The Next Generation of 'Trudeaumania': Rebranding the Liberal Party of Canada
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Fall 08 The Next Generation of ‘Trudeaumania’: Rebranding the Liberal Party of Canada Master’s Thesis Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science- Erasmus Mundus Master in Journalism, Media & Globalisation Supervisor: Jonas Lefevere Erika Thompson-10586679 [email protected] 26-06-2014 REBRANDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................3 INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .......................................................................................6 PERSONALIZATION & CELEBRITY EFFECT ..........................................................7 BRANDING ..................................................................................................................14 MEDIA LOGIC .............................................................................................................17 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................19 RESULTS ..........................................................................................................................25 DISCUSSION ....................................................................................................................35 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................40 REBRANDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA 3 ABSTRACT This study is designed to examine the political marketing strategy of the Liberal Party of Canada in the wake of the recent election of Justin Trudeau as party leader. By addressing the themes of branding, personalization and media logic, this article seeks to explore the extent to which the Liberal Party utilizes strategies of personalization and celebrity in their interactions with the media as their main tactic to rebrand the party. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with political journalists and party officials and experts, findings show that Justin Trudeau proved to be the focal point of the Liberal Party and their communication strategy towards Canadians and the mass media. Additionally, the study found evidence to support the tactical construction of the Trudeau brand and exploitation of celebrity status by the Liberal Party, and their unyielding attempts at media management. The results are significant for future research in the field of Canadian political marketing, specifically in the lead up to a potentially revolutionary federal election in October 2015. INTRODUCTION Within the last decade, the Liberal Party of Canada has undergone an identity crisis and consequently, transformed from one of the strongest political parties in Canadian history to one riddled with uninspiring leadership and voter disillusionment. The once-strong Liberal Party has been in crisis: “After watching its performance at the polls spiral downward for years—losing seats, money, visibility and public interest—a change in trajectory was critical, not only to success, but to survival” (Anderson, 2014, theglobeandmail.com). It was vital that the party established a distance between various REBRANDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA 4 outdated and stale leaders and brought in someone with a fresh new perspective, able to translate support into votes and funding. The Liberal Party and its series of leaders have fallen on hard times in the past decades, failing to dominate the political marketplace and sinking into a third party position in 2011 for the first time in the history of Canadian politics. In a desperate longing for “the Trudeau heyday” (Marland, 2013, p. 1) the Canadian Liberal Party elected Justin Trudeau as leader of the party in April 2013. Trudeau has been a Member of Parliament since 2008, but has always garnered more publicity as the son of celebrated former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Overwhelming media coverage of young women fawning over Pierre Trudeau and his romances with popular culture celebrities “contributed to the so-called Trudeaumania in the late 1960s” (ibid). Since this point in Canadian history, the Trudeau name is considered something of a mythical construct: “Trudeau was an outlier, a special case of a politician transfixing the media and capturing the imagination of romantic idealists. The enduring public memory is that he had a rare combination of style and brains” (ibid). This phenomenon has arguably been passed down to his son, Justin, as he aptly personifies and perpetuates the ‘Trudeau brand’. There was an obvious change in trajectory for the party in 2013, as Harper (2013) stated, “Justin Trudeau has shifted the Canadian political landscape” (thestar.ca). This trend has continued into 2014, as the Liberals hope to ride this new wave of ‘Trudeaumania’ right into the next federal election, taking place in 2015. Based on this phenomenon, it is interesting to examine the Liberal Party’s use of Justin Trudeau as their ‘brand’ and attempt to analyze their perceived campaign marketing strategy. In this context, brand can be conceptualized as “an artificial construct REBRANDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA 5 that becomes a public entity that is superficial, manipulated and open to interpretation” (Marland, 2013, p. 4). The design of strategic messages continuously promoted throughout different channels establishes brand familiarity and molds a brand personality in Justin Trudeau. In this case, name recognition, personality and visual appeal combined with effective political communication fosters a sense of the Trudeau brand and the Liberal brand morphing into one entity. In addition, The Liberal Party strategy encompasses the concepts of personalization and celebrity effect in their political marketing approach. In this case, personalization can be seen as a process where the centrality of a political group declines while an individual actor becomes more present (Rahat & Sheafer, 2007). Through a heightened focus on an individual leader and a diminished focus on the party, the political process is transmitted to the public as a purely personal matter, leaving Trudeau at the helm of shaping the overall Liberal brand appeal. Additionally, personalization encompasses the trend of gaining access to the personal lives of politicians and providing citizens with an abundance of information that goes beyond the political world (Campus, 2010). This combines with the party’s obvious focus on the inherent celebrity factor of Justin Trudeau due to his father’s legacy and the competitive advantage of immediate brand recognition. This high visibility status is fundamental in bringing attention to a cause and encouraging support and involvement from audiences (Biccum, 2011). All of the privileges that accompany celebrity status, such as wealth, prestige and connections, are valuable tools available for candidates and parties to exploit in their political strategy. In contrast, it is also significant to investigate the extent to which this strategy is adopted in the mainstream media and how effective the Liberal Party message is being REBRANDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA 6 communicated to journalists in Canada. The mass media, acting either as a critical or passive channel for information to Canadians is responsible for creating an image of Justin Trudeau as a leader. Media institutions, once considered autonomous from political institutions, are increasingly permeated by partisan interests (Moloney, 2000). The outcome of this interchange is determined by the amount of intervention by the Liberal Party in manufacturing a specific, consumer-oriented message and strategically communicating this in the mass media (Hopper, 2013). With these concepts in mind, this paper seeks to answer the following research question: To what extent is the Canadian Liberal Party utilizing the strategies of personalization and celebrity in their interactions with the media as the main tactic to rebrand the party? This research sought to confirm a Liberal political marketing strategy exclusively tailored to the promotion of their leader, Justin Trudeau. This question will be explored through a series of semi-structured interviews with five Canadian political journalists and five officials and experts within the Liberal Party of Canada. It is expected that this message was carefully constructed and transmitted to the mass media, and later echoed by journalists as the dominant rhetoric in the Canadian public sphere surrounding the Liberal Party. Ultimately, this paper seeks to make conclusions about the political marketing strategy of the Liberal Party as it seeks to rebuild its reputation and status in the upcoming 2015 federal election. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The following theoretical framework will outline the key concepts addressed in this research project, based on previous literature in the political marketing and media fields of study. The topics of research can be divided into two overarching sections: first, REBRANDING THE LIBERAL PARTY OF CANADA 7 the examination of branding and personalization by political parties; and second, the subsequent media response to this type of strategic political communication. This section begins with an examination of the personalization concept, which can be further broken down into the idea of celebrity effects. It discusses the tactic of candidate-centred politics