‘A huge political experiment’ – exploring the political brand positioning of political parties in Jersey from an internal-external perspective

Pich, C., Reardon, John and Armannsdottir, A. (2024) ‘A huge political experiment’ – exploring the political brand positioning of political parties in Jersey from an internal-external perspective. Journal of Marketing Communications .

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Abstract

A political brand aims to project a differentiated and identifiable position in the minds of voters. However, there is limited understanding on the envisaged and realised positioning of political ‘party’ brands particularly in under-explored contexts. Therefore, this study investigates the brand positioning of four political ‘party’ brands from an insider (politician) and outsider (voter) perspective in the context of the British Crown Dependency of Jersey. Adopting a qualitative approach, this study conducted semi-structured interviews with politicians-candidates from all four political parties in Jersey and focus group discussions with young voters 18–24 years. Thematic analysis was adopted as part of the analytical strategy. It was revealed internal stakeholders created clear positioning for their political brands grounded on values and visual identity cues rather than grounded on distinct policies. However, the brand positioning of the three of the four political party brands were largely unclear from the standpoint of young voters. The study has implications for academics-practitioners beyond politics. More specifically, this study presents ‘the Political Brand Positioning Toolkit’. The toolkit developed from existing theory and empirical findings represents a systematic framework, which provides guidance on how to position new or existing brands and strategically manage a brand’s envisaged and realised position.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Journal of Marketing Communications
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	1466-4445
Departments:	Institute of Business, Industry and Leadership > Business
Additional Information:	Dr John Reardon is a researcher and Associate Lecturer in the Department of Marketing at the University of Cumbria, UK. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Depositing User:	Insight Administrator
SWORD Depositor:	Insight Administrator
Date Deposited:	26 Jun 2024 16:17
Last Modified:	26 Jun 2024 16:30
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/7759

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