Candidate Brand Personality and the 2017 New Zealand General Election: A New Framework of Influential Strategies and Behaviours

Abstract

This research on candidate brand personality, which refers to how a politician’s personality is perceived by the public and how this relates to their electoral success, is a grounded theory study concerning the discovery of behaviours and strategies relating to Prime Ministerial candidates in the 2017 NZ general election that may have influenced their projected brand personality. Specific recurring behaviours, discourses, environments, and appearances, performed by, in relation to, or associated with Andrew Little, Jacinda Ardern, and Bill English during their time as party leader since the conclusion of the 2014 election till polling day in 2017 as seen in their political communication and media reports are examined. In searching for these factors, a total of 215 video communications, 307 photographs and 151 press releases from the candidates, their deputies, or their parties were analysed as primary sources. 218 media reports were also analysed as secondary data. These behaviours and strategies were then assessed for how they might have influenced the candidates’ projected competence, energy, openness, empathy, agreeableness, and charisma, according to these brand personality dimensions’ personality trait descriptors. What results is a new framework, consisting of 18 broad categories of behaviour made up of 165 influential individual factors, on how political candidates may influence their projected brand personality that is grounded in the case studies of the examined Prime Ministerial candidates. Beyond this, lessons regarding the importance of the above brand personality dimensions and the validity of strategies emerging from existing literature are extracted from an analysis of the candidates’ overall brand personality performance.