The four seasons of the election - from baby kissing to warfare

As with the seasons of nature so there are four seasons of marketing of candidates for an election.

With the low key warm and fuzzy start of the lead up to the campaigns we enter “baby kissing season” where everyone espouses family values and are friendly to each other and the competition and the door knocks begin.   Every candidate will welcome your feedback and contrive ways, forums, etc to be seen consulting and back slapping with the electorate – the essence is to be seen to be listening rather that to actually listen.

As the election moves slowly along we turn to the “let a thousand flowers bloom season” which is where new and would be candidates come out in such numbers as to scare the public with a bewilderment of emerging but confusing options.   Many of these new options are a one-policy platform option devoid of perspective or depth or general support for a quota.   Their aim is to raise concern on one or two specific issues and hope people take notice and vote for them or that they influence change.   Many do not get airplay, and those that do are usually easily dismissed by the main parties who simply adopt or modify the issue into their platform or point out the error of the way of the issue (greet or defeat).

The combative “talk-fest season” then commences in earnest with candidates vying for attention and putting their opinions and arguing the other opinions with varying degrees of logic and merit.   Here we tune-in to debates on talk back radio and watch the head to head television debates of the leaders of the main parties.

Unfortunately the mood of the election then usually quickly degenerates into “warfare season”.   Here candidates muck-rake and attack each other with insults playing the person not the issue, and attack differing points of view (where a candidate’s lack of intellect/logic makes it important to raise their voice and shout to get attention and overwhelm the voice of their opponent).   Amongst the tactics are the classic “misinformation” with deliberate distortion of fact or personal allegations (eg have you stopped beating your wife) to belittle and distract the other candidate(s) from their campaign(s).

In politics sometimes the seasons get very confused, this election is expected to be close and history shows that the closer the election the dirtier the campaign.   So analyse the information presented to you as the political seasons unfold - and remember that SELLING is telling you what someone else thinks is good for you, whereas MARKETING starts with listening, researching and understanding the needs of the community and meeting those needs with best optioned solutions for the ACT as a whole based on logic and compromise rather than a loud voice.