Political Branding In Campaign Commercials In The 2023 Governorship Elections In Rivers State, Nigeria

A key feature of political campaigns is political advertising, which uses political branding as a tool. The 2023 elections in Nigeria witnessed a high use of campaign jingles or commercials and since these messages aimed to sway voters, there is the need to analyse their contents. Using branding and framing theories as pegs, this study therefore examined political branding in campaign commercials in the 2023 governorship elections in Rivers State, Nigeria. Four research questions with four hypotheses guided the study. Employing content analysis, the study used availability and census sampling techniques to analyse 35 political commercials drawn from the campaigns. The validity of the code sheet was established via face validity method while the Cronbach Alpha method was used to establish its reliability index with a score of 0.82. Simple percentage method was used to answer research questions while Chi-Square was used to test hypotheses at 0.05 significance level. Among other findings, the results indicate low level use of campaign branding by political parties in the election; significant relationships among the branding elements and messaging techniques employed in campaign commercials; and notable variations in the messaging themes employed by the different political parties. The study concludes that the political parties in the 2023 governorship election in Rivers State lacked competence in the branding process hence, their messages were disjointed and lacked consistency and personality. It was recommended that political parties in Nigeria should invest in consistent and strategic branding to sell their candidates and strengthen democracy in the country. The National Independent Electoral Commission should create a department to check negative branding that borders on defamation, in campaign commercials. Keywords: 2023 elections, commercials, campaigns, political branding, candidates, Rivers State DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/94-07 Publication date: March 30th 2025