In the past week, news about the American government shutting down has been plastered all over the Internet, radio, and television. For those living under a rock—or simply don’t understand what happened—the two major American parties could not come to an agreement to raise the country’s budget constraint. Why does this matter? The country is legally obliged to meet this constraint, and could now only do so by cutting costs. In order to cut costs, part of the government has been shutdown.

While this is a very interesting topic—one which hasn’t come up for 17 years—you might be asking yourself “But Logan, how does this relate to marketing?!” Technically it doesn’t. But at the same time, it kind of does.

Both American parties (the Republicans and Democrats) are major brands. Within these brands, there are brand supporters. Within these supporters—or what we’re used to calling customers—there are 4 types: new supporters, regular supporters, loyal supporters, and advocates. Once part of the government shutdown, what separates these groups became significantly more distinguishable.

At one end, there are the advocates, who support their respective party through thick and thin—even if that means they’re supporting a party who shut down the government.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the new supporters (new customers) who have little personal affiliation with the party they support. These are the supporters most affected by the shutdown, because they’ll change their voting preferences depending on how they interpreted the situation.

While the American government is shut down, both parties are assessing the impact their decisions are having on future elections. So what’s the bottom line? American parties are trying to cling on to supporters (customers), while still following their respective (yet risky) strategy of pursuing the best interest of America.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/news-video/video-ap-gfk-poll-gop-gets-the-blame-in-shutdown/article14765817/

In New Poll, Americans Blame Everyone for Government Shutdown