The Social Media Usage and the Transformation of Political Marketing and Campaigning of the Emerging Democracy in Indonesia

Abstract

For nearly one decade, parties, their candidates and electorates across the world have become acquainted with the Internet and social media usage especially during campaigns and elections. Concerning this trend, scholars have investigated the proliferation of the Internet and social media usage in the political sphere. However, little attention has been directed to explore to what extent the proliferation of social media usage have transformed marketization of politics and campaigning of parties and their candidates during direct local elections in the emerging democracy of Indonesia. By using the case study method, in-depth interviews have been conducted to address the campaign volunteers, media relations’ managers, political consultants, candidates, and pollsters during the 2012 gubernatorial election in Jakarta. As concerns its contributions, this paper argues that concerning the electoral and media arenas, there has been parallelism between marketization of politics and professionalization of campaigning among parties and their candidates during this election. As a lesson learnt from the marketization and the professionalization of campaigning of Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama, this paper reveals that the integrative participatory political marketing (IPPM) and the mixed-mediated and online political campaigning (MMOPC) have been successfully utilized due to strong support from voluntary campaigners of outstanding candidates that have creatively combined the axis of the complementary powers of the underground, of the air war and of the online war of marketing and campaigning. As a practical contribution, this chapter identifies the fact that there are countries that apply the candidate-centered system rather than party-centered system and have a multi party system (such as Indonesia); once partisanship to parties and their candidates has been reduced with the passing of time, there has been extensive use of the Internet and social media networks sites by candidates, by their campaign teams and by voluntary-campaigners, the IPPM and MMOPC can be used to fortify and buzz of the personal political brand of candidates in the marketing and campaigning for winning elections.

1 Introduction

To date, the Internet and social media as tools of marketization and professionalization of campaigning of parties and their candidates have taken their place in democratic countries all over the world. Within the US political context, some of us might have seen the extensive usage of social media that occurred during the 2008 and 2012 US presidential election. During those US presidential elections, Obama’s campaign teams, campaign managers, campaign consultants, and campaign volunteers succeeded in using the Internet and social media networks not only for raising campaign donations, but also for mobilizing swing electorates. Meanwhile, within the European political context, some of us might have seen how parties and their candidates have tremendously advanced online professionalization of campaigns during Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential campaign, the 2010 UK Elections, and the 2011 Poland Elections.

Modern television broadcasting and the advancement of ICT always carry out changing patterns of political communication and political marketing of parties and their candidates while dealing with structural and cultural changes of political market environments. Since 1960s, when television became strongly involved in the political sphere, there have been changes in the way politicians packaged their political messages and self-presentation to connect with the electorates (Maarek 1995). The rise of television exposure has transformed the mediatisation of politics wherein political marketing and campaigning have shifted from the propaganda age to the media and marketing ages (Wring 2005). As marketization of politics gradually intruded the political sphere, most of the campaigning of the parties and their candidates has been carefully designed and tailored to follow the media logic. Meanwhile, once the post-modern campaigning (Norris 2000), the professional campaigning (Gibson and Römmele 2001), and the hyper-media campaigning gradually arrived in political sphere, there have been increasing numbers of the Internet (from web 1.0 to web 2.0) and social media networks usage by parties, their candidates, and electorates across democratic countries in the world.

Within the context of the emerging democrary of Indonesia, the Internet and the germ of social media usage have contributed to the processes of democratization of politics against the Soeharto authoritarian regime (1966–1998) (see Hill and Sen 2000, 2002; Lim 2003a, b, 2005; Hill 2003). Scholars have investigated the usage of the Internet and social media in Indonesian politics. However, little attention has been focused to reveal how and to what extent the proliferation of the Internet, and social media usage have refashioned political marketing and campaign model of parties and their candidates during the national or local elections.

Meanwhile, once the Indonesian political landscape has changed dramatically since Soeharto’s New Order—as indicated by the establishment of a new democratic political system, the mass media system, and the election system—the extensive usage of the Internet and social media networks as political marketing and campaign tools of parties and their candidates have gradually emerged. In regard to the political sphere, the Internet and social media have shifted away from their previous roles as the tool for democratization of politics against authoritarian political regimes to their new prominent role as tools of marketization and professionalization of campaigning of political actors and political organizations. Moreover, during campaigns and elections, parties and their candidates have gradually used the Internet and social media networks as strategic professional campaigning tools in the national election (the parliamentary election and the presidential election) and the local election of head/vice head of the Local Government of Indonesia.¹

Indeed, to date, most of parties and their candidates that run for national and local elections in Indonesia have strongly recognized that media outlets are very important media for managing the positive impression and for packaging and delivering the contents of political advertising as well as for political debates across various electorate groups. As marketing and campaigning have been strongly implemented using the commercial media outlets and because no rigorous regulations are in use to limit the campaign budgets that are spent on commercial media outlets, campaigning financing of parties and their candidates has been constantly increasing. As a consequence, only the richer candidates or parties would succeed in developing their marketization and professionalization campaigning programs using various commercial media outlets during national and local elections. Otherwise, the rest of the candidates that lacked campaign financing have had to search for alternative strategies of marketization of politics and professionalization of campaigning in order to win elections.

Against this background, this chapter will be specifically directed at investigating how and to what extent the Internet and social media usage have transformed the marketization and professionalization of campaigning of candidates during the direct local elections in Jakarta, Indonesia. In doing so, this chapter will focus on two research questions: (1) to what extent the proliferation of social media usage has stimulated the emergence of the integrated political marketing model (IPPM) and (2) to what extent the mixed-mediated and online political campaigning (MMOPC) have been successfully advanced by Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama as the winner candidate during the 2012 Gubernatorial Election in Jakarta?

2 Political Marketing of the Candidate for Governor/Vice Governor

Some models of marketization and campaigning of parties and their candidates have been in use in democratic countries. In some of those countries where elections are focused on candidates and not parties, political marketing of candidates can be advanced during the presidential elections (Newman 1994). Meanwhile, within the context of democratic countries where elections are focused on parties and not on candidates, the political marketing of parties will dominate.

Under the party-centred system, there are three models of political marketing of parties: the Product-Oriented Party (POP), the Sales-Oriented Party (SOP), and the Market-Oriented Party (MOP) (Lees-Marshment 2001, 2004, 2008; Lees-Marshment and Lilleker 2005). Meanwhile, considering that political marketing as a concept is not similar with market-orientation, some preferred to posit the measurement of attitudes and behaviors of political market-orientation of parties (Ormrod 2005, 2009) and political market-orientation of parties in regard with four kinds of political market arenas that are: (1) the internal party arena; (2) the parliamentary arena; (3) the media arena, and (4) the electoral arena (Stromback 2010).

Meanwhile, as countries have extreme multi-party systems, reduced electorate partisanship to parties, weakness of parties’ organization and parties that are very reliant on the political brand of candidates, the marketization of politics and campaigning of candidates will be strongly favored over the marketing and campaigning of parties. In other words, as parties have already lacked political partisanship across groups of electorates, political marketing of candidates seems to be dominant over the political marketing of parties. Within the context of the emerging democracy of Indonesia, there have been parallelisms and complementary functions between political marketing of parties and political marketing of candidates and vice versa during the national and local elections.

Post-Soeharto Indonesia has a multi party system characterized by diversity; as there is less partisanship of electorates towards parties, parties rely much upon the personal branding of candidates, therefore political marketing of candidates has superseded political marketing of parties. However, there have been parallelisms between political marketing and campaigning of candidates and political marketing and campaigning of parties, therefore, the complementary functions of marketization and campaigning commonly exist during national and local elections. Taking into account these conditions, the political marketing concept of candidates (Newman 1994) and political marketing of parties (Lees-Marshment 2001, 2004, 2008; Lees-Marshment and Lilleker 2005) in their relationship with media and electoral arenas (Stromback 2010) will be used as the main conceptual framework to posit new alternative models of marketization of politics and professionalization of campaigning that are the Integrated Participatory Political Marketing (IPPM) and the Mixed-Mediated and Online Political Campaigning (MMOPC) concepts.

2.1 The Emergence of Integrated Participatory Political Marketing (IPPM)

As a concept, integrative participatory political marketing (IPPM) can be derived from the two main concepts that are the participatory political communication and the integrated marketing communication (IMC). Theoretically speaking, the idea of political participatory communication stems from a wide rage of existing concepts such as the principle of democracy, communication development, the concept of public participation and political participation. The earlier participatory political communication concept emanates from the participatory democracy theory as suggested by Barber (1984). However, Barber (1984) did not clearly outline and define what exactly the meaning of participatory political communication is. Considering that participatory democracy is inseparable from public participation, (Meijer et al. 2008) then proposed three concepts of public participation in political spheres that include: (1) the policy participation, which means the type of public participation either to support or to criticize government policies; (2) the political participation, which is a type of public participation to direct or to influence the process of political decision-making during the campaign and election and (3) the social participation, which is a type of public participation that is used to increase the social capital of democratic countries.

Other scholars also proposed the concept of participatory communication that originates from political participation, communication development, and campaign communication concepts. As concerns communication development, Tufte and Mefalopulos (2009: 6–7) have outlined four types of participatory communication that are passive participation, participation by consultation, participation by collaboration, and empowerment participation. In terms of campaign communication, participatory political communication has been posited by Lileker and Jackson (2010a, b) that refer to the participatory/voluntary activities of the electorates to engage in the political campaign activities of parties and candidates either in the unmediated political communication or the mediated political communication, such as the participatory style in the web-campaigning.

Meanwhile, marketing scholars have posited IMC as a concept since the 1990s. Schultz (1993) and Schultz et al. (1993:1–10) have firstly introduced the integrated marketing communication (IMC) as a concept when the decline of mass marketing, the rise of de-massification, and the emergence of empowerment of customers occurred within the global marketing phenomena. According to Schultz and Schultz (2004:9), the development of the IMC has been advanced in regard to three main factors that are: the development and diffusion of digital technology, the increasing emphasis on brands and branding as major competitive differentiating tools, and the increasing focus on multi-nationalization and globalization as marketing spread across the traditional geographic boundaries. Generally speaking, since the 1990s, the IMC has gradually shifted the traditional marketing model based on 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion), has advanced the SIVA model (solution, information, value, and access), and then has favoured the development of the IMC model due to changes in the nature of corporate communication and changes in marketing environments (Granati 2012:xv).

Theoretically speaking, IMC as a concept emphasizes the added value of a comprehensive plan that is useful in evaluating the strategic roles of several communications methods (such as the general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public relations) and to strengthen the maximum communication impact (Schultz 1993). IMC also refers to the audience-driven business process of strategically managing stakeholders, content, channels, and results of brand communication programs (Kliatchko 2008:140). As a consequence of the fact that marketers started using the IMC, they need to smartly craft the synergy, creation, and integration of communication to direct the process for planning, executing, and monitoring the brand messages, which enable the creation of brand-customer relationships (Ouwersloot and Duncan 2008:14). In this respect, by employing this concept, marketers must decide to what extent each function of IMC will be used by taking into account eight elements that are advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, publicity and public relations, personal selling, packaging, events and sponsorship, and customer services (Ouwersloot and Duncan 2008:10–11).

The implementations of IMC will rely on three main players (Ouwersloot and Duncan 2008:20–21). First, the companies and the brands behind the marketing communication should have something to sell. Second, the marketing communication agencies have become the strategic partner by offering several marketing and communication services to the targeted customer. In terms of the marketing communication agencies, there are two main categories (Ouwersloot and Duncan 2008:27). First, the full-service agency is the agency that provides all or most of the services needed in its area of IMC specialization. Second, the specialist agency is type of the agency that provides special services in particular area of IMC programs. Third, the media as the channel of communication to deliver the content and product information and its brand that should be directed to several targeted customers.

Beyond the mass-mediated IMC concept, for nearly one decade, the advancement of IMC within online political communication has taken place in line with the extensive usage of the Internet and social media networks in political market arenas. The adaptation of IMC will enhance the strategy of online participatory marketing and campaigning. According to Lilleker et al. (2011), there have been four tendencies of web campaign model: informing, engaging, persuading, and mobilizing and interacting. In this respect, the Internet and social media usage can be generated as a tool for listening, engaging, creating the political message and sharing and integrating values and information in the political market and repeating the political message, political product or mentioning the personal branding of candidates and parties (Adi and Lilleker Darren 2012: 9–12).

As seen from Fig. 7.1, by anchoring the IMC concept as posited by Ouwersloot and Duncan (2008), the IPPM can be seen as a parallel process between the political marketing of parties (Lees-Marshment 2001, 2004, 2008; and Lees-Marshment and Lilleker (2005) on the one hand, and political marketing of candidates (Newman 1994), on the other. In this respect, the integrated marketing communication and political marketing can be set up as “an organizational philosophy, principles and strategy” to develop the professional campaign structures, strategies and tools to address various political market arenas (Stromback 2010). By using those concepts, the political consultants, campaign volunteers, and the mainstream mass media and citizen journalism will be the important partners of the implementation of communication campaign programs. As anchored by the IMC concept, the campaign platforms can be expected to strongly stimulate the participatory/voluntary push marketing and the pull marketing in the electoral market arenas.

Fig. 7.1

The integrated participatory political marketing (IPPM): a proposed model

Compared with the existing political marketing of parties (Lees-Marshment 2001, 2004, 2008) and political marketing of candidates (Newman 1994), the key advantages of the IPPM as a new model is that the axis of the strategic of political marketing power no longer relies on the parties, candidates and their campaign consultants and marketers per se, but also on the voluntary campaigners of candidates that have emerged as powerful actors to generate the pull marketing and push marketing of parties and their candidates during campaign and election.

Moreover, unlike with the previous political marketing models of parties and their candidates which were fully steered by the central organization of parties and campaign organizations of candidates and very relied upon by political consultants, the IPPM had immanent abilities to generate resources of participatory power either from journalists’/senior editors’ communities of the mass media industries or voluntary campaigners. In this respect, more attractive and influential personal political branding of parties and/or their candidates and more participatory campaigning have been generated among volunteers, and increased power of political marketing and campaigning of parties and/or their candidates can be achieved for winning the elections.

3 The Rise of the Mixed Mediated and Online Political Campaigning (MMOPC)

Television has remained the prominent medium of political marketing and campaigning. Meanwhile, easier access to the Internet and social media networks has been offered by smartphone technology that is commonly used by parties’ leaders, parties’ officials, campaign managers of parties, and their candidates as well as electorates. As there have been various types of online interactions using the Internet and social media (Rice and Haythornthwaite 2006), they may have advanced the smart hyper-media campaign during elections.

In regard to mediated and online communications, there are three important aspects that should be considered by parties and their candidates. The first important issue is how each political party should enable the promotion and delivery of their political product (such as ideas, ideology, policies and candidates personalities) to the public via various mass media. Another issue is how each political candidate has been enabled to deliver his/her policies and image by means of various media outlets. The subsequent issue is how each mass media industry has mediated and constructed positive and negative political news frameworks and political impressions both for political parties and candidates using various types of media outlets (Lees-Marshment and Lilleker 2005).

Once parties, their candidates and electorates, have extensively used the Internet and social media networks there have been various patterns of communication and campaigning that have resulted from them. As outlined by Fig. 7.2, by modifying the proposed-model of the social media usage made by Lilleker et al. (2011) and Adi dan Lilleker (2012: 9–12), the Internet and social media can be generated as a smart tool for listening, engaging, creating the political message, integrating and sharing, persuasion concerning values and information that are presented by parties and their candidates to political market arenas. Moreover, these tools can be used for repeating the political message, buzzing political products, or mentioning the personal branding of candidates and parties as well as mobilizing and interacting across volatile electorates.

Fig. 7.2

The Pattern of the Internet and Social Media Usage as the Medium or Arena of Political Marketing. Source: Adaptation form: (1) Ana Adi and Darren G. Lilleker (2012). Getting the message out: Social media daily activity plan. The Creative Enterprise Bureau, The Media School, Bournemouth University, UK, July 6, 2012, dan (2) Darren G.Lilleker, (et.al. 2011). Informing, Engaging, Mobilising, or Interacting: Searching for a European model of web campaigning. European Journal of Communication September 2011 vol. 26 no. 3 195–213

Yet, traditional and mediated marketing and campaigning are still being used by parties and their candidates to connect with various groups of voters. However, as candidates, parties and electorates have successfully used the Internet and social media networks as marketing and campaign tools, the mixed-mediated and online political campaigning (MMOPC) can be implemented as outlined by Fig. 7.3. Based on this campaign model, there are three important campaign elements that complement each others: (1) the online war campaigning of parties and their candidates that is run using the Internet and social media networks; (2) the mediated war campaigning of parties and their candidates, which includes free mass media publication and the paid mass media publication and political advertising and (3) the ground war campaigning of parties and their candidates which includes the direct selling and door-to-door and word-of-mouth campaigning. Theoretically speaking, this model can be established not only by considering the specific conditions of parties and their candidates whether incumbent or non-incumbent, as leaders, challengers, and followers in the political market arena (Butler and Collins 1994:35) per se, but also concerning the characteristics, conditions and development of volatile electorates during campaigns and elections.

Fig. 7.3

Mixed mediated-political marketing model. Source: Adaptation from: (1) McNair, Brian. 201. An introduction to political communication. Routledge: London and New York; (2) Darren G. Lilleker, (et.al. 2011). Informing, engaging, mobilising or interacting: searching for a European model of web campaigning. European Journal of Communication September 2011 vol. 26 no. 3 195–213

The subsequent question is how and to what extent this model can be implemented by parties, candidates, consultants, campaign managers, and volunteers. Generally speaking, based on this model, those three campaign elements can be utilized simultaneously, consecutively, and complementary. Once it was implemented, the employment of the direct-selling marketing and campaigning potentially leads to the establishment of the mixed-mediated political marketing and campaigning model of parties and their candidates. Under the conditions of mounting volatile electorates and reduced party partisanship, this method will be more effective to re-engage the voters’ trust, loyalties, and sympathies. In this respect, parties and candidates continue the traditional face-to-face direct selling and marketing of their unique personal branding alongside with the mediated and online war of their marketing and campaigning strategy. Because of the complementary functions of these strategies, more and more parties and their candidates succeed in the ground war of marketing and campaigning by using direct selling and the word-of-mouth and they favour the increased use of mediated war the online war for marketing and campaigning and vice versa. The resultant is that more positive personal brand of candidates and or parties’ candidates can be crafted in the media and electoral arenas during the series of campaign and election events.

4 The Emergence of IPPM and MMOPC During the 2012 Gubernatorial Election of Special Region of Jakarta

4.1 The 2012 Gubernatorial Elections of the Special Region of Jakarta

Constituted as the capital city since 1945, Jakarta has become the most strategic city in Indonesia. Even though the decentralization and autonomy policies of the Local Governments have been implemented in the local provinces, regions and municipalities, Jakarta has remained the most important centre of political and economic power. As this city has become the home of the central office government department/agencies, the home of the central offices of the national parties, and location of the headquarters of national and multinational corporations, the gubernatorial elections of Jakarta have become the most interesting political issue in Indonesia.

Meanwhile, compared with other Indonesian provinces, Jakarta exhibits more diverse socio-demographic voter characteristics. It is inhabited by 9,607,787 people (Centre of Indonesian Statistical Agencies 2010), the majority of which are Indonesian educated middle class who have access to various media outlets. Jakarta has the highest concentration of urban professional and middle-class communities in Indonesia. Therefore, the gubernatorial elections of Jakarta have always deserved significant attention among leaders of parties, candidates, as well as among the members of the national and international business communities in Indonesia.

The 2012 gubernatorial elections of Jakarta took place under different conditions as compared with the previous elections that were held in 2007. First, during the 2007 gubernatorial elections of Jakarta, there have been only two candidates that were nominated as governor/vice governor: Fauzi Bowo-Prijanto (nominated by the coalition of the Golkar Party, The Indonesian Struggle Democratic Party, The Nation Awakening Party, National Mandatory Party, and the Democratic Party) as incumbent candidate, and Adang Darajatun-Dhani Irawan (nominated by The Prosperous Justice Party/Partai Keadilan Sejahtera) as challenger candidate. The first direct election was held on August 8, 2007 and was run under Law No.32/2004. At that time, in the first-round election, Fauzi Bowo-Prijanto came out as the winner by getting 57.8 % of the votes. Some Indonesian political consultants and pollsters argued that the key strategic factors that led to Fauzi Bowo’s success story of marketing and campaigning during that election was the prominent role of his political consultants and campaign teams. They have successfully lobbied to parties’ leaders to form coalitions of parties that led to the nomination of only two gubernatorial candidates.²

During the 2012 elections, there were six candidates that ran for office during the first-round of the elections. There were two candidates that entered the second round of the 2012 Gubernatorial Election of Jakarta. In the first round of that election, there were four candidates that had been nominated by parties and coalitions of parties, and there were two non-party candidates. An iron law of political market is that the more candidates compete in the political arena, the more volatile electorates are and create opportunities for each candidate to win the election (Table 7.1).

Table 7.1 The parties and the candidates during the 2012 gubernatorial elections of the special region of Jakarta

Second, during the 2012 gubernatorial elections of Jakarta, even though, to some extent, political consultants took upon themselves the task of organizing the campaigns of the parties’ candidates, most of them were strongly challenged by the emergence of participatory/voluntary-campaigners that mainly supported Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama. As seen from Table 7.2, various hired pollsters supervised most of the candidates and political consultants and each candidate had a particular type of relationship with their political consultants. To some degree, however, most of them failed to fully persuade and mobilise the increasingly volatile electorates of Jakarta. Otherwise, only Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama’s hired political consultants and campaign managers succeeded in assembling a large numbers of participatory/voluntary campaigners.

Table 7.2 The pollsters and political consultants hired by the candidates of the 2012 gubernatorial election of Jakarta

Third, slightly contrasting with previous elections that were mainly driven by party-centred rather than candidate-centred marketing and campaigning, the 2012 gubernatorial elections in Jakarta were characterized by candidate-centred marketing and campaigning wherein the prominent role of personal branding of candidates superseded the political branding of parties. During that election, political branding of candidates had priority over that of parties. In doing so, each candidate tried to develop his personal political branding. In this respect, some of them (Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramly, Hidayat Nurwahid-Didik Rahbini, and Alex Nurdin-Nono Sampono) shaped up their personal branding based on or in line with their political party brand.

Meanwhile, other candidates, such as Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama did not believe that their political parties’ brand would strengthen their personal political brand. Therefore, they tried to elevate their personal political branding, which is inseparable from that of the parties.³ Yet, the rest of the non-party candidates tended to generate their personal political branding. However, because of the lack of attractiveness of their personal branding and political products, most of them—especially non-party candidates—failed to improve their personal branding. Generally speaking, only one of the leading candidates, Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama, successfully generated his personal political brand within electoral and media arenas.

Fourth, compared with the previous election, the political market arenas of the 2012 gubernatorial election of Jakarta showed different characteristics. In this respect, during that election, Jakarta’s electorates expected more from non-incumbent candidates rather than the incumbent ones. What were the expectations? Most of the volatile electorates needed that candidates offered them the best solution for several existing social problems of Jakarta, such as: (1) the social economic divide between the rich and the poor; (2) the unresolved problem of public transportation management; (3) poor public service management system of traditional markets; (4) the annual flood disaster; (5) health service for poor people, etc. Indeed, as regards those public demands, each candidate tried to develop his political products based on candidate-centred marketing and campaigning on the one hand, and the party-centred marketing and campaigning on the other. However, because of the lack of political trust of electorates towards parties, only candidates that strongly pursued the candidate-centred marketing and campaigning and had a more attractive personal political branding (such as Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama) could raise the political engagement of the volatile electorates of Jakarta.⁴

After the first round of the 2012 elections, according to the series of survey researches of the Indonesian Survey Circle, Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Rahmi still retained the top rate of electability among the candidates, by getting 43.7 % of total voters. However, his rate of electability had been decreasing as time went by (by March 2012 at 49.1 %, by May 2012 at 43.3 % and began to slowly increase by June 2012 at 43.7 %). In contrast, Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama’s rate of electability had been rising with the passage of time (from 14.4 % by March 2012, to 20.9 % by May 2012, and then had slowly been declining to 14.4 % by June 2012). The most interesting trend this survey detected is an increase in the huge amount of undecided voters (from 17.4 % by March 2012 and May 2012 to 29.7 % by June 2012).

Generally speaking, as seen from Tables 7.3 and 7.4, unlike the previous gubernatorial elections of Jakarta, one of the most important stumbling blocks for candidates, parties and their hired political consultants during the 2012 Gubernatorial Elections of Jakarta was the increase of volatile electorates. Based on the series of survey researches concerning the first round of elections, most of the Indonesian pollsters forcasted Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramli as the potential winner candidate. In this respect, even though equipped with a more precise sampling method, most of Indonesian pollsters failed to produce more accurate prediction about the voter preferences due to the huge number of undecided voters. Therefore, the first round of the elections showed different results. Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramli’s strongest competitor, Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama, came out as the winner by collecting 42.6 % (1,847,157) of the total number of votes, and Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramli came out second after getting 34.05 % (1,476,648) of the total number of votes.

Table 7.3 The rate of likeability of the candidates in the 2012 gubernatorial election of Jakarta

Table 7.4 The degree of electability of the candidates for the 2012 gubernatorial elections of Jakarta

4.2 The IPPM: The Lesson Learnt from Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama’s Political Marketing Strategy

The incumbent candidate, Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramli seemed very reliant on the political marketing of parties—which is based on the Product-Oriented Party (POP)—during the first round of the elections; then he began to develop the Sales-Oriented Party (SOP) strategy and shifted to the Market-Oriented Party (MOP) strategy during the second round of the elections. Meanwhile, the non-incumbent candidates, Hidayat Nur Wahid-Didik J.Rahbini and Alex Nurdin-Nono Sampono also used the political marketing of parties, but unlike incumbent candidates, they combined the political marketing of parties with the political marketing of candidates. In this respect, Hidayat Nur Wahid-Didik J. Rahbini seemed to employ the Sales-Oriented Party strategy, while Alex Nurdin-Nono Sampono utilized the Product-Oriented Party strategy. Generally speaking, most of the candidates that were very reliant on the political marketing of parties failed to enter the second round of the elections because of the weaknesses of the internal political marketer of their parties’ campaign organization, on the one hand, and because of the reduced attractiveness of their personal political branding across electorates.⁵ Meanwhile, the non-party candidates, Faisal Basrie-Biem Benyamin and Hedardji Supandji-Achmad Riza were more likely to implement the political marketing of candidates. However, because of lack of strong personal political branding, they failed to enter the second round of the elections (Table 7.5).

Table 7.5 The tendencies in the implementation of the political marketing model of the candidates in the 2012 gubernatorial election of the special region of Jakarta

Meanwhile, slightly constrasting with the incumbent candidates and the rest of the aformentioned non-incumbent candidates, Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama seemed to successfully implement smarter political marketing of candidates. Professional communities in Jakarta first endorsed Jokowi’s integrated participatory political marketing. Most of them had backgrounds as political activists against the authoritarian Soeharto New Order regime (1966–1998).⁶ These volunteer communities had very eagerly stood for Jokowidodo to be nominated by an Indonesian political party as the candidate for the 2012 Gubernatorial Election of Jakarta. Applying the political marketing of candidates, before the first round of the elections, Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama had begun to use the Product-Oriented Candidate (POC) strategy. Thus, Jokowidodo introduced himself in the political market arenas as the current Mayor of Surakarta Regency, Central Java and succeeded in developing an outstanding public services management system in his region. In a similar manner with Jokowido’s, Basuki Tjahaya Purnama also presented himself to the public as the former successful Head of the West Belitung Regency, Bangka Belitung Province who had promoted some outstanding popular policies—such as providing health services and education services with priority to the underdeveloped areas and health subsidies for poor communities—that were appreciated by his electorate.

As regards increasing volatile electorates of Jakarta, Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama began to follow the Sales-Oriented Candidates (SOC) strategy. Based on this political marketing strategy, his election staff devised the ground war marketing and campaigning and used the mixed mediated and online political campaigning (MMOPC). Firstly focused on the ground war marketing and campaigning, Jokowi’s campaigning products were centred on his success story based on the innovative public service system in the health services, managing the traditional market services, and promoting the automotive-car industries strategy as well as encouraging the development of local vocational schools and creating more opportunities for the creation of new jobs. Moreover, he had begun to utilize the Market-Oriented Candidate (MOC) strategy, before the first round of the elections by adopting marketing intelligence, survey researches, and focus group discussions to adjust his political product in order to meet the voters’ expectations, needs, and demands. Based on this strategy, he successfully co-created his personal branding as tailored by the expectations, wants, and needs of the Indonesian urban middle class as the strategic electorates of Jakarta.

Meanwhile, as of the end of April 2012, when the Indonesian Democratic Struggle Party and the Gerindra Party nominated him, he formed his campaign team which was headed by Mr. Boy Bernardi Sadikin—son of the former Governor of Jakarta (1966–1977), General (ret.) Ali Sadikin—and the party-centred political marketing strategy began being implemented.⁷ Before the first round of the elections, the political marketing approach of the above-mentioned coalition of parties had been carried out on the basis of the product-oriented parties (POP) strategy, and then it shifted to the market-oriented party (MOP) strategy. Moreover, before the second round of the elections, they began to advance their political marketing and campaign programs based on the integrated participatory political marketing (IPPM). Jokowi’s personal branding attracted hundreds of thousands of voluntary campaigners.

Generally speaking, the IPPM model was developed based on two main objectives: (1) enlarging the positive news frame of free and paid publicity, and (2) accumulating huge political endorsements from the participatory/voluntary campaigner communities of electorates, either by direct and pull marketing (grassroots efforts), and push marketing by using social media. In this respect, the IPPM model was firmly established not only based on political marketing of parties per se, but also fully by being supported by the participatory/voluntary political marketing of professional urban communities who had no officially affiliation with any political parties.⁸

The IPPM model of Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama was developed on the basis of the three steps of political marketing strategy.⁹ The first step was implemented based on the traditional/face-to-face participatory political marketing to address various segmented electorates. In this respect, voters mainly came from three main groups: (1) trader communities of the traditional market of Jakarta, and (2) the urban professional communities and young communities of Jakarta; (3) the poorest communities who live in the small sub-region (Kampoeng) of Jakarta (Fig. 7.4).

Fig. 7.4

The integrated participatory political marketing (IPPM) model implemented by Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama during the 2012 Gubernatorial elections of the special region of Jakarta

The participatory political campaigning within the framework of the mediated political communication was developed as the second step. To this end, Jokowidodo and his campaign team developed “personal close contact” and organized special informal meetings with the senior editors of political departments of national newspapers, senior producers of private/commercial national television broadcasting companies in Jakarta. The main goals were: (1) establishing personal connections and attachment with them; (2) sharing the ideas about the future of the local government of Jakarta as the capital city of Indonesia; and (3) meeting their expectations towards the new Governor of Jakarta. Finally, to amplify Jokowi’s personal branding, his voluntary campaigner communities established the use of participatory political marketing in the online political communication arenas. To do so, Jokowidodo and his campaign teams and voluntary campaigner communities organized the direct informal and formal meetings with various groups of the electorate and buzzed positive branding of Jokowi using the Internet and the social media networks to persuade the volatile electorates of Jakarta.

4.3 From “Blusukan” to the Mixed Mediated and Online Political Campaigning (MMOPC): Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama’s Smart Campaign Model

Guided by IPPM, Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama’s campaign teams tried to establish and generate the ground war campaigning using traditional face-to-face direct marketing and campaigning (“blusukan”) to enhance the commentary functions of the airwaves war and the online war campaigning. To do so, the three types of political marketing had been used: (1) traditional political marketing which is generated from the direct selling, door-to-door campaign and word of mouth; (2) political marketing and campaigning on the Internet and social media; and (3) the free and paid private/commercial mass media political marketing, especially television broadcasting.

First, the traditional political marketing was used to develop and implement the best-tailored approach using direct selling, door-to-door, and both traditional and online word-of-mouth campaign methods to address the mounting volatile electorates of Jakarta directly and personally. In this respect, Jokowi and his campaign teams, as well as the campaign volunteers, utilized the humanistic communication approach to them. The volatile electorates were mainly made up from two main groups: (1) trader communities of the traditional market of Jakarta, and (2) the urban communities, especially the poorest communities who live in the small sub-region (Kampoeng) of Jakarta. This humanistic campaign approach of the ground war campaign is called “blusukan”. ¹⁰ The term humanistic campaign approach became a popular issue across commercial media outlets. Taking into account that this humanistic campaign approach improved news values across media outlets, most of Jokowi’s campaign activities attracted positive news reactions from Indonesian newspapers and commercial television broadcasting.

The other groups of segmented and targeted voters were the young government official staff of the Special Region of Jakarta. Why was this group also important? The main reason was that by addressing the young and idealist bureaucrats of the Special Region of Jakarta, the campaign teams, political consultants, and campaign managers could easily explore the weaknesses of incumbent candidates’ leadership (Governor Fauzi Bowo) and to assess the electorates’ needs and expectations as regards the new governor. As the qualitative data had already been provided, Jokowidodo’s campaign teams, political consultants and campaign managers could adjust their campaign products, styles of packaging and delivering not only in order to meet the demands and expectations of the bureaucrats of the Special Region of Jakarta per se, but also to fulfil the expectations, needs and demands of Jakarta’ electorates (Fig. 7.5).¹¹

Fig. 7.5

Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama’s Smart Campaign Model: from “Blusukan” to mixed mediated and online political campaigning (MMOPC)

The other segmented and targeted political market arenas were the senior editors of the political departments of national newspapers, senior producer of private/commercial national television broadcasting companies in Jakarta. Mr.Budi Purnomo, Jokowidodo’s Head of the Media Centre, organized special meetings with senior editors/producers of commercial media outlets with the following agenda: (1) making personal contact with them; (2) sharing ideas about the future of the Local Government of Jakarta as the capital city of Indonesia; (3) absorbing their expectations towards the new Governor of Jakarta; and (4) organizing strategic cooperation to strengthen the positive Jokowi’s personal branding. Most interestingly, the agenda was carried out and, even though Jokowidodo did not spend for commercial space in the mass media—because of reduced campaign budgets—he obtained positive media coverage during the campaign and the elections.

The third segmented and targeted political market arena was that of the urban professional communities and the middle class electorates of Jakarta. Thus, a special team of Jokowi’s campaign volunteers was organized. This team was formed from members of various professional and urban communities that did not want the incumbent candidate (Governor Fauzi Bowo) to be re-elected. As it was supported by hundreds thousands of volunteers, this team vigorously marketed their main political idea, i.e., “The New Jakarta” (Jakarta Baru). ¹² Guided by the principles of the candidate-centred marketing and campaigning, they tried to market Jokowi’s branding as “the hoped for and upcoming leaders of Jakarta” and mobilised hundreds of thousands of anonymous campaign volunteers by extensively using social media features. Once in line with the direct selling and marketing approach, Jokowi’s campaign managers imagined and crafted Jokowi’s personal brand image as that of an artist and celebrity. Taking into account that in the imagination of the volatile voters of Jakarta their expected leaders should look like idols, by using the journalism techniques of tabloidization, Jokowidodo’s personal brand was strongly delineated by his media centre, then re-linked, and re-mentioned by his campaign volunteers using the social media networks.

Massively supported by various social media networks users, this mixed mediated and online political campaign (MMOPC) strategy was successfully advanced by Jokowi‘s campaign teams, consultants and voluntary campaigners and placed Jokowi’s name as the top personal political brand.¹³ First, this was done by informing and by engaging political marketing strategies; using the social media, Jokowi and his campaign team extensively used Twitter and Skype for making personal contact with hundreds of thousands of volunteers and swing voters¹⁴ during the first round and second round of the elections.¹⁵ Second, Jokowi’s political marketers mobilized and interacted with volatile electorates that were very frequent users of the social media networks. Another strategy that was used by Jokowidodo’s political marketers was that of founding the “The Jokowi-Ahok Social Media Volunteers” (JASMEV) by August 2012.¹⁶ As a result, before the second round of the elections, they had more than 10,000 volunteers for social media based political marketers,¹⁷ and 562,598 unique users supported Jokowidodo, while only 309,678 unique users supported Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramli. In the social media networks, there were 1,365,234 unique users who mentioned Jokowidodo’s personal brand.¹⁸

As the mixed-mediated and online political campaigning (MMOPC) had been successfully implemented, Jokowi’s personal brand generated more positive brand mentions and attracted more positive news across commercial media outlets. The main factor was that most of Jokowi’s campaign events and personal activities championed the “new values” across commercial media outlets. Jokowi’ news values met with the logic of mass media coverage. Therefore, Jokowi’s political news coverage—in hard news, soft news, or feature programs—benefited from the increasing number of private/commercial television programs. As a result, Jokowi, as the non-incumbent candidate, became “the media-darling” across various commercial media outlets.¹⁹

Table 7.6 Distribution of voters in the 2012 gubernatorial elections of Jakarta: Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama vs. Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramli in the second-round of election

As he enjoyed positive coverage in the social media network sites and in the mass media, Jokowi’s personal brand attracted the majority of the volatile electorates of Jakarta. In spite of the fact that, before the elections, Fauzi Bowo was predicted as the winner in those elections, after the first round of elections, Jokowido-Basuki Tjahaya Purna was the winner; he was voted by 1,847,157 voters, i.e., 42.60 % of the total number of voters, while Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Rahmli came out second as he obtained 1,476,648 votes, i.e., or 34.05 % of the total number voters. As there was no candidate with more than 50 % of the total number of votes in the first round of the elections, the second round was organized.²⁰ The second round of the elections was held in September 2012. The result surprised the incumbent candidate and most of the Indonesian pollsters and political consultants; Jokowidodo-Basuki Tjahaya Purnama obtained 2,472,130 votes or 53.82 % of the total number of voters, while Fauzi Bowo-Nahrowi Ramli obtained 2,120,815 votes or 46.18 % of the total number of voters, Based on these election results, on September, 29, 2012, the General Election Commission of the Special Region of Jakarta declared Jokowidodo the Governor of Jakarta for 2012–2017 (Table 7.6).

5 Conclusions

IPPM and MMOPC use gradually emerged during the 2012 Gubernatorial Elections of Jakarta. Jokowi’s campaign teams successfully established the Integrated Political Marketing Model (IPPM) and the mixed-mediated and online political campaigning (MMOPC) while dealing with an increase in the volatile electorates of Jakarta. By using IPPM and MMOPC, the cost of Jokowi’s campaign was widely recognized as the cheapest campaign that had ever been run compared with any those of other candidates for governor/vice governor of the Indonesian provinces.²¹ Moreover, once IPPM and MMOPC had been successfully established, there had been overwhelming positive coverage and political endorsement that came from the majority of senior editors, senior producers, and reporters of various commercial media outlets due to the high news values of the candidate’s personal branding. The main reason is that Jokowi’s campaign activities and events tended to meet the mass media logic, and this fact was indicated by increasing rating of various programmes of the television broadcasting companies during first and second round of the elections.²² In this respect, the IPPM and MMOPC can be considered as a new ideology of political re-connection, wherein decentralized, democratized and equalized participatory marketing and campaigning can be co-created and co-implemented across candidates, parties and electorates.

Indeed, several conditions need to be fulfilled in order to develop the IPPM and MMOPC in the political market arenas. First, they may be established once candidates already have strong political branding and thus they can attract political support and political endorsement from voluntary campaigner communities. Second, they may be redeveloped if there is a massive well-informed middle class that will stand for any party and candidates that fulfil their expectations of better leadership and policies of the future government. Third, they may be advanced if there is easier access and networking among candidates, campaign managers, and campaign volunteers based on the interactive-online political marketing and campaigning tools. Fourth, they may be crafted if there is clear differentiation between the ideas of the incumbent officials and the challengers that will strongly polarize the electorates.

To put it briefly, the IPPM can be crafted once marketing and campaigning strategies have been already anchored with IMC and participatory communication concepts and there are parallelisms between the political marketing of candidates and the political marketing of parties and vice versa. Meanwhile, the MMOPC can be advanced when there is stronger personal branding of non-incumbent candidates than that of incumbent candidates and when candidates succeed in influencing the majority of volatile electorates. Theoretically speaking, the lesson learned from this episode of the emerging democracy in Indonesia is that IPPM can be considered as one of the alternative models to complement the existing mainstream model of political marketing of parties (Lees-Marshment 2001, 2004, 2008) and political marketing of candidates (Newman 1994), while MMOPC can be considered as one practical model of professionalized campaign based on the candidate-centred system to complement the existing party-centred of professionalized campaign model (Gibson and Römmele 2001, 2009; Stromback 2009).

In the future, research needs to be advanced by focusing on several directions. First, from the perspective of a more comprehensive mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, research needs to be directed to address both the party-centred and or candidate-centred IPPM and MMOPC by using both subjective and objective quantitative measurements. Second, another research area to be developed by using comparative the conceptual frameworks of IPPM and MMOPC is that of the specific political market arenas as suggested by Stromback (2010) that are the parliamentary, the internal, the mass media, and electoral arenas. Third, as there have been diverse structural factors—political system, government system, media system, and election system, on the one hand—and cultural factors—in relation with the degree modernization and secularization of societies- on the other hand, across the well-established democratic countries and the emerging democracies, research needs to be carefully catered for are revealing the inter-links and relationships between the party-centred and the candidate-centred of IPPM and MMOPC whether within and across those countries. Fourth, taking into account that there have been diverse tendencies of political engagement, political trust, political knowledge, the degree and type of the mass media exposure and the Internet and social media networks use across parties, candidates and electorates, further research needs to be focused on examining how, in which way, and to what extent the IPPM and MOPC can be developed as an ideology of political re-connection to overcome the existing problem of the democratic deficit and declining political engagement that still occur across the democratic countries in the world.