Political event management

One communciation tool used frequently by public relations practitioners is events management. An event might be organised to launch a product, raise the company profile or enhance corporate reputation, or whatever. But the reality is that events are an everyday part of the PR toolkit.

Yet in the political sphere, especially in the UK, events conceived for political reasons seem very low profile. In the US I found evidence of political event management, typically for fundraising and volunteer mobilising. One agency, EMBARK, refer to such events as a platform bringing together stakeholders. Another company Penner-Madison suggests that political events management in their area of operations, Thailand, plays a very low role, but they suggest that it should be much more important in political and electoral campaigns. They argue that events are a means for political campaigns to reach out to people. This is an interesting point, as in essence the key to Obama's use of the Internet was that he used it, a communciation channel, to reach out to people.

The fact that political event management, outside of party conferences, has a low profile in the UK, could be explained by the party as opposed to candidate system. Individual candidates need to raise their profile, secure funds and develop hype, political parties are far less likely to need to do so.

It is, however, quite possible that the role of events managemnt may increase in the UK as a means of direct communication to voters. If, and it is a big if, you accept those viewpoints that political campaigning is gradually moving away from one dominated by mass communciation channels, and hence media management, through to one where more direct communication is being used, then you can see the importance of events growing.

Whether you prescribe to the views of Blumler and Kavanagh's third age of communciation, or Pippa Norris's post-modern campaigning, this approach essentially suggests that there has been a historical development of political communications, and that the wheel is turning, if not circle, at least a crescent. Thus historically politicians relied on personal contacts/networks and public meetings. So that Gladstone is supposed to have won an election throug his Midlothian campaign, essentially a series of public meetings. Then with the advent of radio, communicators such as F.D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill were able to utilise the technology. Since the 1960s mass communciation, especially television, has dominated political communications. Commentators such as Norris and Dominic Wring, however, suggest that this dominance is being challenged. They, and many others suggest that this challenge is being driven by the use of the Internet by members of society. But I would add to this, and note that greater use of direct mail and politically motivated events can also bring citizens into closer contact with politicians or political ideas. I do not suggest that these three direct forms of communication have replaced mass communication channels as the dominant channel for political communications, but they certainly provide valid alternatives.