How modern-day political pollsters are changing the world – one campaign at a time.
From the moment Aristotle first gave it a name to the time when elections could be won or lost over 240 characters, politics has always been heavily influenced by marketing and marketing has always been tremendously impacted by politics. The symbiotic bond between political polls and marketing strategy has been an ever-evolving relationship swayed by emerging technology, shifting values, and globalization.
Today, however, the connection between politics and marketing has taken a sudden and unexpected shift into the unknown. As Americans are emerging from a global pandemic that has left them more divided than ever, the reliance on digital communication and socially distanced campaigning has left some political strategists and pollsters frantically looking for ways to make meaningful connections with constituents, as well as sway the hearts and minds of moderates throughout the country. With the world continuing to distance itself physically from each other in exchange for digital communications and online research, the potential impact for political marketers to virtually reshape our government as we know it is remarkable.
Developing a Narrative from a Distance
A large percentage of voters today find themselves exhausted, weary, and relatively distrustful of both political parties. To combat this, political campaigns are eagerly searching for ways to connect with constituents in a way that feels authentic, trustworthy, and above all else, safe. While the challenges to overcome such an uphill battle are many, the rewards are enormous. Savvy campaign marketing strategists are refashioning old, reliable methods for connecting with their base by updating them with a more modern, fresh, and humanistic approach that better aligns with the current landscape. Through partnerships with digital marketing firms and political pollsters, the potential for this new brand of connecting with voters is immense.
Political Call Centers Reimagined
As the physical limitations of the pandemic and the election cycle collided, political marketing teams found themselves reaching for ways to get their message to the audience in a way that was both meaningful and relatable. While rallies and fundraisers were inaccessible pathways to spreading their message, campaign managers found themselves drawn back to the classic call center to assess the political temperature, convey their message, and sway the moderates to vote in their direction.
…and it worked.
Despite the pundits claiming that phone polling and campaigning were a thing of the past, the pandemic created the perfect environment for political candidates and referendums to connect to their audience on a one-on-one basis. By adopting a more user-friendly, less robotic method to connecting over the phone with voters, campaigns that embraced this reimagined marketing strategy were handsomely rewarded at the polls on election night in both 2020 and 2021, and from the looks of the data, the same will ring true for 2022.
Returning to the Basics to Leap into the Future
While automated marketing approaches seemed to be the pathway for modern political campaigns, the recent global pandemic has brought the need for person-to-person connection back into clear view. Though we live in a digital age where the wealth of the world’s knowledge is available to us within the palm of our hands, the reality is that true human connection, whether at a rally, in a letter, or on a telephone call, will always triumph when it comes to swaying the hearts of our neighbors and changing the world in which we all live.
