7 Quick Marketing Lessons You Can Learn From Singapore General Election 2020
Note: This article is not a political commentary and written purely to share good marketing tactics observed to gain vote shares across the course of campaigning period.
The Singapore General Election (GE) concluded on the 10th July 2020 and most Singaporeans could not be happier that the to-be-newly-formed government can now quickly dive right into the myriad of issues caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic such as healthcare and economic crisis. One key difference as compared to previous GEs is due to COVID-19 safe distancing measures, no physical rallies were allowed during the campaign period. This meant that rallying activities had to be moved to digital formats and social media channels would inevitably play a pivotal role in this election. Businesses can look at the GE in a different way for there are many marketing lessons that can be learnt.
Building Salience
When deciding to vote for a party or a candidate, one of the key factors that most, if not all voters look out for is the capabilities (salience) of the candidates. During the start of the campaign period, some candidates were invited to go on national television to debate on critical issues plaguing Singaporeans currently. This monumental event brought tremendous awareness to a particular candidate who was relatively unknown at that time — Dr Jamus Lim, which majority of the public felt that he performed most admirably during the televised debate. Analysis showed that Dr Jamus Lim’s “stocks” shot through the roof as he went head-to-head effectively against the incumbent represented by Dr Vivian Balakrishnan. Based on this observation, it is important for marketers to focus their efforts on building on the salience of the brand, communicating these salience points and earning trust to encourage products and services consumption.
Memorable Tagline(s)
During the debate mentioned above, Dr Jamus Lim also made a short but extremely memorable tagline which many are considering it as one of the most memorable campaign quote to ever be said (on live TV). You guessed it right, “it warms the cockles of my heart” tagline had literally everyone talking about it for the entire campaigning period and beyond. This quote is expected to be on everyone’s lips for a significant period of time. Larger firms such as Nike’s “Just Do It”, Apple’s “Think Different” are strategically using taglines to great effect. As such, firms should invest time and effort to come up with memorable and relatable tagline(s) to drive relevance and awareness to its brand, products and services.
Crisis Management
Like any elections, political parties and candidates will inevitably face setbacks during the campaign period such as being embroiled in scandals and controversies, like it did for this GE. It is important that political entities show the way that they will handle such setbacks for this sets the tone of how future and perhaps more major setbacks will be managed. It is therefore important for firms to take note that when coming face-to-face with a crisis, displaying authenticity, tact and timeliness of responses are definitely critical must-have factors to impress or move your consumers empathically. Effective crisis management is not purely a defensive strategic move for it can turn the tide and build strong brand empathy which could drive consumption of products and services.
Simple Works Best
Let us be honest here, how many of us actually read and fully understand the manifestos of respective political parties? Many parties and candidates started making “highlights” banners and pictures to communicate key points for the layman voters to understand their respective manifestos. Similarly, many firms have detailed brand guidelines and fact sheets of their products and services. It is important for firms to take a consumer/customer-centric approach to communicate key Unique Selling Points (USPs) in a simple layman manner to encourage understanding and learning of the brand, products and services to ultimately drive consumption.
Personalised Quotes
Through the course of campaigning, parties and candidates had to make countless of speeches. However, as there are increasingly many new faces in the political arena, it is not easy for voters to identify speeches with the political parties or candidates. Therefore, it was observed that some political parties and candidates produced “quotes” banners pictures to “put a face” to the key speeches made. As such,firms can definitely explore producing similar quotes banners for key spokespeople, i.e media quotes or speeches made during milestone events as a form of effective brand building tactic for both the firm and key personnel.
Videos are Preferred
One key arsenal that many political parties and candidates embraced during the course of campaigning is using videos as a marketing and communications content driver. As observed, videos posted by on social media channels garnered much more socials interactions such as likes, shares and comments as compared to static images. This is largely because of the nature of content consumption on social media. Additionally, as social media channels algorithms are increasingly prioritizing videos to show ahead of static images, firms should therefore seek to invest in videos and animation productions capabilities to leverage on social media consumption behavior and the algorithm which prefers videos to organically improve outreach and awareness for the brand, products and services.
(Really) Know your Target Audience(s)
There were many issues raised during the course of the campaigning period. Fundamentally, all political parties and candidates expressed their ideas and solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as the proposed solutions can be very different in response to the same focused issues, it boils down to how much can political parties and candidates relate and empathize with the majority of the voters. For marketers, it works exactly the same way as it is necessary to find out and tailor products and services to optimally suit the needs and wants of target audiences so that any form of demand generated consumption can be captured by the firm and not by competitors.
Conclusion — Tonnes To Learn
Re-watch the campaigns, especially those online and social media channels of each major political parties and candidates and take a look at what they had done to appeal to the electorate. Many of the strategies they used can be emulated and applied easily. There was a lot to learn and you should approach these observations with an open mind, regardless of your political beliefs.
What have you learned about marketing and communications from the Singapore General Election 2020?
Disclaimer: This article does not reflect my present nor my past employer’s view, all views above are solely from my own personal standpoint.
