'You don't have to kill to win'

2008-11-10 09:30

Chris Moerdyk

At least one party in South Africa seems to have been listening when marketing and political analysts in the USA unanimously agreed that Barack Obama's victory last week was directly as a result of his using the internet and cell phone technology to reach voters.

During the voter registration process this weekend I got three text messages from the DA signed by Helen Zille herself as well as two phone calls urging me to go and register. And the DA even remembered to put in an "unsubscribe" stop mechanism which suggests that someone in the party understood what modern communication technology was all about.

While Obama used Facebook, Twitter and other internet based social networking sites to reach young voters, the McCain camp stuck to more traditional methods mostly involving TV commercials and posters.

But, South African political parties who want to score well in next year's elections will have to make even more use of modern marketing methods because this country has an extremely high proportion of its population under the age of 30.

Which is one of the reasons, one suspects, why the ANC is so tolerant of its Youth League.

Certainly, South African political parties will have to abandon their traditional approach to electioneering. For decades now it has consisted of a combination of public platform speeches backed up by a relatively minimal amount of mass media advertising and millions of street poll posters. The content of which was usually based on communications strategy that was already out of date in the 1980s.

Another area where Obama scored well was in the messages he was presenting. His marketing team clearly knew what they were about because Obama almost always spoke about what his audience wanted to hear.

Unlike McCain who persisted in pushing what he wanted to say.

Outdated

In terms of marketing and communications, up to the last elections, South African politics was firmly based on very outdated 1950s electioneering strategy. A bit a fear mixed with over the top promises and coated liberally with invective about what was wrong with opposition parties.

Another problem that we have in South Africa is that traditional mass media is not reaching the youth market. Research over the past few years has shown that virtually all mass media types have slowly but surely been losing touch with 18 to 25 year olds. And the only way to get hold of them is through their social networks and cell phones.

And just to add to the problem, our youth are extremely streetwise these days and very well informed both politically and socially because of the power of those social networks. Somehow political messages will have to move away from the "we care" and "we'll make everything rosy in the future" because our youth just doesn't buy into that naive propaganda anymore.

There is no doubt that this last US presidential election not only captured the attention of the world but it made US voters sit up , take notice and take an interest.

Hopefully, South African politicians and voters will have taken note of some of the more glaringly obvious elements of the US process. Not only the meeting of marketing and politics but particularly the way in which Obama and McCain had a full go at each other but stopped short of inciting or even tolerating violence.

That's something we still have to learn about democracy.

You don't have to kill people to win.

Send your comments to Chris.

Disclaimer: News24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on News24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of News24. News24 editors reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.

- News24