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Internal Political Marketing

Internal political marketing covers the organisation of political marketing – the structure, organisation, resourcing and staffing of offices in parties, campaigns and parliament or government; the organisation and involvement of volunteers and members on the ground; and the implementation of product change and branding. Ineffective internal political marketing has the potential to derail political marketing strategies, branding and communication efforts. Successful internal activity ensures that volunteers become and remain effective activists for the party; recruits donors; ensures the right staff are in place and that new directions in the brand are accepted and complied with even if they challenge traditional party beliefs and ideals. Internal political marketing includes understanding volunteer demands, creating volunteer-friendly organisations, communicating with members and viewing volunteers as part-time political marketers; creating unity; relationship marketing within political parties and campaigns; fundraising; managing political marketing staff and resources; and central versus local versus volunteer control.


Academic Literature

General and overview

Bauer, Hans H., Frank Huber and Andreas Herrman (1996). Political Marketing: an information-economic analysis. European Journal of Marketing, 30: 159-172.

Lamprinakou, Chrysa (2008). The Party Evolution Model: An Integrated Approach to Party Organisation and Political Communication: Politics 28(2), May 2008: 103-111.

Lees-Marshment, Jennifer (2009). Political Marketing: Principles and Applications (1st edition)  Routledge. Chapter 6 Internal marketing: marketing to volunteers and the party.

Lees-Marshment, Jennifer (2014) Political Marketing: Principles and Applications 2nd edition. Routledge Chapter 5 Internal Political Marketing

Rogers, Ben (2005). From Membership to Management? The Future of Political Parties as Democratic Organisations. Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 58(3): 600-610.

Audio-visual

Axelrod, David (2014) ‘Welcoming David Axelrod to the Labour Party’ UK Labour Party https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNLG7xaYf64 accessed 14 June 2018

People’s Action Party (2016) Honouring Our Party Activists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njEqcvLVfTk December 4th accessed 8 June 2018.

UK Labour Party (2018a) ‘Why Join the Labour Party” UK Labour Party May 30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQShQsqRbz8, accessed 8 June 2018.

Websites

Australian Liberal Party (2018) Canberra branch ‘Volunteer’ webpage http://canberraliberals.org.au/get-involved/volunteer/, New South Wales https://nsw.liberal.org.au/get-involved/, https://www.lnp.org.au/join/ accessed 8 June 2018.

Boyle, Darren (2017) ‘UKIP canvasser “is caught urinating on an elderly great grandmother’s home before trying to force his way inside while handing out Paul Nuttall leaflets” The Daily Mail, 19 Feburary 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4239850/Ukip-tweets-pictures-Bolton-Stoke-campaign.html

Craig, Kevin (2018) ‘Labour Doesn’t have a Leadership Problem – It Has A Membership Problem’, Huffington Post, 15 May 2018, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-membership_uk_5afaa778e4b0200bcab891d1?guccounter=1

Danish Social Demokrats (2018) http://www.socialdemokratiet.dk/da/bliv-medlem/ accessed 20 June 2018

Ferguson, Kate (2017) ‘New Tory campaign group Activate apologises after some of its members joked about gassing chavs in a series of “sickning” WhatsApp messages’, The Daily Mail, 30 August 2017, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4837690/Activate-apologises-members-suggest-gassing-chavs.html

Hancox, Dan (2017) ‘”There is no unwinnable seat now”: How Labour revolutionaised its doorstep game’ The Guardian, 13 June 2017

Helm, Tony and Michael Savage (2017) ‘Jolt for Tories as poll suggests under-45s switching to Labour’, The Observer, 20 September, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/30/poll-conservatives-jeremy-corbyn-young-people

Major, Kirsty (2017) ‘Momentum are in the middle of building their next secret weapon – and the Tories don’t stand a chance’ The Independent, 13 July 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/momentum-labour-apps-tories-dont-stand-a-chance-a7839526.html

McTague, Tom (2014) ‘”Cameron is not serious about real change to the EU”: Tory MP defects to UKIP with stinging attack on Prime Minister – as Farage wars more may follow’, The Daily Mail, 28 August 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2736598/Tory-MP-Douglas-Carswell-defects-UKIP-resigns-Parliament-spark-crunch-Essex-byelection.html

UK Labour Party’s (2018) Website https://labour.org.uk/members/why-join-labour/ accessed 20 June 2018)

Watt, Joseph (2015) ‘Tessa Jowell apologises after volunteer claims Sadiq Khan would be “liability” as Mayor because he’s Muslim’, Evening Standard, 3 September 2015, https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tessa-jowell-apologises-after-volunteer-claims-sadiq-khan-would-be-liability-as-mayor-because-hes-a2926446.html

Wheeler, Caroline (2017) ‘Sound the retweet: Tories to launch digital war on Labour’, The Times, 2 July 2017, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/sound-the-retweet-tories-to-launch-digital-war-on-labour-px8tdtjf8

Wong, Julia Carrie (2018) ‘Campaign volunteers hit with obscene images after sending texts’ The Guardian, 19 June 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/19/campaign-volunteers-texting-voters-unsolicited-pictures-messages

YouGov (2018) ‘The stigma factor: UKIP vote most embarrassing, Labour least’ https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/04/18/public-most-embarrassed-vote-ukip-most-proud-vote-/ accessed 14 June 2018

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