Political marketing: Part 04: The crisis of democracy

While you as an individual and your party as a whole are concerned with political marketing, political advertising, election campaign management and political marketing on the Internet, it can easily happen that you too easily fail to recognise the fundamental problems of domestic and foreign policy in Germany. Germany and the rest of the world have a serious crisis of democracy. This is reflected in the things that seem to make political advertising in general and political marketing on the Internet in particular necessary.

The most obvious grievance is that voter numbers are lower than they could be. You can see from this that citizens do not recognise any sense in politics, or at least in elections. Most citizens vote for parties because they have "always" voted for them, or because they remember one or two good and charismatic politicians from this or that party. Few citizens, however, vote for a party because they are actually convinced that it can change something. Particularly in the era of grand alliances and coalitions, the election promises and objectives of individual parties blur into an empty monotony. This makes it seem completely automatic to voters that their interests are not at the forefront, but rather the desire of a party to please possible alliance partners in order to come to power as successfully as possible. This problem makes well thought-out political marketing all the more important. Election campaign management, political marketing on the Internet and political advertising must emphasise the individuality of each politician and their party all the more in the current crisis of democracy.

The battle for votes can only be successful if citizens can identify with a party, with you as a person active in politics and with the party programme. If you base your election promises and goals on what other politicians say and what seems to work successfully, all parties end up offering voters the same thing in their election programmes. The voter cannot care which party is then elected, as it makes no difference anyway. This is no way to overcome the crisis of democracy - quite the opposite!

The political monotony of most parties means that voters' attention is drawn to those parties that seem to stand out from the crowd. So while failed political advertising and even slowly emerging political marketing on the Internet of the once major parties fade into a meaningless grey, those parties that stand out from the crowd in some way - in whatever way! Such parties are always the political, extreme fringe groups that would not stand a chance in a functioning democracy. The futile attempt to please everyone in the country leads to the result that empty political marketing with standardised election campaign management, political marketing on the internet and standardised political advertising have the opposite effect.

Ending the crisis of democracy therefore does not mean that you should, or even can, please every citizen, but that you represent individual, citizen-centred goals and stand up for them. This guarantees that you will lose votes. However, you will win new and lost voters and they will vote for you out of conviction - not for lack of alternatives!