POLITICAL PARTY BRAND IDENTITY AND BRAND IMAGE: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT

Alessandro Bigi, Royal Institute of Technology - Stockholm, Sweden Michelle Bonera, Università degli Studi di Brescia, Italy

ABSTRACT

In this article we explore the concepts of political party brand identity and image. Political leaders should be able to effectively define the distinctive characteristics of the political brand and subsequently activate the most appropriate mechanisms of communication to promote an accurate perception of the image in the market. The specific aim of this research is to explore interrelations between a political party’s brand identity and image in two different time periods, in order to discover possible discrepancies and changes in time. The party blog, containing both the official communication and the people’s feedbacks represents a perfect place where to observe the concepts and the values on which both the political brand identity and image are founded.

INTRODUCTION Kelley (1956), is generally credited with the first use of the term “political marketing”. The link between politics and marketing discipline was subsequently reinforced by Rothschild’s (1978) study on political advertising effectiveness, segmentation, social policy, and political policy making. During the past 25 years, political marketing has transformed from a relatively obscure subject studied by a small group of authors and academic marketers to a significant area of international research in contemporary marketing. Therefore, a wide range of academic literature has concentrated on the application of marketing concepts and principles to politics (Andrews, 1996; O’Cass, 2001). Similarly, the marketing concept, as a general management philosophy and overarching principle in marketing, has been noted to be a useful philosophy that is relevant to both profit and nonprofit organizations (Berthon, Opoku, Pitt, & Nel, 2007; Brownlie & Saren, 1991; Kotler & Zaltman, 1971) as well as to a variety of industry contexts (Kotler, 1972; Wensley, 1990). Over time, short-term marketing campaigns, designed to influence specific and limited targets at particular periods of time (elections and voters), have been replaced by long-term activities, which aim to increase the brand image of political parties and influence the viral effect of user-generated content in political communication. Shifting from short-term to long-term communication aims at the creation of a political brand. One of the first authors on this subject, Kirchheimer (1966), suggested that viewing parties as brands is an inevitable response to the move from mass-based to catch-all parties. Voters are less influenced by class affiliation and more likely to act as rational economic actors when voting (Downs, 1967). In the past, to win an election, the catch-all party must have entered into millions of minds as a familiar object fulfilling in politics a role analogous to that of a major brand in marketing. (Kirchheimer, 1966, p. 192) In this article we focus on the concepts of political party brand identity and image. Identity and image can lend insight into the character and behavior of organizations and their members. Whether those insights concern personal versus organizational identity (Ashforth & Mael, 1989), threats to identity (Elsbach & Kramer, 1996), organizational image and identification (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994), organizational image as an end state (Alvesson, 1990), adaptation (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991), issue interpretation (Gioia & Thomas, 1996), or member commitment (Whetten, Lewis, & Mischel, 1992), identity and image have acquired the status of key concepts employed to describe and explain individual and organizational behavior (Whetten & Godfrey, 1998). Aim of this research is to explore interrelations between a political party’s brand identity and image in two different time periods, in order to discover possible discrepancies over time.

CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND The concept of brand, understood as a set of distinctive features of a product that can generate unique value for customers compared to the competitors’ products, has an element of complexity in the literature, which has given rise to different models, interpretations, and definitions (Maurya & Mishra, 2012). Brands have been associated with businesses, products, organizations, and services. Researches (Fournier 2010; Hirschman 1987; Thomson 2006) recognize that brands can also be human. This is important when we refer to political parties that are represented by single political actors. According to a customer-based approach, the cognitive components are brand awareness, brand identity, and brand image. Awareness is linked to the reputation of the brand. It depends on the strength of the brand in terms of recognition and customers’ ability to recall the brand. Brand identity is connected to the distinguishing factors that enable the recognition of

the brand, and the set of corporate values that guide the selection of choices over the life cycle of the brand (Bertoli & Busacca, 2002). Brand identity or organizational identity is the combinative construal of firm culture, history, structure, characteristics, status and reputation with competitors, customers, and society at large, and it is formulated and cemented over time (Brown, Dacin, Pratt, & Whetten, 2006; Scott & Lane, 2000). Identity involves all that is central, distinctive and enduring about a firm (Albert & Whetten, 1985), conveyed through mission, vision, actions and association of the firm’s values and goals (Brickson, 2005). Indeed, organizational identity theory demonstrates how identity both shapes and drives organizational goals and strategic objectives (e.g., Brickson, 2007). Put simply, identity involves how both internal and external constituents and stakeholders see the firm (Gioia, Price, Hamilton, & Thomas, 2010; Sen, Bhattacharya, & Korschun, 2006; Voss, Cable, & Voss, 2000). In contrast, brand image is the external projection of the identity. Scholars have seen organizational image as a broader concept, which includes notions involving the ways organization’s members believe others see the organization (Dutton & Dukerich, 1991); fabricated, projected pictures aimed at various constituencies (Bernstein, 1984); and the public’s perception of a given organization (Berg, 1985). Brand image has been the subject of many different conceptualizations and definitional debates. Dutton and Dukerich (1991) argued that organizational image is the way members believe others view their organization. Whetten et al. (1992) took some issue with this definition and argued instead for defining image as the way “organizational elites” would like outsiders to see the organization. Such a “projected image” could be an attempt to represent essential features of organizational identity to others. It could also take the form of the projection of a desired future image that communicates to insiders and outsiders a vision to be achieved (Gioia & Thomas, 1996). Projected image, however, might also encompass attempts to convey a socially desirable, managed impression that emphasizes selected aspects of identity; it could even conceal or misrepresent identity. In fact, Bernstein (1984) held that image should be defined as a construction of public impressions created to appeal to an audience (and not necessarily the attempt to represent some ostensible reality). All these views, however, take image to be essentially an internal conception—that is, perceptions held or communicated by insiders. Berg (1985) took a decidedly more external approach by focusing on perceptions held by outsiders. He defined image as the public’s perception or impression of an organization, usually associated with a given action or event (which we term an external transient impression).

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAND IDENTITY AND BRAND IMAGE The central problem lies in the relationship between brand identity and brand image, a problem that has been extensively documented in marketing literature focused on brand management (at the individual level by Cooley (1902) and James (1918), at the organizational level by Albert and Whetten (1985), Dutton and Dukerich (1991), Dutton et al. (1994), Reger, Gustafson, DeMarie, and Mullane (1994), Elsbach and Kramer (1996), Gioia and Thomas (1996), among others). Although the approach that consumer perspective must be incorporated into brand identity is generally accepted (Kapferer, 1997, 2008), undoubtedly the management of the company identifies and defines the content of the brand. Brand image is linked to the perception of the public and depends on the set of associations—namely the elements of information, rational and emotional, that are in the memory of the consumers and that guide their behaviors by defining their perception of the brand (Keller, 1998). The intangible nature of the brand of a political party complicates the process of brand building, which requires a clear separation of the concepts of brand image and brand identity. The management of a political brand meets the objective of offering a set of tangible (political programs, political activities, etc.) and intangible factors (services, culture, values, emotions, etc.) to the public. This makes up the supply system that guides people’s perceptions and behaviors. Therefore, the process should be able to effectively define the distinctive characteristics of the political brand and subsequently activate the most appropriate mechanisms of communication to promote an accurate perception of the image in the market in particular and in the more general context. Organizational identity is typically taken by scholars to be an organization’s members’ collective understanding of the features presumed to be central and relatively permanent, and that distinguish the organization from other organizations (Albert & Whetten, 1985). Nevertheless, because of the reciprocal interrelationships between identity and image, organizational identity is, rather than enduring, better viewed as a relatively fluid and unstable concept. There must be fluidity to the notion; otherwise, the organization stagnates in the face of an inevitably changing environment. The instability of identity arises mainly from its ongoing interrelationships with organizational image, which are clearly characterized by a notable degree of fluidity. Perhaps most importantly, we further argue that the instability of identity is actually adaptive in facilitating organizational change in response to environmental demands. All of these views of organizational identity suggest that it is not only a complex phenomenon but also one that can vary with the context for which it is expressed (Fiol, Hatch, & Golden-Biddle, 1998; Wilkins, 1989).

Image often acts as a destabilizing force on identity, frequently requiring members to revisit and reconstruct their organizational sense of self. To examine the processes by which identity becomes interrelated with, and susceptible to, the influence of image, we begin with the assumption that organization members have developed some sense of “who we are as an organization” (Albert & Whetten, 1985) and have communicated that identity to internal and external constituencies. Over time, organization members receive feedback about their organizational portrayal, or some event occurs that makes identity concerns salient (cf. Dutton & Dukerich, 1991; Elsbach & Kramer, 1996). Because organization members are also simultaneously members of external groups and thus sensitized to outsider views of their own organization, the tendency to compare their views of their organization with others’ views is heightened further (Hatch & Schultz, 1997).

THE EMPIRICAL CASE The case under analysis is Beppe Grillo’s “Movimento 5 Stelle.” Beppe Grillo is an Italian comedian-turned-political activist and candidate. His career as a comedian started in the late 1970s; during the early 1980s, rising audience ratings and critical acclaim transformed him into one of the hottest media figures. Towards the end of the decade and into the 1990s, Beppe Grillo’s satire changed: he began to discuss controversial issues, both during his theater shows and on television. He openly attacked some of the most powerful Italian politicians and their penchant for bribery. As a result, by the early 1990s, Beppe Grillo was informally but firmly banned from Italian television. Yet this did not stop Beppe Grillo’s satirizing of politicians and corporations. His theatre shows were almost always sold out. Even the editors of Time magazine noticed Beppe Grillo and his political satire: in 2005, they named him among the 37 European heroes of the year . In January 2005, the web provided Beppe Grillo with a new and powerful communication instrument: a blog at beppegrillo.it. Through this site (and with the help of the digital marketing company Casaleggio & Associati), his popularity received a much-needed boost. In December 2005, less than a year after its first post, beppegrillo.it was awarded the WWW 2005 Prize in the News and Information category by the well-known Il Sole 24 Ore, “for interactivity with the public, ample documentation on the Internet and commitment to tackling topics of use to citizens.” In June 2012, beppegrillo.it was the most popular blog in Italy. During 2008, several meetings were held that anticipated the foundation of an official political movement. Movimento 5 Stelle was announced and formalized on 4 October 2009, with civic lists at the administrative election of 2009.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Our object of analysis has been both Beppe Grillo posts and the most-voted user comments. The beppegrillo.it posts from January 2005 to May 2012 have been analyzed. During this period, Beppe Grillo and his staff published 4,935 posts, which included 2,572,638 words. The data containing the comments for the year 2005-2012 contained around 19,765,000 words. These posts have been divided into two different segments (before and after the blog switched from personal to political), but they both have as their central foundation the Movimento 5 Stelle. To get only significant data we decided to analyze only the comments receiving the most votes from readers. Than we used Leximancer software a tool for transforming lexical co-occurrence information from natural language into semantic patterns in a nunsupervised manner. Leximancer is an Australian-developed text-mining or lexicographic tool that that enables a visual analysis of texts. Leximancer uses a machine-learning technique, to discover the main concepts in a text, and how they relate to each other (Rooney, 2005). One of the advantages of Leximancer is its ability to handle several of text, including the short and ungrammatical comments typical of those posted to beppegrillo.it. The program generates word lists by assessing the contextual collocations of words through “term-occurrence information, such as co-occurrence, positions and frequencies of nouns and verbs” in text (Kamimaeda, Izumi, & Hasida, 2007; Young and Denize, 2008), suggesting clusters of meaning based on word groupings.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS We compiled two parallel datasets (party leader’s posts vs. comments from the public) in order to identify possible differences or discrepancies between the official communication (coming from the organization and reflecting the party brand identity) and the public opinion (expressing what the public thinks of the party brand and depicting the brand identity). Figure 1 shows the result of Leximancer’s content analysis of Beppe Grillo’s post before the foundation of Movimento 5 Stelle. The concepts extracted from the political leader’s posts are displayed on a concept map that details the relative

importance of concepts, and the strengths between them. Large circles represent key themes from a text, while dots represent concepts. Brighter (lighter-colored) and larger themed circles and concept dots indicate greater relevance within the text. When concepts are close together or overlap in the map, it means that they also appear close together in the text. Concepts that are directly related, but not necessarily strongly semantically linked, will be far apart on the concept map, while concepts that are strongly semantically linked will be close to each other on the concept map (Rooney, 2005, pp. 410–412). Moreover, concepts that occur in very comparable semantic contexts will form clusters. The researcher can then use the concept map to guide its interpretation. The themes represented clearly indicate the predominance of discussions about Silvio Berlusconi, prime minister at the time of the posts. Analyzing the composition of the two principal themes makes it clear that the message is predominantly negative and that the leader of Movimento 5 Stelle is creating a brand identity in contraposition to the Prime Minister. The Berlusconi theme is characterized by the following concepts: Berlusconi, trial, mafia, Deputy Public Prosecutor, cabinet, trials, judges, sentence, boss, investigation, crimes, intercept, judge, crime. The same negative concept apparently is not extended to the institution and the government that are represented by the concepts of Government, politic, politicians, politician, justice, political party, laws, and respect. The third theme, newspapers, has a neutral polarity. In analyzing the same conceptual map with the data coming from public comments, several differences are identified (fig. 2). The first aspect is the relative unimportance assigned by the followers to Berlusconi; this is not one of the most important themes and is less cited than the left wing party (PD, or Partito Democratico). The same concepts correlated to Berlusconi seem to be less aggressive (Berlusconi and Rome). The followers are showing more nationalism and patriotism in their comments. The terms “Italy” and “Italian” are more relevant, and a huge importance has the theme “Country.” Making an analysis of the concepts correlated to the themes reveals a desire of belonging to a Country, as well as the desire to change a situation and the political assets. The second element in order of importance is represented by social elements. The social themes are people, house, and words. The difference between the identity shown by the leader of the Movimento 5 Stelle and the perceived image is quite clear in this first phase of the analysis. The tables 1 and 2 show the words that the software related to every theme for this phase. The second set of analysis is focalized on the second time frame. The difference between the two sets is found in the more political and electoral implications of the second data elaboration, due to Beppe Grillo’s decision to create a movement in order to run for elections. In this phase Beppe Grillo expanded its subjects without in any way changing his personal attack style. The leader’s communication (fig. 3) is still negative and against Silvio Berlusconi, even if several proactive aspects have appeared and gained importance. The most representative theme that identifies the difference between the brand identity and the brand image is temporal. Movimento 5 Stelle and Beppe Grillo are focused on reality, Silvio Berlusconi and other concrete aspects. The follower’s posts are differently oriented (fig. 4). The followers are not focused on Silvio Berlusconi; the most important theme is related to the future, even if correlated to the term problem. Once more, the tables 3 and 4 show the words that the software related to every theme for this phase.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATION

The organization that governs the development of a political brand must work to increase the value of the brand (brand equity) and gain sustained competitive advantages. The increase in brand equity comes from the positioning decisions and depends on the ability to develop a brand identity that is correctly perceived by the market (brand image). Such a task suggests two major options: the first is to change something about the way the organization sees itself (i.e., change aspects of the identity); the second is to change the way others perceive it (i.e., change others’ external impression/reputation). The party blog, containing both the official communication and the peoples feedbacks represents a perfect place where to observe the concepts and the values on which both the political brand identity and image are founded. At this point, if the discrepancy is marked and significant, it can suggest the need to reevaluate and change aspects of identity. Because direct interventions to followers to alter their conceptions of the organization are unlikely to be effective (Reger et al., 1994), a viable alternative for the political leader is to project an attractive vision in the form of a desired image as a precursor to a hoped-for future identity.

If the political leaders decide, however, that the identity-image discrepancy should be resolved by attempting to change how outsiders perceive the organization, they can attempt several tactics. First, they can project an image to their outside constituencies that more strongly conveys their conception of the organization’s identity. Such an attempt at strategically altering images of the organization to better communicate the organization’s sense of identity is aimed at influencing outsiders’ perceptions to be better aligned with self-definitions.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH There are three main limitations to the present study. The first is that, due to space limitations, the paper cannot report additional levels of analysis focusing on generic themes rather than single concepts. The huge amount of information collected (more than 20 million words examined) forced us to work at this level of analysis, leaving more in-depth analysis to future researchers. The second limitation is linked to the interval of analysis; we confronted just two periods (before and after the decision to create a political movement). It would be interesting to study the evolution of the single terms and themes during shorter periods, identifying trends and reaction viscosity. Finally Cameron (2007) notes the limitations of Leximancer as being less valuable for data sets, which could produce false positives as a result of simplifying complex primary data through machine analysis. To some extent, the research required some subjective interpretations and codifications. That said, the counterbalancing arguments for Leximancer’s objectivity, face validity and reliability outweigh this possible risk in an exploratory study. However, for an exploratory study we consider these limits to be within acceptable boundaries and a stimulus to further research.

TABLES

Table 1: Theme’s related words of the party leader’s posts before the foundation of the political party.

Table 2: Theme’s related words of public comments before the foundation of the political party.

Table 3: Theme’s related words of the party leader’s posts after the foundation of the political party.

Table 4: Theme’s related words of public comments after the foundation of the political party.

FIGURES Figure 1 Concept map of the party leader’s posts before the foundation of the political party.

Figure 2: Concept map of public comments before the foundation of the political party.

Figure 3: Concept map of the party leader’s posts after the foundation of the political party

Figure 4: Concept map of the public comments posted after foundation of the political party.

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