1 Customers, consumers, partners, society and the political party: Stakeholders in Australian Political Marketing Andrew Hughes and Dr Stephen Dann, Australian National University Abstract As political marketing is the hybrid of marketing and political theory, the relative instability of core commercial marketing theory recently has increased the complexity of the political marketing stakeholder issue. This paper updates the Hughes and Dann (2006) exploration of political marketing stakeholders in light of the American Marketing Association’s revocation of the 2004 definition, and introduction of current AMA (2007) definition. Specifically, the paper addresses the recategorisation of the stakeholders into the AMA (2007) “customer, client, partner and society at large” structure as the foundation for future work on political marketing stakeholders. Introduction Politics is a business of ideas, and marketing should not consider itself a neutral participant when it has the opportunity to influence broader societal outcomes through the mechanisms of how it engages and influences the political process. Part of this process is the role of stakeholders in political marketing, something that even Alderson (1965) considered as being important in understanding how the relationship between marketing and public policy influences marketing systems and dynamics (Alderson, 1965: 372). Stakeholder influence in political marketing appears to be a transitory process which fluctuates from one election cycle to the next. Key influencers in elections fall by the wayside when promises turn to policy delivery, and even groups which opposed a party in an election can exert powerful stakeholder influences on an incumbent government. Yet at the same time, Australian politics is still beholden to the classic political battles along entrenched factional lines. Competing influences lobby, manoeuvre or stumble their way into influencing policy, products and candidate selection based on the extent to which they can exert their influence over the key decision making process. The political marketing process is seen as a top down managerial approach with tightly controlled integrated marketing communications, ‘on- message’ campaigning and strict party discipline which is backed by increased professionalism, full time campaigner staff and an elongated campaign cycles. Yet this long term orientation of the permanent and professional campaign is tempered by the co- dependency of the major political parties on short term fixes based on focus group data, media monitoring and opinion poll tracking. Added to the mix is the classic political party structure of professional political activists alongside the rank and file grassroots memberships which form the core support base of the party. Lobbyists, political donors and external pressure groups round out the influences on the party. As numbers of party membership decline, there is a corresponding rise in interest in independent operations such as GetUp and MoveOn. Even within the political process itself, political marketers are often as much a stakeholder- lobby group as they are a central part of the campaign development team. Policy platforms are still production orientated in their nature, albeit with market realities tending to temper ideological commitments. On the marketing front, the changes of the AMA (2007) definition have raised the question of how well this new definition can exert a normative influence on future commercial and political marketing activity. It should be noted that the change in the definition of a term will not in and of itself revolutionise an industry. Instead, the authors of the paper are concerned