How Voters Became Political Consumers

Yesterday the Toronto Star ran a great piece entitled, “How voters become political consumers” that looks at how politicians and political campaigns are increasing approaching voters like consumers instead of like, well, just citizens.

Parts of the article will definitely make you go, “Duh.” But it gets good when it gets into specific examples, like how, when discussing the controversy over the mandatory, long-form census, Tony Clement kept repeating the same message, just like a TV ad would do.

The article also takes a bit of a deeper look into how the federal Conservative party uses market intelligence to segment Canadian voters, It’s sort of creepy but at the same time, quite smart and the other political parties might want to be taking a few notes.

Anyways, I just thought this piece was another great example of how marketing and branding really are everywhere.