Eva Pujadas
Political brands: Research objects and methods
Marketing research and advertising techniques are not only being applied to commercial products but also to cultural, social and ideological “goods”; political communication campaigns are not an exception. As for any kind of media content (information, fiction and of course advertising!), the brand images that the audience have in mind, - those that really account at the most important moment of the whole process, that is creating consent/dissent, buying or voting - do not merely concern the specific and deliberated messages made at the strategic planners studios, performed by specific actors, and adorned by creative slogans, but these meanings go far beyond the message. Historically, advertising research has surpassed for more than a while the apparently simple research of the message, since the so called “hypodermic needle approach” has shown to be limited in order to account for the brand images that the audience have in mind. Since then, advertising research has been exploring the message in relationship to its specific audiences, that is, the contextually situated viewer. Even if in particular cases and for particular products focus group or in-depth interviews have been (and of course, still are) applied to grasp the particular nuances of message’s meanings, the quantitative approach --that is accounting for GRPs, ratings and share- has dominated the field. Some relevant changes have occurred during the last decade that have made the traditional model obsolete and that have lead to traditional advertising research to a “crisis”. Among them, mass media no longer have the impact they used to have since relevant audiences (quantitative and also qualitative) have moved not only to thematic channels but particularly to the web 2.0. and are using media messages in social media in so many particular ways that are going far beyond the advertisers intended purposes. Meaning seems to disappear from the traditional approaches and move towards many other disperse and fragmented sites. This paper aims at showing both, these new sites where contemporary brands are created – using the case of political brands as an example - and also a particular qualitative approach to a brand’s meaning; that is, the specific case of advertising image research, as a field where a “traditional” semiotic approach and the “newer” media literacy disciplines converge.