

By COLIN JAMES

When I buy jeans I don't buy Levi's. I buy jeans that fit, cost half the price and last longer. I don't know what make they are, but I know which shop sells them.

I'm a Vegemite aficionado. When an Auckland hotel serves me something else with "-mite" in its name, it's almost enough to dissuade me from staying there.

Forty years ago, brand loyalty in politics was of my Vegemite variety. Nowadays it is more like my choice of jeans.

In 1963, Austin Mitchell found 79 per cent of voters for Labour and 71 per cent of voters for National had never voted for any other party. Political brand loyalty was a generational hand-me-down. The brands were etched in voters' hearts and minds.

By the late 1970s, those who had voted for the same party through three elections had dropped to 45 per cent. Today, that figure is probably not much more than 25 per cent.

The party leaders tell the story. Bill English comes from a National-voting family. But so does Helen Clark.

Richard Prebble, Peter Dunne, Jim Anderton and Laila Harre were all once Labour. Winston Peters was once National.

Brand loyalty in politics is obviously weak.

Political scientists explain this partly as a result of social diversification. The old "cleavage" between bosses and workers dividing National from Labour supporters has lost its potency.

With social diversity has come party diversity.

"Before MMP there were 2 1/2 brands," says Jenny Raynish, of public relations firm Raynish and Partners. "Now there is a lot of brand choice and politicians have to fight hard to get people to buy their brand."

Voters have been "convenience shopping", trying different brands, and that has eroded the major brands.

In this cluttered marketplace the advantage lies with niche parties. "The Greens have a fabulous brand: the name says what they stand for," Raynish says.

Advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi boss Kim Wicksteed agrees: "When you have a single-minded vision or statement or proposition, it is easier [for voters] to get it."

He says the Greens' focus on GM is a good example.

What is a political brand? Not the logo, Wicksteed says. This election Labour has pulled the 30-year-old leaning L off its billboards. Its branding this year is "red, Helen and two ticks", Labour president Mike Williams says.

David Winston, an American expert on political brands, says a party brand is its perceived "benefits, image and ability to perform, as well as shared value systems" - the same as a pair of sport shoes' brand.

So is politics merely imitating the consumer market?

British political scientist Catherine Needham thinks so - but says it is "a reflection of a reflection".

Consumer product brands originally mimicked political parties, she says, "offering consumers an outlet for self-expression and the opportunity to endorse a particular way of life, something that was traditionally offered by politics."

Brands are promoted as "a set of values, a philosophy, even an ideology".

That sounds right up the parties' street. But Labour trashed its brand in the 1980s when it went in for free-market reform.

And National exchanged its middle-of-the-road conservatism for radical economics in the 1990s.

Factor in the broad audience to which a large, catch-all party has to pitch and you can see brand-builders' difficulty.

Voters also avoid some brands, Raynish says. Part of the Greens' brand is Morris dancing and rope sandals and a lot of people are averse to that.

Many are averse to the rich-man's brand that Act still wears, despite attempts in two elections to appeal to ordinary folk - this time, with a "tax cut for every worker".

Some in Act are talking of "rebranding" the party after the election. Behind the scenes, president Catherine Judd has been doing something like that with her "liberal project", designed to restate Act's free-market, individual-liberty principles.

In this campaign, Act is trying to present a less redneck and less radical image than in 1999. It has dropped the slogan "Values. Not politics." (Maybe scandal-mongering by Rodney Hide has turned that into "politics, not values" in the public mind.)

It is using more yellow in its visuals and has darkened its blue to a navy, marking it out from National's royal blue.

Peters has had to recover his brand from the ashes of his disastrous choice in 1996 to exchange it for that of National in coalition. So far in this campaign, he has been making not a bad fist of rebuilding the old brand. He is once again unmistakably the prime defender of national cultural unity, pushing crime, the Treaty and immigration as his core issues.

Dunne has been busily rebranding his micro-party, United Future, with "family values", in recognition of his merger with the former Christian Democrats.

Clark has spent nine years recovering Labour's brand. She got part-way there in Opposition but in 1999 still needed a prop from the Alliance, which for many voters had kept alive the old Labour brand.

In office she has come to personify the Labour brand and the Alliance has faded nearly to nothing.

What is her brand? Keeping her word, competence, authority. And a gentler society than in the 1990s. Her version: "Steady, reliable, predictable, progressive".

Bill English does not yet personify the National brand, despite pushing a "new leadership, new energy, new commitment, new National" line.

He is centrist and new, but National's public image and its policies are still the old 1990s dry economics. The visuals lack clarity and coherence. Its unmemorable slogan - "Get the future you deserve" - can be read as an admonition as much as an invitation.

But what will happen to Labour when Helen Clark moves on? Does Labour just stick another face on the billboard?

The answer lies in the tactics of brand building. Big parties hope for something like consumers' reflex reaction to McDonald's: want hamburger, get a big Mac. Want a government, reach for Labour (or National).

Brand loyalty is an emotional, not rational, commitment.

"The heart rules the head in brand selection," Wicksteed says.

Consumer product brand-builders aim to go from trade mark to "trust mark" and on to "love mark". The consumer comes to love the brand.

This is a challenge for political brand-builders, Wicksteed says, because "politics has become far less of a personal commitment".

Helen Clark may have got to the "trust mark" stage. Last week, there were even glimpses of a "love mark" in her walkabouts.

But is there a widespread emotional attachment to her brand? Is there a popular reflex: want government, go to Helen?

There was such a reflex for Margaret Thatcher in 1980s Britain - she was a "single-minded proposition". But, ominously for Labour post-Clark, the Tory brand disintegrated when Thatcher went.

At least Labour has the Clark brand. National has a lot of brand-building to do.

What can the advertising agencies do about that? Wicksteed says an agency can create a brand. National's dancing Cossacks in 1975 - an advertisement etched into the minds of those who saw it - are an example.

No such stunning advertisement has yet emerged in this campaign.

Maybe, in today's fudgier MMP world, none can, though the Greens' GM scare ads are the closest.

But, then, as Raynish and Wicksteed point out, the Greens have the most single-minded proposition.

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