Bo Bäckman: Find and develop Gaps in the market
11/12 2009
As much of brand perception is based on values it is interesting to identify values that are “homeless” in terms of Brands.
Today in Sweden we are 10 months away from the national election. The political map is changing and volatile and values will play an important role.
Are political parties’ brands? Yes I think so. They are dependent on brand promises, strategy, communication, media tactics, ambassadors, management, PR … The same prerequisites as for creating a Superbrand. Many of the prerequisites are mirrored in values.
To measure political parties
Traditionally you ask a sample about “Which party is best today”. But below “Best” there are more or less probable options. These you can identify by asking: “Which parties can you consider voting for”.
• Definitely
• Probably
• Maybe
• Hardly
• Never
The analysis will show:
• Percent convinced – have a “Definite Party”. These are hard to move and make good ambassadors
• Shared potential – might consider two or more parties. Make then go your way. They will listen as they are hesitant and need to find a reason to make a choice.
• The “neverists” – they will never believe anything from that party. And they will take every chance to discredit that party.• In short: Find and influence the possible flows.
Political BrandMapping:
SD: Sweden Democrats S: Social Democrats FP: Liberals M: Conservatives C: Center party V: Socialist party MP: Environmental Party
1: Modern life style, but with a focus on the local.
2: Concerned about the society – empathy.
3: Selfcentered with a focus on a troubelsome everydaylife.
4: Open for modern life style and pretty content with life. Want to express themselves. A global perspective.
The concept for Political BrandMapping is to start with many values, extract the Political Drivers by finding what core values correlate with having a political party on your “Short list”:
The Core values map (see below) is formed by plotting values against each other so that the values have a maximum distance between them and then position the parties with a maximum distance between them. If you have a value in the right hand upper corner and another in left hand upper corner these are not shared by the same individuals. They split the political Brand map and the parties.
Conclusions
The new party (SD) is filling a Gap among those who are more passive. The SD possible voters are hostile towards the large cities. They want to protect their little world from changes – be it new values or strangers. Life is often tough for them (and unfair in their opinion).
The party that is closest to SD is the Social Democrats – but still a distance away. We must remember that S is a large party that holds sometimes opposing values. The common denominator is equality.
The environmentalists feel a little bit lonely. Their values do not correlate with other values as you can see in the chart. Environmental matters are quite far from other values. Being an environmentalist seems to be a priority – not very much else matters.
The two parties that attract the votes of the environmentalists are MP and V.
KD and C are close and their potential voters are quite content – life is good to them. An interest in Looks&Fashion is correlated with thinking “Life is good”. But that life is good doesn´t prevent them from taking in new impressions.
Being a liberal (FP) is to be split: To be an early adopter as well as a traditionalist.
The conservative party M is very close to the liberal party FP. M is far away from S but as S is a large party there are values in the new M strategy that attracts S-voters
The next step in value positioning is to elaborate on the values. The values above are a condensation of several values that correlate and have been labelled. There must a more thorough analysis in order to understand more of the value drivers. This will not be done in this article.
The possibilities
Spring 2009: How many are possible for the parties? How many are convinced?
Source: Orvesto 2009. 16 000 interviews
In all 61 % have a “definite” party. The sum of all possible parties is 224 i.e. the voters have 2.2 alternatives.
So everything is possible – the political map is volatile. This also makes political choices very sensitive to different moves from the political actors and media. The closer you get to the election the more important it gets to make a choice – you observe more, you listen more and you discuss more. And media and politicians are very eager to provide “information”
The table below shows cross possibilities. I.e. if you have C as a possibility what other parties can they consider? 68% of the possible C-voters have FP as a possibility (definitely or maybe vote for). As you see from Sum possible The smaller parties (C, FP, KD, SD, V) have higher sums. The flows between them can change rapidly. You can also see that there is a rather large propensity to move across the political boarders. 24% of the possible S-voters can consider voting for M.
Bo Bäckman