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Creating a Winning Campaign Strategy
David Winston
Introduction
More than twenty years ago, I was sitting at my desk at the National Republican Congressional Committee watching a show on C-Span. It was a lecture on targeting by Democrat Mark Gersh at American University’s Campaign Management Institute. Later I discovered he was the Democratic Party’s leading expert on redistricting and targeting. For the next two hours, I sat fascinated by what Mark had to say; by the time he finished, I had learned the fundamentals of targeting through the prism of the opposition party. This turned out to be a valuable perspective indeed. For the past three national elections, Mark and I have been the Democratic and Republican analysts for CBS, calling races on election night. We’ve become friends and colleagues, and I laugh about the origins of my targeting education. He doesn’t find it quite as funny.
My point is that strategy, like targeting and other elements of campaign management, is partisan in terms of implementation but not definition. The principles of good strategy apply equally to Republicans and Democrats. The harder question to answer is, What is strategy? A lot has been written and said about this sometimes confusing but central component of a winning campaign, whether the strategy is designed for the beaches of Normandy or for a congressional district in Long Beach.
My favorite maxim about strategy was written by Sun Tzu, the fifth-century author of the Art of War: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Two thousand years later, when it comes to strategy, not much has changed.
There are as many definitions of strategy as there are strategists, but here is mine:
Strategy is achieving a desired outcome using a structured approach based on understanding existing and potential environmental elements.
This chapter focuses on the foundation of a winning campaign: strategy. Crafting a successful strategy takes good instincts; an understanding of politics; historical context; and detailed, quantifiable, and qualitative research.
Driving the process are four key steps that the campaign manager must undertake with support from the candidate, the campaign’s consultants, and other key players.
• Define a desired outcome
• Develop situational awareness
• Define a winning coalition
• Create a strategic communications plan
After taking these steps, this same group must agree on the final strategy and get behind it to achieve success.
“Think New”
Before leaping into the process of putting together a winning strategy, every campaign manager must avoid the natural tendency to think as we have always thought. Remember the early critics who scoffed at the Obama campaign’s decision to change the dynamics of the presidential race by expanding the pool of participants? That was a strategic decision that took some new thinking.
History backs up this idea. In the 1930s, the French General Staff hoped to discourage a German invasion by building the Maginot Line. The French embraced a “static defense” that was based on what they had learned in World War I. The Germans, focusing on the future, out-thought them by developing a strategic doctrine based on mobility, which completely overwhelmed the French strategy.
Now, fast-forward to the 2008 election. While the McCain campaign was busy running a base strategy, as George W. Bush had done successfully in 2000 and 2004, Barack Obama understood that the political environment had changed dramatically over the past four years and crafted a strategy that would leave the GOP scratching its collective head, wondering what happened. In both examples, the losers clung to the past while the successful strategists beat their opponents by “thinking new.”
Break the Rules
One of the ways to think new is to break the rules. Here’s what I mean. See if you can solve the following puzzle, but be warned. Solving it takes some new thinking.
Here’s the task: Connect the nine dots with three lines but do it without lifting your pen or pencil from the paper.
Here’s the answer.
This is tritely but accurately called the “outside the box” solution. Most people fail to find the answer because they instinctively view the nine dots as a box and internally create a rule that says, “stay in the box.” An important structural element is at work here. To solve the puzzle, you have to consciously decide to break rules and do things differently. Breaking rules is one of the critical elements of being creative.
For example, before Bill Frist became a U.S. senator, he was one of the preeminent heart research surgeons in the world. He was part of the extraordinary team at Stanford that found the answer to how to implant a heart and keep the body from rejecting it. Other researchers had managed to implant hearts before, but the patients lasted only days or weeks. The Stanford team decided to break the rules. They asked, How do we ratchet down antibodies so they don’t do what they are supposed to do long enough for the body to accept the new heart and then restore the antibodies back to working capacity? No one had tried it before. It was outside the box thinking. It worked and changed medicine and many people’s lives forever.
Change Perspective
Another way to think new is by changing your perspective. Here’s another puzzle to try. Remove three sticks and leave four.
If you look at this puzzle as a group of objects, you won’t solve it. If you can transition your thought process to view it as a graphic, you can find the answer. Here it is.
Thinking new is often the crucial missing component in failed strategies. The McCain presidential campaign lost, in part, because of a dated perspective that was especially ineffective up against an opposing campaign that embraced all things new.
The McCain campaign looked at the country as a collection of red, blue, and purple states, each with its own potential as a McCain victory state. The campaign focused on the 2000 and 2004 presidential contests when it should have been analyzing what happened in the 2006 elections. The answer would have led them to adopt a different kind of strategy.
In 2006, the Republican majority coalition fell apart. The GOP lost ground with a number of key constituencies—married women with children, middle income voters, independents, and Catholics. The impact of these demographic losses in important states was obvious. For example, Republicans lost Catholics by eleven points nationally. That kind of margin meant that reelecting Senator Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania and Senator Mike Dewine in Ohio were uphill battles.
The results in 2006 should have set off alarm bells. Instead, the McCain people decided to run a tactical, base-focused campaign. The strategy was to get out the base in large numbers everywhere, appeal to certain targeted constituencies in key electoral states like Catholics in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and cobble together an Electoral College victory much as Bush had done.
The campaign failed to understand that voters in what I call the “big middle” had abandoned the GOP in 2006 and nothing had happened in the interim to bring them back. A nationalized campaign to reach and attract those voters was their only hope of victory. The McCain campaign should have changed perspective, looked beyond the base, and found a strategy to rebuild the Republican coalition.
Even with a great direct mail operation, a world-class voter turnout effort, and smart television buys, if a campaign can’t put together a majority coalition, it doesn’t know how to win. It’s like building a house. Without a blueprint, a great crew and first-rate tools don’t matter.
Finally, when it comes to new thinking, it’s important to understand that every manager embarks on a campaign with personal biases. That’s not necessarily good or bad. It’s just a fact. We all grow up in different places, in different families with different views and values, go to different schools, and have a variety of friends and influencers.
The key is to recognize your biases and incorporate them in a way that expands your options but does not limit your decisions. For example, I was once a senior fellow for statistical analysis at the Heritage Foundation, so I view issues through the prism of conservative economics. That perspective would be in total sync with most Republican candidates I might work for. But if I were a campaign manager for a Republican running on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I would have to factor that bias out of my decision making because most people in that area probably wouldn’t agree with me. It’s important to remember. The campaign manager is not the candidate. The manager’s job is to help get the candidate elected.
Step 1: Define a Desired Outcome
Now that you have your head in the right place, ready to think new and act differently, the first step on the journey to a winning strategy is settling on a “desired outcome”: your goal. In the business world, it could be increasing sales by 10 percent. In college, it might be getting a 4.0 grade point average. In political races, it usually means winning the election by a 50 percent plus one margin. Political outcomes are a little easier to determine (if not to achieve) than most. Your goal could be a number higher than 50 percent, but in most political contests, the desired outcome is no more complicated than setting a winning percentage. But whatever the strategy—in politics, business, the nonprofit sector, or even war—the key to defining a successful outcome is to ask the right questions. Do you define your goal clearly and does your strategic plan go on to achieve it?
In politics, the goal may seem obvious but sometimes we ask the wrong questions.
A good example is the Gore 2000 campaign. Its goal was winning the majority of the popular vote. It achieved the goal but lost the election because it lost sight of the electoral map. It didn’t consider a what-if scenario for a popular vote win but an Electoral College loss.
In 2008 the Hillary Clinton campaign’s desired outcome was winning the delegate-rich primary states. The campaign succeeded but didn’t count on the cumulative numerical advantage of the caucus states, the proportional nature of Democratic Party nominating rules, and the media attention Obama gained with caucus victories.
Here are some examples of asking the right questions.
In 1994 Newt Gingrich decided to ask why the GOP should continue to run campaigns based on the notion that “all politics is local.” After all, it was Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill who coined the phrase. Gingrich answered his question by deciding to nationalize the 1994 congressional elections. He broke all kinds of Republican doctrine that dictated candidates win locally, one race at a time. He picked up over fifty seats in one election.
In 2006 DCCC Chair Rahm Emanuel looked at the playing field and said, in essence, “If there are only thirty competitive seats, we can’t win.” Democrats won that election because Emanuel asked the right question: “How can we turn forty more seats into competitive contests?” He tasked Mark Gersh with finding them. Ultimately, expanding the field, coupled with a favorable political environment, allowed Democrats to win back the Congress. Other factors were important—fund-raising, candidate recruitment—but Emanuel changed the dynamics of the election cycle when he asked the key question.
Step 2: Develop Situational Awareness
For most nonpresidential races, the bottom line is pretty simple: get the strategy right by developing a winning coalition, which takes us back to the second half of my definition of strategy: using a structured approach based on an understanding of the existing and potential environmental elements.
To do that, campaigns must engage in something called “situational awareness.” The U.S. Navy defines it as “the degree of accuracy by which one’s perception of his current environment mirrors reality.” In politics, your ability to assess the environment will determine, in large part, whether your campaign succeeds or fails. To understand situational awareness, a campaign manager must begin with an analysis of the existing elements that impact the political environment.
Assessing the Existing Elements
Party Registration/Identification
First and foremost, you must know the party registration and identification numbers for your race by heart. This is an absolute necessity. The numbers tell you the size of your voter pool—how many Republicans, Democrats, and independents—and where to find them. Without these basic numbers at the core of your strategy, you cannot win.
The wider the gap in party registration/identification numbers, the less chance a party has to compete. Maryland is a good example. There the party registration is about 2 to 1 Democratic. Even a good Republican Senate candidate like Michael Steele in 2006 couldn’t overcome the Democrats’ registration advantage in a bad Republican year.
There can be rare exceptions. In the 2006 election, Florida congressman Mark Foley’s solidly Republican seat, which under normal circumstances would not have made Emanuel’s target list, was won by a Democrat thanks to the sex scandal that broke just before the election. Similarly, in 2008 Louisiana’s 2nd District, a solid Democratic seat, was won by a Republican, when incumbent congressman William Jefferson was caught with $90,000 in his freezer.
But in races with a narrow registration gap, party registration/ identification numbers become all-important.
Previous Political Behavior
Both parties focus on reaching and turning out their base, as they should. But nationally and in most states, neither party has a sufficient electoral majority to win without looking at the big middle. One way to do that is to analyze previous political behavior.
Voters’ past political behavior provides a gold mine of information to help develop strategic targeting. This data can answer questions like, What was the historical turnout in past elections? How has that turnout differed in presidential and nonpresidential election years and how has one party benefited from these patterns? What kinds of candidates have generally won in this area? Is this a ticket-splitting area?
Answering this last question is particularly important because certain areas in the country have a history of ticket splitting. Ticket splitters, who may be registered Republicans, Democrats, or independents, vote for candidates in both parties. They make up the big middle and should never be taken for granted. Virginia has a large number of ticket splitters. Over the past few years, voters in Virginia, which had been reliably Republican, have elected Democrats as governor and more recently to both Senate seats. Anyone looking at previous political behavior wouldn’t have been surprised to see Virginia, or Indiana, become a battleground state in the 2008 presidential contest. In 2006 Indiana voters gave three Republican-held congressional seats to the Democrats. Obviously something was happening with Indiana voters, and it paid off when Obama won the state, the first Democrat since 1964.
When looking at past political behavior, remember that any targeting strategy should reflect ticket splitters. Years of election data and exit poll results have shown that most Republicans get at least 10 percent of the Democratic vote and most Democrats get at least 10 percent of the Republican vote. When you include independents, nationally ticket splitters are somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 percent of the electorate.
Precinct data can show where swing voters are found. But that’s only half the analysis. The next step is to discover who the voters in your election are and what they care about.
Demographics
A demographic analysis of an election district provides “up close and personal” information on voters by such factors as race (e.g., African American, white, Asian, Latino), income level, sex, age, and religion. The importance of demographics varies according to the nature of the election district, the candidates, and current key issues.
In Florida districts, for example, age is a significant demographic. In urban districts and, more recently, in southwestern and western areas, race is a key demographic. The demographic makeup is critical because these groups tend to share common experiences, values, and issue positions. For example, Latinos are concerned about education, jobs, and immigration policy. Women may be concerned with security, the eco nomy, education, and health care. Analyzing demographics helps you identify issues that concern target voter groups and connect your candidate with these key voters.
There are two main sources for demographic information. The Census Bureau can give you information on everything from the number of women 55+ in your area to the number of low income voters. It can provide data on race, age, sex, income, and union participation, to name a few. It does not have information on religious affiliation.
The other source for good demographic information is your state’s voter files as well as files made available by the two parties at both the national and state level.
These sources will become your references of choice as you put real numbers behind your target groups.
Issues Currently in Play
The 2008 presidential contest was overwhelmingly about one issue: the economy. The McCain campaign, however, argued that the contest wasn’t about issues but experience and in so doing forgot one of the cardinal rules of campaigns and elections: issues matter. In the 2008 election, voters wanted a president who understood their concerns and offered solutions to address them. The McCain campaign thought the election was about defining Obama. The Obama campaign thought it was about the economy. Is it any surprise, then, who won?
In developing a winning strategy, campaigns and candidates must address the issues people care about or risk irrelevancy. A party that is overly focused on its base, especially in races other than presidential campaigns, often only emphasizes issues that don’t reflect what the majority of voters worry about on a day-to-day basis.
That doesn’t mean base issues aren’t important, but to put together a majority coalition requires an issue matrix that focuses on broader issues that matter to both the base and the big middle. This is where survey research can provide crucial issue information by political areas, by demographic categories, and by geography to help you reach your winning coalition of targeted voters.
Strengths and Weaknesses: Your Candidate and Your Opponent
Every candidate has strengths and weaknesses that must be identified and agreed upon before a campaign strategy is crafted. This takes both courage by campaign managers and a sense of reality. Again, look at the last presidential race. An honest assessment of Obama would have found his speaking ability a great strength; his lack of experience, a weakness. A similar critique of McCain would have shown his experience as his main strength and his self-admitted lack of knowledge about the economy as his weakness. Putting together a candid assessment of the candidate’s and the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses is the final but critical last step in understanding the existing political environment and its likely impact on the campaign. If you don’t know that, you don’t know how to win. It’s like a fighter pilot who says, “I don’t care what the enemy does. I’m going to fly as effectively and efficiently as possible.” How long would that pilot last in combat? A campaign isn’t much different.
Assessing the Potential Elements
Once you have analyzed the existing elements impacting the political environment, it is time to assess the potential elements that may affect the political environment. This critical exercise in making knowledge-based assumptions begins by asking the right questions. Start with these.
What Are Future Issues Likely to Be?
In assessing the current political environment, survey research provides the most reliable and current analysis of voter concerns. The issue mix, however, can change over time. Who would have guessed a couple of years ago that by the fall of 2008 the war in Iraq would rank behind a housing crisis, high gas prices, and a collapse on Wall Street? As you write your campaign strategy, you should focus on two or three major issues. But it’s also important to make assumptions about whether that current issue mix is likely to stay the same or change and explain why.
As with current issues, survey research can give you some sense of where the electorate could move. All of us have gut feelings about major issues. We can also get a sense from news coverage and listening to the opposition about potential issues. Early in the campaign cycle, it’s wise to think about other potential issues, have a “plan B” in the desk drawer, and be ready to pivot if a new issue arises.
What in the Environment Is Likely to Change or Is an Unknown and What Will Remain the Same?
Crystal balls don’t work, but we can make some educated assumptions about the political environment. For example, last spring, assuming that George Bush’s high negative job approval ratings would remain a significant factor in the fall election was a pretty good bet. The McCain campaign should have accounted for this likely situation by making a painful but necessary strategic decision to separate the candidate from an unpopular president.
In the same race, the African American turnout and the youth vote were other unknowns. Both groups were important to an Obama victory. It was safe to assume they would go to the polls in higher numbers. But how high was the key question. Republicans failed to understand the importance of the youth vote, once again relying on television to reach voters. Had they assumed a higher youth vote, their strategic communications strategy would have included the kind of new technologies that are the conduits for conversations with this voter group.
In 2004 the Kerry campaign assumed his war record would not be a major issue and could be dealt with tactically. Had they assumed the opposite, they might have handled the situation strategically and changed the dynamic of the race.
What Weaknesses and Strengths in Both Candidates Are Likely to be Important?
By this point, you have put together what is likely to be a long list of strengths and weaknesses for your candidate and your opponent. At this point the manager must pare down the list to the strengths and weaknesses that are likely to matter in the election.
In 1992 Bill Clinton’s admission that he smoked marijuana was a weakness. So was his inexperience, but only the inexperience became a serious issue. For his opponent, President George H. W. Bush, his strength was his foreign policy experience, but it gained him little in the election because voters were focused on the economy.
Your campaign must hone in on the two or three strengths and weaknesses of each candidate that will be most important to voters, given the political context of the election. This is crucial to a winning strategy.
What Is the Impact of the National Brands of Both Parties and Other Political Races?
A bad national party brand or a tsunami of a campaign like Barack Obama’s can have a major impact on other campaigns. In 1980 Jimmy Carter’s disastrous economy gave Ronald Reagan a huge win as Republicans won the Senate and picked up thirty-four seats in the House. In 1994 Democratic congressional scandals and Bill Clinton’s policy mistakes in his first year as president combined to form the perfect political storm, and Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in forty years. The negative national Democratic brand simply overwhelmed many of their candidates that year.
In 2006 it was the Republicans’ turn. Hurricane Katrina, the faltering war in Iraq, congressional overspending, and Republicans’ inability to get things done downgraded the GOP brand to a point where Democrats were able to regain both the House and the Senate. Winning in a difficult environment is possible, but a realistic assessment of the impact of these outside factors must be part of the situational awareness process.
Step 3: Defining a Winning Coalition
Once you have a comprehensive picture of the political environment, you have achieved situational awareness and it’s time to move to the next step: defining a winning coalition.
Start by precisely defining your coalition. This means more than simply coming up with vote totals. A precise definition requires knowing how many voters it will take to win, but you must also know who those voters are and where they are found. How many married women with children? How many Hispanics? How many Catholics? You must put both percentages and hard numbers behind the target groups.
Next, determine which groups are reliably in your column and how you will hold them. Past political behavior and survey research are critical here. For Republicans, at the moment, this is more difficult because of losses among swing voters in the past two elections. Conservatives fall into this category, which remains a larger group than self-identified liberals, according to the 2008 exit polls. Evangelical Christians also remain reliably Republican. For Democrats, liberals, African Ameri cans, and, at least for the moment, eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds make up their most reliable voters.
Then, determine which groups are key swing groups and how to attract them. If you don’t know who these groups are, find out. Survey research can tell you which groups offer your campaign the best opportunity and which the biggest challenge. It can also tell you what issues are of greatest concern to these voters and what messages will have the most resonance.
These are not mutually exclusive steps. One of the most difficult challenges campaigns face is appealing to both their base and the swing voters needed to reach a winning coalition.
Finally, predict what your opponent’s coalition will look like and identify the friction points between the two campaigns. The single most important factor that will impact your strategy is your opponents’ strategy. So, figuring out how they might win and how you think you can win will give you the overlay—the playing field where the contest will take place.
For example, in 2008, when Obama began talking about a middle class tax cut, he was going after voters who made $50,000 to $75,000 per year. In 2004 Republicans had won this group by ten points. The Obama campaign decided to pursue a GOP key target group, realizing the move would play on Republican turf. But Obama’s strategic message on the issue won the day. Exit polls showed that despite his liberal record and views, the Obama tax message worked with these voters and took away what had been a solid Republican advantage for decades.
You must put your plan to build a winning coalition on paper. Your chart or spreadsheet should list the target groups, numerical and percentage vote goals, and the issues/message that will bring those voters into the fold. For a Republican congressional race, an abbreviated hypothetical coalition might look something like this:
For Democrats, those boxes might include registered Democrats, African Americans, single women, union workers, or a host of other possible targets. Geography can be a target “group” (i.e., selected counties or precincts) if a particular area behaves in a unique fashion. But remember that other demographics may have more impact on voters’ political behavior than where they live. For example, eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds in Tampa probably have more in common with eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds at Ohio State than with the eighty-year-old couple across the street. Given the current communications environment where political discourse has become nationalized thanks to cable and the Internet, geography is becoming a lesser factor in targeting. When putting together a coalition, remember that there will be overlap. Many voters will be found in more than one group. Many independents will be in the $50,000 to $75,000 group as well. Don’t overcount.
The Weakness of a Base Strategy
Thanks to redistricting, a significant number of congressional districts, both Republican and Democratic, are relatively safe seats. In those races, a base strategy, in which the base is large enough to provide the numbers needed to win, may work. But for many races—local, congressional, statewide, and presidential—neither party’s base is large enough to win outright. The voters who will push a campaign into the win column will be found in the middle. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that the base alone can win the race.
Create a Strategic Communications Plan
Strategy Versus Tactics
Once the campaign has identified the groups that make up a winning coalition, the next step is to develop an effective message. But don’t mistake tactics for strategy. Strategy includes elements like defining the political environment, understanding the opponent’s strategy, developing messages to reach them. Tactics are methods for delivering the message and reaching voters like direct mail, phone banks, social networks, scheduling, advertising, and Internet. Think of the process as a little like building a home. Strategy is like an architectural plan that reflects the wants and needs of the buyer and the environment in which the house will be built. Tactics are the tools to build the house.
Strategy creates context for tactical decisions. Don’t buy an ad because you think you should buy an ad. Do it for a reason.
Survey Research: Reaching Voters with an Effective Message
During your situational awareness phase, survey research can be a major source of crucial information about voter concerns. You may also be able to gather information from public polls and other resources. But as you put together strategic messaging, internal survey research is critical because it helps you listen to voters, learn what they’re thinking, figure out how to help them at a policy level, and then develop a message for the candidate so he or she can lead. All candidates have a series of issue positions. Surveys should not be used to decide a candidate’s position on issues but to assess the strength of a particular issue with a particular group. If one of your target groups is married women with children, survey research can identify their number one issue and the components of that issue. For example, it could be gas prices or the cost of health care. It could be worries about how to pay for college when falling stock prices have decimated the college fund. Survey research can tell you which issues to emphasize with each of your target groups and gives you the ability to test the effectiveness of your candidate’s issue messages and those of your opponent.
Strategic Communications
David Ogilvy, a giant of modern advertising, said, “The results of your campaign depend less on how we write your advertising than on how your product is positioned.” Ultimately, it is a candidate’s positions, not money, not consultants, and not campaign managers, that will make or break a campaign. Does anyone think that Barack Obama would have won the Democratic nomination if he had supported the war in Iraq? Equally interesting, two of the Republican candidates in the primaries who raised and spent the least came in first and second—John McCain and Mike Huckabee. Positioning matters.
When developing a strategy, it’s important to do an analysis comparing the strategic messaging for your campaign and your opponent’s. It’s called a communications matrix, and it’s an exercise to help you predict what the debate will look like in the months ahead. The matrix looks like this.
The first quadrant is what are you are going to say about your candidate. What are you going to emphasize about his or her issue positions with the key groups identified in your winning coalition? The second quadrant reflects what you are going to say about your opponent. The third quadrant is what the opponent will say about your candidate and finally what the opponent will say about himself or herself.
This tool gives you a starting point for a campaign discussion, based on the issues you want to talk about. Once the communications matrix is completed, you take the potential messages from each quadrant and test them using survey research to determine who wins the battle of strategic messaging. If candidate A says, for example, “The economy is on the verge of catastrophe. We need the $800 billion stimulus bill,” and candidate B says, “The country is facing tough economic times, but tax cuts for small business to create jobs is the answer, not spending billions for pet projects,” what happens? Strategic communications is the single most important element of your strategy because winning campaigns are all about delivering a well-constructed argument as to why voters should choose their candidate.
Voter’s Memory Process
Political strategic communications are impacted by what is called the voter’s memory process. Average people respond to three triggers that determine whether something is remembered or not. First, issues that interest them. Recently the economy has swamped all other issues, and voters remember what candidates have to say or not say when it comes to their economic plans for the country.
The second type of memory is what I call a sudden dramatic change; 9/11 is a good example of a searing memory that results from a highly emotional, vivid experience. Politically, we saw soccer moms suddenly become security moms as they watched people die in real time on television. Polls at the time showed the national security/defense issue, which had been at 4 or 5 percent, jump to 25 percent. The Breslan school terrorist in September 2004 incident is another example of a dramatic moment that voters, especially women with children, remembered as they cast their vote for president that fall.
The third memory trigger is, in reality, no trigger at all. The very fact that the vast majority of voters simply aren’t consumed by politics while many politicians run ads based on what interests them rather than the voters explains the failure of so much political advertising/messaging on both sides. People don’t remember what doesn’t interest them.
For example, I am not interested in quilting. You could create the most compelling ad about quilting ever made and I wouldn’t remember the message. A lot of political messages are the advertising equivalent of a quilting ad. When the ads don’t work, campaigns simply crank up the buy or pump up the volume with a harsher tone.
It’s a little like the storied American tourist traveling in France who doesn’t speak the language. So he talks slowly and loudly, and then is frustrated when the locals still don’t understand him. Too much of what passes for strategic campaign communications today is based on this methodology. Moreover, too many campaigns don’t understand why they’re not getting through to voters and as a result spend even more money to fund ineffective messages.
If the challenge of every campaign is to develop a communications strategy and message that engages voters, then it must reflect the most important element of strategic communications—getting the issue mix right. Here is an example of a Republican strategic communications effort that worked because it addressed high gas prices, a key concern of voters in the summer of 2008.
With the ban on offshore drilling scheduled to be lifted at the end of the fiscal year, the question facing the House was whether to extend the ban or let it expire. The Democrats’ liberal leadership had a record of inflexibility when it came to drilling and maintained its antidrilling views even with gas prices going through the roof. Democrats had the votes to extend the ban, but they didn’t count on a concerted strategic communications effort by House Republicans who had long opposed the ban as a roadblock to energy independence, lower prices, and national security.
Republican leaders argued for an “all of the above” energy policy that included drilling along with more funding for other energy sources like wind, solar, and biofuels. They drove home the point with assistance from vocal advocates for the policy like Newt Gingrich; and within weeks, polling data showed the majority of Americans now favored offshore drilling.
Democrats got the message, and despite their antidrilling views and the fact that they had the votes in Congress to extend the ban, they decided to quietly let the ban expire. They didn’t even take a vote. While 2008 wasn’t a good year for Republicans, exit polls showed that Republicans did win voters for whom energy was the top issue. The Republican victory on the energy issue didn’t result from an attack campaign against the Democratic leadership but rather a strategic campaign to offer voters a positive policy alternative on an issue that interested them. If you’ve got the right issue, the right position, and the right message, it is possible to win even as the minority.
Means End Theory of Communications: Laddering
Engagement is the name of the game in strategic communication. But how do you make a personal connection with a voter who may be interested in the campaign but more likely is not? One method is called laddering. It is a process of seeing issues in a way that connects your campaign and candidate with voters and their values through language. On paper, it looks like this:
• Issue attributes are various policy components of the issue.
• Issue benefits are the results of the policy—the outcome.
• Personal consequences are the ways in which the outcome affects voters personally.
• Value is how the consequences mesh with voters’ life goals.
In practice, here’s how laddering works with a real issue: a 5 percent tax cut. To reach a more conservative voter, the language laddering might go like this:
| Issue | Favor a 5 percent tax cut. |
|---|
| Issue benefit | “You will have more money in your pocket.” |
| Personal consequences | “You can afford your child’s education.” |
| Value | “You are a good parent.” |
For a more liberal voter on the same issue, the laddering might go like this:
| Issue | Oppose a 5 percent tax cut. |
|---|
| Issue benefit | “The government gets to keep more resources it needs to help people.” |
| Personal consequences | “More low-income elderly can get better health care.” |
| Value | “You’re a good citizen.” |
Both of these examples show how to approach issues in a way that goes far beyond a policy discussion to create a personal connection between an issue and a voter’s values, something that is important to him or her.
Allocating Resources
Reaching voters is not inexpensive. Whether it’s through TV ads, paid television media, earned media, or new technologies, making that personal connection to voters through shared values is likely going to be the most costly part of any campaign budget. As you do your targeting, as you put together a potentially winning coalition, put a dollar figure on the cost of reaching each target group. You must know not only who you are going to reach and what you are going to say to them, but how you’re going to reach them, how much it will cost, and whether you can raise the necessary funds. If not, go back to the drawing board.
Managing Strategy
Once a strategy is defined, too many campaigns assume that is how it’s all going to play out. Winston Churchill said of strategy, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.”
The military has a useful management tool that can help you manage your strategy. It’s called an OODA loop:
• Observe
• Orient
• Decide
• Act
After you’ve begun to implement your strategy, the next step is to observe how your strategy is performing. This often begins by doing survey research, which provides a statistically based analysis of the campaign’s impact and progress. From those observations, you move on to the next stage: orienting, determining what has worked and what needs changing. Orienting is the process of developing options that move your strategy forward.
From those options, you decide which actions to take and then you execute. Then you return to observation to see the impact of your actions and repeat the process. The faster a campaign can employ an OODA loop kind of self-assessment, the greater chance the campaign has to stay a step ahead of its opponents.
Campaigns that lack an effective strategy based on the elements I have described in this chapter are unlikely to be successful. In 2006 Republican leaders operated on the assumption that it would not be a national election and success depended on turning out the base. Strategically, they couldn’t have been more wrong. It was obvious months before the election that it was going to be nationalized and that a base turnout would not be sufficient to win. It didn’t matter if the GOP turnout operation was better. It didn’t matter if the television ads were better. The strategic assumptions were wrong, and Republicans lost badly.
Once again, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Without a viable strategy based on a winning coalition, a campaign can make a lot of noise but is unlikely to make the kind of progress needed to win.
