Political Marketing and Management in the 2017 New Zealand Election

This chapter sets the scene of how political marketing is used in New Zealand just like other established democracies but adding context about the 2017 Election. It notes how the election was very unpredictable, with a change in the Labour and Greens leadership just before the campaign started, and that National won the most votes and seats but lost control of government due to the decision by minor party NZ First. Jacinda Ardern, elected Labour leader just 8 weeks before the election, when the party was languishing in the polls, became Prime Minister. This chapter introduces the rest of the book, outlining how the different chapters will seek to explain the result by covering varied aspects of political marketing, drawing on rich and extensive quantitative and qualitative data.

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of descriptive statistics from the 250,000+ Vote Compass data set to help us to understand what the market wanted. Analysing the whole sample but also by demographics and each party’s prospective voters, it finds that health was the top issue, closely followed by the economy, then housing, education, social welfare, and the environment. Politicians thus face the challenge of implementing substantial social investment and infrastructure policies while maintaining economic competitiveness. The products offered by Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens were the most closely aligned with public opinion in terms of policy, while Labour offered the most likeable leadership. National needs to reflect on being the least responsive to public opinion in their policy offering; Labour needs to defend their market share and leader’s popularity; NZ First need to focus on retaining supporters and the Greens work on improving the reputation of their leadership.

This chapter presents detailed analysis of the +250,000 Vote Compass sample to identify the parties’ alignment with supporters, target markets, and undecided voters. National’s platform was only in line with the views of 40% of their prospective voters, the lowest of the four parties examined while the Greens’ policies were most in line. National’s overall policy platform was not overwhelmingly in line with any demographic, while Labour, NZ First, and the Greens often overlapped on targets such as lower earners though Labour/Greens were stronger on youth and NZ First seniors. The Greens’ policies had the highest alignment with undecided voters, and National the lowest. Labour, the Greens and New Zealand First need to focus on attracting National’s prospective voters and undecided voters rather than each other’s market share, and National have significant work to reformulate an effective relationship with their prospective and undecided voters as well as identifying potential targets.

This chapter explores the extent to which National and Labour followed the market-oriented party model in 2017. Drawing on multiple qualitative and quantitative primary sources including interviews with senior practitioners, analysis of 170+primary sources and Vote Compass main survey and post-election data, analysis finds that Labour took the edge in overall orientation towards listening and responding to the public whilst National’s lack of responsiveness ultimately lost National control of government. Market-orientation is still important. Labour’s marketing was imperfect and failed to demonstrate delivery competence, but they tried to respond to voter concerns whilst National was dismissive of market research, focused on their strengths rather than voter concerns and relied on their record instead of focusing on future promises. National need to respect, reflect, and reform and Labour needs to deliver in government, while creating space for new product development for 2020 to maintain their market orientation and win again.

This chapter addresses the brand personality performance of Andrew Little, Jacinda Ardern, and Bill English from their ascension to the party leadership to polling day in 2017. Their performance is analysed by assessing candidates according to their projected competence, energy, openness, empathy, agreeableness, and charisma. The research finds that Ardern had the strongest performance according to these criteria, with English the middling candidate and Little with the weakest performance. It thus demonstrates both the value and limitations of competence, the ability of energy to ‘reinvigorate’ a party, and the importance of openness, empathy, agreeableness, and charisma. It closes with pertinent lessons for practitioners, including the importance and limitations of focusing on a candidate’s functional capacity, the importance of charismatic communication, and the ability for facets of candidate behaviour to have impacts across multiple brand personality dimensions. Having a well-rounded brand personality is very important for political candidates.

The ability to communicate governing qualifications and personal qualities was vital for both National Party Leader and Prime Minister, Bill English, and Labour Party Leader, Jacinda Ardern, in the 2017 New Zealand General Election given they were both new to their roles. Because of this, leadership was more of a focus in this campaign than in the past. Through the Contemporary Governing Leaders’ Communication Model, this chapter highlights how both leaders effectively promoted the qualities that were already seen as their strengths, but struggled to mitigate or strengthen certain aspects of their image that were seen as weaknesses going into the campaign—for Ardern, strong and competent leadership, and for English, responsiveness to public concern and criticism. The chapter concludes with lessons for Ardern, newly elected National Party Leader, Simon Bridges, and political marketing scholarship more broadly, going forward.

This chapter offs a pragmatism-philosophy-driven analysis of the book findings with additional insights from interviews with practitioners from National, Labour, the Greens, ACT, and United Future, providing lessons for research and practice in New Zealand and globally. For academics, it notes the importance of market-oriented behaviour, the need to align policies with the views of undecided voters and key target markets, differentiate from other parties, develop and communicate the leaders brand in terms of competence as well as relatability and understand the party brand is influenced by the leader not just specific policies. For practitioners it offers advice for specific parties and generic lessons such as the need to plan but be flexible, to create a close relationship between market researchers and party decision-makers, differentiate between parties, understand and manage the party’s existing brand perception, and that delivery is the qualification parties need to win elections.