The Marketing Revolution in Politics: What Recent U.S. Presidential Campaigns Can Teach Us About Effective Marketing

Newman, a marketing professor and founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Political Marketing, offers an in-depth study of how marketing techniques have been used in American political campaigns over the last 50 years. He focuses on President Barack Obama's "integrative use of technological advances for the first time in a marketplace setting," and discusses his campaigns' combination of social media, big data, and micro-targeting. With a wealth of examples from other presidential campaigns, Newman takes readers through the various hits and misses, pointing out what worked and didn't and why. He goes back to Lyndon Johnson's "Daisy" ad, in which the image of a little girl taking petals from a flower leads into a missile launch countdown and nuclear explosion. It implied that Republican Barry Goldwater's hawkishness was a threat to the country helped Johnson to a huge victory. He compares President George W. Bush's disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to Obama's skillful handling of Superstorm Sandy. Structured around seven marketing lessons that Newman suggests can be adopted by any organization, the book sometime reads like a marketing textbook, but his interesting examples and insights will increase readers' understanding of future political campaigns. (Jan.)