In defence of targeting
Regular readers of my blog will know I'm all about the personal touch when it comes to campaigning.
It's important for voters to feel seen and heard, and personalising communication is one way to do that. Voters want politicians to be in touch with ordinary people like themselves: to understand their lives, hopes, dreams, fears, and the issues they care about.
Voters rarely have the appetite to consume large amounts of information that's not relevant to them. Most people can't be found attending town hall debates or local resident association meetings, and they certainly don't want to read each political party's manifesto from start to finish. Voters often have limited time to engage with politics.
They're not the only ones constrained by time and resources. Politicians wear many hats—trying to represent electors, meeting voters, researching the issues they vote on, and advocating on behalf of their communities. We also want them to be human beings with hobbies, families and friends. It's physically impossible for them to engage personally at scale. While they may recruit and get help from volunteers, I can tell you that none of them ever have enough volunteers to talk to everyone within a regular constituency.
How can we help politicians scale up a personal approach that addresses voters on the issues that matter to them? You probably guessed it from the title: targeting.
What targeting is and what it isn't
The word often gets used indiscriminately, but there are two specific types of targeting. Targeting is narrowing the audience for any communication by factoring in different criteria. Microtargeting tends to refer to either targeting a smaller group of voters with ads, or conducting survey research against a list of voters with the aim of forecasting what others are likely to say.
Cambridge Analytica, and some other campaign professionals selling fairy dust for monetary gain, have given targeting a bad name. They've given the general public the impression that targeting is all about manipulating people. But buyer beware: there's no real data that backs up Cambridge Analytica’s claims around the actual impact of their targeting.
The idea that the vast majority of campaigns have the time or resources to create micro ads for hundreds of small cohorts of 20-50 people is unrealistic. Remember, someone has to create the creative elements, write the copy, sign off on the messaging, and then go and set up the paid advertisement or share the content organically. Unless there's an ultra-competitive race such as by-election or special elections on the line, campaigns just can't allocate the resources to do that at scale. Even in a by-election it would be very cumbersome to do. Of course, some high-stake campaigns may geo-target parliamentarians or other opinion leaders about specific causes. Still, this kind of targeting of voters is not my reality, or my experience after more than a decade of campaigning.
The rules for good targeting
Effective targeting is about relevance, integrity and dialogue. It's about finding meaningful and manageable ways to craft messaging that speaks to different groups of people. Criteria such as a person's income, the neighbourhood they live in, whether they have children at home or which industry they work in can all impact their priorities.
Consent must be at the heart of it
In the post-GDPR world, everything is about consents and that can make engagement hard. On the other hand, it does give you a valuable opportunity to ask people what they want to hear about, and play by their rules. This makes them more receptive to you. I actually believe gathering granular consents is helpful when targeting voters and supporters. This can be done as simply as asking what topics are most important to the individual, and then tailoring your communications to these topics. Of course, for this to work you have to engage them in the first place… but you're already doing that, right?
Similarly, surveying voters on topics like their lifestyle, age range, family composition, and their likelihood to vote gives us a great opportunity to gather the consent to speak with them about specific policies relevant to them. We can create better and more informed relationships with voters.
Good targeting isn’t just about sending one letter to someone. It’s this interactive process of continuously engaging with the voter over time, always remembering to give people the choice to opt-out, and also to provide feedback.
Don’t push conflicting messaging
Good targeting must be consistent. Don’t share conflicting messaging with different target audiences. It’s deceptive, unethical and an open goal.
In my political career, I must have seen this mistake made in about ten thousand political leaflets and digital ads. It's an error that no political party or third party campaign is immune to making. Astute readers will notice, whether they work for political parties, for the press, or are hyper-active members of the local community. It’s naïve to think that micro-messaging doesn’t get picked up. It only takes one target piece to go to the wrong person and it will be shared with the other side.
What does this mean for our democracy?
Bad press around micro-targeting has a lot to answer for, but targeting can be a useful way to get people involved in politics. If targeting creates greater engagement by being relevant, then quite frankly that’s what our democracies need. There's already enough disinterest in and lack of appreciation for our model of governing that anything we can do to increase participation is a good thing in my book.
I believe most non-targeted engagement creates a feeling of indifference. It makes people feel that their struggles, priorities and interests aren't recognised by the people who represent them. It would be great if our politicians could combat this by speaking with everyone one-to-one, but the reality just is that they can't. Allowing space for some personalisation scaled up with the use of technology is a good thing. Those who want to engage with their politicians in greater detail should of course then be able to do so.
Targeting someone based on what is relevant to them is not a bad thing. Actually, we do it all the time. My son loves vehicles and cooking. He has two friends at his nursery, Amelie and Josh. Amelie likes trains, building with blocks and cooking, whereas Josh likes vehicles and dancing. If Magnus wants to convince Josh to play with him, then it would make sense to focus on vehicles. If he wants to persuade Amelie, then a focus on cooking is more likely to yield results. We’re always engaging people on selected, shared interests in order to achieve common ends.
If you're sending out a consistent message rather than saying conflicting things to different micro-groups, and it’s based on consent, then it can be a good thing. Those arguing otherwise either don't understand targeting, or they don't understand the reality of politics.