Political campaigns are much reviled. Anecdotal evidence can show citizens’ weariness with political spin, while surveys can make plain the spirals of trust in political institutions. From the breach come candidates like Donald Trump (ironically a brand unto himself), claiming to speak for the powerless. Margaret Scammell begins her book with this cynicism, expressed by many concerning the dangers of “the selling” of candidates. She investigates the spread of marketing strategies into contemporary elections, with a particular focus on the branding of political figures, but she is no pessimist. Yes, the act of marketing a candidate or party can stoke fears of propaganda and voter manipulation, but this is only half the story. Political marketing can be understand to reflect, as opposed to cause, the power structures and dynamics in a political system; and moreover, much good can come from a political branding strategy that excites citizens and draws them into the political process, too often blanched of its energy by political reformers.

Scammell begins in Chapter 1 by refocusing the angle on political marketing, from an object of explanation (and denunciation) to an analytical tool through which to explore changes in contemporary campaigning. She notes that changes in political marketing are not explained solely by developments of new technology (e.g., television reduces campaigns to catchy commercials; the Internet encourages ever-finer niche targeting) but as reflections of the competitive structures of politics. Marketing strategies in general are developed and change with the shifting balance of power between producers and consumers; and as parties have declined in power (organizationally) across the industrialized world, the focus has shifted away from producers (politicians and elites) to consumers (citizens), who play a more direct role in modern electoral politics (and who demand, she suggests, higher ethical standards in politics).

In Chapter 2, Scammell looks at the political marketers directly, who they are and what they see as their primary role in elections. The term includes campaign managers and advisors, along with the “hired gun” consultants who make and design political ads. Many see the spread of political marketing, broadly construed, as a sign of the depoliticizing of elections in favor of branding and trickery. But Scammell finds this argument lacking, noting the overwhelming level of partisan loyalty (ideology and ideas do matter) of most in the political marketing profession. Moreover, political marketing is, at least in part, designed to draw citizens into the process. The author cites the efforts of recent campaigns (e.g., Howard Dean in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008) that were explicitly concerned with direct connections with voters. To be sure, political marketing is not primarily interested in enlightened and fully informed citizens, but she does not see the work of such professionals as anametha to such goals.

Chapters 3 and 4 dig into the case studies of Tony Blair in 2005 and George W. Bush in 2004. The beginning of Chapter 3 has a fascinating discussion of the meaning of “branding” to political marketers. Scammell identifies a brand as comprising two parts: “boundary conditions,” which focus on the functional performance of a good or service, and “brand differentiators,” which identify the social and cultural affinities for such goods and services. In politics, this analogizes to candidates promoting either their qualifications in office or their emotional connections with voters. Importantly, she does not fetishize campaigns that exclusively do the former over the latter. Indeed, campaigns can and should do both things. As she writes, “It may be that a campaign that pays no attention to emotional connections (differentiators) is as deficient as one that ignores the substantive indicators (boundary conditions)” (p. 111).

Of course, the next question seems derivative: What is, in fact, a “good” campaign? This is the focus of Chapter 5. For consultants, a good campaign might be measured against particular nuts and bolts: clear strategies, effective field operations, and efficient targeting of voters (p. 115). For political scientists, the author notes the long-held view that campaigns have only minimal effects, a perspective that has undergone revision in recent decades as political scientists expanded their scope to include additional dependent variables (voter knowledge, mobilization, media framing, agenda setting, and so on). With campaign effects more apparent—a “new consensus” (p. 131)—Scammell focuses on the campaign effects most directly tied to “desirable democratic goals.” As such, good campaigns are those that, among other things, encourage political learning, boost affective investment in the political process, increase efficacy, and activate citizen mobilization. The efforts of political marketers can, indeed, have all of these effects.

It is important to consider this argument carefully, however. It is one thing to say that political marketing can, in fact, be positively linked to desirable democratic goals and another to say that the goal of winning is not in tension with such goals. The first is more assertive and the second is largely defensive. To this, Scammell seems to favor the latter while hoping for the former. To encourage this consideration, she recommends two paths forward. First, she is a proponent of political marketing literacy, where citizens develop skills “to differentiate between honest promotion and empty spin” (p. 143). Second, she smartly notes the linkage between the electoral rules of a political system and the types of campaigns we experience. Certain structural elements of an electoral system offer more choice, encourage competition, and spur participation—the “rules matter,” as she notes (p. 152). We might gain a lot by simply examining the types of electoral rules that encourage desirable goals. Both points—smarter citizens and structural changes—are easy to recommend, and are oft noted, but seem harder to put into practice.

There is much to admire in this book, not the least being Scammell’s plea to avoid doubling down on the pessimism so commonly attached to the profession of political marketing. Moreover, her narrative is smartly balanced between making a normative argument that saves political marketing from its worst enemies and avoiding picking “winners” of recent campaigns. This balancing act only takes us so far, though. The reader might sense some criticism of the Bush campaign in 2004 but an affinity for the Obama efforts in 2008. But, one may argue, Obama was no revolutionary in embracing consumer-based political marketing. In one telling, he was a master manipulator, crafting an image of a bottom-up campaign (promoting a candidate with a comparatively “thin” political resume in national affairs) while spending the bulk of his money on traditional campaign ads and using digital tools to keep very close track of his supporters’ actions (raising the specter of privacy concerns). The author never stakes a strong position on either interpretation, though it seems clear that she leans away from such a criticism of Obama.

More at issue is the evidence that Scammell brings to bear on her question. The book is a mix of empiricism and theorizing. As an empirical argument, the evidence could be deeper. The Blair and Bush case studies are instructive, but the analysis of Bush’s ads look only at the content of the ads (ignoring how often the ads aired, which can tell a different story). It would also help to see some additional examples of campaigns that do and do not embody the type of “good” campaign she thinks possible. Regardless, Consumer Democracy is a powerful corrective to the assumption that modern campaigns doom the democratic experiment. It is refreshing to consider seriously the positive implications of her thesis.