Marketing trumped branding as money swamped message
Hello, this is Yoweri Museveni. Vote for the old man with a big hat’.
That message, in six local languages and English, was sent to potential voters a few days to the Feb. 18 presidential elections. It was eventual winner, President Yoweri Museveni’s sales pitch in form of an automated telephone cold call. Such calls were being deployed as a vote canvassing technique for the first time and left many recipients quite excited.
Among them were marketers, sales people, PR agents, and brand managers who sensed that finally some Ugandan politicians appeared to understand what every business knows - if you want to sell yourself to anyone, you have to market yourself like a product.
They know that today’s voter is saturated with election rhetoric, disillusioned by strong arm tactics but is conversely empowered with techno-marketing savvy that their predecessors could only dream of.
It was the same feeling when at 4 pm on Feb. 14, just four days to the Uganda’s general election, a lone truck covered in Museveni’s campaign posters lolled past the traffic in Wandegeya, a Kampala suburb blaring campaign messages.
On the back of the truck was a man dressed in a leotard, stuffed stomach and straw hat and another man looking pretty in a mini-skirt bra-top and kohl lined eyes. `Her’ nose was delicately planted in a plastic rose. The duo was the Holy Grail of electioneering that political parties this time had to turn the bucket upside down in their quest for; the perfect crowd mobiliser.
This time, as every politician dusted off their best suit, the marketing crowd had pulled out their manuals and advertising agencies were looking forward to a year of glut in the form of campaign promotions and PR work.
Unfortunately, according to the Managing Director of ZK Advertising (U), Anthony Wanyoto, the political parties were not hiring the services of professional advertising and PR firms in the country. As a result, he says, some politicians and their party failed to do some things that would have been obvious to a professional.
As an example, he points out a big problem with campaign posters: the lack of consistency. If one belongs to a party - all layouts and colors needed to be identical with logos being in exactly the same location in the campaign material for clarity. This would help voters identify the individual candidate with the party.
Instead there was a proliferation of different color for the same party-members, similar colours for different parties (e.g. DP and IPC/Suubi) and invisible logos that contributed much confusion as it was not clear who belonged to what party. David Galukande, C.E.O of GQ Saatchi (U) and Brenda Mawenu, former head of Public Relations and Events at Moringa Ogilvi (U) made the same point.
Although some politicians, especially from opposition parties complained of their inability to access their campaign funds for such ventures due to it being blocked by the ruling party, Wanyoto said such things required commonsense and not money.
Branding vs marketing
Wanyoto says most missed the thin line between branding, which is the identification of a product’s exclusive position on a matter- `where the candidate stood on an issue’ so to speak, and marketing or how the candidate was being sold to the voters.
In media analysts’ opinions, the only candidate who understood that and therefore ran the best brand campaign was Betty Kamya of Uganda Federal Alliance. She clearly focused on Federalism as her unique selling point and never wavered.
By contrast the one considered the most ineffective campaign by many- was UPC’s Olara Otunnu; with his slogan `Take Back Our Country’. Confused voters asked: Back to where? The 1980s UPC Uganda? The only thing today’s generation knows about that era is the violent stories the ruling party has propagated. So why would they want to go back there?
In case of the Electoral Commission, it was hit by a slew of negative campaigns even before the campaigning started. According to its Deputy PRO, Paul Bukenya, the Commission realised it had to style up fast. They started by experimenting with new ways to get their message across such as eliminating the legal jargon-heavy full page supplements in newspapers in favor of more `punchy’ illustrated adverts and photographic campaigns urging people to `Vote issues-not wolokoso’ (hot air).
SMS media became another innovation for them as they asked themselves, if a person can spend Shs100 to SMS a comment on football, why shouldn’t they be able to use the same system to check on their polling station register?
Bukenya is first to admit that the EC is far from fully exploiting its Internet capabilities, but the EC even had a team `camped’ at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel to make sure the few gimmicks they deployed worked.
Brenda Mawenu, an event and PR management consultant, says the opposition completely failed, especially Besigye, because he has lost touch with what the people wanted. Selling change for change’s sake is nothing new and does not constitute branding in most marketers opinions. She says Museveni did a good job tapping into the youth.
Youth targeted
All contenders also had to take into account the changing environment that is controlled and accessed by PR savvy youth- the swing vote.
The NRM Communications Bureau hired Awel Uwihanganye of TETEA (U) to coordinate their youth campaign. It resulted in the creation of `Youth Voices 2011 and beyond’, whose coordinators are Besigye Andrew, Ntuma Eddie Rush, Allan Senabulya and Shadrach Kuteesa.
With his squint eye and rapper’s bounce, 30-year old Shadrach is an insider in the entertainment industry, being the one who launched GNL’s career and now counts among his stable female rapper Keko, DJ Apeman and newcomer Don MC.
His company, Platinum Entertainment, was the one behind the `Get your Vote Out’ concerts/NRM rallies that blazed Gulu, Mbale, Kasese and Kampala youth.
Shadrach insists that for mobilisation purposes, concerts are the most effective when targeting youth, especially if the presidential candidate is not in attendance; they are crowd pullers. Potential voters come to watch popular musicians, people they would ordinarily pay to see performing, for free.
As youth tend to get bored easily with long political rhetoric, the musicians are prepped before-hand on the political messages the party wants to get across to the audience so they can incorporate them in their performance. A staunch NRM supporter himself, Shadrach swears that their efforts contributed to the building of a cult status for NRM and Museveni amongst the Youth.
Politicians have also finally cottoned-on to the fact that the youth are not to be treated like minority groups like (unfortunately) women and the elderly because they are in-fact the majority demographic group.
But these youth are not an easy lot to address politically these days because of the new trend of materialism they embrace. To them, a successful role model is not one who makes the most inspirational speeches but the one with the flashiest lifestyle.
So Museveni, who had the most `groceries’ and could instantly reward financially, became a hero to many. That is why his turn out at the Makerere `Get Your Vote Out’ concert was a success.
He says the President does not take a political tone when talking to them and instead downgrades to `honest’ talk. He will even burst into an acapella version of `Another Rap’ when the crowd demands it.
``Youth Voice 2011 and Beyond’’ has the objective to `safeguard the voices and votes of the (NRM) youth’ that they collected from social networking sites Facebook, Flicker, You Tube, Twitter and their own website, which they then forwarded to policy makers in the party for inclusion in the manifesto. They then collected feedback from the manifesto statements that they posted online for use in the rally speeches.
Most youth were on Facebook, which at the moment is the fastest growing and most effective social network has 620,677,320 worldwide users. Of those, 263,320 are from Uganda. Penetration of FB usage in the Ugandan population is quite small, 0.79 percent, and the number of Ugandans that get online is just 8.23 percent of the population.
But 45 percent of Ugandan FB users are 18-24 years old, 38 percent are 25-34 years old, and 8 percent are 35-44 years old. These are clearly the majority of educated urban and peri-urban voters. And most importantly, this is where voter apathy is concentrated.
Most of the other voters are either semi-literate blue-collar employees and unskilled laborers or rural farmers who candidates have traditionally wooed with soap and sugar. This time, however, together with the salt and sugar was an almost festive mood - like some kind of benign carnival.
To appeal to these, President Yoweri Museveni’s closest competitor, Rtd. Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye, had to completely change strategy. He ditched his fierce `soldier-boy who can threaten a general’ strategy that had failed him twice for a gentler smiling image.
David Galukande advises that going forward, using professionals to manage their message and design is a must for politicians.
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written by cheap oakley sunglasses, March 02, 2012
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