Campaign Advertising & Debates
Just as products and services are marketed through campaigns, so too are political issues and candidates. When a candidate is seeking elected office, the marketing efforts he engages in an attempt to win the majority of votes are known as his campaign. Most campaigns are multifaceted, combining words, speeches, printed material and web pages; well-financed campaigns also include radio and television ads. Often, debates function as a forum for additional marketing.
Other People Are Reading
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Political Campaigns
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Political campaigns, whether for a candidate or a cause, are designed to convince voters to think or act a particular way. For example, a political campaign to end the death penalty attempts to convince voters that the use of the death penalty is immoral and ineffective at preventing crime. Similarly, in a campaign for elected office, a political campaign is designed to convince voters to cast their votes for a particular candidate.
Marketing
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Political marketing functions similarly to the marketing of a product, only instead of a tangible good, marketers are promoting the advantages -- or, in the case of negative political advertising, the disadvantages -- of a particular issue or individual. Instead of a consumer market, this marketing is targeting a particular electorate, a group of people who will either directly vote in an election or who have some other form of political influence.
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Debates
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Many political campaigns, whether for an issue or an elected office, involve debates. These debates pit two ore more candidates or representatives of different sides of an issue against each other. The individuals argue the merits and demerits of one or more policies. Candidates also speak about their experience, views and characters, and those of their opponents. These debates can be considered an extension of the full campaign.
Considerations
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No two political campaigns are exactly alike. Just as the advertising for a particular product or service is tweaked for a particular audience, so political campaigns are shifted to engage different constituencies. For example, a campaign to ban gay marriage would be marketed very differently in a relatively conservative state such as Utah than it would be in a relatively liberal state such as Massachusetts.
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