(CSC) – On November 14th India joined the likes of Japan, the U.S., and Russia by landing a probe on the moon.

Indian politicians have put aside their partisan bickering for the time being to celebrate the occasion, with ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi calling it “a historic day for India”, and Lal Krishna Advani, the opposition leader, calling it “an event to be recorded in golden letters”.

Hopes are high that this mission could be the dawn of a space age for India. “In fifteen years I want to see an Indian on the moon”, said Abdul Kalam, the former Indian president and rocket scientist.

Brupar Namreem, a street-side bucketwasher in New Delhi, is also excited about the future of India’s space program. “I hope this means the world will look at India in a different way”, he said as he squatted to take a dump by the train tracks.

2-year-old Gracie Melvin angered Liberals with her appearance at a Conservative rally in Harbour Grace, N.L. on Thursday. While Stephen Harper was giving a speech, she walked across the stage with a sign that said “Harper”.

Senior Liberal strategist Tom Dumont has accused the two year old of misconstruing Dion’s Green Shift plan. “Clearly, Gracie is perpetuating these untruths to the public without a full understanding of the historical and comparative evidence in regards to a carbon tax”.

Dumont says Gracie should resign, and that if she does not, Stephen Harper should ask her to step down. When asked by reporters yesterday whether Gracie should resign, Harper stated this was a case of “gotcha journalism”.

Liberal pundits say Harper is obscuring the facts. Liberal blogger Yannick Grenkovich believes Gracie’s action are “the beginning of a shift to low-blow attacks and smokescreen tactics” by the Conservative Party.

Conservative candidate for Harbour Grace, Martin O’Neill, defended Gracie, saying “Her criticism of the corporate aspect of the tax is fundamentally sound”.

The Green Shift plan, which Dion has called “the foundation of the Liberal platform” has been a difficult sell, especially in Eastern Canada.

Gracie has defended her actions, telling reporters in St. John’s yesterday that “det doon. Aiee jejo, mama. No no no.”

Stephane Dion has responded sharply, saying “Wearil seayrosl, da chel on fredolay dreder deuh wahn”.

These days, in our workplace, at home, and in politics, we have less and less leadership, and more management. The structure of our social and economic system depends on this shift towards management, and the result for all people is alienation and detachment from public life.
There is no one definition of management. Many simply say “management is what managers do”. But for the purpose of separating leadership from management, we can come up with a definition of management that encapsulates many definitions:

Management is an act which, carried out by the higher levels of business administration in a stakeholder situation, plans, organizes, and controls people.

Management is essential in a social and economic system that attempts more and more to control without appearing to control. It uses business research to break time down into very specific parts, and assigns certain tasks and rates of pay to those pieces of time.

Leadership is obvious. It is out in the open. In contrast, management disguises hierarchy with language.

The strength of this comparison, and this argument, is based on the concept of “stakeholders” – people who have something to lose or gain from some process. Managers abide by stakeholders, leaders do not.

Today, most politicians do as much as possible to avoid causing offence. Their speeches are bland and state the obvious. When they answer questions, they do not really answer the question. Theirs is a managerial style. They are concerned about stakeholders – corporations, the managers and representatives of other nations, managers and representatives of international organizations, and voters (probably in that order). To deal with the pressure exerted by these stakeholders, the politician, especially those in higher positions of power, have a throng of bureaucrats guiding every speech, every policy, every answer to a question (the “talking points”). The result is a bland figure who, based on guidance from their legion of suit-and-tie paper-pushers who sit in big buildings and move around and substitute words until they find some that ultimately says nothing, shows no charisma, no charm, has nothing new and exciting to say – essentially has all the personality of a lump of coal. Finally, politicians’ “communications directors” assure that it all happens as predictably as live theatre. In this sense, politicians and their bureaucrats and inner-circles function as management. Plan, organize, control; nothing more. Not with all of these stakeholders involved.

In the workplace, despite the “team leader” language, we mostly have managers. Our supervisors are often “accountable” to (get in trouble by; afraid of) somebody higher up – another manager. Our supervisors do not inspire us or go above and beyond their duties. They rarely socialize with or bother to get to know their subordinates. They simply plan, organize, and control. And they must, because another manager higher-up, a stakeholder, has planned and organized a very specific way for things to happen. And from that higher-up position, they can control simply by placing all of the responsibility on the manager below them. There are various ways to exert this pressure on lower managers. One popular way is to provide “incentives”. For example, if the lower manager can cut back overtime pay to less than $500 a month, the higher manager will provide a percentage of that saved money to the lower manager. Other “incentives” are often phrased as “goals” or “targets”, ie: the higher manager will hand down a list of “goals”, such as “this week we will sell so many quantities of X, and make Y many phone-calls to Z that produce Q number of new clients”, etc, etc. The subtle message to the lower manager is “this had better happen or you are not doing your job”, and we all know what happens to people who cannot do their job – demotion, re-location, “re-assignment” – call it what you want. The people working in the lowest echelon end up not understanding their managers at all, feeling detached, trying to figure out “why boss is wound so tight” over stupid things. They cannot see or understand the pressure being exerted from an even higher manager. Instead, they just see a manager who seems unnaturally obsessed, anti-social, driven by quotas and numbers that come from nowhere. Taking all of this into account, any attempt by the lower manager to appear friendly or “like one of the guys” is dismissed as lame and weasel-like.

In the home and in our families we see more and more management. The planning, organizing and control that goes into budgeting, purchasing consumables, home renovation, even family trips, is now the most time consuming and important part of family life. There is less leisure time or “nothing” time. Moments not spent planning for or organizing the next big thing are moments wasted. The small, spontaneous things are excluded – that time is now often used to plan and organize the latest family “project”. The “projects” become neurotic obsessions that require sophisticated forms of control: “We have to replace these windows”. “We are ‘going green’”. “We need to buy X and Y so we can make or have a Z”. “We need to go online and book X, confirm Y”.
The stakeholder in the family situation is the family itself. Trends in the media especially pressure families to “keep up”. It seems that half of the new television programs and non-fiction books available implore us to renovate, redecorate, take this trip, go on this diet, follow this exercise program, “go green”, buy this and that or your quality of life will suffer. And the family, in a way, believes it is on reality TV; that everybody is looking at them, judging their home, their car, their clothes, etc. Then there is an abundance of shows that feel the need to show us how rich people live. Amazing houses, amazing cars, amazing gardens, amazing clothes and jewellery, amazing parties. The strange thing is, we seek out these shows. We like them. We are an embarrassment to hundreds of years of class struggle. People once got so angry they were willing to fight and die for equality. Today, we ogle the possessions and lifestyles of our masters on TV – and essentially masturbate.
Our strange obsessions then, whose origins I cannot really explain here, make the family itself a stakeholder, and make managers out of parents.

Leadership is full of heart. It can inspire you, make you feel closer to people, make you a better person. It innovates. Leaders may have stakeholders, but they do not have to abide by them. They have their own vision and way of doing things, as well as a unique rapport with those who work with them. Leadership can exist in a management environment, but the leader always assumes some risk. A leader in the workplace is willing to be reprimanded – in fact, a leader may expect to be reprimanded. Leaders in politics know they may do or say some things that put their candidacy or their seat at risk. Leaders at home put their reputations, and sometimes even the well being of their family at risk. But they are the parents who are much more than just figureheads and do-nothings. They are exceptional. They break the conventions and try new ways of raising their kids. Meanwhile, management is very deliberate in considering all the risks involved. It “plays it safe” and “covers its ass”. Leadership can be reckless. It may understand the risks, but not do anything to mitigate them. Because leaders are passionate, they are more like the people we truly admire or remember in history. We quote parts of their speeches decades, generations, even a century later. They make changes that everybody talks about for years.

In the Canadian military, there were once ten “principles of leadership”. I think they encapsulate the essence of leadership, so here they are with some explanations:

1. Achieve professional competence – get better at your job
2. Appreciate your own strengths and limitations and pursue self-improvement – know what you’re good at, but admit and acknowledge your faults; mistakes.
3. Seek and accept responsibility – go out and take on new tasks, take the blame for what happens.
4. Lead by example – this one is beautifully self-explanatory.
5. Make sure that your followers know your meaning and intent, then lead them to the accomplishment of the mission – keep your followers informed of the overall goal and complete the task you set out to complete.
6. Know your soldiers and promote their welfare – again, self-explanatory
7. Develop the leadership potential of your followers – train new leaders. This is a humble, modest thing to do. By doing this, you acknowledge that you are nobody special; that there is room for somebody to take your place or take on your role.
8. Make sound and timely decisions – self-explanatory.
9. Train your soldiers as a team and employ them up to their capabilities – push your team to do the difficult things. Train hard so you can fight easy.
10. Keep your followers informed of the mission, the changing situation and the overall picture – self-explanatory.

The point here, actually, is that leadership is principled, while management is procedural.

Here is a description of the “key activities” performed by a manager at a government agency:

- Manages multi-disciplinary teams in diverse geographic urban and rural areas engaged in the agency’s work.
- Manages human and financial resources in a 7/24 shift operation. Takes action on staff relations issues, interpersonal conflicts and client complaints. Monitors and makes recommendations on work flow and administrative duties.
- Manages risk within the work environment to achieve effective results. Authorizes certain procedures.
- Manages and participates in national, regional and local change initiatives and pilots to meet the agency’s mission, vision, values and strategic objectives. Recommends modifications to the initiatives and pilots.
- Ensures that effective relationships are maintained with the public, private enterprise and partner federal government departments and agencies.

It is strange that the “key activity”, if you pay close attention to the verb used most often, is “manage”. Therefore, the key thing a manager should be doing at this job is “managing”. It is like reading a job description that says the worker will have to “work”.
Notice some of the differences between these “key activities” and the principles of leadership: 1) The words “followers” and “soldiers” is replaced by the term “human resources”. This language speaks to the scientific-type breakdown of time and space by management. 2) Instead of “know your soldiers and promote their welfare”, there is only “takes action on staff relations issues (and) interpersonal conflicts”. A manager cares about his “human resources” because their “issues” may affect their work, thus affecting productivity or profit. A leader cares about his “followers” just because. 3) A manager “takes action” on “client complaints” and “ensures that effective relationships are maintained with the public, private enterprise and partner federal government departments and agencies”. This is the stakeholder aspect of management. In the principles of leadership there is no mention of anyone beyond the leader and his followers.

Managers do not do things because they believe those things are right. They do them because that is the procedure required to satisfy the stakeholders. This is not to say that leaders cannot follow procedures – they can. But the overall care of the leader is doing something right, regardless of established procedures.
Management is set up precisely to dull the passionate and principled way of leaders. It must do this because leaders can make their followers see the true condition of their lives. The leader at work shows his fellow workers that there is a different way to do business, and opens workers’ eyes to their true working conditions. The leader in politics arouses too much honest debate, and may make our country stand out or stand up in a world where there can only be a few great and influential powers.

We need leadership in every day life, at home and at work. Lets replace our current office managers – the type who merely “inform” us (undoubtedly due to some requirement in their list of procedures) of “team-building exercises” and “office luncheons” – with leaders who throw parties, barbeques, etc.

Above all, however, we need leadership where it is perhaps most rare - in politics. We are so used to a “management” style of politician, it is difficult to even imagine how a leader would look and act.
Here are some thoughts:

- Daring – the political leader would dare to do things that are contentious in his country, but which also show leadership in the world. A Canadian political leader would not be afraid to piss off the United States. Usually, people make a “business case” for pandering a bit to the States. “After all”, they say, “they’re our largest trading partner”. But the very idea of “partnership” implies mutual respect. A Canada that stands up for itself and has some guts to be different in the world will do just fine business-wise. A Canada that has a leader who speaks out, and whose face appears on newspapers abroad, will certainly garner some attention.
- The political leader would not play stupid parliamentary partisan politics. They would show us delicate, careful, clear, sound reasoning. A political leader would show up at the scrum and concede “yeah, he’s probably right. I think we’ll have to get together and revise what we’ve come up with now. You live, you learn”. How refreshing it would be to hear our politicians speak like adults!
- No more speeches or policies without heart and substance. No more speechwriters, and especially no more communications directors massaging the message, piling and sculpting phrases like a hairstylist building a bouffant. If you write a policy that does not state a position – it is not a policy. If your speech does not say anything different – maybe you are not leadership material. There is a reason why people quote Abe Lincoln and Winston Churchill, and why they will never quote Stephen Harper or Paul Martin. The latter two have never said anything worth repeating.

Management is a subtle yet very powerful modern form of social control which alienates us and detaches us from public life and from each other. Those who call themselves managers, and follow very specific procedures to satisfy stakeholders, perpetrate it. Therefore, it is something that we can fight against by recognizing it in ourselves, or in others. It is not some natural component of the capitalist system, or a conspiracy. It is simply something modern western society found efficient, which required little effort, little conflict, and also happened to be one of the most powerful forms of social control ever devised.

Tim Connolly - Buffalo Sabres

Tim suffered from bone spur problems in his hip last year and only played half the season, and missed the entire 2006-2007 season due to “post-concussion symptoms” (headaches, boo-boos, etc). But don’t let that keep you from drafting this hip-cat onto your team. He may be spurred by fans’ expectations.

Peter Forsberg – Free Agent

Over the past 8 years Peter Forsberg, who also has a career importing and marketing Crocs footwear, has had his spleen removed, refused to play for $13.5 million dollars, dislocated his left wrist and broke a bone in his hand, had surgery performed on his ankle, played a 60 game season due to a groin injury, had more ankle and foot surgery, and made a dramatic three game come back only to be put out by another groin injury. This guy is a shoe-in.

Alyn McCauley – LA Kings

Alyn is retiring after 10 years in the NHL, but don’t bet that this will last very long. This Brockville, Ontario native will return to LA with a vengeance when he realizes there are no hookers in Brockville. Here’s a hidden tAlynt.

Jeremy Colliton – NY Islanders

Jeremy played 18 games last year with the Islanders and got zero points, but during his time in the minors he got 18 points in 60 games. Coincidence? Affectionately known as “Shut ‘Er Down Shitpump” by his teammates, Jeremy is looking to make a name for himself this year – a name other than “Shut ‘Er Down Shitpump”.

Randy Emerson – Free Agent

Randy is a consultant for ABP, a robotics manufacturing company in Cambridge, Ontario. He has never played a single game in the NHL, nor does he own a pair of skates.

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Chapter 7: Conclusion

Therefore, political marketing has pushed the language of our politicians towards an evolved type of doublespeak known as salespeak, which is essentially the way our governments and parties speak to us when the only thing that matters is getting elected or re-elected.

To show that salespeak is something we should be concerned about, and also something we can fight against, I showed how language can be seen as a fundamentally political act. Next, I argued that political marketing is actually a type of social control embedded in communication, and that the techniques and methods of this type of communication were copied from the corporate world for specific purposes. Lastly, I tried to refine the concept of salespeak to show how it can be useful, and then attempted to apply the concept to a few of Canada’s current policies and party platforms. The result, I hope, is a concept that helps us make better sense of what our politicians are telling us, or helps us ask the right questions when they have something to hide.

Not too long ago there was some controversy about Canada having agreed to participate in a joint U.S.-Canada continental ballistic defence system. Canadians never agreed to become a part of it, did not know much about it, and here was Frank McKenna, the former New Brunswick Premier and then ambassador to the U.S., telling reporters “we’re part of it now” . There was an uproar, with the opposition claiming Prime Minister Paul Martin was keeping this a secret.

Maybe he was keeping it a secret. Nevertheless, it might also help if we had a policy that said very clearly whether we would participate in this. At the moment, the only policy we have towards continental ballistic missile defence can be found at the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, in a section on “Space Security” and, if you can believe the wording, “The Sustainable Use of Outer Space”:

Our goal is secure and sustainable access to and use of space, and freedom from space-based threats.
We are not likely to achieve this goal in one giant leap. Our aim is therefore to make progress through small, practical and achievable steps which create the preconditions for space actors to consider space weapons to be of marginal utility .

The document then summarizes various multilateral agreements to which Canada adheres. What kind of policy is this? How can space be used in an unsustainable way? What is a “space actor”? Where is the part that says, “Canada considers a joint ballistic missile defence shield to be antagonistic, and will not participate”, or “the threat to Canada from ballistic missiles is not exaggerated, so we are part of a joint U.S.-Canada continental ballistic defence program”?

The point is – when something like this happens, we need to go to our governments and ask them directly about the policies, about the platforms; ask them to clarify their positions. Policies that tell us where they stand, and hence, where we stand, are vital in shaping our identity as Canadians and for building a stronger democracy that sets an example for the world.

Chapter 6: Salespeak in Canadian Party Platforms and Public Policy

This chapter is dedicated to Dan Lungo

The important thing here is that we have a theory to start with, and some examples of how the theory may work. The best way to show that our politicians are speaking to us differently today is to compare today’s political language to the political language of the past. This is not a simple task, mainly because today there are policies and written documents for which there are no comparable written documents in the past. And in cases where there are policies that appear comparable, we need to be careful, because policy documents, even when they deal with the same topics, seem suited to different purposes or tasks. For example, the 1964 White Paper on Defence initially seems comparable to the Defence Section of Canada’s 2005 International Policy Statement, but each policy says it has a different objective. The White Paper’s purpose was “to preserve the peace by supporting collective defence measures to deter military aggression; to support Canadian foreign policy, including that arising out of our participation in international organizations and to provide for the protection and surveillance of our territory, our airspace, and our coastal waters” , while the 2005 policy’s purpose is “to guide the Canadian Forces in their operations, and assist the Department of National Defence in the development of a sustainable long-term program” . Therefore, here we can only do our best to show that salespeak is present in current policy documents.

Party platforms are a different matter, because unlike a policy, a platform always does the same thing – it articulates the party’s position for the purpose of getting elected. The problem here is that policy platforms have not always existed in Canada, and where they have, the records are difficult to obtain. During the time of product-oriented parties, it is very clear that politicians just expected their “product” to sell. From 1867 to the early 1900’s, most party platforms, as we call them today, were expressed as speeches, and occasionally in letters to the newspaper . Nearing the middle of the twentieth century, official party platforms, pamphlets, and leaflets became more common, and beginning in the early 1960’s the Liberal Party and the Progressive Conservatives always came up with official party “programs” and “handbooks”. Therefore, it is possible to go back and compare the language of political marketing with the language of product and sale-oriented politics. Here we will focus on Liberal Party platforms, since the Liberal Party is the longest standing, and arguably the most efficient, political marketing party in Canada.

The striking feature of policies written today is that they are policies in development. They are not simply plans, rather, they are plans to make plans; policies that are “committed” to “developing” policies. They pretend to get things done, and leave enough room for our government to do something we may not have wanted it to do. Also, as expected, they avoid using words that might make somebody, or something, liable. The policies here were picked either according to their relevance in current affairs (The Government Security Policy, and 10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care), or because they are so full of salespeak that they make an easy target (Communication Policy).

Let us begin with the Government Security Policy. A word frequency test showed that the word “develop” is the seventeenth most used word (used 34 times) in the policy, above “it” and below “national”. This is impressive, since there are 1178 different words in the document. What are some of the things being developed?

- “arrangements that outline security responsibilities”
- “standards of the security policy”
- “procedures for reporting and investigating security incidents and taking corrective action”
- “the Government Security Policy”
- “a strategy that will enable the Government of Canada to identify, recruit, retain and continually educate security professionals”
- “specialized SIGINT and ITS training”
- “appropriate record-keeping advice and guidance”
- “operational standards and technical documentation” X3
- “education, training and awareness programs”

This policy is set to develop standards for itself. It is also “developing” arrangements of security responsibilities, standards, and strategies – all things which should be part of the policy. Basically this policy is still in “development”. You can criticize it, but you might as well not bother. It is not finished yet.

The Communication Policy of the Government of Canada is written in a similar way. The word “implement” is the forty ninth most used word (used 31 times) out of 1742 words, and is one of those tricky words that leaves you unsure about whether anything is going to happen. Concrete things are rarely “implemented” or “made to happen” (whatever “implement” actually means). Here are some of the things being “implemented” by the government and government agencies in the Communications Policy:

- “communication plans and strategies”
- “policies, programs, services and initiatives”
- “communication plans and strategies”
- “policies, programs, services and initiatives with the ongoing advice, support and involvement of specialists in government communications”

A policy that intends to “implement” “plans”, “strategies”, initiatives”, “programs”, and of all things, “policies” is not a policy at all. It is a policy to create policies. If this is unconvincing, here are some of the things being “developed” by the government and government agencies in the Communications Policy:

- “policies”
- “government wide communications policy”
- “Plans and strategies for communicating risk to the public”
- “plans and procedures for handling emergencies”
- “standard operating procedures”
- “communication plans and strategies for policies, programs, services and initiatives”
- “communication programs and campaigns”
- “communications policy requirements, guidelines and procedures for the approval of the Treasury Board as required”

Again, a communications policy that intends to develop “government-wide communications policy”, “communications policy requirements”, and “plans and strategies” is not a policy at all. As you read the document, it is difficult not to remark, “but isn’t this the policy?”

Next is the First Ministers’ Meeting on the Future of Health Care 2004: A 10-Year Plan to Strengthen Health Care. There is no doubt, almost immediately as you begin to read it, that this is a plan to create a plan. The second paragraph reads, “First Ministers remain committed to the dual objectives of better management of wait times and the measurable reduction of wait times where they are longer than medically acceptable” . In other words, there is no guarantee that these objectives will be met, but we should feel better, because at least our First Ministers are “committed” to them. They are unwilling to say something that would make them take responsibility for what happens, like “Within ten years, wait times for x cancer patients will be reduced by a minimum of y months”. At a time when Canadians are looking for guarantees that universal health care will survive, the words “pledge”, “guarantee”, “promise”, and “assure” do not appear. The word “ensure” appears twice, but all that is being “ensured” is:

- “First Ministers have come together and agreed on an action plan… to ensure that all Canadians have access to the health care services they need, when they need them”
- “First Ministers agree to continue and accelerate their work on Health Human Resources action plans and/or initiatives to ensure an adequate supply and appropriate mix of health care professionals” .

It is doubtful Canadians will be comforted by the idea that this 10 year plan involves agreeing upon and accelerating plans and/or initiatives to ensure Canadians get universal health care. This is supposed to be the plan.

Then the Liberal Party platform of 2005 states “much is left to be done to carry on what the Paul Martin government has started, in order to… ensure that the commitments of all Canada’s First Ministers to deliver more timely, patient centred public health care are actually delivered” . Of course, the problem is that there are no commitments in the First Ministers’ plan.

The Liberal Party platform is full of salespeak. The word “develop” appears 112 times, and is the seventeenth most used word, just below “health” and “Canadians”. The word “commit” appears 92 times, making it the twenty third most used word, between “it” and “Canadian”. There are no “promises” or “pledges”, and nothing is “assured”, “ensured” or “guaranteed”, because the party does not want to be held accountable for anything. When the word “ensure” is used, it is only used in the sense that the Canadian public should elect Paul Martin so he can keep working on a plan to ensure something. For instance, the platform states “much is left to be done to carry on what the Paul Martin government has started, in order to… ensure that access to college or university education is not denied by reason of income” . The Liberal Party has been working on this idea for a long time, probably as far back as the 1958 election, when their platform stated “The Liberal Party believes that Canada must end the situation in which many young men and women are shut off, by lack of funds, from education that they have the ability and ambition to use to the country’s advantage” . Perhaps the party did not have time to make this happen in the 32 years they formed the government between 1958 and 2006. The difference between today’s version and the 1958 version is important. The former makes it seem as if something is going to happen if we buy the Liberals’ “product”, and the latter is the party affirming its “belief” in something. Saying “we believe” or “we support” is not salespeak, it is simply sales – trying to sell the image or idea of the party.

It is rare that the 2005 Liberal platform says “the Liberal party will do x.” Instead, they are “committed to doing y”, because being “committed” to something does not mean you actually have to do it, it just means you intend to do it whenever it is convenient. Maybe this year, maybe next. Maybe in ten years, but maybe never if the public forgets.
Nor does the Liberal Party actually “promise” anything. Where the word “promise” is used, it refers to promises the Liberal Party supposedly kept (even though they currently do not seem to promise anything). There is also an instance of “promised initiatives”, which is convenient, because “initiatives” are just things that begin – they tend not to become anything. And in the case of health care, the platform ensures that it is the provinces which “promise” to “establish multi-year targets to achieve… benchmarks” . Not only are the Liberals here unable to assure us themselves that the provinces will be made to do this, but the “promise” is not actually a promise to do anything. A “benchmark” is a standard used for comparison that serves as a target. In other words, this is a promise to establish targets to achieve targets. Anybody who uses this type of language in a regular job gets fired.

The Liberal Party platform today only appears to tell us a whole lot more than it has in the past. But actually, not much has changed. During the time when the Liberal Party would have theoretically been product-oriented, it is clear that there is little attempt to sell or market the party. For example, the Liberal Party platform of 1896 (one of the few actual platforms from that time) can claim simply that the Liberals are for “reduced taxation”, and provide virtually no detail as to what they intend to do beyond saying the tariff “should be so adjusted as to make free, or to bear as lightly as possible upon, the necessaries of life” . During the sales-oriented period the Liberal party platforms spoke about what Canada “should” do, what the Liberal Party “stands” for “favours”, “believes”, “advocates”, and what their “aim” is . And of course, today, once you get past the language, it is easy to see that the Liberal Party is as vague as ever. The difference is that the language of political marketing tells us what we want to hear, in great detail, and without actually telling us anything. We are made to feel as if our politicians are listening to us; that we are more involved in the process. This is the power of salespeak.

This, of course, is just a starting point. It is good that we have a theory and some examples that seem to fit, but there is still work to be done. We must continue to develop and enhance measures that enable us to spot salespeak, and consider a process for coordinating the analysis of speeches and policy-related assets. We must also implement sustainable initiatives to assess the glossary of salespeak indicator words. Most importantly perhaps, we must evaluate, on an ongoing basis, whether the methodology here facilitates the strategic objectives of a new integrated theory of doublespeak. Reviewing these commitments will remain a key priority going forward.

Chapter 5: The Concept of Salespeak

Once again, Salespeak is:

Communication in the form of policy documents, party platforms, and writing and speech related to these, that uses the findings of market intelligence to make citizens believe they are getting the type of government they want and requested. To write or speak this way requires forms of corporate language that hide inequality while setting out a way for people to do things, without actually requiring them to do those things (TQM, HRM, “change”, and “dialogue”), and avoiding liability or faking accountability.

In other words, it is a way our governments and parties speak to us when the only thing that matters is getting elected or re-elected, and it allows our leaders to say they are going to do something in a way that absolves them of any requirement to actually do the thing they said they were going to do. However, if we already have the well known term, doublespeak, to describe everything that salespeak does, why should salespeak matter?

First, we need to determine what doublespeak really means; only then can we begin to understand why a new concept, one of an evolved form of doublespeak, should prove useful.

Orwell never used the term doublespeak. The concept was a combination of his idea of doublethink – the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them – and newspeak, a language where words are being removed to limit the range of human thought.

There are four kinds of doublespeak: euphemism, jargon, gobbledygook / bureaucratese, and inflated language designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary . Euphemism means substituting a negative word or term for a positive one. Sometimes this is used for politeness reasons, i.e, telling your child their cat “passed away” instead of telling them it was “killed”, or worse, “run over by a car”. But it can also be used to deceive, i.e, the invasion of Iraq was also called “disarming Saddam”, and “freeing the Iraqi people”. Jargon is the language of a specific job or profession. It is not usually considered harmful within the profession that uses it. The problems arise when jargon is used on people outside the jargon group. Gobbledygook or bureaucratese is the piling of long words, one on top of the other, in an attempt to overwhelm the audience with words . Lastly, inflated language designed to make the ordinary seem extraordinary is something we see regularly. For example, a book shelver at Chapters becomes a “customer experience representative”, and a call centre worker is a “client care specialist”. Similarly, the U.S. invasion of Grenada was billed as “pre-dawn vertical insertion” . The essence of doublespeak is that it pretends to communicate, but really does not .

Salespeak does all these things. In a sense, it is doublespeak. But unlike doublespeak, we can know the origin, purpose, and place of salespeak. We know where it came from, we know where to look for it, and we know what it tries to do. And if we intend to fight against government deception and manipulation, this is good to know.

Because doublespeak is so broad, people use it to describe manipulative or deceptive language everywhere, and for everything. There is doublespeak at the workplace, at home, at school, in government, in business. But if the whole point of coming up with these insights is to change the way things are, we need to focus on a clearer concept. Salespeak can do this. It points us towards the way our governments and parties communicate with us, and it points us towards policy documents, party platforms, and documents and speeches related to these things.

Focusing on doublespeak and refining our understanding of what kinds of doublespeak are used when, where, and for what purpose, should allow us to see where we are being deceived, and come up with solid counter-arguments. Steven Poole also does this in Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality. Unspeak, he explains, is a way of silencing opposing points of view by using words that lay a claim right at the start to only one way of looking at a problem . For instance, those who call themselves “pro-life” because they are against abortion attempt to defeat any counter-argument by virtue of that name – because nothing is better than “life”, certainly not “choice”. Similarly, when those who support the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan tell us they “support the troops”, this is an attempt to make it seem as if those who do not support the war are against the troops. This is what makes unspeak a political weapon. But when we are aware of how it works, we can fight it, and this is why we need salespeak as well.

Some might suggest that doublespeak or salespeak are inherent to politics, so why bother. Politics, it seems, requires a language of its own to keep everybody happy. Crozier, for instance, believes vagueness or apparent lack of direction in public policy “opens up the space for creativity” so there can be “policy experimentation” and “innovation” . But in a democracy where we are struggling to keep people involved and interested in the political process, this kind of thinking only benefits parties and governments – not people. If our parties and governments are vague and unclear so that they can conduct “policy experimentation” – in other words, do things we never wanted them to do – this is not something we will appreciate. Crozier and other scholars, especially those in political communications, do not see the situation like this. Maybe their thinking is obscured by their language:

“One of the major tasks of the new political communications expertise is to cultivate specific meanings in the public’s imagination. Here there is an attempt to create synergies between the stage production of politics and the citizenry’s sense of social reality. In this case, there is a process of anticipating meaning through research (polling) and experimentation (focus groups) in order to try to manage the flow of these shifting associations .”

We would know whether this new political communication is harmful to democracy if it were defined in a way that says what it means, but this is not the case here.

All we really have here is a theory, so we still need to know how to spot salespeak. There are two criteria it should satisfy, not including that it must be found in a policy document, party platform, or writing and speeches related to these.

1) The context should be right, i.e., the reader or listener can reasonably assume the writer or speaker is saying they will do something in a way that absolves them of any obligation to actually do it. In other words, upon close examination it does not appear they are saying they will do anything for sure.
2) The words should be right (see Appendix).
a) It uses words or terms that do not necessarily indicate anything is going to happen.
b) It uses words or terms which avoid liability or create a false sense of accountability.
c) It uses words or terms which are placatory or create a false sense of equality.

Of course, there is a need to build on and refine the methodology here, especially if we want to somehow quantify salespeak, but what we have will suffice for now, at least to show that salespeak is real.

Chapter 4: Political Marketing Meets Corporate Language

Many might expect the answer to be that that the corporate world has created the most effective language tools for advertising, selling something, and then affirming to the buyer that they purchased the best thing. But a language that attempts to make you purchase a product, or make you believe that you purchased the best product, differs from a language designed to fool you into believing you bought the product you really wanted and requested. The former language is simply sales, and the latter is salespeak. When sales works correctly, maybe you become convinced that you need a piece of twisted up metal with a square cushion to do a sit-up. But if salespeak works correctly, when you ask for your ab workout machine, you may get a toaster and still believe you got the ab workout machine.

The corporate world has provided the tools for this type of communication, but this has been primarily in its internal communications. When companies began substantially increasing in size about a century ago, they ran into planning and co-ordination problems, making good communication essential . Forms of corporate communication soon spread into many modes of public expression (see Schiller 1989). Then research began to indicate that a “human resources management” (HRM) or “total quality management” (TQM) approach would be more effective than earlier forms of communication, which relied on top-down, military-style instructions. The new approach came with a language all its own – a language designed to conceal inequality, and that set out a way of doing things without requiring anybody to actually do them. Corporations also became more involved in public life, and thus increasingly came into conflict with the public during recessions and other times of market failure. To deal with these situations, companies learned to use a language that avoids liability. These two types of language form the basis of salespeak.

When TQM was founded by W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran, and Kaoru Ishikawa , it was considered a scientific breakthrough in the rational planning and management of organizations. “Total” meant organization-wide, and “quality” referred to three things: 1) quality of returns on investment; in other words, staying in business and doing well, 2) quality of products - the belief was that low cost-products would, for various reasons, be more expensive in the long-run, and 3) quality of life for employees. Instead of a top-down approach to management, the founders advocated a “have faith in your employees approach” to tap employees’ creative capabilities and capacity for hard work. There was to be no more punishing employees for poor performance, only “evaluations”, and “professional development”. Senior management were no longer supposed to be supervisors, they were to be “leaders”, leading by example in assuring quality. Essentially there were to be no followers or losers – everyone is part of a “team”, and everyone feels “empowered”.

The problem was that companies used the rhetoric of TQM without actually doing TQM. Companies created mission statements and business principles, and used an arsenal of TQM terms to create a sense of democracy that did not exist. Fox and Fox dissect some of these terms:

- Empowerment = making somebody else take the risk and responsibility.
- Team Working = reducing individual discretion .
We can add to these:
- Professional Development = extra training.
- Evaluation / Review = detailed and recorded monitoring

Zbaracki conducted an in-depth study of five organizations, and found that only one of these organizations backed their TQM rhetoric “by outlining specific expectations and counsel on the use of TQM tools” . The remainder did a lot of talking about TQM, and used the rhetoric, but did not do anything to make TQM happen.

Zbaracki gives some examples: “upper management for a defence contractor revised two of their management policy statements to reflect its new commitment to TQM, and a hotel’s upper management developed a mission statement that supported TQM” .

The language of HRM and TQM is still popular today, and it mostly goes unnoticed. The Canadian McDonald’s “career” web page says, “at McDonald’s, we recognize our real strength is our people. They are the foundation of our business” . Of course, what else can they say? That the foundation is profits? Low wages? Machines?

MacDonald’s “Five People Principles” are classic TQM. Some of the sub-principles listed are:
- Employees are respected, valued and empowered.
- We coach and learn.
- Employees are provided the tools they need to develop personally and professionally .

Similarly, The Gap tells us “our people are what make Gap Inc. a great company” and Canadian Tire calls themselves a “proud Canadian family” .

TQM is full of platitudes like this that mask the reality of power relations. It is also full of ambiguity. “Mission statements”, lists of “values”, “objectives”, “visions”, and expressions of a desire for “continuous improvement” are common. Workers need not worry about having their ambitions constrained, because companies assure them they have created “an enabling environment” . Companies use these terms in the hope that its employees will begin to think this way, in this language. Heath does not see so much of a problem with this, arguing, “the key… is the realization that organizations function adequately because of strategic ambiguity”, because ambiguities are “predictable scripts and cues needed for enactment” . “Enactment” is a TQM word that implies employees simply act out their roles, almost spontaneously, without direction. And they can do this because the “mission statements”, “objectives”, etc., are like a “script”, and employees are just acting out their parts. Even better than plain “enactment” is “joint enactment”, which Heath describes as the process of managers becoming involved in “enact(ing) a drama with employees rather than attempt to direct the actions of employees” . The rhetoric of TQM here almost moves into the realm of fantasy. Imagine - it is not that your boss is coming down to your cubicle to supervise, or to pass on directions. He is coming down to enact a drama with you.

There are scholars, besides Heath, who are not helping the situation. Rapert et al re-affirm the findings of other research which shows the “importance of consensus in strategic implementation”, where consensus means “shared understandings between management and functional levels” . Luckily, much of the research which attempts to build on the rhetoric of TQM is unsuccessful precisely because the language used is so vague (or just plain bad). The word “strategic” finds its way into most of this literature, but nobody seems to know what it means. Usually, when something is described as “strategic” we are supposed to think it is better. For instance, what Smith and Hirst call “strategic political segmentation” is just an expanded form of normal political segmentation. We could argue that “strategic” means “planned”, but that would not explain the almost-every day use of “strategic planning” in marketing and public language. You can make anything sound more sophisticated by adding “strategic”: Strategic marketing, strategic networking, strategic research, strategic grocery shopping…

Adding “implementation” onto “strategic” makes something very simple sound sophisticated. If “implementation” is the execution of something, then “strategic implementation” really means “something being executed better”. And what is a “functional level”? Where would we find the “non-functional level?”

Sometimes HRM or TQM language succeeds in fooling workers into believing that their company is indeed some sort of “family” or “team”, but often it does not. As we know from our own experiences and the experiences of those around us, when workers in a TQM company go home, they often still use the old language of management – “my boss”, “my manager”, and complain about “overtime”, and receiving “warnings”. Workers are generally aware of the disconnect between TQM rhetoric and reality. For example, employees in one of the organizations studied by Zbaracki wondered why they had to use the TQM process while their managers apparently did not .

There are scholars and business people who have sensed this disconnect, and have come up with an interesting, if manipulative, way to mitigate it. They call it simply “dialogue”, and in Yankelovich’s The Magic of Dialogue: Transforming Conflict into Co-operation, it is billed as “a process of successful relationship building and seeking mutual understanding” . The idea is that companies should physically get workers and managers together, bring assumptions out into the open, explore common ground, listen to each other, and seek new options. Isaacs, in Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A Pioneering Approach to Communicating in Business and in Life, urges an almost Zen-like approach to problem solving, where disputants at a meeting must “be present” and “be still and listen to what is true right now” .

The problem is that it is managers themselves that have to initiate this process, hypothetically, in response to layoffs, pay disputes, and other conflicts between workers and managers. “Dialogue” is just a touchy-feely way of hiding contradiction, designed to blur the distinction between management and workers, without getting to the root of the problem – hierarchy and socio-economic inequality. Yankelovich discusses an instance of a trade union dispute being worked out through “dialogue”, where one union member was heard to say, “you know, I can’t tell who is on what side anymore”. The magic of dialogue indeed. If there is ever any doubt about who is on what side, compare paycheques.

TQM’s latest, most used, and over-used innovation in language that conceals hierarchy, is the rhetoric of “change”. This type of rhetoric is used to subtly assert or re-assert top-down management practices, either in cases where companies have been “flattened” (had parts of their hierarchy removed), or in cases where a company is experiencing some upheaval (i.e, layoffs, significant profit losses, difficult competition, etc).

We have all probably heard somebody say “this is a time of change”, as if we had just emerged from a period where everything stood still – un-time, if you will, since change is fundamental to time. In “A Best Practice Approach to Designing a Change Communication Programme”, Barrett tells us “in today’s business climate… the only true constant is change”, therefore, we must learn the ways of “change communication” . The features of this type of communication are similar to TQM rhetoric, but according to Barrett, “change communication” also requires: educating employees on what the change will mean to them; motivating support for the company’s new direction; and limiting misunderstandings and rumours that may damage productivity . These features and the “best practices” Barrett offers really amount to a communications program designed to make employers accept something they probably do not want. The part about “limiting misunderstandings and rumours that may damage productivity” is telling. This can also mean, “if your employees are figuring out that they are losing their jobs because you are outsourcing for cheaper labour, either find ways to keep them quiet or tell them something different”.

Once “change communication” appears in company communications, it tends to stay, most likely because managers are convinced of its effectiveness in stifling dissent and giving them greater power. But a study of large companies by Beer, Eisenstat, and Spector shows that the rhetoric of “change” makes employees cynical, and there is no actual change .

Therefore, although HRM and TQM were designed to make companies work in a different way, they function best, and most often, only as linguistic constructs suitable for disguising hierarchical power relations, and setting out a way of doing things, without requiring anybody to actually do them.

The other corporate language that forms the basis for salespeak is the language that avoids liability. This type of language attempts to shift responsibility, or attempts to make it seem as if nobody is to blame for something. As corporations became more involved in public life and sometimes made bold mistakes, they began to attract a lot of scrutiny. The public became aware of massive profits accrued at the expense of the environment, jobs, and, in general, company responsibility. Corporations soon became more vulnerable to public investigations, lawsuits, and scandals.

To deal with these problems corporations did two things: first, they started programs of “corporate social responsibility” to make themselves look like they were part of their communities and responsible citizens, but more importantly, they began working on a language to avoid liability in the first place.

McCord explains, “in the not too distant past, a business person with no legal training could communicate on the job without worrying unduly that casual utterances or routine business writing might result in a legal liability” . But as the public challenged corporations more and more, this changed. Companies could be found legally accountable if their words were interpreted by courts as creating a legal contract.

Therefore, business writers needed to become more careful in their writing, more “word-conscious” . Woolever uses legal case studies to show how certain words and terms create liability, and offers alternative words and terms that avoid liability. For instance, in State Farm Mutual Auto Insurance Co. v. Rickoff, the insurance company should not have used the word “inspection” in its engineering report, because “inspection” implies thoroughness, officiality, testing, or providing recommendations. Woolever says the company should have used words like “review” and “study” (96) to avoid being sued, because these words avoid liability . When a student “reviews” or “studies” their notes, this could mean something thorough, but it could also mean they flipped through the pages as fast as possible and then went out for a beer.

Woolever suggests another company should have substituted the word “determine” with “evaluated”, “assess”, or “analyze”, and in another case, substituted the word “assure” for “facilitate”, “provide further confidence”, or “enhance the reliability of” . Why? Because the words she recommends will not get the company into legal trouble.

The problem is that these terms are also vague and essentially meaningless. If you intended to send a parcel somewhere, would you want the delivery of that parcel “assured” or “facilitated”? Do you want your eligibility for Canadian citizenship “determined” or “assessed”? The words “assure” and “determine” imply that something will get done, and you will know the results. But for companies, this is bad. As Woolever explains, “determine” means “decide”, and “assure” means “promise” . What she is telling us is that companies should not say these things, but the result of her recommendations may be that companies do not have to do these things either; that they do not have to “decide” or “promise” anything. Why should a company “decide” or “assure” a product is safe, when they can “facilitate an assessment” of the product’s safety? This type of communication is great for companies, but bad for people.

McCord and Woolever are more concerned with what corporations say than what they do. For example, Woolever says an “ultimate responsibility” of corporations is that they “bear the legal burden that their prose is trustworthy” , and McCord believes “it makes no difference what you think, what is important is what you communicate” . Both of these statements are plain wrong, if not for business, then surely for politics. An ultimate responsibility of corporations is not to communicate properly, but to make sure they act as conscientious corporate citizens in the first place, so that they have no need for language that avoids liability. And saying that it makes no difference what you think, only what you communicate, almost encourages corporations to lie, especially if “what you think” really means “what you are doing”.

Nonetheless, the corporate language that avoids liability and fakes accountability remains one of the most prominent and effective features of corporate language overall. Amernic and Craig studied the CEO-speak of popular companies such as Enron, Microsoft, AOL Time Warner, IBM, Disney, Nortel, and CN, and found that CEO-speak is “a seductive, placatory, variegated, socially constructed language of accountability” that ironically permits CEOs to be unaccountable . There should be no doubt – a business language that dodges liability is also a language that may let businesses do something they should not be doing.

The corporate languages that feign equality and avoid liability are the tools of political marketing communications, whose purpose is to make the public think they got what they requested. What more could our governments and parties want than to make us believe we are all in this together, and there is no one to blame?

Chapter 3: A Theory of Political Marketing – Political Marketing as Social Control

If political marketing is the reason our government communicates with us in salespeak, then we need to know what political marketing really is. To do this we will examine its origins and then look at how it works in theory and practice. The conclusion is that although it purports to measure public opinion and translate this opinion into policy, in reality, it takes public opinion and uses it primarily to communicate policy a certain way.

The origins of political marketing actually began with what Terrence Qualter terms the “mass age”. As he explained, “prior to the liberal ideological revolution of the 18th Century and the consequent spread of egalitarian and majoritarian ideas, it did not really much matter what the public thought” . But as these ideologies became revolutions, forming the basis of more democratic governments and the enfranchisement of millions of people, suddenly it mattered what the public thought. Governments had to at least maintain the appearance of popular support, or risk being overthrown, and the only way to do this was with increasingly sophisticated forms of manipulation .

Scammel and Lees-Marshment show how these forms of manipulation (though they would not use such a strong word) in both business and politics, went through three successive stages in the 20th Century:

1) Product oriented – The party or company puts out the best product it can and assumes it will sell.
2) Sales oriented – The party or company tries to make people want what it has to offer by using general forms of communication, including various media and advertising.
3) Market oriented – The party or company uses market intelligence to find out what the customer wants, and then creates or modifies its product to suit these wants.

Marketing became the cornerstone of business philosophy because of the shift in market power from the seller to the buyer . When marketing was applied to politics, marketing language came with it: the “consumer” or “customer” is the voter, and the “product” is the party and/or party leader, platform, and policies. The political process became an “exchange” relationship – you give them your vote, and they will give you their “product”. Their credibility is based on their ability to “deliver”.

Lees-Marshment and Lilleker conducted comparative studies of political marketing, and observed that a market-oriented party goes through nine stages :

1) Market intelligence - To find out what “consumers” want, governments and their public relations firms use mostly polls and focus groups. Polls collect the quantitative or raw data, but focus groups are needed to gauge how people feel about something.
2) Product design - The “product” is designed according to the intelligence gathered.
3) Product Adjustment - The party looks to its values, its history, and the input of its members to decide if the “product” design is suitable. It considers how this “product” will look compared to the “product” of other parties.
4) Implementation - The “product” design is accepted.
5) Communication – The “product” is put out to the public, media, members of the party, and government. Intelligence informs the style, format, content, method, and timing of this communication.
6) Campaign – The party campaigns with “targeted” voter segments in mind.
7) Election and measurement – If political marketing is successful so far, the party is elected. Then the party conducts opinion polls and focus groups to confirm positive feedback on aspects of their “product”.
8 ) “Delivery” – The party does what it says it was going to do.
9) Maintain a market orientation – The party continues to gather market intelligence and adjust the “product” as needed. Communication of the current “product” and future “products” continues, as part of what has been called the “permanent campaign” .

It is important to note that not all parties, and not all companies for that matter, are market-oriented companies, although they may participate in some marketing processes, such as accessing market intelligence. Lees-Marshment and Lilleker contend that a true market-oriented party will go through all nine stages listed above.

It is the communication stage with which we are most concerned. The same way the marketers of Apple’s iPod made sure their commercials targeted youth and not grannies, political marketers want to make sure they target people who are willing to “exchange” their vote for political representation. This process is known as segmentation. In politics, as opposed to business, it is more difficult to segment, because ideally, you want to reach everybody. This is why, as Johnson-Cartee and Copeland point out, segmentation in political marketing is simply “identifying those publics so that as communicators we can adapt our message for maximum effect” . But segmentation today goes beyond the traditional geographic and demographic methods, and since around 1990 has increasingly used psychographic / attitudinal bases to classify political markets . Once market research and segmentation are complete, it is time for “product positioning”, or more simply, the presentation of images and messages appropriate to its “target markets”. And although parties and governments still try to have a “product” for everybody – youth, working poor, “single-parent families” (single mothers), yuppies, seniors, etc, - there is evidence to suggest that they predominantly position themselves according to various points on the political spectrum . For example, Canada’s New Democratic Party, the largest left-wing party in Canada, might position itself according to segments such as “Radical left”, “moderate left”, “Green left”, “Old NDP”, “Left-leaning Liberals”, etc. This way it could garner as much of the relevant left-wing vote as possible.

Political marketing has now become a sub-discipline of political science. Many scholars who write about political marketing seem in awe of it, and treat it like a new house, excitedly exploring the rooms, arranging furniture, figuring out what goes where, and how everything will work, or should work. There are few who bother to find out how political marketing is actually working, and how it negatively affects democracy. Essentially, the sub-discipline of political marketing rarely recognizes problems with the parallel between business marketing and political marketing, and what is worse, some scholars go on to improve the process of political marketing without realizing the consequences.

Palmer finds six problems with the parallel between normal marketing and political marketing, and I have added some examples.

1) In politics, the “product” only has symbolic value, and the range of products is very limited. For example, whereas a car company can usually offer a coupe, sedan, hatchback, different coloured cars with different features, etc, the political product is one intangible thing.
2) The political “product” makes people very emotional, whereas nobody dances on the street or protests when Pepsi releases a new soda.
3) There are negative “consumers” in politics who prefer the competition’s “product” just to deny you a “sale”. This would make about as much sense in the real consumer world as buying a bag of Hostess potato chips out of spite for Old Dutch when your real preference is Pringles.
4) It is more difficult to gauge what political “consumers” want, and the research is not very well funded. “Product positioning” in politics is more likely to fail because situations change so quickly. For example, a record company can safely release radio-friendly alternative-rock albums and feel confident that the market for radio-friendly alternative-rock will not disappear overnight. Political parties tend not to “position” themselves in any clear sense because public opinion can shift so quickly.
5) “Re-branding” in politics is complex due to the role of ideology. Changing a party logo, giving the party leader a makeover, or putting rap music in party advertisements implies that the party actually does something it did not do before. Such “re-branding” can alienate long-time party supporters. In contrast, when a company re-brands a consumer product, the re-branding is interpreted as saying “this product is for you too”.

O’Shaughnessy agrees that “marketing is fundamentally a business discipline, whose supreme relevance lies in business” and adds to the list of differences:

1) Political “products” are given a lot of time, consideration, and discussion in the media.
2) It is comparatively rare that a business or company will need so much “spin” to defend its product.
3) Political products are about identity and self-articulation .

We can contest the last point because it is well known that consumer products also sell identity. For example, when you eat a “frozen entrée”, better known as a TV dinner, you are not just somebody eating frozen food out of a cardboard envelope, you are somebody who is “on-the-go”.

The biggest difference, however, between real marketing and political marketing is this: real marketing finds out what we want, and then sells us that thing. Political marketing, as we will soon see, finds out what we want only so that parties and governments can make it look and sound like we are getting what we want.

This goes against Lees-Marshment’s assertion that political marketing “does not attempt to change what people think, but to deliver what they need and want” . And, of course, if we are not in reality getting what we want, but only getting the impression that we are getting what we want, then Lees-Marshment and Lilleker’s claim that political marketing makes politics a “more satisfying process for the electorate” is misleading.

Market-oriented parties are obviously primarily concerned with winning or holding power. In this situation, Qualter explains that ideologies become flexible, and policies are no longer moral commitments, just things that are useful in attracting voter support .

Research by Worcester and Baines, Lilleker and Negrine, and Bowler and Farrell shows that market intelligence is not being used to inform policy, it is just being used to communicate policy in different ways. As Bowler and Farrell suggest, “polls don’t ask voters what they want, they only seek reactions to what they have already decided to do” . And depending on this reaction, the words and terms used to describe the policy may change, but its substance stays the same.

In Lilleker and Negrine’s studies of British government insiders, a common theme was that political marketing was more a matter of:

developing policy and then finding out the values out there on the street, and then reflecting those values in any communication on that policy. It is taking the right language, (and) convincing voters that you share their concerns and can offer a viable solution .

Data from polls and focus groups is being used to brush up the look and feel of the policy; nothing more. We can at least be fairly certain that market intelligence does not directly affect the policy process, because as one British Conservative MP stated in an interview, “I do listen, but I don’t know how I use all the stuff I hear” . And when we seriously consider how a pure market-orientation would affect policy, the notion seems absurd. There are enough opinions out there to convince any market intelligence analyst that we want everything at once, even if the things we want contradict each other - for example, lower taxes and more or improved government services. Even for a business, a pure market orientation would be unrealistic, because the range of products would be limited by consumers’ imaginations. Evidence suggests that many products, including some of the most original and popular products like the Sony Walkman, were created in defiance of market research . And in defiance of data gathered in political marketing intelligence, our parties and governments have already prepared and “delivered” their “product”. All that is left is to make us think we got what we wanted.

The evidence should make us reconsider Lees-Marshment’s stages of political marketing. Lilleker and Negrine go so far as to say that all parties are actually product or sales-oriented . The figure below better represents what actually happens in political marketing.

Product Design –> Market Intelligence –> Communication

If our parties and governments are not actually gathering market intelligence, and then basing their policies on that data, we are not really talking about marketing at all. We are talking about trickery and manipulation; a hidden type of social control embedded in communication that acts like a mirror, reflecting our own images and desires back towards us. We have no reason to vote for another party, or to protest, because there are public communications firms, policy departments, and other experts at work making sure we think we got what we wanted. Real political marketing is therefore something that happens when the only thing that matters is getting elected or re-elected.

The idea that public opinion is not being used to affect policy is not new. Brooks studied the effect of public opinion on policy in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada, and found that in most cases (58% overall, and 61% in Canada) the government does something that goes against public opinion . Judging by what our governments and parties tell us, we would never know that our opinion mattered so little. This is what makes political communication the key.

Nonetheless, there are some scholars who not only accept the activity of political marketing as it is normally understood, but try to find ways to improve the abilities of parties and governments to conduct political marketing. Smith and Hirst, for example, believe that a new approach is needed now that we are entering the “strategic marketing era” in politics. This new approach is “strategic political segmentation”, and it involves segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) that “promises better targeted policies towards identified and attractive segments” . With this procedure, the authors are able to “segment” the British “political market” (people) into seven distinctive groupings: “Old Labour”, “Feel Gooders, “Tory Mainstreamers”, “Labour Nationalists”, “Underwhelmed Loyals”, “Light Green Lefties”, and “Champagne Socialists” . Why bother with all this? As the authors explain, this research will “offer an opportunity for each party to communicate their policies more effectively to the electorate” (emphasis added). The key word is “communicate”. While Smith and Hirst come up with better ways to conduct political marketing, they implicitly acknowledge that it is primarily about communicating policy in certain ways, not about making policy itself.

In “The Permanent Campaign: The Integration of Market Research Techniques in Developing Strategies in More Uncertain Political Climates”, Sparrow and Turner want to help political marketers bring together qualitative and quantitative intelligence gathering methods. The article, as they describe it, “attempts to show how such methods can be brought together and how parties can start to build integrated marketing strategies” . Political marketers must learn these methods to cope with the “rapidly changing” or “uncertain” political environment . It is unclear why things are so “uncertain” or “rapidly changing”; regardless, there is no speculation here about the consequences of refining market intelligence gathering methods.

To be critical about political marketing, it is crucial to understand the alternative model proposed here – where the “product” is created, market intelligence follows, and then the “product” is communicated according to market intelligence. What we are left with seems to fit Qualter’s definition of propaganda: “the deliberate attempt by the few to influence the attitudes and behaviour of the many by the manipulation of symbolic communications” . Political marketers are using what they know about us, and about what we want, to make their policies appear and sound all right.
When many academics and the media talk about political marketing, there is a tendency to have already accepted what it is, when it is something completely different. For example, Banker defends political marketing, denying that it is unethical, and asserting that it supplies the electorate with alternative perspectives for understanding political reality . Such an interpretation does not even grasp what political marketing truly is in the first place, and overcomplicates something that is actually quite simple - either our parties and politicians are telling us what they are doing and what they intend to do, or they are not. But too much of the focus is on trivial details like attack ads, election campaign fluff, and party leader image management. All of this confirms, in part, the relevance of Chomsky and Herman’s “propaganda model”, whereby the media and intellectuals ultimately serve the interests of the state, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly .

If we are going to discuss how Canadian governments and parties communicate with us, it is worthwhile to look at political marketing in Canada. In Canada, the Liberal Party has always been at the forefront of political marketing, and not coincidentally, it also formed the government for most of the 20th century. The party imported George Gallup’s opinion research methods from the U.S. in the 1940’s, and by the 1960’s they were using the newest polling methodologies, advertising strategies, and branding philosophies . The Liberals were also the first Canadian party to establish an in-house advertising agency .

In political marketing literature, the federal Canadian parties are generally divided up in the following way: brokerage parties like the Liberals, Conservatives, and the now-defunct Progressive Conservatives are primarily seen as market-oriented parties, because they try to appeal to as many Canadians with as many different ideologies as possible, and to do this requires significant experience and resources in gathering market intelligence. For example, Marland points out that during the 2000 election campaign, the Liberals’ “daily rolling cross-country opinion polls had an impressive sample of 20 000 respondents” . The Bloc Quebecois, in contrast, is considered a product and sales-oriented party because it has a very specific goal – separation – and they do not intend on finding out your opinion to change that goal, but they are willing to try and convince you that they are right. The New Democratic Party can also be considered a sales or product-oriented party, because similar to the Bloc, there is a basic knowledge of what the NDP is about – social democracy – and the NDP is not willing to compromise on this (which is probably easier to do when you have never formed the government). But they are willing to try and sell their product. This does not mean that the Bloc and NDP do not commission polls or focus groups, only that they do not have such an extensive marketing apparatus and they do not give market intelligence the same consideration in their communications. For example, a pollster hired for the NDP in the 1984 pre-campaign found “operational problems” that inhibited market intelligence, such as a party executive disagreeing with his recommendations, and then the U.S. pollster who replaced him found party staffers analyzing his data .

Therefore, although much of the research on political marketing looks at Great Britain and the U.S., we can be sure that political marketing is doing well in Canada. And it is Canadian political marketing communications we will be concerned with later.

We have established that political marketing is, in a way, not marketing at all, but a type of social control embedded in communication. But how did our parties and governments learn how to communicate in a way that makes people think they are getting what they want and requested – in salespeak?