The Scottish Liberal Democrat conference is coming up in the next couple of weeks and having spoken at it in previous years I am unable to attend on this, the first with Willie Rennie at the helm.
However I spent some time this weekend contemplating if any of the Laws of Marketing that I use in my day job could be applied to the Scottish Lib Dems. I recognise in doing this I may be burnt at the stake by some of my more open-toed Liberal friends, but feel free to discard whichever of the Laws you feel are unapplicable. Enjoy…
You can read Part I, James’s Laws 1 to 8, by clicking here.
9. The Law of Line Extension
One of the most violated laws in politics is the law of line extension. You often hear people refer to politicians as ‘trying to be all things to all men’ or ‘saying anything that will get them into power’. Although it sounds the inverse of some of the previous laws the Scottish Lib Dems need to narrow our focus in order to build up a position within the electorate’s mind. It is too easy for parties to try and claim to be the green party while also being the party of NIMBY’s (that would be you Mr Cameron). Resisting extending the brand beyond what is reasonable takes courage on the part of our political leaders.
10. The Law of Sacrifice
When I first started building my business a very wise and experienced entrepreneur told me that if you want to be successful, you need to give up something. In politics there are three things to sacrifice; policies, target voters and constant change. The fact you have more policies does not mean you will have more votes. Having a full manifesto with policies covering every area conceivable is plain dumb. Where is it written that we have to appeal to every type of voter from white van man to the young mum? We also need to remember that the target is not the market. The apparent target of our campaigning is not the same as the people who will actually vote for us. Even though Pepsi’s target is the teenager, the market is everybody because even the 50-year old wants to think he’s a 20 year old. We also need to sacrifice changing our strategy with every leader and election for a consistent strategy. So what will the Lib Dems sacrifice in terms of policies and target voter segments?
11. The Law of Attributes
Politics is a battle of ideas. Without ideas and attributes of our own the Scottish Lib Dems will be the party of only the protest vote. As a party we need to own the most important attributes. In Scotland a recent ICM poll set out the five big attributes you want to own at least one of. They are strength in Health, Policing, Education, Economy or Tax (no surprises there then). Labour did own Health but Nicola Sturgeon has given them a run for their money. The Tory’s did own Policing but I’m guessing that is now in question. Where are the Scottish Lib Dems on these big issues?
12. The Law of Candor
A funny thing happens when you are candid about your own party or policies. Every negative statement you make about them is instantly accepted as the truth. However this can be used to our benefit in much the same way that Volkswagon used their ‘VW will stay ugly longer’ in the 1970′s to push home their reliability. When a party starts a message by admitting a problem, people tend to open up their minds. Now you are in a position to drive home the positive, which is the idea you are really selling the electorate (see Tim Farron’s conference speech this week as an example). As they say ‘honesty is the best policy’.
13. The Law of Singularity
All things being equal we tend to find that the only thing that works in marketing is the single, bold stroke. Think Cameron and his little jaunt with the husky’s or Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ party at Number 10 with all those pop stars we have now forgotten. I am sure that Willie Rennie, like any good general should, has already been studying the battlefield and looking for that one bold move that is least expected by the opposition. In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results. Perhaps in the Scottish Lib Dems case it is suddenly coming out in favour of independence and talking about what an Independent Liberal Scotland could look like? Yes I also think the chances of that are the same as finding out that Alex Salmond’s favourite song is Rule Brittannia.
14. The Law of Success
Ego is the enemy of being a successful politician. One of Tony Blair’s gifts, at least in the early years as Labour leader, was not becoming complacent and letting ego take over. Salmond’s Achiles Heel is his ego and both he and his party spin doctors know it. They have a strategy for dealing with it even if at times you get a sense that Salmond’s own bluster will get the better of him. Great politicians like great marketeers have the ability to think like a voter thinks or in the words of Harper Lee, ‘you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them’. The best politicians put themselves in the shoes of the voters and don’t let their ego take over.
15. The Law of Failure
If you fail then admit it, fix it and move on. I think our party failed students on tuition fees and we know it. The Scottish Lib Dems should admit the UK party let students down and we need to say clearly what our position is in Scotland and that we are committed to free education for all. My views on this subject reflect this excellent post from Craig Murray.
16. The Law of Resources
You need money to blast your way into the electorate’s mind and you need money to stay in their mind once you get there. As the SNP have shown you get further with a mediocre idea and a million dollars than with a great idea alone. The Lib Dems have never had the backing of big unions or big business so funding is always an issue. It is probably issue one, two or three on Willie Rennie’s list in how to build an effective party that can win elections. I know it’s an issue that is taxing a lot of minds within the party at present.
I’m sure you’ll disagree with me on some or all of these laws. You may think that it’s wrong to make direct comparisons between marketing and politics and you may be right. However I hope you take these ‘Laws’ in the spirit in which they were written. What I hoped to do here is think about how we position ourselves as a party and get our message across. So what would your Laws of Politics look like? Feel free to comment below.
* James Taylor is a serial entrepreneur working in the UK and USA, as well as a former Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate. He is on Twitter @liberalthought and his website is www.jamestaylor.me.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
ALS, MND - is this another disease where biohacking has potential?
Weekly Road Report - West End Ward #dundeewestend
Care homes under threat after Labour policy change
Three less conventional ways of looking at who supports Reform - The Week in Polls
Layla Moran on Gaza: "Starvation shouldn't be a weapon of war"
Mick Taylor
Jenny Barnes
Peter Martin
Daniel Stylianou
Frank O'Kelly
5 Comments
Again some good stuff in here.
I can’t see our party coming out in favour of independence any time soon – I don’t think there are enough people within it who support the idea. However, we do need to stake our claim on the home rule turf – but that’s becoming crowded too. Salmond is very good at painting a pretty picture, but he doesn’t have the monopoly on it. I’ve seen moves lately from Mike Moore and Willie Rennie that point to us making our picture. It’s still at the sketch stage, and we need to get the colouring pencils out, but we’ll get there.
I don’t think the Scottish Liberal Democrats can ignore what the UK Coalition does. We saw in the election that distancing ourselves on tuition fees didn’t help. I think it would be better coming from Nick. I still think he needs to apologise for breaking the pledge. He can’t change that now – although he has already changed the policy into something much better than we would ever have got under Labour or the Tories alone. He went some way in his speech on Wednesday to change things, but he still, in my view, needs to apologise.
Hi Caron
Yes I agree with you re independence and home rule. I just think as a party we’ve been pretty poor in explaining what Home Rule is all about because it sounds like the kind of phrase that would come out of the mouth of a 19th Century gentleman with a smoking jacket and sideburns. I also wonder why our MSP’s don’t talk a little more about the importance of England getting its own parliament, within the context of a federal system. Whenever I speak with nationalists it always baffles them when I start speaking about the importance of England having it’s own parliament.
One your point re Nick doing a mea culpa on tuition fees maybe he should do one of those Martin Bashir, doleful eyes interviews!
I don’t think you’re bad at explaining what home rule means, I think you’ve completely forgotten it was ever your policy in the first place. I don’t even think I’ve heard a Lib Dem politician use the phrase since the parliament reconvened. In Scotland your constitutional position is defined by your visceral opposition to independence, which means you’ve become essentially a support act for Labour, especially since the SNP have done a very good job of selling the idea that a UK-wide party is structurally incapable of putting Scotland’s interests first.
Oh, and if you’re looking for Scottish Lib Dems who support independence, look in the ranks of the SNP. It’s chock full of former LDs.
An English parliament, or better still regional English parliaments, would be a useful way of resolving many issues, including the West Lothian Question. Labour tried to do this with their referendum on a NE assembly (illustrating once again that Labour have done more for electoral reform that the Lib Dems ever had), unfortunately it didn’t work out.
As for tuition fees, the deluded position that the fees are somehow better than the Tory or Labour proposals alone. The HEPI report makes clear that it is not. It’s a mess that is destroying HE through political incompetence. A Lib Dem lie has wrecked the HE sector, even in Scotland.
The game is over. Scottish Lib Dems should form their own party, and dissociate completely from their Westminster colleagues if they want to survive.
@g – I totally agree with you. We should completely dissociate ourselves from the Federal Party if we are to survive at all. Unfortunately, for many of us, Willie does not see it that way (I have asked him) and refuses to distance us in any way from the Federal Party. “We are one Party, one family” and that is how we will stay. Of course, some of us could splinter off (as has already happened) and form our own Party – at the moment it is still within the main Party (SLF & Liberal Vision) – but I wonder for how long?
We are not being heeded – they may “hear” us but they are not actually “listening” to us! We have been all but wiped out in Scotland and we need to do something about it. Staying within the Federal Party is not the way to do it.