“Winning is the focus for business and politics”

The sectors now face such similar challenges that they should share solutions, argues Spencer Livermore, director of strategy consultancy Thirty Six Strategy

Once, business looked at electionsonly with nervousness. Now, business is learning from the lessons of campaigning as they frame their own brands and corporate strategies.

For years, election strategists have had to contend with an exceptional combination of extreme factors. Increasingly, business is facing the same challenges.

First, cynical consumers. Nowhere is the consumer less willing to listen than in politics – political consumers are more cynical, sceptical, and disengaged than any others. And businesses now are also facing a degree of mistrust that voters have long shown towards political parties, a trend accelerated by the financial crisis.

Second, a hostile media. As trust has fallen in brands and organisations, the media agenda towards business has become more aggressive. Business reporting is no longer confined to the business pages: it has moved to the top of the news. This is a level of scrutiny that political strategists have long operated under. The media environment in politics is routinely brutal and political brands are under attack every day.

Third, fierce competition. In politics your reputation is only ever relative to that of your opponents, and you can only win by defeating them. Likewise, in business, competition is all around us – every business has rivals, and every brand has competitors.
In this increasingly harsh environment, both business and politics are focused on winning. But the win-lose nature of elections sharpens the imperative to win. This has led political strategists to develop a unique process to deliver winning campaigns - a process business leaders can apply to their own corporate campaigns. The process has five steps:

Target the right audience: Begin by ensuring strategy is genuinely driven by audience insight. Political strategists meticulously analyse their target audiences, the ‘swing voters’ needed to win elections, understanding who they are and how to influence them. Prioritising the right audience allows a continual line of sight to be maintained to them at all times during the campaign.

Relentlessly focus on the competition: Harvard Business Professor Michael Porter observed that “the job of the strategist is to understand and cope with competition”. Understanding that your strengths and vulnerabilities are only ever relative to those of the competition will force you to build on your strengths; insulate yourself from your vulnerabilities; and capitalise on your opponent’s weaknesses. See everything through a competitive lens.

Position yourself on the winning territory: Once the target audience is identified and the competitive landscape is understood, work towards developing the strategic positioning – defining the territory from which you can win. The task is to occupy this territory and to do so before your opponents. Rather than traditional issues management, where you fight on your opponents’ or your critics’ territory and allow them to define the terms of the debate, positioning enables you to fight from winning ground.

Create a contrast: Every successful political campaign contrasts its offer with that of its opponents. By creating a choice between two offers, the voter or consumer is asked to choose rather than merely pass judgement on you in isolation.

Drive alignment through your narrative: Fundamental to election-winning success is the disciplined adherence to strategy. To do this, strategy must be coherently articulated in the form of a narrative that drives and unites all communications. This matters because every day dominated by your narrative, you win; every day spent on that of your opponents, you lose.

Applying to the boardroom the rigour, clarity and competitive focus of the election war room can help companies and brands outperform their competition. The challenges faced in business and politics are now so alike that the strategic solutions should be too.