I am a candidate amongst a sea of others in the CUS 2011 Elections. While I will not be using this blog to promote myself, I will be shedding light on my observations on what I would consider to be the best application of marketing that we can possibly find, trying to market one’s self during election campaigns.
While the principles of marketing encourage creativity and thinking out of the box, election campaigns demand the complete opposite. A simple example of this can be observed when we try to look at campaign posters. Pretty much everyone running in any position seems to have their poster tweaked from the same template. Don’t believe me? Just take a round of Angus or Swing or anywhere on campus. Now I’d like to post a few samples for you but, the sad part is, it’ll get me disqualified.
Take a look around and tell me, do you think cloning the same kind of posters is a good idea since it’s been successful since forever? Or is it better if you try to think out of the box and leave the conventional? My answer will come when I find out the results of my campaign but, I would like to hear what others think of this.
One reply on “Marketing, is that all it takes?”
How about taking a look at what some non-Sauder politicians have done to promote themselves successfully? That would make for some interesting posts… The keys to any strategy – political or not – is knowing your target market’s needs and figuring out how you can satisfy one or more of those needs better than anyone else. We’ll start studying positioning soon (positioning = target market + differentiation), and hopefully you’ll see how important it is in your and any other campaign!
Keep it up, Alex. And good luck with your campaign.
Tamar