Cloaking Consumer Perception: The Evangelical Myth - How Bush won the Whitehouse

Evangelical Christians represent a well-defined behavioral target. Political marketers can predictably "tap" Evangelical Christian group behavior by understanding personality and behavioral propensities. This is how Bush won the Whitehouse.

(PRWEB) January 15, 2005 -- The target market" dream of any promotion professional is an intimate understanding of a well-defined group according to behavioral patterns. The Christian" voting block has historically represented a mix of protestant denominations with diverse spiritual belief systems. The institutional structure of protestant diversity has challenged marketers with META message reach and translation.

Defining a large homogenous Christian voting block by reliable thinking, feeling, and life-style behavior has been an historic political goal. The advent of modern Pop Christianity," with a new tailor-made definition of a true believer" (Evangelical -- born again), has enabled political marketers to more effectively track and target Christians.

Evangelical Christians, by their definition, are literal practitioners of Biblical faith. Terms like born again, renewed, saved, transformed, forgiven" litter the vocabulary and sermon focus of Evangelical Christianity. However, the adoption and practice of new vocabulary is not limited to church services or social groups. Evangelical Christians are required to practice what is preached or they are considered hypocrites, spiritually immature Christians, or not true believers.

The adoption of narrow META messages, that represent Evangelical Christians faith and spiritual practice life-style, heavily influences group behavioral patterns. Evangelical Christians are well conditioned to respond to META messages that reinforce rigid value and moral belief systems.

Evangelical Christians are behaviorally predictable. Personality structures of US Evangelical Christians have a high-degree of similarity. They tend to:

- Think in black and white terms.
- Represent polarized values and morals.
- Mimic group behavioral patterns.
- Heavily influenced by group leadership.
- Adopt group thinking and behavior.
- Block out or discount information that is perceived at odds" with spiritual beliefs.
- Consider their group as spiritually right" and discount others (faiths, religions) as spiritually wrong.

The predictable behavioral structure of Evangelical Christians represents a well-defined target. Engineered META message communication systems can be developed to persuade and unconditionally include politicians within their approval ranks if the META message is clear, on target, consistent and repetitive.

For more information on Behavioral Targeting visit: http://www.behaviorlabs.com

Dan Garren
Principal
Behavior Labs
garren@behaviorlabs.com

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