Human Branding in Political Marketing

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Human Branding in Political Marketing:

Applying Contemporary Branding
Thought to Political Parties and Their
Leaders
a b c
Richard Speed , Patrick Butler & Neil Collins
a
La Trobe University, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
b
Melbourne Business School, Carlton, Victoria, Australia
c
Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev University,
Kazakhstan
Published online: 19 Mar 2015.
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To cite this article: Richard Speed, Patrick Butler & Neil Collins (2015) Human Branding in Political
Marketing: Applying Contemporary Branding Thought to Political Parties and Their Leaders, Journal of
Political Marketing, 14:1-2, 129-151, DOI: 10.1080/15377857.2014.990833
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Journal of Political Marketing, 14:129–151, 2015
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ISSN: 1537-7857 print=1537-7865 online
DOI: 10.1080/15377857.2014.990833
Human Branding in Political Marketing:

Applying Contemporary Branding Thought
to Political Parties and Their Leaders
RICHARD SPEED
La Trobe University, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
PATRICK BUTLER
Melbourne Business School, Carlton, Victoria, Australia
NEIL COLLINS
Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan
Political marketing advances by engaging with new and advanced

concepts from both of its parent disciplines. One of the most recent
fields of brand research—the study of the human brand—is taken
into the political marketing arena in this essay. Human branding
is an emergent topic in mainstream marketing. The value as a
brand of a person who is well-known and subject to explicit
marketing communications efforts is being investigated in many
fields. The concept has clear prima facie value in political market-
ing, where the role of a political leader as part of the political
marketing offer has been recognized extensively. Politics is also a
unique context given the relationship between leaders and parties,
each of which has some unique brand associations. The process of
exploring the application of human branding in politics also
provides a context in which some of the interactions among party
and leader, human brand, and organizational brand can be
explored and further developed. Among the conclusions are that
political party leaders require brand authenticity as an advocate
of the party policy platform and brand authority to command
the organization and deliver on the policies being advocated.
Implications for party and campaign management are outlined.
Address correspondence to Richard Speed, La Trobe University, PO Box 199, Bendigo,

Australia. E-mail: r.speed@latrobe.edu.au
129
130 R. Speed et al.
KEYWORDS human branding, brand associations, brand

persona
For political marketing to continue to make progress theoretically and in

practice it must engage with new and advanced concepts from both of its par-
ent disciplines: marketing and political science. Researchers in the field are set
to build on some of the more basic research that characterized initial explora-
tions and helped to establish the field and to address more complex concepts.
In marketing, the study of branding has become a critical and priority issue for
research (Keller and Lehmann 2005; Keller 2010). Brand is now understood to
perform a central role in business, and brand and related concepts underpin
areas of research interest pertaining to customer value, market positioning,
consumer experience, and management performance. Research on brand
issues may be found in the principal theoretical journals in marketing, includ-
ing Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science,
and Journal of Consumer Behaviour. In this essay, we attempt to contribute to
this research momentum by taking one of the most recent branches of brand
research—the study of the human brand—into the political marketing arena.
Among the conclusions of this exploration are that brand concepts are of
functional value to political management and that political marketing,
because of the distinctive role of the person in the party organization,
provides a particularly useful context for the study of the human brand.
Many recent research articles in political marketing assert the field’s
enhanced stature and contribution. It is regarded as an identifiable academic
subdiscipline (Butler, Collins, and Fellenz 2007); as drawing upon the expert-
ise of scholars in multiple fields including management, politics, economics,
sociology, and journalism (Butler and Harris 2009); as growing in scale and
support (Harris and Lock 2010); and as an established field of professional
practice (Plasser and Plasser 2002; Johnson 2009). As evidence of its growth
and impact, political marketing may point to its own dedicated journal, text-
books, handbooks and edited works, academic conferences, and specialist
interest groups in the academy.
Reports of progress are not intended to play down the difficulties and
controversies associated with development and establishment of the field,
however. Advancement has not been uncontroversial. Political marketing is
subject to criticism from two main directions: one concerns the ethics of
applying business concepts to democratic processes because of the
perceived negative effects on societal welfare (Butler and Harris 2009;
Henneberg 2004; Marland 2003; O’Shaughnessy 1990). The other, more
recent, mode of criticism arises within the field, from interested parties
concerned with continually improving the quality of research. Part of that
concern relates to the importance of utilizing newer and more sophisticated
marketing concepts in political marketing research. Henneberg and
Human Branding in Political Marketing 131
O’Shaughnessy (2009), for instance, note that ‘‘political marketing still shows
an adherence to concepts which are coming more and more under scrutiny
in mainstream marketing’’ (p. 8) and decry ‘‘its reliance on (arguably)
obsolete marketing concepts’’ (p. 8). Investigating an important issue in
contemporary marketing theory within the political marketing arena is an
attempt here to address such concerns.
Another concern in theory building is the lack of contingency thinking.
Transferring the nomenclature of marketing to politics is relatively simple:
Citing policies as products, citizens as buyers, and votes as price can contrib-
ute to a helpful initial framing of conditions. But other than briefly serving to
signal grounds for comparative analysis, that is an oversimplification of the
situation. For a theoretically sound investigation, recasting the marketing

process is the foremost issue in attempting to apply marketing ideas to
politics. At least in part, resistance to the value of marketing research and
practice arises from the failure of advocates to provide a careful consider-
ation of the implications of the idiosyncrasies of the political context. That
resistance is understandable. Dragging ideas from one setting to another
without due regard for its distinctive characteristics results in incomplete
understandings and unconvincing arguments.
The expansion of the brand concept from its origins in industry and
commerce to a wide range institutions such as churches, universities, and
government departments indicates the potential of applying brand analyses,
ideas, and applications to political entities. In this paper we seek to under-
take this contextualization process with respect to branding and politics by
exploring the application of a particular stream of branding research—
human branding—to politics.
First, we set out the particular characteristics of the political marketing
context, emphasizing a tri-component ‘‘product’’ model. We then develop the
concept of branding using the popular associative network model and paying
particular attention to the sources of associations in politics. Examining the
political offer through the lens of branding highlights one of the key distinguish-
ing features of the context of politics, the role of the person as part of the offer
and therefore as part of the political brand. To further explore the implications
of this, we draw on an emerging area of branding research: human brands. We
provide a codification of human branding research to date and highlight the
aspects of the political context that human branding research can help address.
In synthesizing human branding theory and political marketing theory we
develop new insights arising from the relationship between the political offer
and the human brand. First, because the political actor is linked in the political
offer with a set of policies, we explore the challenge of establishing the human
brand as a credible advocate for those policies. Second, because the political
actor is linked in the political offer to a party, they must be perceived to have
sufficient authority to deliver on their promises as a leader of that party. Both of
these requirements are distinctive from human branding in other contexts.
132 R. Speed et al.
THE POLITICAL OFFER
Political scientists and political marketing researchers have repeatedly

attempted to delineate what it is that voters express a preference for in polit-
ical contests and therefore what is being offered to them through political
marketing (O’Shaughnessy 1990; Henneberg 2002; O’Cass and Pecotich
2005). This is important work, since the exchange process in politics is not
as straightforward as in most commercial transactions. A number of alterna-
tive characterizations of the political ‘‘product=offer’’ have been put forward,
and they tend to agree on the three major aspects of the offer—policies,
party, and leadership—with differences arising from specific definitions or
weights. For instance, Harrop (1990) talks of party image and policies; Farrell
and Wortmann (1987) speak of ‘‘party image, leader image, and manifesto
proposals or selected issues’’ as being the ‘‘product’’; and Worcester and
Mortimore (2005) propose a ‘‘political triangle’’ based on issues, party image,
and leader image.
In this paper, we follow this school of thinking about the political
‘‘product’’—or offer to the market—and draw on the framework proposed
as the basis for contextualizing political marketing described by Butler and
Collins (1994). In this approach, what characterizes the offer and differenti-
ates it from the common or commercial understanding of a product is that
it is a distinctly multi-component phenomenon that combines the ideology,
the person, and the party (see Figure 1). Each of these components of the
FIGURE 1 The Political Offer.

political offer will be examined, but it is in the integrated or combined under-

standing of the concept that we find utility. The three elements form the basis
of the voter’s knowledge of a particular political brand.
The ideology here involves the principles and institutions proposed for
political order and will indicate how power should be allocated and
deployed. Of course, this underpins the more explicit manifesto of the pro-
tagonist and the detail of policy on any issue being proposed to the voter.
The party refers to the political organization that seeks to attain and retain
power. The person in this model refers either to the candidate in an election
or the party leader, depending on the analysis sought.
An important marketing implication of this multicomponent offer is that
the different dimensions cannot be offered separately. Consequently, parti-

cularly complex trade-off of costs and benefits arise that do not have obvious
parallels in business markets. So, in the case of tension between the party
and the person, voters who are party members may be faced with a party lea-
der or local candidate in whom they have no confidence. Or, voters may be
supportive of the policy and ideas of a particular leader or candidate but also
be a loyal supporter of an opposing party. The choice, then, is a single offer
but with possible internal conflicts. This kind of ambiguity reveals complex
outcome possibilities, thereby presenting two kinds of marketing problems:
The situation makes communicating a promise difficult for the campaigner
and makes choice more difficult for the citizen.
The feature of this understanding that compels the investigation of the
human brand in politics is the highly distinctive, critical role of the person
in the political ‘‘product’’ or offer. The person who forms part of the offer
may be a particular candidate in direct election systems ranging from local
government electorates through to direct election presidencies, or it may
be a party leader. Even in proportional representation systems based on lists,
each party presenting a candidate list has a leader who plays some greater or
lesser role in the communication; the political offer therefore cannot be
separated from the person.
This is not the case in business. While commercial brands often have
spokespeople—individuals who are associated with them in marketing
communication—it is far from essential and many do not. Even in those cases
where there is a spokesperson, often that person is a promotional resource
and does not have decision-making rights with respect to the brand, which
is the case for candidates and leaders. In other contexts such as the arts,
entertainment, and sports, the person does play a more significant role,
though still in an importantly differentiated way from politics.
Understanding the role of particular people and personalities in
branding has not been a priority in commercial branding theory, and the
exploration of this area is only just beginning. For political marketplaces,
however, in which the person is central to the offer, this dimension proves
critical and is thus the main emphasis of this essay. To do this, we first
134 R. Speed et al.
examine contemporary business thinking about brands before introducing

new ideas about the relationship between people and branding in the form
of a review of research on human brands.
BRANDING AND ASSOCIATE NETWORK MEMORY
One interpretation of brands is that they function as consumer behavior

heuristics, shortcuts that enable consumers to make faster, simpler choices
(Park and Lessig 1981; Maheswaran, Mackie, and Chaiken 1992). Contempor-
ary branding analysis utilizes the associative network memory model to help
conceptualize the way brand associations are built in the minds of consumers
(Anderson 1983; Keller 1993). Associative learning conceptualizes memory as

a network consisting of individual pieces of information (nodes) that are con-
nected by associative links. Each node has an association set that represents
the preexisting associations that are related meaningfully to that object. The
connections between the nodes are established through experience (Grunert
1996). Figure 2 provides an example of the association set for the VW Beetle.
Recall of a particular piece of information occurs once the relevant node
is stimulated, and stimulation occurs either from an external source or from a
linked node being stimulated. This process is known as spreading activation
and results in stimulation spreading through the network until the level of
stimulation or the strength of links have fallen to a point that no further acti-
vation occurs (Collins and Loftus 1975). Learning occurs when this memory
structure is modified, either by the establishment of a new associative link
FIGURE 2 Illustrative Association set for Volkswagen Beetle (from John et al. 2006).
between nodes with distinct association sets or by addition of a new associa-

ted concept into an association set (Grunert 1996).
Business branding research has been utilizing the concept of association
sets for many years to help understand the structure of consumer knowledge
about brands. Nodes can represent any form of information, such as ideas,
attributes, logos, or concepts (Keller 2003). At any point in time, consumers
have an association set for a particular brand based on what they have
learned about the brand in the past, and this can be reinforced or changed
based on what currently being told about it. The value of a particular brand
derives from its association set, held in the minds of its consumers (Keller
1993). A brand represents a valuable competitive asset if the associations that
make up the association set are:
. Favorably evaluated by the consumer, ensuring that their response to

activation is positive.
. Strongly held by the consumer, enabling them to be accessed easily and
consistently.
. Unique to that brand, ensuring that the brand is evaluated differently from
the competition.
With favorable, strongly held, and unique associations a brand is able to

promise something valuable that competitors cannot. Accordingly, consumer
behavior is likely to be different, and favorable, toward that brand in com-
parison to others within the category.
For brand managers, therefore, the challenge is focused on two tasks.
First, they need to accurately identify and utilize the associations customers
currently hold about their brand. These associations have been built over
time and represent the cumulative results of all the consumers’ past learning
about the brand. This outcome of brand history in the minds of consumers is
commonly referred to as the ‘‘brand heritage.’’
The second challenge is to change favorably the association set, either
by adding new associations; by dropping unfavorable associations; or by
strengthening existing favorable associations. When favorable change is
sought, this is the focus of the brand’s current marketing activity. When done
correctly, this is of far greater strategic import than just marketing communi-
cations; it is an integrated and consistent set of activities focused on achieving
a particular position in the minds of consumers, conventionally referred to as
‘‘positioning’’ (Keller 2008).
THE POLITICAL OFFER AND BRANDING
Following this logic, the tripartite political offer can be interpreted as a brand
(Smith and French 2009; French and Smith 2010; Needham 2006), with
136 R. Speed et al.
associations added to a network through the policies adopted and advocated

(Reeves, de Chernatony, and Carrigan 2006), perceptions of the heritage of
the party, and the reputation of the leader or candidate. Consider the illus-
tration in Figure 3 that indicates the possible association set for the British
Conservative Party. In this case, the person element is David Cameron in
the role of party leader.
A number of policy positions will signal a broader core ideological
position in terms of left-right, religious-secular, progressive-conservative,
big government–small government, internationalist-nationalist, and so on.
For instance, an education policy that promises direct action by government
is more likely to have associations from the left, whereas an education policy
that promises more parental choice will draw associations from the right.
Foreign policies that emphasize human rights issues are associated with
internationalism, whereas policies that emphasize trade opportunities are
more nationalist in association. These associations exist for each of these
policies regardless of the candidate or party advocating them (Bale 2006).
Parties also have associations arising from their origins, past positions,
and past actions (White and de Chernatony 2002; Evans 2008). In Figure 2,
the British Conservative Party is seen as traditional in outlook, a supporter
of business committed to lower taxes and representative of the upper and
middle classes.
The individuals involved in political parties also carry associations
(Harris and Lock 2001; Needham 2005; Scammell 2007; Haddock 2003;
Finlayson 2002). For instance, a local candidate may have a past history in
FIGURE 3 Possible association set for British Conservative Party (adapted from French and
Smith 2010).
the community that carries an association. But at the top level in the party, as
political leaders make decisions they acquire associations. Margaret Thatcher
was associated with war in the Falklands; Tony Blair with war in Iraq.
Winston Churchill’s decisions over the Tonypandy riots in 1910 created
negative associations that affected his standing in Wales for the rest of his life.
The political offer, then, can be reinterpreted in these three terms. Each
element of the offer—policy, party, and person—can be the subject of mar-
keting communication designed to either reinforce or change voters’ percep-
tions and so can form part of the brand’s positioning. Also, to the extent to
which voters have knowledge about the policies, party, or people that form
the brand stored in memory, these elements form part of the brand heritage.
Seen through the brand lens, the political offer highlights three possible
sources of associations about the political brand: the ideology or policy,
the organization or party, and the leader. In competition, political decision
makers have attempted to shift the political contest in their favor by changing
each and all of these three elements. The amendment and abandonment of
contentious and unsuccessful policy positions is a constant aspect of the
political process.
To emphasize the central role of the person, the position of the political
leaders as a brands is convoluted further by the fact that they rarely have an
identifiable existence as brands independent of their status as party leaders.
To illustrate this, we explore human brands and the unusual characteristics of
political leaders in branding in terms in the next section.
PEOPLE IN POLITICS AND HUMAN BRANDS
One definition of human brands is ‘‘any well-known persona who is the

subject of marketing communications efforts’’ (Thomson 2006). By defining
human brands as the focus of marketing communications efforts, this defi-
nition highlights the positioning process designed to build and modify an
association set. Just as is the case for any type of brand, commercial or other-
wise, whether a human brand has significant brand equity depends on
awareness of them in a particular market and the set of associations that
customers in that market hold about the individual. If those associations
are favorable, strongly held by the target group, and unique, then the
behavior of consumers toward the human brand will be different from what
it would be if they lacked that brand equity.
Human branding is an area where theory is both new and comparatively
rare. Much of the work in this area has been atheoretical and essentially
‘‘self-help’’ in nature (Peters 1999; Andrusia and Haskins 2000; Graham
2001). However, a number of papers have now appeared that seek to begin
theory building in this area (Thomson 2006; Lair, Sullivan, and Cheney 2005;
Hearn 2008). Work to date has drawn on notions of identity to help explore
138 R. Speed et al.
the motivation of the human brand and on relationships to explore

the motivation of their consumers. Table 1 presents a typology of the devel-
opments in human and personal branding research to date, organized to
illustrate the focus of research efforts.
One body of literature—the ‘‘Brand You’’ experience—emphasizes the
utilization of marketing techniques to position a person for a career or life-
style decision. Celebrity branding is based largely on the celebrity endorse-
ment literature and understanding. Thomson (2006) highlights several
groups of professionals who can be considered human brands, such as sports
professionals, media personalities, or arts and entertainment figures. All of
these groups contain examples of individuals who are subject to deliberate
and careful marketing communication efforts, who are well-known, and

who have a sufficiently strong attachment in the eyes of at least some of their
audience to provoke change in the audience’s behavior (Silvera and Austad
2004). From the commercial arena, there has been a honing of the celebrity
branding material to focus on ‘‘superstar’’ business people (Reidenbach and
Pitts 1986, Hayward, Rindova, and Pollock 1997). Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, and
Martha Stewart typify this kind of individual. The final type in the table is the
politician. In this case, in which there are fewer applications than in other
categories, the interest is in how the political leader or candidate influences
electoral prospects. The strategic purpose may be any one of a number of
possibilities: election, positioning, repositioning, enhancing or defending
reputation, and so forth. While several instances of such research are cited
(Scammell 2007; Motion 2000), there is no literature of any scale on the
subject.
In analyzing human brands, most effort to date has tended to focus on
what might be termed ‘‘freestanding human brands,’’ where there is little or
no link between the human brand and any organization. However, as can be
seen from the list of professionals above, in many cases the human brand is
also part of a branded organization such as a sports team, a business, or a
political party. The interaction between human and organizational brands
is a relatively unexplored area of marketing. There has been study of the
branding impact of movie actors (Addis and Holbrook 2010), but in their
associations as human brands combine with other association sets (movie
title, director, studio, writer, etc.) on a movie-by-movie basis, rather than
through the more permanent association with an organization seen in
political leadership.
The challenge of marketing a well-known personality is obvious. They
are not inert, abstract constructs. They are real individuals, who can be inter-
viewed, photographed, and challenged. They may be the subject of a mar-
keting communication effort but that is not necessarily the only source of
information about them available to the public. Because of the risk this car-
ries, most business has chosen not to incorporate human brands into their
activities. Political parties, because of the nature of the offer, have no choice.
TABLE 1 Summary of Human Brand=Personal Brand Research and Focus
Marketing Marketing Examples of

The brand Which is Link to theory practice related
Level studied is . . . valued by . . . Focus organization research research literatures
Personal Any Universal— How individuals Organizations Criticism—(Hearn Not developed Considerable
Individual employers, can use tools buy the 2008; Shepherd ‘‘how-to’’
friends, and techniques personal brand 2005; Lair et al. literature (e.g.,
acquaintances of marketing 2005) Peters 1999;
and brand Andrusia and
management to Haskins 2000)
advance their
careers
Celebrity Well-known Consumers How the Organizations Drivers of Considerable Considerable
identities familiarity and acquire consumer celebrity literature in
associations of celebrity brand attachment endorsement media and
well-known equity through (Thomson 2006) literature (e.g., cultural studies
139
individuals contracts Silvera and
influence Austad 2004)
consumer
behavior
Businessperson CEOs Stockmarkets, How the Organizations Not developed No application to Distinction
employers familiarity and with celebrity marketing between
associations of CEOs gain reputation and
business leaders benefits and celebrity
affect their accept risks (Rindova et al.
organization 2006); impact of
CEO celebrity
on
remuneration
and
(Continued )
TABLE 1 Continued
Marketing Marketing Examples of

The brand Which is Link to theory practice related
Level studied is . . . valued by . . . Focus organization research research literatures
performance
(Wade et al.
2006);
premiums paid
in takeovers
(Hayward and
Hambrick 1997)
Politician Leaders= Voters How the People (leaders Not developed Change of leader Communication
candidates familiarity and and to reposition strategies to
140
associations of a candidates) are parties (Neale reposition party
political leader= part of the et al. 2008) leaders
candidate affect political offer (Scammell 2007)
electoral made by a Public relations
prospects of party strategies to
political parties position female
politicians
(Motion 2000)
Impact of leader
reputation on
political parties
(Davies and
Mian 2007)
There are two main situations where a human brand can be linked to a
branded organization: by contract or by office. In these cases the human
brand is a competitive resource that may be used to represent the organiza-
tion to the public. In the case of a celebrity endorser or advertising spokes-
person, the connection between the person and the brand is by contract. An
alternative link is through office bearing. In this case, the human brand is a
competitive resource of the organization, but they are also a company officer
and have decision rights within the organization. In a commercial context,
such a human brand would be a celebrity business person, a recognized
individual who leads a known organization (Treadway et al. 2009; Graffin
et al. 2008; Hayward et al. 2004; Rindova, Pollack, and Hayward 2006)
In political marketing we frequently see celebrity endorsement of polit-

ical parties (Street 2004). That is not particularly different from the use of cel-
ebrity endorsement in commercial situations. However, we also see the office
bearers of political parties presented as human brands. Indeed, the ubiquity
of organizational leaders as human brands is one of the strongest contrasts
between commercial and political marketing. Whereas celebrity business
people are comparatively rare, all political leaders are spokespeople for their
party and are key competitive resources for the parties to utilize.
THE HUMAN BRANDING CHALLENGE OF

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP
While human branding theory is in its infancy, there are nonetheless a number
of observations that can be made about the factors influencing the strength of
a human brand, and these factors can be examined in the context of politics.
We highlight two distinguishing features of human brands in politics that may
be developed on the basis of the three-component representation of the polit-
ical offer outlined earlier. We concentrate on the relationship between the
person and the other two elements. First, the relationship between the person
and the ideology or policy is critical. That is, the alignment of the political lea-
der and the promise to the voter must be clear and credible; the fundamental
question of authenticity underpins this. Second, the relationship between the
person and the party is critical. For any leader, the ability to command a party
to actually deliver policy and to be perceived as such, is essential. This is
about the authority of the person in the political organization. Thus, we
explore the brand authenticity and brand authority of the political figure.
Figure 4 outlines the nature of the relationships.
Consistency With the Policy Platform: Brand Authenticity

Human branding research has adopted the idea of a ‘‘brand persona’’ to rep-
resent the image that the human brand seeks to project. This is distinct from
142 R. Speed et al.
FIGURE 4 Authenticity and Authority in the Political Offer.
the actual personality of the person who is the human brand. This is consist-
ent with the use of ‘‘brand persona’’ to represent the image communicated
when dealing with abstract brands. It is also consistent with the distinction
that is made in corporate branding between image and identity. In analyzing
political marketing, a brand persona is a useful concept to employ. All the
deliberate positioning effort applied to party and candidate is attempting
to create a particular brand image in the eyes of the targeted voters. The posi-
tioning process will seek to highlight attributes that are particularly valued by
these target voters and to moderate any attributes that are seen as negatives.
As the preferences of target voters change, so must the brand persona, even
if the underlying party or personal characteristics cannot be changed as
quickly.
In building any brand, managers rarely have complete freedom to pro-
mote attributes and position the brand as they wish. For any brand, the
brand’s history and heritage constrains their options, and some consistency
with past positioning is required. For human brands, while the concept of
the persona recognizes that there is scope for the presentation of an image
that is not necessarily a complete representation of the individual’s actual
character, the persona presented must be one that the individual concerned
can support and reinforce in their day-to-day actions. The extent of scrutiny
on both the political and personal lives of political leaders is sufficient to
highlight areas where the persona presented does not ring true.
We term this fit between persona and underlying personality
‘‘authenticity.’’ Note that we are not suggesting that the brand persona has
to be a warts-and-all presentation of the individual concerned. A good brand
persona is a presentation of a persona that the individual concerned is able to
support. Tolson (2001) calls presentation of this type of persona ‘‘being

yourself’’ and carefully notes that this is not the unvarnished, unguarded
presentation of an individual: ‘‘ ‘being yourself’ . . . must be understood as a
type of public performance, but a performance which, crucially, is not per-
ceived as acting. For this to be brought off successfully the public persona
of the celebrity needs to project an aura of authenticity’’ (p. 445).
We are therefore using ‘‘authentic’’ as it is used in a number of areas of
social science (Van Leeuwin 2001). The need for authenticity arises from a
number of sources. First, it is clear that consumers cannot form strong asso-
ciations about a human brand unless the messages they receive about that
brand are consistent. An authentic persona is one that the individual con-
cerned is able to reinforce and support through their public performance.

Because of this, the degree of inconsistency is reduced. Without authenticity,
there is a significant probability that consumers will receive conflicting mes-
sages from the marketing messages they are being targeted with and the
behavior they see exhibited by the human brand. Second, the probability
of favorable assessments is diminished by a lack of authenticity. There is a
large and growing body of research in consumer behavior that suggests that
consumers are sensitive to perceived manipulation by marketers and
respond in a very negative manner if such manipulation is suspected, hence
Tolson’s (2001) emphasis that the performance cannot to be perceived as
acting.
All human brands require authenticity to have value as brands. How-
ever, politicians face obstacles in maintaining a perception of authenticity
that other human brands do not. In politics, there is inevitably a tension
between maintaining authenticity and responding to events. A fact of polit-
ical life is that the positions adopted by parties and their leaders are required
to change in the face of changing public preferences. As politicians are
required to articulate positions that differ from those they have previously
and successfully advocated, the ability to show the sincerity and constituency
required to support authenticity is diminished. Goffee and Jones (2005: 87)
praised British Prime Minister Tony Blair for ‘‘his consummate skill in manag-
ing his authenticity.’’ They also note, however, that ‘‘because of his desire to
maximize his personal appeal, Blair moves between different, contradictory
selves, lacking any central personal beliefs.’’ Blair’s decline can be inter-
preted as a failure of his audience to continue to believe, as Tolson suggests,
that the performance was not acting.
A perceived failure to maintain a consistent political position over time
is frequently used as a line of attack on particular candidates. In the 2004 U.S.
presidential election, when John Kerry’s alleged inconsistency in voting for
the second Iraq war and subsequently against measures to fund that war
was raised as an election issue by the Republicans, it was so poorly handled
that ‘‘flip-flopping’’ became a defining association of the John Kerry brand
(Bennett 2005). The ability of his political opponents to use the ambiguities
144 R. Speed et al.
of memory, history, and attitudes toward the Vietnam War to raise doubt
about the authenticity of his war service record in Vietnam effectively
destroyed one of Kerry’s biggest single assets in the electoral contest with
George W. Bush (Robinson 2006).
The requirement to adjust position does not just arise over time with
changing public perceptions. It also arises directly from the political process.
Generating authenticity is a challenge in a number of electoral systems,
where there is a distinction between election by activists and by the general
population. The challenges of serial elections where activists and general
voters both have a role in electoral outcomes have been investigated exten-
sively in political science (e.g., May 1973; Robertson 1976; Kitschelt 1989). In
this paper we focus purely on the authenticity challenges posed and leave on
one side the more general challenges investigated in such research.
The U.S. system of primaries to choose candidates followed by a general
election has long been considered problematic for candidates since they
must first win the support of the majority of their own party and then win
the support of the general electorate. This two-stage process means that in
the first contest they are seeking to win the approval of the median primary
voter and in the second the median general election voter. These two targets
have distinctly different preferences, and positions taken to secure the party
nomination may well have to be moderated to secure the support of
non-party voters. Researchers in political economy have investigated the
conditions under which electoral institutions influence election outcome:
‘‘During primary election campaigns, extremism is better than moderation
because primary voters are located near the ends of the ideological spectrum.
Only after primary nominations are settled is moderation towards the center
a reasonable strategy’’ (Burden 2001: 99)
The problem is similar, but less formal, in leadership contests in parlia-
mentary parties. Generally the electorate for leadership contests are party
members or party parliamentarians, who have considerably more partisan
preferences than the general electorate. Successful leadership candidates
often find that positions taken to secure the leadership have to be dismantled
to contest general elections. Presenting a persona that is appealing to the
median voter among party activists and then seeking to present a persona
that appeals to the median voter among the general electorate, requires a
repositioning and has the potential for inconsistencies that undermine the
perception of authenticity. This is not a problem that human brands outside
politics encounter with such regularity.
Consistency With the Party Organization: Brand Authority

The concept of human brand has largely been developed to consider free-
standing human brands: well-known personas that are subject to marketing
in their own right. Typical human brands like sports people, movie actors,
and other celebrities may have links with organizations such as teams, movie
projects, or endorsed products, but these links can be changed. Players can
swap teams, new movie projects can be undertaken, new endorsement deals
can be signed. The human brand takes their personal brand equity with them
into the new situation. Even if human brand equity was built in a particular
organization, that link can be broken. With this degree of portability and
independence from organizations, it is possible to consider such human
brands as appropriate for use in co-branding models. For instance, a cos-
metics company might use an actress to brand a line of perfumes or a sport-
ing goods company use a sports star to brand a line of equipment. Such
arrangements are consistent with co-branding and can be modelled and
analyzed accordingly (Whan Park, Jun, and Shocker 1996).

In contrast to this, most well-known businesspeople and politicians are
much more strongly linked to their organization. Comparatively few establish
celebrity outside their business or political context, and often their celebrity is
derived from their role in the organization. In associate network terms, it is
much less likely that associations are linked directly and exclusively to the
human brand within the political offer. Much more likely is that the associa-
tions also link to the organization or to party policy. Where there are direct
and exclusive associations to a political party leader they are going to be
every bit as likely to arise from the personal than the political, such as Ronald
Reagan’s past as a movie actor, Barack Obama’s ethnic heritage, David
Cameron’s old Etonian background, and so on. This is important to under-
stand because it determines the likelihood that those attributes are preserved
when the political leader changes. Without such embedded associations
political leadership would be closer to a co-branding model, suggesting that
associations can easily be changed by a change in leadership (Neale, Hughes,
and Dann 1998).
The key difference between a human brand as an endorser and a
human brand as organizational actor is the ability to make promises on
behalf of the organization. That is the essence of brand authority here. It is
hard to conceive of a political leader having policy commitments that are
independent of the policy commitments of their party. It is extremely likely
that the values and attitudes modeled by the leader will be taken by voters to
represent those of their party. Political leaders have held party office and so
have personal involvement in construction of the party’s policy platform.
Party leaders are unlike other human brands because of this office-
holding relationship with a particular organization. They have arrived in
the office holding position after a political career associated with that party
and the policies has advocated. This history suggests that the formation of
internal associations from leader to policy and from party to leader is
extremely likely.
Because party office-holding is not the same as endorsement, consu-
mers can reasonably have expectations that a human brand who is also an
146 R. Speed et al.
organizational actor will not just be promising but will also have some
responsibility for delivery. The ability of a leader to deliver on policy
depends on their ability to create a controlling coalition within their own
party. This process will vary depending on the political system or the party
structures. In the U.S., the need to form a coalition on a national issue is
frequently about marshalling enough legislators in Congress to pass a bill.
In countries with stronger party discipline the need to form a coalition is
not to marshal a vote on a bill but to get the bill drafted in a form that is
acceptable.
The consumer’s perception of a party leader’s ability to deliver is part of
the political brand. If perceptions of ability to deliver are low, then the con-
fidence of a voter in the promises made on behalf of the organization will

also be low. Without confidence in the leader’s ability to deliver, favorable
associations arising from party heritage and policy positions will weaken,
and the equity in the political brand will diminish. The credibility of a polit-
ical leader is their perceived ability to deliver on the political brand promise
and derives, at least in part, from the authority of the human brand within the
organization.
In the proceeding section we have sought to highlight what light explor-
ing political branding using insights from human branding theory can shed.
We have highlighted two concepts—authenticity and authority—which are
central to successfully using a political leader as a political branding resource.
Authenticity is a concept widely discussed in the human branding literature,
but credibility or authority is a concept that arises because of the link
between leader and party and so is an area that most human branding theory
has to date overlooked.
CONCLUSIONS: THE HUMAN BRAND IN POLITICAL MARKETING
In this paper, we have sought to inform the application of branding concepts

to political marketing by exploring the application of human branding to
political leaders. We have highlighted the prominence of the person as part
of the political offer and contrasted that reality with the majority of commer-
cial brands. Analyses that proceed on the assumption they are the same will
contain serious weaknesses.
To demonstrate the potential benefits of a careful contextualization of
marketing theory, we have applied theories from human branding research
to the context of political marketing. Human branding research is a compara-
tively new field, and so there is considerable merit is seeking to identify con-
texts in which novel or surprising insights can be generated. Without such
boundary testing of theory, the risk is that it is developed based on an
assumed perspective and the generalizability of the work is severely limited
as a consequence.
We have identified a number of consequences for the study of political

leaders as a type of human brand that arise from the political context. First,
we should note that unlike other contexts where human branding is being
explored, wherever there is a candidate or leader, there is always a human
brand aspect to the political brand. This is certainly not the case with busi-
ness brands or entertainment brands. Political marketing therefore represents
an extraordinarily rich environment in which to explore human branding.
Second, since most politics is conducted in the context of political parties,
there is a relationship between the human brand and the organization at
the heart of the political brand. This is not necessarily the case in other
human branding contexts, such as celebrities. Political branding therefore
provides a powerful context in which to examine the interaction between

human brand and organizational brand.
To start this process of examination, we highlight two new insights aris-
ing from the relationship between the political offer and the human brand,
both of which establish the strength of the offer captured by the brand. First,
the leader requires authenticity as an advocate of the party policy platform.
Without a perception of authenticity, the leader’s commitment to the policy
platform will be seen as insincere, manipulative, and artificial, all of which
severely weaken the brand appeal to voters. Second the leader requires auth-
ority, a perception that the leader is able to command the party and deliver
on the policies being advocated. Without this, the political brand promise
lacks cohesion and believability with respect to delivery.
Through this paper we have sought to ensure a more universal appli-
cation for human branding theory by identifying the adaptations required
to deliver useful insights in the political context. We therefore hope to assist
in avoiding some of the repeated criticisms of political marketing in the next
phase of the development of the discipline.
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AUTHOR NOTES
Richard Speed is Pro Vice Chancellor (Regional) at La Trobe University. He

has a particular interest in the use of sponsorship as a marketing resource
and in using marketing in nonprofit settings. His research has appeared in
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, European Journal of

Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Management, among others.
Patrick Butler is Associate Professor of Marketing and Director of the
Executive MBA programs at Melbourne Business School. Formerly at the
School of Business Studies at Trinity College Dublin, he has been a Visiting
Professor at Senshu University, Tokyo, and has taught and presented in
China, the U.S., and Europe. His research on marketing strategy and public
management has been published in international books and journals.
Neil Collins is Professor of Government and Dean of the Graduate
School of Public Policy, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He is a past
president of the Political Studies Association of Ireland and a former Centen-
nial Scholar at the American Political Science Association in Washington DC.
He is the author of several books, including Understanding Chinese Politics,
Manchester University Press, 2013.

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Human Branding in Political Marketing:

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Human Branding in Political Marketing:

La Trobe University, Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

Political marketing advances by engaging with new and advanced

Address correspondence to Richard Speed, La Trobe University, PO Box 199, Bendigo,

KEYWORDS human branding, brand associations, brand

For political marketing to continue to make progress theoretically and in

situation. For a theoretically sound investigation, recasting the marketing

THE POLITICAL OFFER

Political scientists and political marketing researchers have repeatedly

FIGURE 1 The Political Offer.

political offer will be examined, but it is in the integrated or combined under-

the different dimensions cannot be offered separately. Consequently, parti-

examine contemporary business thinking about brands before introducing

BRANDING AND ASSOCIATE NETWORK MEMORY

One interpretation of brands is that they function as consumer behavior

(Anderson 1983; Keller 1993). Associative learning conceptualizes memory as

between nodes with distinct association sets or by addition of a new associa-

make up the association set are:

. Favorably evaluated by the consumer, ensuring that their response to

With favorable, strongly held, and unique associations a brand is able to

THE POLITICAL OFFER AND BRANDING

associations added to a network through the policies adopted and advocated

PEOPLE IN POLITICS AND HUMAN BRANDS

One definition of human brands is ‘‘any well-known persona who is the

the motivation of the human brand and on relationships to explore

and careful marketing communication efforts, who are well-known, and

TABLE 1 Summary of Human Brand=Personal Brand Research and Focus

Marketing Marketing Examples of

Marketing Marketing Examples of

In political marketing we frequently see celebrity endorsement of polit-

THE HUMAN BRANDING CHALLENGE OF

Consistency With the Policy Platform: Brand Authenticity

FIGURE 4 Authenticity and Authority in the Political Offer.

support. Tolson (2001) calls presentation of this type of persona ‘‘being

cerned is able to reinforce and support through their public performance.

Consistency With the Party Organization: Brand Authority

analyzed accordingly (Whan Park, Jun, and Shocker 1996).

fidence of a voter in the promises made on behalf of the organization will

CONCLUSIONS: THE HUMAN BRAND IN POLITICAL MARKETING

In this paper, we have sought to inform the application of branding concepts

We have identified a number of consequences for the study of political

provides a powerful context in which to examine the interaction between

Addis, M., and M. B. Holbrook. (2010). Consumers’ identification and beyond:

Burden, B. C. (2001). The polarizing effect of primaries. In P. F. Galderisi, M. Ezra,

Research, 43(4), 549–563.

Needham, C. (2006). Brands and political loyalty. Brand Management, 13(3),

Plasser, F., and G. Plasser. (2002). Global political campaigning: A worldwide

White, J, and L de Chernatony. (2002). New Labour: A study of the creation,

Richard Speed is Pro Vice Chancellor (Regional) at La Trobe University. He

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, European Journal of

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