“The party or me, that would be the same thing’
Frank Underwood, fictional President of the United States in House of Cards, season 5
episode 2.
Marloes Groen
10787755
University of Amsterdam
Amsterdam School of Economics and Business
Final version Master Thesis Track Marketing, Business Administration
Supervisor: Roger Pruppers
Second reader: Jorge Labadie
Statement of originality
This document is written by Maria Louise (Marloes) Groen, who declares to
take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and
that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have
been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision
of completion of the work, not for the contents.
Content:
Summary
1: Introduction 1
Theoretical framework 7
2: The political brand 8
3: Building a brand 12
4: Leveraging secondary brand associations 19
5: Research Questions 27
6: Data and method 33
7: Results 46
8: Discussion 82
9: Conclusion 93
Literature 95
Appendix 89
1: Primary brand elements of each of the eight political parties 89
2: Questionnaire 91
3: Results of strongest association categories per party / party leader 94
4: Results ANOVA 1.B: Rank of associations 98
5: Positioning of all the parties and party leaders 103
6: Complete results ANOVA 3A: Evaluation of the party (leader) 106
List of figures
Figure 1: “Jesse Klaver on the homepage of GroenLinks (2016) 3 Figure 2: Brand association map of the Conservative Party (French & Smith, 2010) 13
Figure 3: CBBE model by Keller (2001, p.10) 15
Figure 4: Division of seats in parliament, a prediction based on brand awareness 15 (Labadie, 2017)
Figure 5: Primary brand elements of the SP 17
Figure 6: Brand consensus map of the Conservative Party (French & Smith, 2010) 18 Figure 7: Secondary sources of brand knowledge (Keller, 2005) 20 Figure 8: “D66 participating in the annual Gay Pride” (2016) 21 Figure 9: ‘Voting tool environmental friendly economics’ 22 (in Dutch: Kiezwijzer Duurzame Economie) (2017)
Figure 10: Conceptual model of CEO brands (Bendisch et al, 2013, p.608) 24
Figure 11: Conditions of the main study 34
Figure 12: Categorisation key for the associations of political parties and 40 political party leaders (translated from Dutch to English)
Figure 13: Demographics and voting characteristics of the sample 47 Figure 14: Brand awareness level of parties and party leaders 48 Figure 15: Strongest categories for parties and leaders on average 50
Figure 16: Strongest association categories per party 51
Figure 17: Strongest association categories per party leader 52 Figure 18: Rank of naming ‘own leader’ or ‘own party’ per leader and party 54 Figure 19: Graphical results of the ANOVA with dependent variable 55 ‘rank of naming own party / own leader’
Figure 20: Significant results univariate ANOVA for all four CUE’s 55
Figure 21: Overview of positioning results per party 57
Figure 22: Overview of positioning results per party leader 59 Figure 23: Positioning of ‘own party’, ‘own leader’ in the associative networks 60
Figure 24: Evaluation of the party 62
Figure 25: Evaluation of the party leader 62
Figure 26: Effect of naming or not naming the corresponding party on 63 the evaluation of party leader brands
Figure 27: Effect of naming or not naming the corresponding party leader on 64 the evaluation of party brands
Figure 28: Significant results univariate ANOVA for all four CUE’s 64 on the dependent variable Evaluation of the Brand
Figure 29: Evaluation of ‘own party, own party leader’ 66
Figure 30: Effect of indicating a party leader is favourable or not on 67 the evaluation of the party brand
Figure 31: Effect of indicating a party as favourable or not on 67 the evaluation of the party leader brand
Figure 32: Significant effects for ANOVA’s with dependent variable 67 ‘evaluation of the brand’
Summary
The field of political branding is rather unexplored, even though the concept of branding might prove very helpful for political parties. In times when a lot of people dislike politics and vote for politicians who claim not to be a politician, branding could be a useful way to attract voters and tie them to the party. In recent years, consensus has been found to whether a political party may be seen as a brand. In the case of party leaders, discussion remains if they may be conceptualized as brands. One side of the argument thinks that politicians are only a part of the political offer, since they usually did not have a brand of their own before they got into politics. On the other hand: if politicians are able to elicit strong, favourable and unique brand associations and it is possible to form associative network of their brands, they might as well be conceptualized as brands. This research builds on the idea that both a party and a party leader may be conceptualized as brands and their relation is explored. The main question of this research is ‘what role do the political party and the political party leader play in each
other’s positioning?’ In order to answer this question, 255 participants came up with free associations
about eight political parties and their accompanying party leaders. They rated their associations as positive or negative and unique or not unique and with this information, an overview could be presented about the key positioning features for parties and leaders. This research finds that the party and the party leader are strongly associated to each other. The research suggests that positioning wise, a strong party brand and a strong party leader brand can help each other or, when both party and party leader are evaluated unfavourably, may help bring each other down. To our surprise, the findings regarding the spillover effect of brand associations between the party and the party leader differ from prior research done in the United Kingdom. This indicates that political parties and their leaders in The Netherlands might not be very well positioned in general and they are advised to focus more on branding in order to create more strong, favourable and unique brand associations.
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Political party as a brandPolitical parties are bound to find a place in the mind of voters. Politicians and their teams are constantly trying to find an answer to questions such as ‘What are the things that matter most to voters?’ ‘What do they think of my party and do they see what we are doing?’ With great emphasis on communication they try to make it as clear as possible for people to show what makes their party unique and favourable over others. A common strategy that derives from branding theory is to choose three topics to place the focus on, in the hope that this focus will lead to strong, favourable and unique associations and therefore a strong political brand. A memorable story comes from Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 presidential campaign, where the campaign workers were consequently reminded to look at three messages on the white board: ‘change vs. more of the same’, ‘don’t forget health care’ and ‘it’s the economy, stupid’ (Stephanopoulos, 2000). It is too big of a statement to say that this lead to Clinton winning the campaign, but the clear focus certainly helped. The prior example exhibits how the two concepts of ‘branding’ and ‘politics’ are closely related to each other and what
opportunities the field of branding could offer to politics. A brand is known to serve three vital roles: it is a magnet to attract new customers; a reminder about the company’s services; and the brand can become the emotional tie to a firm (Lemon, Rust & Zeithaml, 2001). Since the lack of loyalty is a big problem in politics, utilizing these three vital roles would be a great opportunity for political parties.
However, this does not mean that the field of political branding has been blossoming. Only in recent years, political branding gained increased attention within marketing and political science journals. In 2015 this grown interest led to a special issue of the Journal of Political Marketing devoted entirely to the research that has been done on political branding. In this issue the growing consensus is shown that both a political party and a political candidate can be conceptualized as brands (e.g. Butler & Collins, 1994; Scammel, 2015; Speed, Butler & Collins, 2015; De Landtsheer & De Vries 2015).
1.2 Building a political brand
Staying with one political party during your entire life is a rarity these days. In the Dutch
Parliamentary Elections of 2010, almost half of the voters voted for another party then they did the year before (Dassonneville & Dejaeghere, 2015). Another trend is the rise of politicians who, ironically, try to distance themselves as much as possible from politics. Prime example of this, is of course the current President of the United States: Donald Trump. The Republican candidate who surprised the world by winning the elections, had been fighting with his own party the entire campaign (Burns et al, 2016). But then why did he win this election? “Because he is not a politician”, as many of his supporters have spoken (Brown, 2016). His Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who was a very
experienced politician, had probably expected that this experience would work in her benefit. Another reason for Trump winning the election might have been his populist style; a political style that is often hard to beat for more democratic candidates. But, in the spring of 2017, Emmanual Macron showed that one does not need to have a conservative and populist message in order to win elections when he became President of France in May 2017. With his liberal, pro-European and optimistic vision and a party that only exists half a year, he beat ‘the establishment’ (Giesen, 2017). And there, we see a parallel to Trump: even though they have very different styles and ideology, they both positioned themselves as ‘an alternative to the establishment’. In the 2017 Dutch elections, a party that tried to distance themselves from politics, was GroenLinks. They told that they were not a party, but a ‘movement’ that ‘would change the country’, as party leader Jesse Klaver said after winning ten extra seats in the parliamentary election (De Witt Wijnen, 2017). These three party leaders, though all very different in style and opinions, did well in elections with their claim to do politics completely
different. Interesting to state is that these party leaders were all new to their party (Macrons party was even a party he founded himself) which possibly made it easier to sell the ‘change’ claim.
The field of political branding is relatively new, but it offers a lot of opportunities for political parties. The author of the opening article of the Journal of Political Marketing devoted to political branding mentions that there is a great potential for branding to unify rational and emotional aspects of political behaviour (Scammell, 2015). This could prove helpful given the described trends of low loyalty with politics and a general disliking of politics as a whole. There are different views on
political branding deriving from distinct research fields, but one of the most adopted perspective is the voter-centric brand perspective (Nielsen, 2015). This perspective sees voters as the owner of the party brand because their associations give meaning to the party brand (Nielsen, 2015). These associations take all forms and shapes, such as associations about policy that the voter likes or dislikes,
associations about meeting a party volunteer on the street or associations about the party leader. To influence the associations a person holds of the brand, commercial branding research provides
marketers with different brand building tools, such as marketing communications and making sure the brand elements of the party are in line with the desired associations of the party. Another tool a marketer has access to, is borrowing associations from another brand, person, place et cetera. By linking the brand to another entity with its own associations the brand can borrow these associations from the other entity (Keller, 2005).
The focus on the party leader as a tool to build a brand, we see for example in the branding of ‘GroenLinks’, the Dutch Green Party. When you visit their website, you do not see any pictures that relate to green policy, but a big picture of their party leader: Jesse Klaver (see figure 1). The message reads ‘Yes, send me updates from Jesse’.
Figure 1: “Jesse Klaver on the homepage of GroenLinks (2016)
In order to create a strong brand, it is vital to know how people actually perceive your brand before you can change it. Previous research has only focused on developing brand association maps of political parties, and not of party leaders, even though it has been stated that the party leader plays a very big role in this network. It would be interesting to see what the associative networks of both the party and the party leader look like, and to see if there is overlap between the associative networks. Did Frank Underwood, the fictional President of the United States speak the truth when he said ‘The party or me, that would be the same thing’(James Gibson, 2017). In this thesis we try to fill this research gap by answering the following main question:
What role do the political party and their political party leader play in each other’s positioning?
1.3 Delimitations of the study
In this research, the focus lies on how people see and perceive the brand of a political party and a party leader. Their associations with these brands are being researched, not the ‘truth’: what do the brands really stand for? Also, since this is a marketing thesis, we will not look for answers to questions that lie in the field of political science, such as: what does this imply for our democratic system? What can we do about the low trust that people seem to have in politics and politicians?
Much research on political branding and the branding of political candidates comes from the United States or the United Kingdom. The political systems in these countries are different from the
situation in The Netherlands, where it is very uncommon for one party to have a complete majority and compromising is the logical outcome. This also implies differences in the campaign strategies between the countries: where in the US negative campaigning on the person is very common, we don’t see that in the same manner in The Netherlands, since it would be very difficult to work together after such a campaign. The UK has two parties that are very dominant: the Conservative Party and Labour Party. In the Dutch political situation, there are many more parties that hold political power. Also, since in the UK their elections are often a direct conflict between Conservative Party and Labour, this allows for both parties to strengthen their own associations in comparison to the other. In the Dutch political landscape, there are more flavors than left and right. We will not make a comparison between the countries, but we will keep in mind the differences between them.
1.4 Contribution
1.4.1 Theoretical contribution
The field of political branding is relatively new, with a lot of undiscovered grounds. Nielsen (2015) included only 24 articles in the systematic review of the literature on political brands. Many theories of brand building in the commercial context do not yet find their equivalent in the context of politics. In this research we aim to present an overview of the most important brand building articles in the current branding literature and see how this theory might be of use in the field of politics. Up to this point, some aspects about the political brand have become quite clear, but other aspects need more elaboration. One thing that research agrees on, is that political parties may be conceptualized as brands (Nielsen, 2015). Whether a party leader may be seen as a brand on its own s a discussion point among researchers. One viewpoint is to see the political party leader as part of the political offer, that consists of Policy (ideology), Party (organization) and Person (leader) (Butler and Collins, 1994; Speed, Butler & Collins, 2015). French and Smith (2010) developed a model to map the associations people have about a party and researched the brand association maps of both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. They found that the party leader has a big and central role in this brand association network of the party (French & Smith, 2010), but they regarded the party brand as the main brand. On the other hand, Guzmán and Sierra (2009) conceptualized the idea of political candidates as brands. Their research showed that Mexican voters see themselves and the candidates for the Mexican presidential 2006 election as distinct brands (Guzmán & Sierra, 2009). Davies and Mian (2010) showed that for the three main parties and their leaders in the British General Elections in 2001 and 2005, the reputation of the party leader and the reputation of the party were highly correlated and showed a lot of overlap (Davies & Mian, 2010). It is thus established that the party leader is a big part of the party brand, but the brand of the party leader on its own and in relation to the party brand has not been given much attention. Fitting in the role of the party leader on the association network of the party brand offers opportunities. Smith (2009) found that people (politicians) have a greater impact on the brand personality of the party brand than people have in commercial markets. Commercial
brands rarely have a leader that is widely known and therefore have an influence on the brand personality, making them reliant on endorsers to transfer personality to the brand (Smith, 2009). The party leader therefore seems to have an important impact on the party brand, but up until now, no research has been done that compares the associative networks of both party and party leader. This is interesting because it would offer the opportunity to compare the networks and see in what way the two brands seem to influence each other.
1.4.2 Managerial contribution
Scammell (2015) mentions the potential for branding to unify rational and emotional accounts of political behavior. Very interesting; because for party marketers and politicians it is very important to know how to persuade people to vote for their party, and they know that that is not just a rational process. French and Smith (2010) argue that the political brand has been on a rise because people are less and less involved with party politics. Strong and unique party brands could be a solution for voters, making it easier to differentiate between parties and therefore easier to cast a vote (French & Smith, 2010). But, this line of thinking does not necessarily mean that parties have started to differ more from each other. On the contrary, French and Smith (2010) state that political parties more than ever use a ‘catch all’ approach, leading to increased fighting over the middle ground. The reason being that people are less tied to a party based on their social class or religion (French & Smith, 2010). This proves both a threat and an opportunity. A threat because parties cannot lean back and expect the voters in ‘their’ social class or who share their religious values to automatically vote for them, and on the other hand it provides an opportunity, because voters of different social classes and religions are now available where they were not before. For voters, this makes it more difficult to differentiate between the parties and especially when they have low involvement with politics, they might search for heuristic cues to base their voting decision on. Clarke et al (2004) identified the party leader as a heuristic for the assessment of voters of overall party competence, responsiveness and attractiveness. Also, the associations of the party leader seem to spill over on the party brand (French & Smith, 2010), making it very important to know what those associations people have with the party leader are. Because if you do not know these associations, they cannot be changed.
1.5 Outline
In the literature review, we dive deeper into the concept of political brands, by looking into previous research done in the area of political branding. After this, we will take a step back and describe the ways in which a brand is built, and then how the role of both party leader and the political party brand might influence each other’s brand. To research political brands, it is important to first fully
understand the concept of brands and their importance to firms. The process of brand building will be described including the concepts of primary and secondary brand associations. More attention is paid to the research that has been done on candidate branding. We argue that these candidate brands may be
seen as a source of secondary knowledge for the party brand and their role in the positioning of the party brand is discussed. The research questions that will together answer the question What role do
the party and the party leader play in each other’s positioning will be presented. In the method
chapter, the choice for a free association method for this research is elaborated upon, as well as the development of the questionnaire and the creation of the variables used to answer the research questions. The results chapter is divided in three parts in order to present the results clearly for each research question. In the discussion, the results that are described are discussed and the implications of this research are discussed. Finally, we conclude by presenting an overview of the research and the most important things we have learned and give recommendations for further research.
Theoretical Framework
This theoretical framework consists of three chapters. In the first chapter, an overview is presented of the research done on political brands. As in each area of research, in the field of political branding there are some areas of consensus in the literature and some areas that deal with different views. Some of the different viewpoints that will be discussed are the ‘roots’ of political branding research (for example roots in psychology or roots in reputation research) and in the way that different researchers look at the role of the party leader, either as a brand on its own, or not, just as a part of the political brand. After that, we will dive deeper into the concept of branding and brands as a whole and intend to link this theory to the field of political brands. In order to create a thorough understanding of the concept of the brand, how it is stored in the minds of consumers and brand building, the most important research in the field of branding will be presented. The choice of this thesis to see the political brand as a ‘voter-centric political brand’ with roots in cognitive psychology and inspired by Keller (2003) and to see the political party leader as a brand on its own and as a source of secondary knowledge to the party brand will be explained. In the end of this chapter we explain our position that the political party leader may be seen as a part of the political brand but also as a brand on its own. In the third and final chapter of the theoretical framework, the influence that a party leader may have on the party brand as a source of secondary knowledge is described.
2. The political brand
In the first chapter of the theoretical framework, an overview is presented on the current research done on political branding. First, the different views on political branding are described. We discuss
whether a political party brand may be seen as a political offer, consisting of three parts including the party leader. To finalize, we discuss whether a party leader may be seen as a brand on its own or not.
2.1 The political brand
As was stated in the introduction of this thesis, the field of branding is rather new to politics. However, there is a variety of theoretical approaches to the concept of political branding and different ways to see the political brand. In her systematic review of the literature on political brands, Nielsen (2015) identified six perspectives on political branding, deriving from the research traditions of economy, phenomenology, anthropology, personality psychology, cognitive psychology and sociology. The minimal definition of a political brand as given by Nielsen (2015, p. 126) is:
“Political representations that are located in a pattern, which can be identified and
differentiated from other political representations.”
This definition holds in it multiple ideas: a political brand is build up out of multiple political
representations; people ought to have brand awareness of these representations (people must know that the political brand exists) and people should be able to differentiate one political brand from another. This definition is based on the theory by Keller (2003) that we will describe further in the next chapter, that a brand should have brand awareness and a differentiating brand image in order to build brand equity. The voter-centric political brand is one of the most adopted ways to look at a political brand. This idea puts the voters in the centre of the brand, stating they ‘own’ the political brand, because it is their associations that endow it with meaning (Keller, 1993, p. 12). Nielsen (2015, p.74) illustrates this process as “like birds building nests, voters collect bits and pieces of information they encounter in their everyday lives, which are stored in the voter’s memories.” These little bits of information find their place in the associative network that makes up the brand meaning for each individual voter. This network consists of one central node, the party name, and a number of specific features that people have learned to connect to this concept (Keller, 1993). Since associations come from personal experiences, each voters associative network is different. In the chapter on brand building, this associative network theory is described in more detail. An interesting study done on political branding was the analysis of the evolution and development of the ‘New Labour’ brand and the successful management of this brand, done by White and De Chernatony (2002). In de mid-1990’s, the British Labour Party struggled with a loss of political support. Labour had lost elections at the cost of the Conservative Party from 1979 until 1992. To fix this, Labour put branding at the core of their modernization process in the mid-1990’s, having learned from the Conservative Party who were
more familiar using marketing techniques to remain in power (White & De Chernatony, 2002). White and De Chernatony (2002) suggest a couple of conclusions based on this research of ‘New Labour’. The first is that the brand was an essential element in the modernization of the party, and a useful tool to suggest and promise changes (White & De Chernatony, 2002). Second, they describe the
‘ambiguity’ of the brand as a success “It represented values with which large swathes of the
population could identify, such as personal opportunity flowing out of strong communities” (White & De Chernatony, 2002, p.49). The suggestion that ‘New Labour’ was a new way to govern, also attracted many voters. However, four years after the successful 1997 elections, voters turned out to be disappointed in the lack of actual change that ‘New Labour’ had shown in government. This
discrepancy between announcements and actual performance in government, lead to poor voter turnout at the 2001 election (White & De Chernatony, 2002) and shows that good branding also means that the brand must be able to deliver what it preaches.
2.2 The political offer
Butler and Collins (1994) developed a conceptual framework to describe what they call ‘the political offer’, stating that the political brand consists of three parts: person, party and ideology, that are often indivisible. Following this line of thinking, it would imply that the associations people have about political parties fit in one of these three categories. With ‘person’ they mean the party leader, who is the face of the party; party is the organization, including for example all the volunteers; and ideology regards to the ideas and policy of the party (Butler & Collins, 1994). Needham and Smith (2015) have a similar approach, saying that the main influences for the party brand remain in a large part by the leader, the policies and the tone of voice that is portrayed in the mass media. To see what the political brands looks like in the minds of voters, French and Smith (2010) developed a consumer-oriented approach for mapping the political brands of British political parties. They analysed brand maps to discern brand characteristics and they measured the power of the two political brands and their brand equity (French & Smith, 2010). They found that both the Conservatives and Labour had a strong brand equity and that the party leaders played a big role in the associative networks of both parties. More recently, a similar research was conducted in Ireland. MacDonald et al. (2015) wanted to assess the brand equity of the four largest Irish political parties through looking at the strength, uniqueness and favourability of their brand associations, a method provided by Keller (1993). They name the party with the worst level of brand equity the party that has the strong links to negative associations such as corruption, and a dominant position of former leaders (MacDonald et al, 2015). This research all have the common viewpoint that the political party may be conceptualized as a brand, and the described research all puts the party leader as one aspect of the party ((Butler & Collins, 1994; French & Smith, 2010; Needham & Smith, 2015; MacDonald et al., 2015). But, there is also empirical evidence that a political party leader can be seen as a brand itself as well. Whether the party leader is only a part of the party brand, or a brand on its own with its own associative network is therefore still a point of
discussion in the field of political branding. In the next paragraph, the research that is done on the brands of politicians will be described.
2.3 Party leader brand
Guzmán and Sierra (2009) published their research that measured the self-concept of Mexican voters and their perceived images of the presidential candidates in the Mexican election of 2006. They found that indeed voters see themselves and each candidate as a distinct brand. Looking back at the
definition of a political brand as presented by Nielsen (2015, p.), it therefore appears that a political party leader may be described as a political brand itself:
“Political representations that are located in a pattern, which can be identified and
differentiated from other political representations.”
While French and Smith (2010) only researched the associative networks of political parties in Britain, Cwalina and Falkowski (2015) focused solely on the positioning of political candidates in Poland. Their main assumption is that a politician’s image may be conceptualized as consisting of a node (her or his name), which is the starting point from which the associative network with a variety of
associations can be retrieved (Cwalina and Falkowski, 2015). They state that political candidates should not only be compared to an ‘ideal candidate’ but also to their main competitors, since having negative associations towards one candidate might result in preferring another candidate more
(Cwalina and Falkowski, 2015). Their results show that “it is not only the strengthening of politicians’ positive features, but also neutralizing the negative ones that contributes to his or her higher expected quality” (Cwalina and Falkowski, 2015, p.170). This implies that the quality of the associative networks, with strong, favourable and unique associations and limited negative associations, will result in a higher expected quality. De Landsheer and De Vries (2015) intended to bridge the domain of political marketing with that of political psychology and European studies in their research of the brand image of EU President Herman van Rompuy. They describe a politician’s image as: “An image is created through the use of visual impressions, communicated by the candidates’ physical presence, media appearance, experience, and record as a political leader.” (De Landsheer & De Vries 2015, p. 202). Their research further develops the idea that political candidates may be seen as brands and that their image not only belongs to the candidate but also to his or her marketing team. They thought that de branding of Van Rompuy as a diplomat would help him to characteristics that are necessary for the leadership of the EU (De Landsheer & De Vries, 2015). What makes the position of a political party leader as a brand more difficult, is that they rarely have an identifiable existence as a brand
independent of their status as party leaders (Speed et al., 2015). This is also the view of Smith (2009, p.215) who writes, that “for voters, the personality of the party and its politicians are not separate but amalgamated to form an associative network in memory of the overall brand”.
In the field of reputation management, Davies and Mian (2010) researched the correlation between the reputation of a party and the reputation of a party leader. The focal issue of their influential research study was that the relationship between party leader reputation and party reputation was more claimed than tested, so they set up their research to measure the correlation in the setting of British politics. They used a multidimensional measure of brand personality to measure the reputation among voters of the three main parties and their leaders, both prior to the 2001 and 2005 General Elections. They found that the reputations of leader and party are highly correlated, but not statistically the same (Davies & Mian, 2010). With the research method Davies and Mian (2010) used, respondents had to rate the personality traits for both parties and party leaders on five-point, Likert-type scales. The research was done twice, in 2001 and in 2005 in order to see whether the reputations would change. The
correlations of their research show that about 45 per cent of the variance in party reputation in 2001 could be explained by variation in the leader’s reputation (Davies & Mian, 2010), indicating that indeed a party leader is an important potential asset or reliability for the party brand. These findings emphasized the role of the leader’s reputation in managing the reputation of the political party (Davies & Mian, 2010). This is consistent with the work of Vivader-Cohen (2004) who state that the leader of an organization is a significant symbol for any organization and his or her actions have a major impact on the reputation of the organization. A limitation of the method they used is that the true reputation and image of parties and leaders and the associative networks of the brands could not be measured (Davies & Mian, 2010), they only measured the correlation between the two. However, Davies and Mian (2010) claim that with their research they have raised a question mark against the party and the party leader being independent variables. To conclude this chapter: it has been established that the party may be conceptualized as a brand, and research clearly shows that the party leader plays a big role in the brand of the political party. This influence that the party leader has on the brand personality of the party brand, seems to be bigger than in commercial markets, where commercial brands rarely have a leader that is widely known and therefore have an influence on the brand personality, making them reliant on endorsers to transfer personality to the brand (Smith, 2009). Research is not clear on the position of the party leader as a brand on its own, with some research saying that a political party leader brand fulfils the definition of a political brand, and some research indicating that a party leader is not a brand on its own, since a party leader is reliant on its party brand in order to obtain its
meaning. Also, there has been no research that compares the associative networks of both political party and party leader and therefore it is hard to tell in what way associations are transferred between the two brands. In the second chapter of this theoretical framework, the brand building process is described and translated to the political context where possible. Chapter four discusses the potential of a party leader to be seen as a source of secondary brand knowledge for a brand and vice versa.
Chapter 3: Building a brand
In this chapter, we will describe the main research that has been done on branding. In order to obtain a deeper insight in political brands, it is crucial to take a step back and see why brands are important and how brands are built. Most of the branding literature so far is focused on commercial brands. As emphasised before, the theory on political branding is relatively new. Whenever possible, the branding theory will be applied to the context at hand, showing the relevance of existing branding theory in the realm of politics.
3.1 Importance of brands
Brands are important assets for a company, since they are able to show consumers a differentiation between competing products or services and therefore they can influence consumer preference and choice (Aaker, 1991). The knowledge of ‘how to build a brand’ and ‘how to influence your organizations brand’ is therefore an important skill for marketing managers. Lemon, Rust and Zeithaml (2001) describe three ways in which a brand serves vital roles: first, the brand acts as a magnet to attract new customers; second, it can serve as a reminder to customers about the company’s products or services and third, the brand can become the customers’ emotional tie to the firm. Another asset of a strong brand is that it makes the organization less vulnerable to external influences, such as competitive marketing actions (Keller, 2001). A big difference between commercial brands and a political brand is the complexity of the range of product offerings (parties have promises from education, to healthcare, to public transport, et cetera) as pointed out by Lock and Harris (1996). A voter has to accept all or none of the wide range of offerings when they vote, which is very rare for commercial brands (Smith, 2009).
3.2 The mind of consumers
Every time a consumer sees or hears about a brand, this is an opportunity for brand building. All those memories and little bits of information (associations) that a consumer gathers about a brand, become located in an associative network that makes up the brand meaning for the individual consumer. This network consists of one central node: the brand name and a number of specific features that people have learned to connect to this concept (Keller, 1993). Henderson et al (1998) were to their knowledge the first who studied associative networks for the purpose of detecting branding effects and strategies that would be valuable for brand managers. They stated that “understanding consumer perceptions and associations is an important first step to understanding brand preferences and choices” (Henderson et al, 1998, p. 306). In figure x a brand association map of the Conservative Party of the United
Figure 2: Brand association map of the Conservative Party (French & Smith, 2010, p.467)
In this brand association map, the ‘Conservative Party’ is the central node. From there on, the
associations that people have with the Conservative Party are linked to the brand. Associations that are not directly linked to the central node, such as ‘cycles to work’ still find their place in the associative network, as they are linked to a node (the party leader) that is linked to the central node. This shows that the brand (the central node) grows as more pieces of information (nodes) are connected to the brand. For example, the association ‘cycles to work’ was probably created in the mind of voters when they saw images or video material of David Cameron on his bicycle. This association might not sound so important for a political party, but as the association map shows, this association ‘cycles to work’ is an easy link to ‘supports green policy’, which is something that many voters value in a party (leader). So seeing for example the party leader acts as a stimulus for the entire associative network of political associations (French & Smith, 2010). Collins and Loftus (1975) call this process ‘spreading activation’ which means that the activation of a brand in memory triggers a number of linked associations that are for example experiences, feelings, images, issues, sentiments or symbols. This means that two
consumers can have very different associations with a brand, depending on the experiences they have had with a brand, and depending on which nodes they link to the central node. They might also differ in their opinions whether associations are positive or not. The association ‘young’ for example might for one voter mean ‘a nice, fresh perspective’ and for another voter it might be linked to the
association ‘unprepared to lead a country’. As stated earlier, brand managers do have a certain influence on this process by very selectively expose consumers to the information they want them to know about their brand. In paragraph 2.4 we describe the tools brand managers have to build these opportunities to create associations. But first, we dive deeper into the theory of these associations, since not all associations are evaluated equal. Some associations play an important role in the evaluation of the brand, and others are of lesser importance.
Keller (1993) uses the strength, favourability and uniqueness of associations as measurers of brand equity (Keller, 1993). Strong associations are associations that come to mind easily and can be measured in different ways, for example the percentage of the people who name the association; the amount of associations the brand brings to mind or in what order an association is ranked among other associations (Keller, 1993). Favourable brand associations are associations that are evaluated
positively, opposed to associations that are evaluated negatively and unfavourably. Uniqueness of the associations relates to whether people think that an association is unique for a (political) brand or that it is a common association among brands. The strongest brands are the brands that hold strong and favourable associations overall, and ideally if these strong and favourable associations that are important to voters are also considered unique for that specific political party. A brand that is well known and has a good set of these strong, favourable and unique associations, is seen as a brand with high brand equity. In the next paragraph the concept of customer-based brand equity is described in more detail.
3.3 Customer-based brand equity
How the brand is located in the minds of consumers, can be measured by customer-based brand equity (CBBE). The CBBE for a brand is positive when consumers react more favourably to an element of the marketing mix for one brand, than they do to others (Keller, 1993). CBBE can only occur if two criteria are met, which are: (1) the customer must know that the brand exists (brand awareness) and (2) she or he must hold favourable, strong and unique associations in memory (Keller, 1993). The CBBE-model that Keller presented in 2001 shows a series of steps that lead to building a strong brand (see figure x). Starting from the bottom up, the model describes the process of brand salience, brand meaning, brand responses and brand resonance. The strongest brands are the brands that score well on all of the six brand building blocks. Previous research has not described political brands in the context of this CBBE-model, but as this research intends to enhance the knowledge of political brands, a translation to political branding is made in the description of the building blocks. The parties that are discussed are VVD, PvdA, CDA, D66, SP, PVV, GroenLinks and the Party for the Animals. The choice for these stimuli is described in the methods section. This CBBE-model has never been used in the context of political parties, so we use the existing literature to create a logical CBBE-model focused on politics. We then describe the three brand equity drivers in this context. We build upon the previously named article of French and Smith (2010) who created brand maps of the two biggest parties in the UK. In their research they asked conservative voters to come up with free associations about the conservative party; after all the associations were written down, they asked the voters to place their associations in a map and link the associations to each other (French & Smith, 2010). We use their brand map of the Conservative Party to illustrate the different brand building components.
Finally we will focus on the role of the party leader on the party brand and we formulate research questions to obtain more knowledge about this role.
Figure 3: CBBE model by Keller (2001, p.10)
Brand salience
In order for a brand to be considered at all, obviously the brand must be salient in the minds of consumers. This salience is measured by brand awareness which in turn falls into brand recognition and brand recall. The question to be asked is: do people recognize the brand (brand recognition) and do they recall the brand (brand recall) when they have to name brands in the brands’ category? (Keller, 2001). In a 2017 study, Labadie et al even found that brand awareness might be the best predictor of voting intentions. Their predictions based on the spontaneous awareness of party leaders (figure 2) turned out to be quite accurate after the parliamentary elections in march (Labadie, 2017).
Figure 4: Division of seats in parliament, a prediction based on brand awareness (Labadie, 2017)
In the research of French and Smith (2010) were brand association maps for the Conservative Party and the Labour Party were made, they measured the brand awareness for these two biggest parties in the UK. Their findings showed that 100% of their respondents recalled the party names (French &
Smith, 2010). They were not surprised by these findings, since political parties get a lot of exposure in the media and with regular elections, people are constantly reminded of political parties (French & Smith, 2010). We assume that in the context of The Netherlands the same situation would be valid, even though our political landscape is different from the U.K.’s political field.
Brand meaning
Brand meaning derives from brand associations, as we discussed previously these are the pieces of information that people have about the brand. The most important associations are the associations that are strong, favourable and unique. These strong, favourable and unique associations are a potential source of differentiation (French & Smith, 2010) or in the words of Keller (1993) these strong, favourable and unique associations are the building blocks of brand equity and can lead to brand loyalty. French and Smith (2010) were the first to measure political brand associations and their contribution to overall brand equity, since they thought of the political brand associations as the basic source from which perceptions of brand quality are determined. Their view is that partisan loyalty and voting behaviour derive from the perception of the quality of the political brand (French & Smith, 2010). In their measurement of the power of the Conservative Party and Labour Party in the UK, they found that both of the parties have strong brand equity and that the party leaders played a big role in the associative network of both parties.
Brand responses
Brand responses are dived into two categories (1) consumer judgments and (2) consumer feelings. Consumer judgments are for example the perceived quality, credibility, consideration and superiority of the brand. Consumer feelings relate to the emotional reactions people might have towards a brand, such as warmth, fun, excitement, security, social approval and self-respect (Keller, 2001). In the context of political branding
Brand resonance
Brand resonance is the top of the mentioned brand pyramid and is also the smallest block, showing that it is the hardest to reach: only when all the other blocks are fulfilled. Brand resonance is made up of four categories: behavioural loyalty, attitudinal attachment, sense of community and active
engagement (Keller, 2001). In short, all these characteristics of brand resonance have in common that it means that consumers are willing to invest time, energy and/or money in the relationship with the brand. Among the best examples of this brand resonance is the Harley Owners Group, where all sorts of people who own a Harley Davidson motor bike come together to talk about the brand and ride their motor bikes together. In the polical context, party membership may be seen as a form of brand resonance. People who are a member of a political party pay an annual contribution and often devote
their free time to the party to volunteer, especially in times of elections. In 2015, fewer than 300.000 people in The Netherlands were member of a political party, so this is a rather small group of people.
3.4 Brand equity drivers
The party brand consists of multiple compartments that each carry their own sets of associations, which means that by using marketing activity, these components can be influenced (Speed et al., 2015). Keller (2005) describes three sets of brand equity drivers, namely (1) the choices for the brand elements or identities such as names, logos, symbols, characters, slogans, jingles, packaging etc. (2) the products and services and all the marketing activities and programs that accompany them and (3) other associations that marketers can indirectly transfer to the brand, by using secondary associations such as linking the brand to other persons, places or things.
3.4.1 Primary brand elements
One of the most controllable aspects of the brand, is the choice of primary brand elements and brand identities. These are the first things a consumer will notice about the brand. A brand element is a trademarkeable visual or verbal information that identifies and differentiates a product or service (Keller, 2005). Visual brand equity therefore helps build brand recognition and enables the brand to stand out in comparison to other brands and it helps to communicate the brands desired image (Bottomley & Doyle, 2006). Colour, symbols and the party name are able to give meaning to the brand, as each carries its own set of associations. For example, you see that parties that are situated on the left side of the political spectrum all have the colour ‘red’ in their logo (PvdA, SP, GroenLinks), which carries the association of socialism. And the logo of the nationalistic party PVV is, probably not accidentally, made up out of red, white and blue, the Dutch national colours. In figure 5, the primary brand elements of the SP are described. In the appendix, a description of the eight political parties in this thesis and their primary brand elements are given.
Symbol: Tomato, symbol of protest
Party name: SP, stands for ‘Socialistische Partij’ (socialistic party) but they
always use the shortening ‘SP’. The name shows where the party comes from: socialism
Colours: Red, symbol of socialism
Figure 5: Primary brand elements of the SP
In the brand consensus map of the Conservative Party (figure 6) we see that some of the primary brand elements play a big role in this associative network: the colour ‘blue’; the logo ‘tree logo’ and the slogan ‘Time for a change’.
Figure 6: Brand consensus map of the Conservative Party (French & Smith, 2010, p. 467)
3.4.2 The product, services and all accompanying marketing activities and programs
The second brand equity driver named by Keller (2005) is the product or services itself and all accompanying marketing activities and programs. This also inhales the quality of the product, controlled retail distribution, motivated and trained employees, positive retail experience and good word of mouth, and publicity (Keller, 2005). This driver is already a bit more unpredictable as the first driver ‘primary brand elements’, since it involves a lot more elements ánd people, who of course sometimes make mistakes or are not in their best mood to represent the brand. Translated from the mainstream marketing literature by Keller (2005) to the political context this would be: The party and its policy itself; the quality of the party: its successes, how much of the proposed policy actually takes place; positive experience with the party representatives when they are met with on the street or during an event; good word of mouth and publicity (Keller, 2005). In the previously shown brand map of the Conservative Party (figure 6) we see associations that regard policy (‘tough on immigration’, ‘good policies on education’, ‘low inheritance tax policies’, ‘low taxation policies’; ‘supports green
policies’); the political position (‘not in power’; ‘promotes traditional British values’, ‘party of the 80s / dated’); their target audience (‘represents Middle/ Upper classes’; ‘family oriented party’).
3.4.3. Secondary brand associations
The third, and most uncontrollable way to build brand equity, is to leverage secondary associations from another brand, person, place et cetera. This means that the brand collaborates with another entity and in this process, hopes to borrow the associations that are in the associative network of the other entity. In the next chapter, the possibilities political brands have to leverage secondary brand associations will be described.
4. Leveraging secondary brand associations
In the past chapter, the brand building process is described and translated to the political context. An important aspect of brand building, is the leveraging of secondary associations. In this chapter, we will explain this process further and come with examples of things or people that could possibly serve as a source of secondary knowledge. In the context of political branding, the party leader could be
considered as a source of secondary knowledge to the party brand. This idea is investigated further in this chapter.
4.1 Secondary brand associations as brand building tool
As we mentioned shortly in the previous chapter, the leveraging of secondary associations is the least manageable way to build a brand but certainly a type of brand building that offers much potential (Keller, 2005). Leveraging secondary associations essentially means that the associations of one brand, are transferred to another brand. One type of leveraging secondary associations that many brands use, is a collaboration with a celebrity. The brand that initiates this collaboration, hopes that the associations people have with a celebrity (such as ‘cool’, ‘modern’, ‘young’, ‘fresh’) will be
transferred to the brand and people will also associate the brand with these ‘cool’, ‘modern’, ‘young’ and ‘fresh’ associations. The celebrity needs to be careful about this collaboration as well as the brand, since the associations people have with the brand might also be transferred to the celebrity brand. Thinking back about the associative network theory that was described in the previous chapter, the celebrity and the brand are both nodes in the associative network, that through the process of endorsement become linked to each other (Till, 1998). If the leveraging of secondary associations is successful, it is therefore a rather easy way to transform your brand: you do not have to change your brand identity which could be very costly; and you do not have to change your product. A celebrity brand is not the only type of source that offer potential for the leveraging of secondary associations. In figure 7, the figure by Keller (2005) with potential secondary sources of brand knowledge is
Figure 7: Secondary sources of brand knowledge (Keller, 2005, p.21)
In figure 7, the brand is placed in the middle, and around it are the potential secondary sources ‘other brands’, ‘places’, ‘people’ and ‘things’ that are then divided in different categories. The discussed celebrity brand would fall under the category ‘people’ and then ‘endorsements’. A type of source that is common in advertising, is the ‘country of origin’ source, that is often seen in the promotion of Italian food products such as pasta and pizza. In using the green, red and white colours of the Italian flag or Italian language, a brand hopes that the associations people have about Italy (with ‘great food’ as a common association) become linked to their brand.
Not all of these sources are easily translated to the political context and no research on political branding has considered all of these sources. Referring back to the brand association map of the Conservative Party from French and Smith (2010), the source ‘people’ is easily identified: (at the time) party leader David Cameron and former party leader Margareth Thatcher are very strong
associations for the Conservative Party. Another person who is linked to the conservative party is John Major, the treasurer in Thatchers cabinet. Some associations in the network are then clearly linked to one of the people. Associations that are linked to David Cameron are ‘cycles to work’, ‘hug-a-hoodie, ‘young leader’. The association ‘good leader’ is linked to both Cameron and Thatcher. Thatcher also brings up the association ‘first female PM’. Important to state is that these associations were brought up when asked about the Conservative Party as a whole, and were placed later in this associative map and linked to the person within the associative network. This shows that the associations of the persons Cameron and Thatcher have spilled over to the associative network of their political party. In
the associative network of the Conservative Party no secondary sources regarding ‘other brands’, ‘places’ or ‘things’ are identified. This indicates that for a political party, the secondary source of brand equity mostly comes from the (former) party leader. However, we will describe each of the four main sources (places, other brands, things and people) and try to link those to the political context.
Places
One example of ‘places’ that was mentioned shortly is the ‘country of origin’. Keller (2005) gives the example of a New Zealand based sweater manufacturer that positioned its product on the basis of its “New Zealand wool”: a country of origin association that resonates well with people, since New Zealand is known to have more sheep than people. With ‘channels’ the channels of distribution are meant. In the political context, one could argue that some politicians place emphasis on ‘where they come from’ as a way to build brand equity. Naming this ‘location of origin’ would then be more accurate. However, leveraging secondary sources from a place in the political context seems a stretch.
Things
The three sources of secondary knowledge that fall under the main source ‘things’ are events, causes and third party endorsements (Keller, 2005). By participating in an event or donating to or asking attention for a cause, political parties hope that the associations people have about the event or cause, become linked to the associative network of the party. One example is an event as the Gay Pride, the annual canal parade in Amsterdam to celebrate gay rights. Political parties that are involved with this topic and who stand for equality, like to participate in this event (see figure 8). Not only to show support to the cause, but also because they have the hope that by doing so, they will become more strongly associated to progressive values.
Third party endorsements have appeared to grow in popularity, especially in advertising (Dean & Biswas, 2001). Dean and Biswas (2001) write this popularity to the idea that this type of advertising intends to highlight the quality of a product while at the same time enhancing the credibility of the advertisement with this included information of an independent source (Dean & Biswas, 2001). For political parties, especially in election times, third party endorsement is often used as a strategy to persuade people to vote for their party. For example, when the ‘Kiezwijzer Duurzame economie’ was presented, an assessment of all political parties on how they score on green policy, parties who value green policy fell over each other in their rush to publish the ‘Kiezwijzer’ on their social media profiles (see figure 9).
Figure 9: ‘Voting tool environmental friendly economics’ (in Dutch: Kiezwijzer Duurzame Economie) (2017)
Other brands
The third main source of secondary knowledge is ‘other brands’ and consist of collaborations with other brands or by using another brand as an ingredient. An example of this is the collaboration that Milka chocolate has with the cookie brand OREO. In the political context, these types of
collaborations are rare: especially in the Dutch political landscape where coalitions are very common, working together is often considered a necisity and not viewed from a branding perspective. However, an example of a collaboration that was seen last year was the collaboration between the PvdA and GroenLinks to come up with climate policy (Beunderman, 2017 This may be seen as a cooperation that is clever from a branding perspective: in this way, the PvdA might borrow associations from GroenLinks, that is very strongly associated to green policy (it is even in their name); and for
opposition party GroenLinks, working together with a coalition party was a smart way to show their fit for government.
People
Probably the most interesting source for secondary knowledge in the political context, is ‘people’. As the model by Keller (2005) shows, there are two types of this source that could be considered: employees and endorsers. In the start of this chapter, the idea of using celebrity endorsers to create more brand equity was briefly mentioned. Till (1998) and Till et al (2008) researched celebrity endorsements as sources of secondary knowledge for brands and their implications are presented. First, they state that a consistent use of an endorser results in consumers thinking of that endorser when thinking about the brand, and the other way around: people thinking about the brand when they see the endorser. Key to this process is repetition: the two stimuli need to be seen together often in order to establish a strong associative link (Till, 1998). Another important aspect to consider in the context of the transfer of secondary knowledge is what Till (1998, p.403) calls ‘belongingness’. This means that when there is a a perceived ‘fit’ between the brand and the celebrity endorser, it is more likely that an associative link between the two can develop (Till, 1998). An implication for this is that the choice of a celebrity endorser should fit with the associations that the brand currently has or could possibly have (Till, 1998). These are two different but related things: when there is a very strong fit between the associative networks of the two brands, the associative link will be created faster and the celebrity endorser than serves to reinforce the existing associations; when the associative network of the celebrity endorser is more in the area of the associations that a brand hopes to have or wants to enhance, the celebrity serves in order to create those associations for the brand (Till, 1998). In the latter situation, it is even more important that the two brands are seen together often in order to create a strong associative link. Till et al (2008) found support for this match-up theory, indicating that an endorsement will be more effective when there is an appropriate fit between the two brands. They also found that simply pairing a well-liked celebrity with a brand, might have a positive effect on the brand attitude (Till et al, 2008). To finalize, celebrity endorsers are more effective for brands that are less familiar, and brands that people lack knowledge of, since these brands do not have enhanced associative networks of their own (Till, 1998).
Working together with a person as an endorser and building a strong link between her or him and your brand, is however not without risk: people make mistakes. The stronger the link between the brand and the endorser, the greater harm will be done when the endorser becomes involved in a scandal (Till, 1998). Especially in the context of sports brands, endorsers have often lost their shine once they were caught cheating or using drugs. This makes it very important for brands to carefully consider with whom they want to collaborate.
A great difference between a celebrity endorser and a political party leader, is that the latter is usually not a celebrity until the moment when he or she becomes a party leader. This means that usually their brand image only starts to be built from the moment their party have chosen them to be a party leader. All the associations that people will then be able to get from the party leader, are thus linked to the political party since it is this party that is making them famous. With interviews to portray the ‘person behind the politician’, the party leader does get opportunities to build a brand that is not completely related to the party.
The source ‘people’ could also regard employees, such as a CEO. Bendisch et al (2013) presented a conceptual model of CEO brands, see figure 10 since CEOs are increasingly recognised as potential assets to the company brand, and can be seen as brands on their own. A difference with endorsers, is that CEO brands are often created and enhanced in order to influence the perception of stakeholders rather than the public.
Figure 10: Conceptual model of CEO brands (Bendisch et al, 2013, p.608)
The Conceptual Model of CEO brands by Bendisch et al (2013, p.608) brings together “the key components of a CEO brand: identity, reputation, positioning, and equity”. CEO brand equity is therefore made up of a combination of the Creator Perspective (how the company wants you to see the CEO brand) and the Stakeholder Perspective on the CEO brand (Bendisch et al, 2013). For
commercial brands, a favourable stakeholder perception of a CEO will enhance the status of a CEO, which means that their income can increase up to 100 per cent and therefore also contributes to greater equity of the CEO brand (Bendisch et al, 2013). This means that for a commercial brand, having a strong CEO brand, will likely result in better results for the firm, since stakeholders will trust the CEO
and therefore the firm more. Putting the political party leader under the category ‘employee’ does also not seem like a perfect fit: the main role of a party leader is to represent their party to the voters and the public, not to stakeholders. We would therefore argue that the party leader falls under the umbrella ‘people’ and is difficult to place in a subcategory. This difficulty to categorize the party leader, does not mean that we should forget about it altogether. Multiple things show the importance of developing more insight into the function of a party leader as a source for secondary knowledge. First, in previous research by French and Smith (2010 the (former) party leaders and politicians shown to be the only sources of secondary knowledge that were present in the associative network of the Conservative party and the same went for the Labour Party. Second, even though the party leader is not either a celebrity endorser or a CEO, but more likely a mix of both, their brand is capable to influence the party brand more than any other source. Smith (2009) supports this thought and states that people (politicians) have a greater impact on the brand personality of the party brand than in commercial markets. Commercial brands rarely have a leader that is widely known and therefore have an influence on the brand personality, making them reliant on endorsers to transfer personality to the brand (Smith, 2009). Therefore, the idea of the party leader as a source of secondary knowledge will be investigated further in this research.
Successfully leveraging secondary associations
According to Keller (2005) three factors predict how much leverage will result from secondary sources. (1) The knowledge people have about the secondary entity: the entity needs to be familiar and the consumer must have some associations about the entity in order for associations to be transferred (2) the meaningfulness of this knowledge: are the associations that are transferred from the entity relevant to the brand, and (3) the transferability of this knowledge: to what extent consumers will link the knowledge to the brand (Keller, 2005). We stated that this brand equity driver can be rather unpredictable, since the brand gives up some control of the brand image: it is not entirely up to the company to choose the associations that are being leveraged from the other entity to the brand (Keller, 2005). This means that not only the good associations people have about the entity might transfer, but also the bad associations. To successfully leverage associations between the secondary source and the brand, it is important that there is a ‘fit’ between the two (Till et al, 2008).
This suggests that it is important for a party leader to have a good fit with the party he or she
represents. In the association map of the Conservative Party, we see that there is an overlap between the associations that people link to the party and to Thatcher and Cameron. This shows that for the Conservative Party apparently there is a good fit between the two party leaders and the party they represent. Lei, Dawar and Lemmink (2008) found that the spillover effect between a subbrand and the parent brand is not divided evenly. They found that the strength of the spillover between the subbrand and the party brand is a function of the subbrand-parent brand link rather than the parent brand –
subbrand link strength (Lei, Dawar & Lemmink, 2008). For the position of the party leader within the brand of the party, this implies that the strength of spillover between the party leader brand and the party brand will be stronger, than the link between the party brand and the party leader brand.
Party leader as heuristic cue
Secondary associations are the most important in the decision making process of a consumer (in this case voter), who lacks the motivation to judge the brand on a deeper level (Keller, 2005). To explain this process, a short overview of the so called Eleboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion by Petty and Cacioppo (1986) is presented. The ELM model describes the process of how a person is persuaded by a message. There are two different routes a person may follow, the central or the peripheral route. The first type of persuasion, the central route, occurs when a person is motivated and capable to carefully and thoughtfully assess the true benefits of the information that is presented to him or her. In the political context we might say that these are the voters who inform themselves about the policy of a political party by reading the party programs and watching television debates to compare the different parties. The second route, the perifical route, occurs when a person lacks the motivation and/or capacity to assess these true merits (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). For these voters, the party leader has been identified as a heuristic cue to assess the overall party competence, responsiveness and attractiveness (Clarke et al., 2004). They explain this need for a heuristic cue by stating that political parties themselves can be very big institutions, with local, regional and national organizations that not necessarily deliver the same message (Clarke et al., 2004). This makes it very appealing for voters to assess instead the party leader, who is a clearly identified, single individual who is responsible for the party’s policy and the choices that the government is going to make and therefore is a convenient shortcut to assess the likely competence of the party when it is going to govern (Clarke et al., 2004). As Till (1998) stated: endorsers are more effective for brands that are less familiar, and brands that people lack knowledge of, since these brands do not have enhanced associative networks of their own. This might imply that for smaller and less known parties, their choice of party leader is even more important than for more established political parties.
