Marketing a Political Campaign

 Davis Flachs

Marketing a Political Campaign

At the age of nineteen, I secured a position with Dan Bishop’s congressional campaign. I figured as an “intern” I would be stuffing envelopes at a fold-out table surrounded by dozens of people doing more important things. 

This was not the case. I showed up on my first day only to find two cars out front. I walked into the office park in semi-rural Union County, unsure if any of the units were actually occupied. I called the campaign manager. He came out and walked me to the comically small room which was our headquarters. 

We spoke for a few minutes, getting to know each other before starting to outline my responsibilities. It turned out I would not be completing trivial tasks such as stuffing envelopes. I would be assisting with event planning and marketing, among other things. By the end of the campaign, I helped plan multiple fundraisers and a parade, and provided key points to focus on which demographics we should target.

Switching Up The Approach

Early on, the Bishop campaign was hurting. Low numbers were coming in from our focus areas. In the early stages, we focused on the urban area, trying to draw and flip as many voters as possible. This proved to be futile. After some deliberating and the potential congressman seeking counsel from the President, we decided to switch up our strategy. The rural areas were guaranteed wins for us, but the turnout was low every year. 

Our strategy shifted towards getting people in these areas excited about the candidate and to the polls. To put this into action, the potential congressman made appearances at as many community events as possible, while holding rallies locally every week. It was a big change from fancy fundraiser dinners in uptown Charlotte, but you could see in each new report how much we were now gaining on the McCready campaign, our only opposition. A big step in this was getting the endorsement of community leaders. In the city, people look to various papers and channels to endorse a candidate. In the country, they look to the community figureheads. The guys who own dozens of car dealerships. The owners of local restaurants that have been around for half a century. The people who run the industry in these regions. The people with some local influence. Everyone around had connections to these families. Getting their endorsement meant an incredible boost in the polls. This was our first step in turning the campaign around.

Putting It Into Action

The next step was simple. Keep up the community efforts. Getting some facetime with everyday people and finding opportunities to get some press was crucial. Our next community event, which was also one of our biggest, was the parade.

The parade was by far my favorite public event. This was the rural crowd, and growing up in a semi-rural area, I knew how to appeal to them. In the rural Carolinas, trucks are a big deal. As silly or stereotypical as it may sound to an outsider, the bigger the lift, the cooler the truck. We reached out to local dealerships, trying to find the truck with the biggest lift kit around. Since many of the dealers were already acquainted with the campaign, this was not difficult. Within a day we had dealers ringing our phones off their hooks in attempts to support. In the end, we left for the parade with a truck so high a man of average height would have to jump just to grab the step-bar on the side of the vehicle. We equipped the vehicle with multiple American flags, a Dan Bishop for Congress Flag, and buckets filled with bumper stickers and candy. 

After the parade, we parked by the town hall, and a crowd of kids followed with their parents in tow. They all wanted to see the truck and get a photo sitting in it. It ended up being an incredible opportunity to get the congressman some facetime among his constituency and served as an impromptu town hall. The crowd drove the news channel over as well.

Conclusion

In my tenure working with the campaign on their marketing efforts, I learned a lot about marketing. I learned if a strategy is failing, it’s not the right move to pick at the minutiae of it, trying to change minor pieces that make little difference. It is time to change the strategy altogether. I also learned that knowing one’s audience is key. With most of the staff being career campaign workers who bounce from campaign to campaign around the country, many of their ideas for marketing toward the rural population struck me as out of touch strategies that would’ve been perceived as ingenuine. Since I had spent the first twelve years of my life living there, myself and another staff member were able to educate them on who these people really were.

My time with the campaign gave me the knowledge, work, and experience I needed to grow comfortable in the world of marketing. Whether or not marketing is the career path I wish to take is irrelevant. In almost any field, some level of marketing skills are a necessity.