How Keesmaat could have developed her brand — and support at the polls

Reprint of my article in the Toronto Star, Canada's largest dialy newspaper: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2018/10/26/how-keesmaat-could-have-developed-her-brand-and-support-at-the-polls.html

There are two ways new challenger brands can grow. They can either steal customers from established brands or they can grow the market by recruiting new buyers. When it comes to electing a new challenger candidate, the same strategies apply. The Jennifer Keesmaat campaign failed at both.

In high involvement purchases, where selection requires time and effort, once customers have made their choice, they rarely switch. To entice them away from an incumbent, a challenger must offer a radically different proposition, not mere incremental improvements on the same.

The U.K. Labour Party learned this the hard way in the years following the 2008 recession. While the Conservative government slashed public spending and demonized welfare recipients as lazy and dishonest scroungers, Labour leadership thought that to stay relevant, it too needed to support austerity, however begrudgingly. Offering a diet coke version of Conservative policies, they were trounced at the next general election in 2015, gaining their lowest seat tally since 1987.

Enter Jeremy Corbyn, who refused to fight the Conservatives at their own game. A passionate believer that the poor shouldn’t suffer for the mistakes of the rich, he made the case for public investment. He refocused people’s anger on the tax avoiders, reckless bankers and low wage-paying employers, not welfare claimers and immigrants.

He communicated this with a simple and powerful slogan, “For the Many, Not the Few.” Offering a real alternative to the Conservatives, in the snap election of 2017, Labour won 40 per cent of the vote, its biggest vote share increase since 1945.

In the Oct. 22 Toronto election, voters didn’t see a credible alternative to the incumbent, Mayor John Tory. While Keesmaat differed in style and tactics, her campaign failed to position her as substantially different in strategy and substance. Which is a shame, because the city is facing a transit, housing and affordability crises of epic proportions and their root causes need debating.

Roots causes such as the $30 billion required to repair and build bridges, water mains, transit and community housing. The Tory campaign mostly avoided this debate because the mayor also promised not to increase the city’s primary source of revenue, property taxes.

Had the Keesmaat campaign framed the city’s infrastructure and transportation woes as a funding challenge, and offered bold ideas on how to solve it, such as raising property taxes, it could have shifted the debate away from the mayor’s strengths - collaboration and consensus-building in a time of fiscal constraint.

This would not only have drawn a sharper contrast with Tory but also put the spotlight on the provincial government, which blunts Toronto’s economic edge (its quality of life) by starving it of funding. Such a campaign would have turned heads and created a real alternative worth considering.

The second way new challenger brands can grow is by getting new buyers to enter the market or by inspiring non-voters to vote. Whether in the public or private sphere, lack of engagement is generally down to one of two issues — access or relevance. Lack of access means there are financial, educational or physical barriers keeping people from voting, whereas a lack of relevance means that people don’t see any benefits from engaging with the political process as a whole.

In the U.S. 2008 Democratic primaries, the Barack Obama campaign was up against a better-known and better-funded Senator Hillary Clinton. The only way he could compete was to expand the electoral base - inspiring people who hadn’t engaged in the political process to get up and vote.

To reach them, he built a true grassroots campaign and devoted its most valuable asset (his time) to engage with them directly. He spent most of his time in depressed communities - in their local barbershops, gymnasiums, restaurants and homes.

He also spoke plainly and avoided policy jargon to ensure his message was understood by the many, not just an educated few. He had an inspiring rallying call, urging everyday people to re-engage in public life, “Yes We Can,” and a slogan that signalled a new brand of politics that lifted people and the country up, “Change We Can Believe In.”

In the Toronto election, voter turnout was down 20 per cent, compared to the 2014 election, with even lower turnouts in the city’s periphery than its core. The Keesmaat campaign obviously failed to expand the electoral base.

While she may have made her presence felt in some areas and some selected media, her campaign did not do that broadly enough. In terms of her story and messaging, there was no single inspiring and differentiated slogan — rather a flabby pun about the city “needing city builders,” and an abstract and weak statement about wanting to “Build a Better Toronto with You.” Neither of which was going to get anyone off their seats.

Challengers have a better chance of beating incumbents by offering a radically different proposition and by inspiring the unengaged. This requires giving existing voters better reasons to believe and those left out of the political process, more reasons to belong. In the end, having the courage to say what is not being said is the required constant. This is something that Keesmaat perhaps had, but ultimately her campaign failed to convey.