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Are Celebrities Good fo...

2010-04-16T09:05:06-04:00

I'm going to keep this short. Very short. In the spirit of this forum of 'no right or wrong answers' but rather some good, old fashioned 'thinking' it might be nice just to hear what you all...well, 'think'.

Politics is not a arena for the faint-hearted, even more so around election time. The UK is gearing up for one of the most hotly contested elections of all time with the main players looking to get as large a proportion of the voting public as possible. So, I thought I'd do some research into the way in which politicians can gain votes - specifically, whether celebrity endorsements of political parties actually make a difference to an election campaign and why.

There's plenty of literature available on political campaigning and a lot on celebrity endorsements, but the use of celebrities in political campaigning has not received as much attention as one might think, especially outside of the US. So, my co-authors and I thought it high time this be dealt with. We want to know if celebs work in the UK as political advocates and if so, WHY do they work - the second question being far more important in my mind as a consumer behaviourist.

I won't bore you with the methodology or the pre-testing or the theorisation of the constructs use (the full paper is available - see the reference at the bottom of this topic for those who are interested). But in a nutshell, we hypothesised that celebrity endorsements only work for a certain type of voter; specifically, those who have a very low engagement with politics. Conversely, we hypothesised that those for whom politics is very important will not respond any differently to a celebrity or non-celebrity endorsement because they are more concerned with other aspects of politics (e.g. policies, the party manifesto etc).

So, what did we find...well, after running an experiment with 300 Britains of voting age we were able to show that those who concentrated on the importance of politics (High Political Salience) did not respond any differently when presented with a celebrity or non-celebrity endorsement. However, those who did not concentrate on the importance of politics (Low Political Salience) were significantly more in favour of the celebrity than the non-celebrity endorser.

With a huge number of people not voting in general or regional elections in the UK one can assume that a fair proportion don't care much about politics. Sure, some don't vote for other reasons, but for many, they just don't care. These are the people who are likely to respond to celebrities according to our study.

My questions to you are - is this good for politics? Do we want celebrities to be advocating political parties? Do we want those in our society who have no interest in politics voting simply because the latest popstar or actor has said they should? Is this good for our world as it could lead to a greater number of voters turning out at the polls? We know celeb endorsements are common in the US elections - is this because politicians know that many people don't know (or care) about politics? That the policies between parties are so slight that 'something else' is needed in the 'swing states'.

Like I said, I want to keep this short so I can hear from you. If you're interested, please read the full article: Veer, Ekant, Ilda Becirovic & Brett A. S. Martin (2010) "If Kate Voted Conservative, Would You?: The Role of Celebrity Endorsements in Political Party Advertising", European Journal of Marketing, Vol 44 (3/4), pp. 436-450.

Happy voting Great Britain!

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Attracting Great Leader...

2010-03-15T17:54:24-04:00

Every year countless athletic competitions are "fought" to determine which team is superior. We love to make analogies to battles as I have done, but, barring accidents, the rules of the games prevent deaths that would occur in real battles. The audience gets most of the satisfaction of watching a real battle, but the losing team is free to try again later, and its players are free to live their normal life. I would like to extend these benefits from entertainment to another of the reasons a real battle might be fought: politics.

If you must choose an analogy for our political system in the US, if would be one of an externally peaceful kingdom who's citizens are rarely happy with their leadership and revolt, replacing the king. Every few years we ask ourselves: "shall we revolt now or wait until later?". This is not the story that legends are made of, not the kingdom that every hero aspires to rule one day. This is the job of a servant who works hard to please his master and is sold after a few mistakes. How do we attract true leaders in this environment?

The heroes of legend, the Alexanders and Caesars, have all been great conquerors. For whatever reason they had, they claimed all the land they could reach as their own. The ones we honor the most were the ones who were able to make good use of the resources of each region they conquered in order to spread "modern" civilization throughout their empire. If we could give people a chance to do that, to be the conqueror who brings prosperity to all they conquer, I suspect that we would find great leaders where we currently see great servants.

Arguably this has already been achieved in the business world. Great leaders climb the corporate ladder where they would have risen through the ranks of an army. They claim a market segment the way they would have claimed a farming region. They buy or merge with other companies the way they would have conquered cities. They even buy their way into politics the way a noble might bribe a king. But businesses are not cities, the needs of one do not correspond to the needs of the other. We must have our county run by governors, not CEO's.

We can change the way we vote for leaders. We can vote on the results of their work rather than the hype of their campaign managers. We would need to set up a system that allows a leader to "conquer" a neighboring political region peacefully, like the sports team was able to conquer the other team. We can do this by letting our citizens vote not on which candidate will lead and which will go home, but to which larger region they will belong.

For example, when I was growing up New Hampshire had no sales tax while Massachusetts had a small percent. This was enough to cause many citizens to cross the border into New Hampshire to do their shopping. What if those citizens were allowed to vote to make their county part of New Hampshire? Then they could avoid the longer trip and enjoy no sales tax in their home town! I'm sure Massachusetts had its own benefits, perhaps one of New Hampshire's counties would have voted to join them. Swapping counties like this would allow the results of good leadership to spread, and the results of poor leadership to eventually vanish from the country altogether.

This would change the way we do politics in the country. It would require quite a bit of planning to work out the details. It would remove some historic pride in our political regions. I bet it would make great new stories though. Could we find a leader that would be capable of conquering the entire country? Unify it instead of the divisions that our current political system is facing? I hope I get to find out some day, I'd really like to see the new ideas that come about when leaders compete to conquer the country through excellent governance.

And think of all the new jobs created for the map makers!

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The Presidential Electi...

2010-02-08T08:43:06-05:00

In the 2004 elections, the republicans prevailed by concentrating on their core value messages and substantive issues such as national security and foreign policy in a time of international conflict. Leadership and competence were emphasized in response to national danger. The imperative of sharing values such as freedom and democracy with oppressed peoples of the world is an issue that obviously resonates with the American people.The sagacity of extending tax relief at the same time that the nation was fighting a war to protect the nation from acts of terrorism on a global scale was much debated. For some the safety and security of the nation and its citizens was a secondary consideration. The perceived illusion of a growing budget deficit and a misrepresented failing economy was also debated. Then president Bush continued the argument that he had made for years that there was a necessity for making his tax cuts permanent to keep the economy expanding. John Kerry continued the tired old canard of tax relief only for some in the middle class while rolling back the tax cut for high income individuals, but most of the nation did not listen to promises that have never been kept by politicians that have never met a tax that they did not like. Senator Kerry’s voting record and his propensity for saying different things to different audiences resulted in too many self contradictions. While his sincerity or veracity was not brought into question, his credibility gap would not allow the nation to be swayed by class warfare and clever distinctions as to who really deserved tax relief. The nation remembered the promises of tax relief that were offset by new taxes upon social security benefits during the Clinton administration. The public was reminded that the Bush, Regan, and Kennedy tax cuts all actually increased Federal revenue.Surrogates tried to make economic issues central. Soft money was banned in 2004 resulting in an increase in political activity by 527 groups primarily funded by George Soros. Changes concomitant to the ban on soft money also increased the activity of interest groups through direct mailing and telephone. The tactics of these 527 groups were to attempt to put President Bush on the defensive about the loss of jobs by endless repetitions of phony statistics, in truth the bounce back from the destruction of the world trade center and stock collapses were less dramatic and harmful than similar occurrences like Black Thursday throughout U.S. history. Also the recovery from the damage to the economy was far more vigorous than the current recovery from the collapse of Fannie Mae and the sub-prime housing loan market. The swift boat veterans for truth were another 527 group attempting to get their own message out. They questioned Kerry’s statements about his service in Viet Nam from the perspective of witness on the scene. Their message raised the question of Kerry’s credibility, leadership and competence.I contend that at a time of war, the substantive issues in the 2004 election were, in point of fact, leadership and competence and that the issues such as the deficit, crime, and poverty were the “feel good” issues that just did not play out. With the threat of international terrorism and the continuing military pacification and occupation of former terror sponsor states, the security of the United States was not only the most substantive, but also the most important. The declension of the recalcitrance of Libya demonstrates this importance.

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Barack Obama’s America

2009-09-28T20:18:21-04:00

Used only with express written permission

In 1970, Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg famously defined the Real Majority of the U.S. electorate as being “un-young, un-poor, and un-black.” Today, Scammon and Wattenberg’s Real Majority is increasingly an historical artifact. Certainly, George W. Bush helped hasten the end of this Republican-leaning coalition by his poor performance. But Ronald Reagan also helped by getting much of his conservative agenda enacted into law. Redefining what is means to be a conservative is a central problem for the Republican Party in the Barack Obama era.

But other factors are working to create a new majority poised to elect more Democrats. Since 1970, the U.S. has had four revolutions: (1) a racial revolution where whites will be a minority of the US population by mid-century; (2) a family revolution where having a mom, dad, and kids living at home with their biological parents is no longer the norm; (3) a gay rights revolution where greater tolerance toward homosexuals is prevalent; and (4) a religious revolution where the location of faith is not necessarily in a church building, but in the heart of the individual.

Each of these revolutions contains their own astonishing facts. Regarding race: there are more foreign-born living in California (8.4 million) than there are people residing in all of New Jersey. As for families, only 30% describe their own family situation as consisting of a mom, dad, and kids, while families headed by grandparents, single parents, blended families, and gay partners predominate. Regarding gay rights, the 2000 Census reported that same-sex partners resided in all but 255 of the nation’s 3,141 counties. And during the 2004-2005 academic year when George W. Bush made gay marriage a central issue of his reelection campaign, the number of gay-straight alliance clubs in the nation’s high schools increased at a rate of three per day. As for religion: 92% of Americans believe in God, but 82% also think a person can be a good Christian or Jew without attending a church or synagogue.

Faced with these facts, Scammon and Wattenberg’s Real Majority could only must 48% of the presidential vote in 2000; 51% in 2004, and just 46% in 2008. And with each passing year, Ronald Reagan’s America becomes a more distant memory. Barack Obama’s America is emerging from the social revolutions listed above. In so doing, Obama’s majority reaffirms an aphorism that Scammon and Wattenberg so famously coined: Demography is Destiny.

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