Corporate Identity:

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40 thinking” and a way to “tear up a frozen ideological landscape”. Both Sindre and Laurie appeared to share the view that fort the Green Party, climate and the environment trumps old concerns about left- right in politics and that the Green Party would work with anyone as long as sustainability came first. This is also a central idea behind their party program.

According to Laurie, the Green Party, at core is about sustainability and that even as the party is perceived to be a left- wing party or a center party “you can find elements of our policies that are placed firmly on the right, further right than to a lot of people would believe”. In addition, Laurie adds, “because the Green Party is a relatively young party, we are still taking shape, and as a party we may evolve or change slightly from year to year. But that being said, our overriding vision remains firm. And that vision is to change the society and save planet earth”.

The view that the Green Party is independent of the traditional left-right political axis, however, was not shared by any of the public relations professionals in the external

stakeholder group. Hans was clear in his view that the Green Party was definitely on the left side of traditional political axis as a socialist party, and that the Green Party should be careful in repeating this strategy as they could lose credibility over it. Lisa also thought of the party as a red party, “more red than most people seem to be aware of”, and with tendency towards redistribution of wealth. Jarle also placed them on the left side of the political specter.

Hans expressed that be believed them to be sincere in their commitment for a

greener planet. And Lisa gave them credit for managing to be consistent in their focus on the environment, but also pointed out that they appear very inconsistent about economic

policies.

These conflicting views on the vision of the Green Party between the internal

stakeholders and external public relations stakeholders suggests that there is a gap between how the internal stakeholders of the Green Party view their own strategy and how that strategy is implemented or perceived by outside stakeholders. For the Green Party this could have several implications: The Green party could be failing to recognize for themselves where they are on the traditional left- right scale of the political landscape, the overriding strategy of saving the environment, regardless of political principles, could be a strategy that confuses or does not resonate with external stakeholders who may require the party to commit on other traditional issues as well, and/or also be a proper fit with how the

41 stakeholder feels about other issues, and there is also the danger that the Green Party could send confusing or mixed signals or that the party could become perceived to shop around or flip flop on issues that are not related to the environment. And finally, it could be that the Green Party is failing to communicate clearly what their priorities are, and that they intend to stay away from traditional left- right politics in a convincing way.

5.1.2 Visual identity

The visual strategy of the Green Party is based on having a clear, simple and consistent communication and according to Laurie, “they (the party) try to be as uniform as possible in all digital and analogue channels.”

The Logo is distinct green with letters in white - a reflection of the party’s commitment to the environment and the colors were chosen because of a desire for a simple color palette. According to Sindre, a lot of effort was put into finding the right shade of green and “they tried to create a visual expression that substantiates their profile”.

Laurie also explains that the logo itself is shaped to look like a leaf and comes in two different varieties. One is shaped rectangular in order to be good fit on top of newsletters, on the top of a website, or the corner of an envelope (Laurie is careful to underline that they very seldom use envelopes). The rectangular shape also serves a purpose that helps to build brand-awareness. The Green Party is a relatively new party and having a rectangular logo enables the party to write its name in full in order to eliminate any doubt as to which political party the logo belongs to. The other shape is squared and has the acronym MDG written on it which is short for The Green Party (Miljøpartiet de grønne) in Norwegian. This has been developed for profiles in the digital sphere such as Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Sindre also tells me that the logo and colors are designed to be suitable, not only in digital channels, but printed on all sorts of items or surfaces. The pictures of the logo can be found in Appendix 12, 5 & 12, 6.

Laurie, who is responsible for all digital communication for the Green Party, stresses that she puts a lot of effort into that no matter wherever you have contact with the party, Facebook, Instagram, their website, or the street corner, the goal is that you will get a coherent and consistent impression of the party (Illustrations in Appendix 12, 8). The aim is that any point of contact with the party creates the same visual, emotional impression so

42 that the person who sees or reads something at any point, don’t have to remember which channel it was seen in, but can go back and find that content in all the digital channels. To illustrate this Laurie displays a visual expression that she has been currently working on where she has taken the logo of the party and modified it a little so that it resembles a speech bubble. This was designed because there was currently a debate in the party regarding a report, and the speech bubble logo would accompany the report and be

published in all digital channels to create awareness of the debate and the report (picture in Appendix 12, 7).

The written language is also a part of the Green Party’s visual commutation that is given a lot of consideration. Laurie says that “the language needs to be good, simple and easy to comprehend”. They try to avoid the use of difficult words, foreign words, double clause sentences or other things that can distract or reduce the readability of a text or make the reader confused. She gives an example and cites that a “doc 8 suggestion” from

parliament is not a “doc 8 suggestion”, but a just a suggestion. In addition, they try to appear as positive, including and casual. They also use and post a lot images and videos, largely because social media is a very visual form of media, and, as Sindre says: “A picture is worth a thousand words”.

Jarle found that from a professional point of view, the Green Party are among the best political parties when it comes to visual communications. “The use of soft colors, good pictures, nice fonts and their website and other visual forms of expressions communicates with the electorate in a positive way.” He adds that this is very important, and that

especially when you are building a new party, the visual dimension becomes very important.

In addition, he points out that during the election, the party were also very much in command of their social media channels. He also believes that because of the “young and fresh” people in the party, they become an “easier sell” in these channels than more conventional politicians would be.

Lisa gave praise to the Green Party for being very good at visual communications and said that they appear as one unified and coherent brand. “When you hear the name, the colors, imagery, and elements they use in their communication immediately come to mind”.

She also added that in her opinion as a communications advisor, “they have a coherent profile and brand”. She said the logo works very well, and that they have written their name in full on the logo leaves little doubt about what they wish to achieve, and that the logo

43 should succeed in giving strong associations to green policies, even among those who did not follow or care for politics.

Hans explains that his communications firm, Geelmudyen Kiese, had ranked the Green Party to be the political party that was the best when it came to social media during last year’s election, but that this was because they used the social media to engage in dialogue with the electorate, not because of any logo. In his view, the Green Party was not a logo, but people. In his view a political party is not a piece of soap that can be branded.

The external stakeholders found that the Party were successful in having a coherent visual profile that the visual profile was a good reflection of the Green Party’s brand. In terms of the visual identity of the party, the internal and external public relations stakeholders’ views appeared to harmonize to a great extent. However, the external stakeholders did express concern that the visual image of the party leads to a too shallow understanding of the party and overshadows what the party actually stands for. But, it can also be suggested that the voters do have a good understanding of the brand of the Green Party through visual representations, and that the party is in fact living up to the

expectations and promises that are made implicitly through the visual profile of the party. If the voters understand the visual brand of the party as being young and exciting, then it can be argued that the visual image of the brand is successful.