People of Australia have moved from dissatisfied to disinterested when it comes to our politics. In August last year, the Australian National University conducted a study that found the number of Australians who believed it made a difference which party was in power plunged from 68 per cent in 2007 to 43 per cent in 2014.

There is also some early rhetoric that the idea of ‘brand’ may also be experiencing some early decline in appeal (think Google’s business model).

So here are three things brands can learn from what our politicians are not getting right:

• Keep outward focussed: Look outside of your business and your industry to get ideas on how to build your customer experience. If you don’t and only listen to those in the building, your consumers will turn off you as we have seen with our political parties. While Tony starts talking about consultation, at BrandHook, we’ve been talking about collaboration for the last 12 months. It’s about the consumer calls, not the Captain ones.
• Stay relevant: Talk to the people buying your product regularly about what they want and how they are buying you. Their attitudes and behaviours are changing. Game of Thrones was the ‘it’ show 6 months ago when it was on – what’s more relevant to the consumer today?
• Be consistent: In today’s Australian newspaper, the head of Virgin Mr Borghetti said, ‘business and politicians are driven too much by headlines and short term vision’.   His view was to take a longer term strategic approach and stick to it to see results. This is about the reasons why the Government was voted in at the election – the majority of Australians did – but do you know why they did and are you delivering those benefits at the moment? Whether a political party or a brand, you need to consistently deliver the benefits that attracted the consumer in the first place.

Maybe the Liberal caucus snuck a look at this blog before 9am this morning. Lets see how they go over the next 18 months.