ABSTRACT
Political marketing is about much more than propaganda, rhetoric and advertising (Lees-Marshment 2001; Maarek 1995). While these are clearly aspects of the marketing paradigm, reducing political marketing to just encompass political communication means we overlook the key shifts in the behaviour of modern British political parties. The important development of the last five years is the introduction of techniques that borrow from corporate marketing, in particular corporate-style branding and market segmentation. The fact that a British political party has re-positioned itself following extensive marketing research, and has designed its manifesto, public image and communication as a result of interacting with the market, has been hailed as moving democracy towards a more consultative future. The theory is that political parties that adopt a market orientation are more attuned to public needs and desires and so can be described as organic to the society they seek to represent. However, marketers usually focus on a strategic section of the population: the target market; a concept that appears anathema to politics. If political parties talk to certain groups, other sectors of the electorate may feel disenfranchised, and indeed evidence from recent elections does not substantiate the position that politics and the people have become more connected. If anything, the UK General Election of 2001 indicates that the reverse has taken place. This article discusses the role of political marketing as the cause of an emerging democratic deficit in UK politics, rather than it creating a more Periclean or super-democratic form of parliamentary government.
