Political Brand: role of social agents as a promotional tool for the development of political interest

Abstract

Recent studies in many democratic countries like USA, Europe and Canada have confirmed that political participation of the electorates is declining over time. The trend is mainly attributed to the youth disengagement due to lack of interest in politics. This matter has become a serious concern for scholars and politicians, while they try to find new ways to develop youth interest in politics. In fact, studying political-interest is not a simple subject because it is directly linked to the behavior of voters.’ To ameliorate this behavior, it requires great efforts to position political brand in an attractive way to appeal the young voters. Furthermore, the behavior of young voters is directly influenced by their social networks. Brand awareness and brand association (in this case political party or politician) dependent on the intensity and amplitude of information and the nature and manner of available tools used for promotional purposes. Particularly in politics, politicians have to select more reliable and strong socially acceptable marketing tool to develop their desired image. This research tends to analyze the role of social agents as a promotional tool in the development of political interest among young
voters. Specifically, this paper investigates three core questions. First, who is the most influential and reliable social agent to develop brand awareness and association? Secondly, how social agents, media, and internet can play their role as promotional tools in political interest development? Thirdly, how the branding strategies could be applied to ameliorate the political interest in youth? Data has been collected from the young students of University of Gujrat, Pakistan to analyze the young voters’ behavior and the mediating role of social networks, as promotional tools, in the development of political interest. Analysis of the available data indicates that politicians or political parties, who are actively engaging in developing strong relationships with youth by effectively mobilizing the social agents, media, and internet, shall be successful in developing and inducing the political interest among the youth and consequently enhancing voting-turnout.