Political party marketing mayhem

A fundamental marketing premise is that the more you become publicly obsessed about what a competitor is doing, the more you will be increasing the perception of the size of the threat that the competitor presents.

No homework

The ANC could not have done any meaningful research in the past few weeks that indicates whether or not the voters of this country perceive COPE to be trying to pass itself off and some sort of “herstigte” ANC. And if indeed it is the intention of COPE leaders to present themselves as a breakaway party that espouses everything the original ANC held dear, then no matter what they call themselves, it will not take rocket science to create that situation. The mere fact that all were prominent members of the ANC will do the job for them.

Now, the ANC is actually drawing far more attention to COPE that would have been the case if they had done anything. Not reacted to anything and largely just ignored the breakaway group. Quite contrary to destabilising COPE, if that was the ANC's intention, they are actually acting as COPE's best publicity agents.

Ignoring changes

What both the ANC and COPE, along with just about all of the other major political parties in this country, studiously seem to ignore are the vast changes that have taken place in the past few years in terms of the promotion of political parties.

In the recent French presidential elections, numerous commentators highlighted the fact that for the first time in French history voters were being swayed just as much, if not more, by personalities than by policies.

Other elections have also shown that some measure of celebrity status seems to swing a lot of votes. Including "notorious" celebrities such as the Italy's Prime Minister, Silvio Berluscone who has been put on trial on at least six occasions for a variety of corruption charges. He has always denied wrongdoing and has never been convicted. And he keeps getting re-elected. A fact from which Zuma has perhaps taken heart.

Showbiz

Barack Obama has also shown beyond a doubt that some sort of celebrity status certainly helps swing voters and when one adds a bit of showbiz to the election campaign there is no question that even more voters join the fan club.

The only South African politician who seems to understand this phenomenon is Jacob Zuma who unashamedly employs more than just a modicum of showbiz and who has also become an extremely popular celebrity, albeit a notorious one.

Given the success of TV programmes such as Big Brother and others, it is clear that in order to be admired and elevated to celebrity status, one does not have to be pure as the driven snow. Hollywood has for decades proved that decadence, impropriety, a touch of crime here and there and the morals of an alley cat, contribute enormously to celebrity status and popularity.

Means little to voters

Add all that together and one can fairly easily understand why the launch recently of the new COPE name, identity, colours and logo along with the relaunch of the DA's symbol, will mean very little to voters. Admittedly, I suppose every political party needs some sort of symbol behind which to rally its supporters but I get the sense that most politicians expect a lot more from their logos.

I would guess that less than one percent of South Africa's voting population will be able to repeat the significance of all the elements of the COPE logo should they be asked.

And I would also bet my pension on that fact that even fewer South African voters will, in a couple of month's time, be able to recall what the old DA logo looked like.