Asian political parties discuss political branding

“If you are not telling your story, then who is?,” asked Marike Groenewald in a political branding workshop attended by Asian political parties. Many parties in the region, it appears, still struggle to tell their story, their political brand.

Groenewald, who served as the workshop facilitator, assisted the participants in developing a brand guide for their respective parties.  A brand guide is a document that helps people in the organization to apply the party brand consistently and correctly.  “You need to be on message, in volume, over time”, said Groenewald. “Also, remember that if you are not telling a story, you are still telling a story.”

Almost two dozen delegates from ten member-parties of Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats (CALD) participated in the workshop.  Held on June 7 to 11, 2018 in Taiwan’s capital Taipei, the event provided a venue for the participants to share best practices on political management, branding and leadership development.   “The Taipei workshop gave me a lot of insights on how we can adjust our programs and directions,” said Ted Lopez of the Liberal Party of the Philippines. “These would be important in sharpening our focus, particularly in our branding and organizational development.”

More importantly, the workshop also served as an opportunity to learn from the political context of other participants and how they responded to it.  Senia Ng, a participant from Democratic Party of Hong Kong, shared: “I learnt a lot from other participants, in particular, about the challenges we are facing in this era and what strategies we should take to get through this difficult time.”

Apart from political context and branding, the participants also discussed innovations on political management and becoming a learning organization.  Drawing from the experiences of South Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA), where Groenewald previously served as executive director, the participants learned about the journey of the DA from being “a party of irrelevants” to being the country’s main opposition party.  The journey has never been easy, and there were times that the party was placed in difficult situations.  But as Warwick Chapman, DA’s current executive director, said in his Zoom session: “The birthplace of innovation is vulnerability.”

In this day and age when liberal and democratic parties feel vulnerable to attacks from populist and illiberal forces, the workshop reminded the participants that this is also the time for them to reform.  “The reason why we can win now, why we can be better than the opposition party, is because we have devoted our energy to develop young talents,” said Hung Yao-fu, secretary general of the host party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).  “The DPP as a political party has been focusing on empowering youth members and the younger generation.  We have put many resources to help them grow and be stronger.”

The historic Grand Hotel Taipei served as the venue of the CALD workshop, which was organized with the support of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom.  The walls of the 66 year-old hotel surely have many stories to tell, including the founding of the DPP more than 32 years ago.

As the participants return to their respective countries, it is hoped that what they learned within the four walls of the workshop room would carry their party stories to a more receptive audience.  After all, those stories could play a crucial role in sustaining Asia’s difficult but inspiring journey to democracy and freedom.