How brand and image control concentrate power in PMO.
Concern over image could make it hard to weaken power of PMO
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is spending a lot of time this month polishing up his brand at home and on the international stage.
He has also promised to govern less from the top down.
A new book out this month predicts that Trudeau can’t do both. Wherever there’s a strong political brand, there’s also central command, says Alex Marland, author of Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control.
“Branding is addictive, it is circular and it is a seemingly unstoppable force,” Marland writes in the preface. “Branding requires message control and simplicity, and political power centralizes when communications converge.”
Some might argue it’s a bit early to predict failure for Trudeau’s promise to roll back the centralization of power in federal politics, especially when all the coverage around the prime minister is of the celestial sort: stardom, honeymoons and sunshine.
But it’s already evident that this new Trudeau government is intensely attentive to brand and image politics, and that it is actively courting the sky-high coverage. No sooner had the prime minister returned from his star turn in Washington last week than he was off to New York this week to bask in awards for feminism and serious attention from the Bloomberg media empire.
Trudeau’s ever-increasing celebrity also threatens to consolidate, not reduce, the tight control of the Prime Minister’s Office, Marland writes.
“Charisma is its own problem. It increases deference to the leader, and charismatic figures attract followers whose judgment is clouded by their emotional connection.”
All this can happen even with the best of intentions and promises of openness and transparency. Marland isn’t saying that Trudeau was insincere in vowing to loosen the PMO’s grip on everything in Ottawa, just possibly unrealistic.
An article this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal would seem to back up that assertion. It was a record correction of sorts, on the muchheralded early announcement on the “unmuzzling” of federal scientists.
“Communications policies adopted under the former Conservative government ‘have not changed,’ according to Health Canada’s chief of media relations, Eric Morrissette,” the CMAJ article reported. “Virtually all communications are vetted by media relations staff, and in most cases, they provide written statements instead of direct access to experts.”
Around Ottawa these days, most would agree the PMO still wields mighty clout, especially as people are vying for jobs and favours, or even the not-so-occasional anonymous leaks to the media from PMO insiders.
Note, for instance, that when the Trudeau government recently wanted to threaten the provinces that Ottawa might act alone on carbon pricing, the warning came in the form of an off-the-record quote to the CBC from “a senior official close to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.” Now that’s a classic case of the PMO flexing its muscles — not just with the media, but with the provinces, too. The brand plays on, you might say.
Much of Marland’s book is focused on how the former Conservative government brought branding and message control to federal politics — and it’s the most complete, revelatory insight to date. I should also say, in the interest of full disclosure, that I had an early read of Brand Command so I could put a blurb on the back cover. Marland, a Memorial University professor and one of Canada’s leading political science experts in marketing and branding, has been a valuable resource in my own work on these subjects for several years now.
Because the book delves so deeply into the branding practices of Stephen Harper’s government — everything from those “message event proposals” to the muzzling of public servants and staffers — there might be a temptation to treat Brand Command as a history text. What it also is, however, is a manual for modern governance and a guide to what may not change when power shifts in Ottawa.
Marland flatly warns that branding erodes parliamentary democracy and the book contains a number of suggested ways to keep branding power in check (including an effective Senate, independent of the PMO). “Given the connection between unity of communications and unity of command, it creates serious problems for Canadian democracy,” he writes.
Successful branding, in other words, needs broad agreement. It doesn’t work well when people are “off message.” Healthy democracy, on the other hand, requires an element of dissent and disagreement. The same is true of the media, which can often be seen by brand-fixated governments as just another arm of the marketing machine.
Marland’s book reminds us that the new government came to power promising to change the brand and command in federal politics. The brand change is obvious in every front-page headline and nightly news broadcast. The change in command style? Let’s say, for now, that’s still a work in progress. sdelacourt@bell.net