Political marketing: Part 06: Historical campaign management: What you can learn from history

Politics is as old as human society itself. In the early days, there was no crisis of democracy, because democracy did not yet exist - the leader was always the smartest and strongest of a group of people. However, the crisis of democracy soon became a crisis of politics, because the newly emerging ideas changed the image of politics permanently. With the rise of democracy came campaign management and political advertising - political marketing on the internet is merely the modern continuation of this.

The first written evidence of election campaign management dates back to 63 BC and describes Marcus Tullius Cicero's candidature for the office of Roman consul. It already clearly formulates what political marketing and good campaign management should look like. The summary is: friends, target groups, popularity and presence. In campaign management, however, friends are not the people you would have a coffee with in your free time, but those you can win over as supporters for your political marketing.

These are people who still owe you a favour, which you can now call in, or those who you can win over with favours and then ask for support. You need to entrust these old and new friends with tasks that you could not manage on your own - an example today would be political marketing on the Internet if you don't know much about web design and computers. However, you must always keep an eye on this political marketing that is being done for you, at least apparently, in order to be able to distinguish friends from foes.

Then as now, every politician should realise that their candidacy alone makes them a public target for criticism. In the past, as today, the target groups were the people who could identify with the candidate. Social background and status play a decisive role here, from which terms such as social class have emerged. The candidate must endear himself to these target groups, but also to the rest of the population. This is achieved through impeccable behaviour, famous and popular friends and an extensive presence.

Both you as a candidate and your friends as supporters for political advertising must be omnipresent during the election campaign. By surrounding yourself with lots of friends, you signal to the rest of the population that you are already popular. This gives critics less to attack and makes it easier to win over sceptics. This is why political marketing on the Internet is so important in today's election campaign management. What Cicero called friends is called subscribers and followers in social media in our age, in which political marketing on the Internet is so important, and while politicians used to, and still do, have to surround themselves with large numbers of friends, today it is important to maintain a positive ratio of likes to dislikes.

Your friends in the election campaign must also be present with their contribution to your political advertising and win voters for you. In the minds of the general public, this means: I like this star, this star likes this politician, so I like this politician too. As a result, your political marketing on the Internet is networked very widely and attracts many more voters.