In two days time, Australians will be voting for their next Federal Government. All indications are that the country will be replacing the existing Liberal Government with an Australian Labor Party (ALP) Government.

In my opinion, both major parties - the Liberals (the more “conservative” party) and the ALP (the more left-wing party) - have similar policies in most areas. Sure, they may have different philosophical underpinnings, but for all intents and purposes they really only differ on certain issues that may, or may not be, important to various people. These are issues like the employment laws and the environment.

As you might imagine, political campaigning is quite the spectacle. All the relevant parties spend millions of dollars on political advertising, “touring” and other promotional efforts. Political marketing in Australia is pretty sophisticated too. A lot of polling, analysis and testing goes on to craft just the right message to the right target market. From a marketer’s point of view, it’s absolutely fascinating.

This doesn’t mean the campaigns work… or that people base their vote on an advertising campaign. But how people do come to vote, and why and how certain campaigns are constructed, who they’re designed to appeal to, and what their objective is, is all very interesting.

So… will it be close… or an ALP landslide? Well, we’re hosting an “election party” on Saturday night to celebrate or commiserate (depending on your view) as the votes are counted, the results come in, some candidates win, others lose, and the new government is decided.

I can’t believe some people find politics boring!

Tags: political advertising, political campaign, political campaigning, political marketing, Politics

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 4:17 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.