A Study On Political Marketing In Obama Presidential Election

Political marketing is the main pattern of political election in the west countries. Especially, opinion poll, grass-root mobilization and political advertisement are here and there as television, newspaper and internet involves fast. Political marketing is a series of persuasive activities that political actors take diverse channels and strategies to communicate with political audience bilaterally in order to attract their recognition and support, eventually to realize their political goals. Through a study of Obama political marketing, this paper tries to know about the model of American political marketing and essences of American democratic system more clearly and supply some consultation for China's election system.Political marketing involves as mass media develops. And political marketing has experienced three periods:at first political marketing emerges as radio marketing when Franklin D. Roosevelt broadcast his policy through "fireside chats" on radio after World Warâ…¡; then, it involves as television marketing when John Fitzgerald Kennedy took office with the help of television advertisement; political marketing comes to internet marketing era in 2008 American presidential election when internet plays an important role in grass-root mobilization and information publishing.There were several key issues during 2008 American presidential election, such as financial crisis, Iraq War and healthcare reform, etc. Barack Obama is an African-American and lack of strong political experiences. Facing these situation and his strengths and weakness, candidate Obama orients himself as a future reformer to meet voters' wants and needs. He promised that once he was elected as a president, he would process the reform of financial system and healthcare system, and withdraw troops from Iraq. Obama creates his own campaign website to demonstrate his future policies on different issues, and communicates with voters bilaterally through blogger, online search engine and videos. Eventually he got the support from a large number of young voters.Achieving success, political marketing also has positive and negative effects on American democratic system, especially the election system. On the one hand, political marketing looks more democratic, at least on the means of it, shortens the psychological distance between candidate and voters, gives more participation rights and the right of know to common voters. On the other hand, political marketing spends a lot of money, which turns American politics into money politics. The mass media, whose stance should be neutral, has bias for different candidates and their political party due to some pragmatic interest.The research path of this paper is:to give a clear definition of political marketing and make it as the strategic starting point at first, and then analyze the model of American political marketing through case study, and finally discuss the possible effects of political marketing on American democracy.Through theoretical analysis and case study, the conclusion of this paper is:from technical perspective, Obama political marketing is very successful, but from the perspective of political development, political marketing has some adverse effects, so America needs to guide and normalize the operation of political marketing in legitimate and administrative ways.