NEW LABOUR: A STUDY OF THE CREATION, DEVELOPMENT AND DEMISE OF A
POLITICAL BRAND
Abstract
This paper examines the use made by political parties of
branding, as a means of establishing party values and
winning political support. It looks in particular at the
way in which political parties use communication to create,
build and maintain political brands.
The paper involves an examination of the recent history of
the British Labour Party. After a long period in the
political wilderness, the party re-branded itself as 'New
Labour' in the mid-1990s, and - as New Labour - swept to
power in a landslide election victory in 1997, under their
new leader, Tony Blair.
Using media coverage and material written by some of the
architects of New Labour, the paper will describe the
creation of the 'New Labour' brand, and look at how it was
developed and used to generate political support. The paper
will also consider the evolution and development of the
brand, as the substance underlying the stated brand values
has come to be questioned, not least by so-called 'Old
Labour' supporters of the party.
The paper will draw conclusions regarding the successful
management of a political brand, pointing in particular at
the need to ensure that the performance of a party espousing
a particular brand supports and reinforces communicated
brand values and the brand itself.
NEW LABOUR: A STUDY OF THE CREATION, DEVELOPMENT AND DEMISE OF A
POLITICAL BRAND
Bled International Public Relations Research Symposium
July 7 and 8, 2001
Dr Jon White
Associate
Henley Management College and
Honorary Professor, Public Affairs
Birmingham University Business School
University of Birmingham
Dr Leslie de Chernatony
Professor, Brand Marketing
Birmingham University Business School
University of Birmingham
Abstract
This paper examines the use made by political parties of
branding, as a means of establishing party values and
winning political support. It looks in particular at the
way in which political parties use communication to create,
build and maintain political brands.
The paper involves an examination of the recent history of
the British Labour Party. After a long period in the
political wilderness, the party re-branded itself as 'New
Labour' in the mid-1990s, and - as New Labour - swept to
power in a landslide election victory in 1997, under their
new leader, Tony Blair.
Using media coverage and material written by some of the
architects of New Labour, the paper will describe the
creation of the 'New Labour' brand, and look at how it was
developed and used to generate political support. The paper
will also consider the evolution and development of the
brand, as the substance underlying the stated brand values
has come to be questioned, not least by so-called 'Old
Labour' supporters of the party.
The paper will draw conclusions regarding the successful
management of a political brand, pointing in particular at
the need to ensure that the performance of a party espousing
a particular brand supports and reinforces communicated
brand values and the brand itself.
Introduction
Political parties emerge as a response to social
developments, when groups of people feel that they have an
approach to social questions around which they wish to
gather support, or which they seek to defend and promote in
the face of opposition. Political parties have histories,
traditions and approaches to managing their own affairs.
They also acquire and use names and symbols, to strengthen
their own positions, to rally their supporters, to garner
further support and, perhaps, to intimidate their opponents.
In recent years, political parties have turned to techniques
of marketing to manage their affairs and further their
interests. Since World War II, and drawing to a large
extent on the experience of political parties in the United
States and other developed democracies, political parties in
North America and Europe, and more recently in emerging
democracies such as South Africa and the countries of
central and Eastern Europe, have made steadily increasing
use of these techniques.
This paper looks in particular at the use of branding by
political parties, and at the recent experience of the
United Kingdom’s Labour Party which put branding at the
heart of the process of modernization which led to the
party’s return to power – after a long absence – in the
country’s general election of 1997. Since then, and using
the same techniques, the party has consolidated its hold on
power in an election held in June, 2001.
The paper examines the creation of the 'New Labour' brand,
looking at how it was developed and used to generate
political support. The paper will also consider the
evolution and development of the brand, as the substance
underlying the stated brand values has come to be
questioned, not least by so-called 'Old Labour' supporters
of the party.
The paper also considers the successful management of a
political brand, pointing in particular at the need to
ensure that the performance of a party espousing a
particular brand supports and reinforces communicated brand
values and the brand itself. Throughout, the importance of
communication in establishing and sustaining the brand
cannot be understated.
Branding
A brand is a multidimensional construct, involving the
blending of functional and emotional values to match
consumers’ performance and psychosocial needs (de Chernatony
and Dall’Olmo Riley, 1998). One of the goals of branding is
to make a brand unique on dimensions that are both relevant
and welcomed by consumers (de Chernatony and McDonald,
1998).
Success in an overcrowded market will depend on effective
brand differentiation, based on the identification,
internalization and communication of unique brand values
that are both pertinent to and desired by consumers.
Powerful brands communicate their values through every point
of contact they have with consumers (Cleaver, 1999).
A functional value is a value relating to the way something
works or operates and can be evaluated through rational
deduction. An emotional value is a value relating to a
person’s emotions and derived from a person’s circumstances,
mood or relationships with others, and being instinctive or
intuitive or based on feelings, as distinguished from
reasoning or knowledge.
Applying branding principles to a political party –
the case of New Labour
A political party, despite the difficulty of defining the
market place for its brand, can consider itself as a brand,
to be developed to offer functional and emotional values to
an electorate as part of its appeal.
The New Labour brand was developed as part of the
modernisation of the Labour party, which occurred of
necessity between 1983 and 1994. By the 1983 election, the
Labour party’s support had reduced to the point where there
was a danger it might lose its position as official
opposition to the increasingly powerful and secure
Conservative Party. The Conservative Party had come to
power in 1979, replacing a weak and failing Labour
government. It was to remain in power until 1997, through
elections in 1983, 1987 and 1992. By 1983, the Conservative
Party was making strong use of marketing techniques to
sustain its hold on power (White, 1983).
“New Labour was the product of traumatic and multiple
failures” (Rawnsley, 2000, page viii). It emerged from
recognition through three election defeats, that the party
had to modernize, reconnect to the electorate, and overcome
the electorate’s doubts and fears about Labour as a party of
government. The process of modernization is well described
in books such as Gould, 1998. He first mooted the term ‘New
Labour’ in 1989, but the term and the brand were not adopted
until the 1994 Party Conference, which had the theme, New
Labour, New Britain.
The New Labour brand represented an explicit break with ‘Old
Labour,’ the party of tradition and the almost one hundred
years of history that the party had lived through since its
foundation as a party to represent the interests of
organized Labour.
New Labour had to break explicitly with the past, and to
demonstrate the new party’s commitment to current values.
This involved changing the party’s constitution and founding
principles, among them Clause IV, which committed the party
to taking significant components of the economy into public
ownership. A revised Clause IV allowed for the workings of
the market economy.
New Labour set out to represent functional values of
openness, modernity, economic orthodoxy and redistributory
social policy. Emotionally, the brand had to reassure,
remove the fear that voters still after many years felt that
a Labour government would return the country to the dark
days of the ‘winter of discontent’, when the country was
paralyzed by union disputes in the winter of 1978 – 1979,
under the last Labour government.
Labour set out to appeal to middle England, recognizing it
is most successful as a party when it bestrides the centre
ground (The Economist, November 15, 1997).
The evolution and development of the brand
Improvement of the Labour product and the communication of
its benefits went hand in hand (Fletcher, in Marketing,
November 27, 1997). Gould (1998) shows how, partly as a
result of his experiences with the US presidential campaign
in 1992, he and other advisors were able to professionalise
the process of party and campaign communication through the
elections of 1987 and 1992, and in the successful election
of 1997. Gould, a strategy and polling advisor to Tony
Blair and the Labour Party in the 1997 General Election
campaign and in the three years that preceded it, is one of
the central figures in the modernization of the the Labour
Party, but the architects of New Labour are recognized as
Tony Blair (now Prime Minister), Gordon Brown (Chancellor of
the Exchequer), Alastair Campbell (the Prime Minister’s
press secretary) and Peter Mandelson (a close advisor to the
Prime Minister, and recognized master of communication
techniques used in the pursuit and retention of political
power).
In the 1997 election, Labour came to power with 419 seats in
the House of Commons, for a majority of 179. The
Conservatives retained 165 seats.
New Labour as a brand was successful in part because of its
ambiguity. It represented values with which large swathes
of the population could identify, such as personal
opportunity flowing out of strong communities. It was an
easy target for criticism. The Economist, for example, said
that Tony Blair’s project to establish New Labour in
government was to achieve cultural hegemony by creating a
more inclusive politics for a post ideological age (The
Economist, October 25 1997).
Rawnsley (2000) talked about the illusions that sustained
New Labour. He said “the illusionists are best placed to
know what an illusion it was that New Labour was a glossily
impotent machine always under the masterful control of an
assured leader. That this illusion was maintained for so
long was one of the great triumphs of Alastair Campbell’s
spin.”
The demise of the brand
New Labour was described by Derek Draper, an aide to Peter
Mandelson in the 1997 campaign, as “an election strategy
rather than a governing strategy” in comments to a forum to
assess New Labour’s record held in 2001, at London’s
Institute for Contemporary Arts.
Nevertheless, Tony Blair, speaking outside his office at
Number 10 Downing Street on May 2, the day following the
election in 1997, said “we ran for office as New Labour and
will govern as New Labour. It will be a government that
seeks to restore trust in politics” (speech in Downing
Street, May 2, 1997, quoted in Rawnsley, 2000, p15).
However, Philip Gould, writing in a memo to the party
leadership in May 2000, Getting the Right Place in History,
said by then the New Labour brand has “been badly
contaminated. It is the object of constant criticism and,
even worse, ridicule. . . Labour is undermined by a
combination of spin, lack of conviction and apparent lack of
integrity” (Gibbon, 2000).
Part of the contamination was due to the discrepancy between
the high aspirations incorporated into the brand’s values,
and the performance of the party in office. In an end of
term assessment, Toynbee and Walker (2001) wrote
“expectations had been raised, only to be dashed when
nothing much happened, or with transport, things evidently
got worse. Early trickery with figures undermined
confidence” (Toynbee and Walker, 2001, page 230).
Other commentators felt that it was hard to find much that
was concrete, let alone distinct and consistent, in the
principles on which New Labour’s approach was built (The
Economist, May 2, 1998; White, 1999). The article concluded
that it would be better to judge New Labour by its deeds
rather than by its words.
The New Labour government embarked upon its first years in
office on a flurry of activity, but early on attracted
criticism for the tightness of control it sought to maintain
on information, and on the messages delivered by government
and the people who spoke for it. Charges of ‘control
freakery’ and ‘spin’ were directed against the government.
Marketing professionals asked if New Labour had spun totally
out of control (Marketing, July 27, 2000). In mid-2000, as
the government seemed to lurch from one crisis to another
(for example the fuel crisis of September, 2000) the New
Labour brand was seen to be under threat. The brand was
discredited by internal disputes within the party, and a
perceived inability on the part of the government to take
control of current issues. Where the brand once stood for
modernity, integrity and competence, it now seemed to
represent elitism, spin and drift.
Toynbee and Walker’s assessment of the government’s record
prior to the 2001 election, at which Labour was returned to
office with a comparable majority concluded that the
government was “a modest, competent, unambitious government,
over-given to high flown rhetoric while trimming its sails
to every wind.” (Toynbee and Walker, 2001, page 239).
From mid-2000, use of the term ‘New Labour’ lessened. One
report at about this time suggested that the term new was
now redundant (Daily Telegraph, July 20, 2000).
Conclusions
Reflections on the emergence, development, evolution and
demise of the New Labour brand suggest a number of
conclusions. The brand was an essential element in the
modernization of the party, and a device to suggest and
promise changes. The brand promise, vague though it seemed
to commentators at the time, was aimed to reassure, to allay
fears and to convince the electorate that Labour would
provide a new kind of government.
The brand came to be devalued when some of the important
promises made were not delivered. One of these had to do
with the standards to be followed by the government in the
conduct of public business, but early illustrations of
government and ministerial performance showed that the
government was essentially no different from other
governments (Rawnsley 2000, see in particular the Ecclestone
affair, and the forced resignation of Peter Mandelson from
ministerial posts).
The brand was built through communication (Gould, 1998), but
the discrepancies between announcements and actual
performance led on to cynicism about the government, New
Labour and politics itself. This cynicism led on to poor
voter turnout at the 2001 election.
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