Delivering the Political Brand Promise as a Post-election Political Branding Technique
摘要
Political branding literature discusses political brandingpolitical branding as if it ends when elections are won. However, the government needs to utilise political branding principles to ensure continuous support of the political marketpolitical market. Delivery is one of the strategic ways to keep the party and government brand equitybrand equity intact after elections. Delivery builds trust, and the fact that the brand promisebrand promise is fulfilled enhances brand evaluation. That is why this study supports the view that deliverydelivery is at the core of political branding beyond elections. The brand promise helps the political market to connect at the functional level with the party. So, promises raise expectations about how the expressed and latent needs of the political market would be addressed for them to experience the change they voted for, and thus induce support. Therefore, when the promise is not ‘kept’, there is a negative ‘moment of truth’moment of truth experience with the party and the government. This negative experience with the political brand can lead to punitive actions such as political brand avoidancebrand avoidance in subsequent elections. This chapter, thus, argues that political branding goes beyond elections and ensuring delivery is one of the valuable ways to keep the party and government brand equity intact. It discusses the strategic approaches, that is, the main constructs of the framework (pre-electionpre-election delivery checks, adjusting the brand promise, implementing the promise and communicating and marketing the delivered promise) for delivery as a post-electionpost-election branding techniquebranding technique and concurrently draws on the practical experiences of the New Patriotic Party in Ghana to demonstrate the value of these principles and how it has been applied in practice to solidly establish the relevance of these constructs in political branding beyond elections.