Perfect Political Positioning

As my first political based blog post I wanted to gear it towards a strategy I’ve learned in public relations, positioning. Positioning is when you place a person or a brand in a certain spot that will gain the most favor from your publics.

I decided the analysis the strategy set forth in the study, “Exploring the positioning process in political campaigning” done in the UK. Although, it is a different country the characteristics and results mirror the same political groups in the US.

The authors broke their ideas down into two parts; what effects positioning of politicians and then a model of how they could go about positioning. Baines, Lewis, and Ingham address many things that effect a politician and the public’s opinion.

- History of policies and promises

- Political affiliation/party

- Stances of competition

- Position in election: leader, follower, challenger, niche

(Baines, Lewis, Ingham).

After you have determined your stance a model is presented based on research done by Baines, Lewis, and Ingham.

This chart was created by the authors of this study, (Baines, Lewis, Ingham), and is found on the pdf of their research posted on EmeraldInsight, https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/eb023496/full/html.

This model covers the main issues that publics follow during an election and the best strategy for winning acceptance. With all of this knowledge and research done, the public relations team can began their version of the RPIE model, with the best foot forward in their research.

Each issue is placed in a scale of importance based off of the research. Below the issue is advice on agenda making and communication. To explain further, if you look at the law and order category it says “build agenda” and “build communication”. This is suggesting to not only plan for this issue but talk about it publicly. Unlike the issue of drug decisions, it states “reduce or terminate policy”. There is an emphasis to not only stop communication about it and planning but to lesson all action on the issue (Baines, Lewis, Ingham).

I haven’t seen many models covering position in politics but I consider this a very clear and simple outline of where to st

art to understand how one might plan their course for an election. A few things have to be taken into consideration on account of this data. For political uses this is over 10 years old, which is very dated in political strategy. Politics themselves are constantly changing too, constant reevaluations would be required and used to update the chart. Besides, those few things the models allows a visual of how to organize strategy efficiently.

Baines, P.R., Lewis, B.R. and Ingham, B. (1999), "Exploring the positioning process in political campaigning", Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 325-336. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb023496