The Sunday News
Michael Mhlanga
While it’s nice to think that our voting decisions are based purely on how well the platforms of each of the candidates align with our own individual set of beliefs and values, it is far more likely that our ballots are cast based on the outcomes of carefully targeted and optimised political marketing campaigns.
Initially, understanding that our actions are likely prompted by the calculated promotional efforts of external entities may be uncomfortable, but consuming the marketing of any product, service, or idea is how we make decisions about many things in our everyday life—from what peanut butter to buy to what clothes to wear—and that’s not a bad thing… especially in a country where every decision comes with so many choices.
Political marketing is the process by which political candidates promote themselves and their platforms to voters through masterly-crafted communications aimed at gaining public support.
As a business marketer, you may think that political marketing techniques and strategies don’t apply to you, but while the entity being marketed is different, there are many parallels between political marketing and the marketing of goods and services.
Both business marketers and political marketers use media outlets to inform, remind, and alter the attitudes and behaviours of potential clients and voters (respectively), and they both employ similar tools when structuring campaigns, such as market research and statistical analysis.
The primary and most important difference between business marketing and political marketing is that the latter is used to raise awareness and inform members of the public about critical issues and leadership choices within their community, state, and country.
The modern political marketing landscape provides myriad opportunities to connect with potential voters and shape public opinion, including cold calls, email campaigns, direct mail leaflets, radio spots, social media outreach, and television news and talk show appearances. There are also many tools available to gather data on voters and craft campaigns, such as factor analysis, discriminant analysis, conjoint measurement, and multidimensional scaling.
In a nutshell, the importance of political marketing is how effective it is at spreading messaging and informing the public.
Campaign messages and ideas are very easily and quickly consumed and shared, and this facilitates a better more organic way of raising awareness and generating a call to them to action, whether that action is to join a campaign, lobby for a bill, or cast a vote at the poll and reassure voter confidence, political marketing is essential in retaining power in 2018 and one tool yet to be exploited is the answer to what happened, is happening and will happen to everyone. Before I explore that, let’s reflect on this past week’s comedy.
The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all
At this point I feel like I have a more moral obligation to tell my countrymen how drunk they are if they are failing to diagnose themselves of this apt stupidity. Kambe shuwa who fails to realise that Nelson Chamisa is diving into political oblivion?
It’s almost certain that a few years down the line we will not speak of Chamisa as MDC-T Vice president but a clairvoyant with a swipe machine in his church. He is a preacher now. Someone disputed this week that being a theology graduate does not mean he is going to be a pastor and I said did he ever say he is not going to be a pastor? Why then did he study it if he was not interested in being a man of the cloth (particularly at Makandiwa’s former college)? Doesn’t Chamisa have a Facebook page where he is preaching?
To my knowledge, seminarians are cleric aspirants and Chamisa is now an ecclesiastic whether he is full time or not, he now is a pastor and memory reminds us where clerics in politics land – in the doldrums. Well, he won’t be the first, Abel Muzorewa, Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, Canaan Banana, our retired Archbishop Pius Ncube and Chamisa won’t be the last but is the youngest.
Politics has no mercy for man of the cloth, it swallows them then spits them right back into the faces of their followers-cud.
This is the fate of Nelson, mark my words, in any case, opposition no longer trusts him.
It seems he wasn’t the only hilarious thing to happen in Zimbabwe’s politics this past week. We had a red carpet event at Bulawayo’s Holiday Inn. So there were Human rights awards in Bulawayo and they were being given to Tajamuka activists at most.
The winning criterion was based on votes and Jessie Majome and Linda Masarira walked away victors on that evening. That is not the interesting part, what is hysterical is that people were being awarded for making noise in the streets, breaking the law, futile activism and all this based on how many common people think you are the best at it. All this does not happen elsewhere but right here in Bulawayo, in an auspicious event, where the common man is not invited yet the awards are meant for those who say they are in sync with the common man, they bear his interests and they have been his champion.
I think those BUYA boys were right to protest against such an insult of their shared movement. Why would you award someone for every citizen’s moral obligation?
Don’t we have a right to fight for our people’s interests anyway? Have we achieved that? That proved that political remuneration in opposition echelons is elitist, – there are others who are noisier than others; those in Bulawayo are less talkative than those in other cities. That event disenfranchised every Bulawayo activist, it taught them how anyone in opposition thinks of them – they are weak, period. That’s why they were not voted for. Maybe it’s high time they detach themselves from the noise.
Corruption: Voices from the hostels
Let me get back to this week’s central submission-Zimdefgate. I feel that justice has not been done to it on public awareness.
Someone asked me why I have chosen to write about it yet it’s a tired topic. I simply replied…there is more to it than what the common man sees. It’s the job of the media to inform the public on what is happening just like it did when it was first exposed. I apply a stakeholder’s analysis to trigger answers and show how much attention the issue got and why we have to deal with it once and for all.
Everyone is looking at Zanu-PF and how the party deals with the issue and many other cases of alleged corruption across board. If ever there is what will bring electoral confidence in the party, it’s how the party deals with corruption.
Last week I told you how the student is angry with the deficiency of answers on the issue. This week I choose to engage the students directly, integrate their thoughts into this piece and influence a food for thought to the party on why it is necessary to deal with corruption publicly and inherently win the hearts of the students by offering justice and bringing closure to it in a manner that everybody would find fair and just.
I feel the media has not done enough in following the story. As much as the spark of the scandal that had two weeks attention, ever since Professor Jonathan Moyo sued a media house and Deputy Minister Dr Godfrey Gandawa was arrested, not much has been reported back to the people. I know the underlying argument is that investigations are underway, but that does not sell because when the issue came to light, investigations were still underway, the arresting of implicated people was a result of investigations even with the media updating the public.
When such sentiments emerge, the party should recollect and be accountable to its constituency, which includes students, regardless of their political affiliations. Remember I once wrote about winning their trust, and here is an opportunity to do just that. Zanu-PF is a brand and at this stage it needs that consumer who wants the party to stamp out corruption of whatever form.
Micheal Mhlanga is a research and strategic communication specialist and is currently serving Leaders for Africa Network (LAN) as the Programmes and Public Liaison Officer. He also administrates multiple youth public dialogue forums in Zimbabwe including the annual Reading Pan Africanism Symposium (REPS) and Back to Pan Africanism Conference.
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