Politics and Image: The Conceptual Value of Branding

Abstract

AbstractThis article argues that the brand concept is a powerful tool for understanding political images. It challenges typical economic versions of political marketing that tend to deemphasize the significance of communication, popular culture, and personality in politics and argues that the brand as a concept can bring together the economic and the aesthetic, rational choice and cultural resonance. It proposes a model of brand distinctiveness and argues that this may be useful both in the analysis of party communication and in the normative evaluation of that communication.KEYWORDS: political imagepolitical marketingpolitical brandspopular culture and personalization in politics Additional informationNotes on contributorsMargaret ScammellMargaret Scammell is senior visiting lecturer in Media and Communication at the London School of Economics. She has published widely on politics, communication, and political marketing and is the author of Designer Politics (Macmillan, Citation1995); On Message: Communicating the Campaign (Sage, Citation1999) with Pippa Norris, John Curtice, David Sanders, and Holli Semetko; and Media Journalism and Democracy (Ashgate, 2000) with Holli Semetko. Together with Holli Semetko she is editor of the Sage Handbook of Political Communication, which will be published in 2012.