"Mazi ta fagame" by Pangalos in 2010 had impressed me incredibly. It found me at a very personal time; I was pregnant and thinking about how to make the baby's room, lost in my own glass bubble. It was of course preceded by Papandreou's infamous announcement from Kastellorizo about Greece's appeal to the support mechanism of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. Shock and awe. And memoranda. And suddenly, Pangalos in an awkward posture, slumped in his chair in the Parliament, in his placement during a meeting of the Standing Committee on Public Administration, Public Order and Justice that September said the incredible "We ate together" in response to the outcry against him of political personnel of the country which was summed up in the question of the world "how did you eat the money". Apart from the other interpretations and commentaries on this phrase and attitude, which are of no particular interest since they were within the framework of the common sense of the time, what impressed me was that I thought, in hindsight of course, that it was not disbelief or sincerity , whatever you want to say, but political marketing.
The collective guilty unconscious of an entire people was based on this saying. We discovered complicity and guilt. And after we were frozen by the developments, we bowed our heads and endured the memorandums and the debt crisis, as a punishment for decades of stupidity. "We ate together" made us plug it and thus the political and economic life of the country went on. Very difficult, but it went.
If Pangalos did not serve a communication policy already defined by experts and was a spontaneous reaction, we could say that communicators and political marketing would be infinitely jealous...
How did Pangalos come to mind after 13 years... Do you believe it?
This campaign by '#haw' did it all.
I discovered her upside down. First I watched the video with the bro-head and then I looked for the rest. "How to Leave Your Home", "How to Live a Carefree Student Life", "How to Get Awesome Transgender at Your Gay Wedding" and "How to Take Life in Your Hands" co-starring Tsipras .
Yes, yes I know; it's SYRIZA's election campaign for 17 to 24 year olds. Which speaks in their language and the hot topics that concern them and the party's proposals for Housing, Labor and Education. Yes, yes I know; today the parties are fighting for the youth, who may be a little apolitical but a potential regulatory factor.
My first thought when I saw the spot with Broedros was that it could very well be a video of the "Radio Arvyla" show; the satirical one. Which has a certain aesthetic precisely because of satire and the obviously low budget. It's tacky, but catchy.
Beyond the aesthetic concerns, this particular campaign raises many other political marketing concerns. Is the SYRIZA campaign a successful polar marketing after all? We could say yes. They seem to know well the characteristics of the target group they are interested in; the kids who shouted "Mitsotakis γ@μι@σαι" at the summer concerts and the like. It is daring because it breaks the classic rules of political correctness about the seriousness of a political campaign and thus succeeds in its purpose which is to be noticed and remembered. It works directly on the emotion and temperament of today's youth using tools such as language that successfully conveys the message to the receivers because it makes them feel familiar. It uses various regional symbols, such as the flag of the LGBTI community in the background of the scenery to better convey the respective message. It plays with the words "fair" and "unfair" which are a continuation of the political slogan of the previous election contest "It is fair and it was done" which was first used by the then Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in his speech in Vellidio in 2018. It is light, jokes. At the same time, at the end of the videos with the directorial and dramaturgical trick of the protagonist pausing and changing his expression before asking the audience looking directly into the camera "It's not fair" directly targets the viewer's emotion. We could finally say that this is successful political marketing because it "popularizes".
Before proceeding with this text I did a quick internet search on the words politics and marketing. On the first pages of Google you only find ads from marketing companies for their services. You will tell me that this search was not needed to confirm the obvious; political marketing exists and reigns and is going through its digital age.
After all, we saw it in America and we digested how much digital political marketing when based on populism pays off.
But was it always like this?
Aristotle could be considered the father of political marketing; in 334 BC, in his first book, he defined rhetoric as the art of persuasion, that is, the art that can find persuasive elements used by its politicians
era in political gatherings as public speaking. For Aristotle there are three techniques applied by rhetoric, the appeal to logic, emotion and the speaker's morals. After Aristotle, the evolutionary history of political marketing in Europe encounters a very large gap and reappears in 1513 with Machiavelli's "The Ruler". Then, under Napoleon, we meet it again, this time as propaganda; he is the one who uses the full range of mass media of the time: theater, art and the newspaper. And we arrive at World War I, the end of which marks the beginning of a new era, that of the establishment of the mass media. Great Britain takes the lead with the introduction of suffrage and the appearance of television in 1930. This is the time when political advertising increases and campaigning is emphasized. In neighboring Germany, Goebbels worked his magic before and during World War II. Then, in 1950, in Great Britain again, the Deputy Ministry of Public Opinion Formation was established. And in 1975, when Margaret Thatcher was appointed leader of the Conservative political party, a new important era began, that of Political Marketing. The application of marketing principles by Thatcher and the Conservatives in their election campaign was what gave her the 1979 election victory.
Already in 1956 in America, Stanley Kelley was the first to use the term "political marketing" wanting to comment on the influence exercised by professionals of the genre through political persuasion, but it is Shama who gives his first definition in 1976 as the "process through in which political candidates and their ideas are directed to voters in order to satisfy their eventual needs and thus win their support, both for themselves and for their ideas."
The process of making an electoral decision is fundamentally complex. This
because individuals use a combination of rational and irrational modes
justification of their decision and are emotionally influenced by the messages transmitted by the mass media, political marketing, as well as forces exerting various
groups.
And that's all exploitable. And often dangerous. Not because it shapes the election result, but ideas and cultures. And when it comes to very young voters it's even easier. And dangerous. Because it forms identities.
Personally, I would prefer youth to be taken more seriously. Gen Z I imagine can speak proper Greek without Greekish and think and function beyond the TikTok culture. If we treat them as digital and social media victims, what revolution and with what qualitative characteristics will they make in political culture?
How are we going to continue like this?
*Frontpage picture: Herbert List