Scenario Planning on Political Marketing

When it comes to design the overall strategy, we all use to strive in order to predict the future. Uncertainty is the principal barrier that we must overcome. What we do know for sure is that if we manage to anticipate the future, we will be much qualified to face challenges at all business spheres. In politics, for its part, challenges use to be more demanding.

In politics, scenario planning tends to be more difficult to apply than in business. Politics revolves around social behavior. It incorporates more unpredictable variables such as the rise of a dictator capable of destabilizing an entire region. No one ever thought ten years ago, for instance, that Hugo Chavez would change not only the course of politics and collective thinking in Venezuela, but also in many countries of South America. A political strategist can suppose dictatorial behaviors in the long-term, but never the ideology behind the mind of a leader and its effects on society. There are always others variables influencing both the political context and its protagonists such as taxes, violence, and unemployment; and those macro variables such as the very economy, environment, technology, etc.

Scenario planning will always have another connotation on politics as long as it depends largely on social behavior. It demands further degree of imagination and intuition. Even so, I think that politicians and their strategists walk onto complete darkness when it comes to predict 5 years ahead.

In business instead, a hypothetic scenario is much easier to calculate; physical, natural and economic behaviors are more predictable than social’s. They are the epicenter of any strategy based on scenario planning. Economy for instance, leaves some traces that use to appear cyclically. Shell anticipated energetic crisis by taking into account natural patterns. Although scenario planning for business also analyses human behavior, it will always have a wider array of alternatives to get more accurate results.