Howard Vs Rudd

It is a campaign period in Australia. Soon the Prime Minister election will be held. It has been an interesting thing for me to be able to witness it. I decided to share about this because I believe that campaign means marketing. I believe that most of the members are familiar with the campaign. I can still remember the first we had approximately 50 different parties at the beginning of reformation era.

There are only two major parties in Australia, Labour and Liberal. The current PM, John Howard, is from Liberal party and also one of the candidates. He is the second longest serving Australian Prime Minister. The other contender comes from Labour party is Kevin Rudd. In this sharing I do not intend to express my political opinion since my objective is purely to discuss the unique marketing phenomenon during the campaign.

The unique issue about their campaign, of course we could not see this in Indonesia, is their marketing technique in expressing mockery and ridicule of the other party. Instead to only focus on their strengths, they also focus on raising the disadvantages from their opponent. They attack their opponent from every angle of their opponent, such as future policies, the ministry candidates, and the mistake of the leader in open communication to public.

I find this marketing very powerful since the public could see clearly both advantages and disadvantages of their prime minister candidates. Probably it still would take 100 years for Indonesia to apply this method since it might be considered to be morally inappropriate. However, let us just share about what you think about this phenomenon. What is the electoral campaign like in your country? How do they conduct the marketing?

David Herlambang
MarketingFirst