Why Canadian Political Parties Don't Get It

The traditional way to run a political campaign is to control your message. Control what you say
and when you say it. Control who hears it.

Tell one story to your raving fans, and a more moderate story to people in the center.

As voters have seen again and again, politicians are good at this. Some people call it lying. Others say it's stretching the truth. But in general, politicians have gotten away with it; and you the voter have been resigned to that.

The top-down, control-the-message strategy worked in the past for a few reasons:

• Media companies were complicit in not embarrassing the people they counted on to appear on their shows and authorize their licenses.
• Politicians could decide where and when to show up and could choose whether or not they wanted to engage.
• Bad news didn’t spread far unless it was exceptionally juicy. Especially if included sex, corruption, or people dying.

One of the key cornerstones of traditional political marketing has been to just change the communication. Use different positions for different target segments, if only they can find that sweet spot in the marketing communications mix they could finally reach their audience. This has been noted in a recent globe article:

Canadian politicos are fascinated by the campaign's use of social networking.

“There's eight million Canadian accounts … on Facebook,” says Nammi Poorooshasb, federal New Democrat director of communications.

“We've been looking at ways to mobilize these people in those communities.”

Sure they may be 9 million plus people on facebook but how many of them are identified with any political party? Or even care to hear about traditional ideas from traditional political parties? Judging by the numbers (and my own network) very few.

You can change the message, tactics, promotion, and marketing channels and add as many hot toppings of social media to be "with it" - but you will fail.

The dream has been simple for Canadian political parties: if we can just enough of today's hot web marketing everything else will be take care of itself.

The reason why people (especially youth) are not involved in politics isn't because of the lack of promotion to youth or to whatever market; it's because new media marketing can only work if you choose to reorganize your organization.

That is moving from a top down approach to a bottom up, whereby a party is a collaborator not a messenger. Whereby a political party realizes they no longer control the message and need a grassroots (different tribes if you will) to do their communicating for them. Where those tribes actually participate in creating party policy that is binding on the party to adopt - not sweep under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. Where real meaningful change of structure and responsiveness can occur and by ordinary members.

People don't stay around too long when they don't feel wanted or worse - can't find meaningful work to do.

It's not the marketing that brings about transformation, it's the organizations structure, values, and ideas. It's how easy it is for the grassroots members can easily do participate with a political party. That is, people of all types can become involved and actually see the change the wish to see. This means no centralized power around the leaders office, no old boys club, and no ignoring the grassroots when they speak up.

Right now no Canadian political party doesn't embody this approach . There is no uniform message and worse - they're still using traditional structures to grow their party base, win votes, and try to form government.

Just as technology propelled certain organizations through the industrial revolutions, new marketing can drive the right organization through the digital revolution.

It's a wonder when we do go to vote, we end up voting for more of the same.