In many Presidential campaigns, there is one major blunder that is hammered home by the media, and that incident often ends that person’s presidential bid. Some classics: Governor Dukakis wearing a helmet and riding the tank; Senator Muskie crying at a news conference after a newspaper printed derogatory statements about his wife, and the classic, Senator Gary Hart and his playboy antics on that aptly named boat, “The Monkey Business.” This year it was the Howard Dean Iowa pep rally, now dubbed the “I Have a Scream” speech.
Running a political campaign is one of the most challenging and exhausting activities possible. Running a typical campaign will mean 12+ hour long work days for several months. On Election Day, either you win, or you and your entire campaign team are fired. As you approach the final days of the campaign, this creates a huge amount of stress and pressure for success.
Hiring campaign consultants can be tough on a candidate or manager, and the wrong initial choices may start a campaign into a death spiral. Fortunately, there are some common-sense guidelines to help your campaign gain altitude.
Studies show that contact from campaigns significantly increases a young person’s likelihood of turning out to vote on Election Day. Plus, it’s cost-efficient and easy to integrate with your overall campaign strategy.
Studies have shown that an audience bases their judgment of the quality of a speaker as follows:
Body Language: 55%
Vocal Qualities 38%
Words 7%
Over 93% of your perception as a speaker is from factors other than what you say!
Studies have shown that an audience bases their judgment of the quality of a speaker as follows:
Body Language: 55%
Vocal Qualities 38%
Words 7%
Over 93% of your perception as a speaker is from factors other than what you say!
Political campaigns cannot afford to waste resources, whether financial, human, or time. An uncoordinated effort will waste all of these directly as well as indirectly through inefficiency. Below are some common examples of wasteful campaign spending, along with advice in how to avoid these situations.
At its essence successful public relations is all about story telling — and every campaign or non-profit, no matter who they may be, has a great story to tell. It may take a while to identify and massage your campaign’s story and it may also take some practice to refine delivering the messages and preparing for questions, but once you’ve settled on the dimensions of your story and who is best equipped to tell it, then it becomes very important to determine which audiences and supporters you need to influence Âwho needs to hear and understand your story.
As campaign consultants we must offer our clients more than just the usual fare of voter targeting, issue research, polling, message crafting, and all the nuts and bolts of campaigning.
We must be aware of the election laws and the procedures used by local election officials to conduct the elections and enforce these laws. In close elections, the consultant must be ever vigilant for anomalies and obvious changes in voter patterns on a precinct-by-precinct basis.
Technology is changing the way we work, shop, bank, exercise and most other areas of life.; Why would we expect political campaigns to be immune?
It’s been 30 years since Robert Redford played the role of Bill McKay in “The Candidate,” which accurately represented what was then a whole new political form:
