The other day, I had one of my 247 clients over to the house for a strategy session on how to get their fundraising campaign going. During that time, they showed me their campaign placard that they're getting printed for the Iowa Caucus. "What do you think?" "It looks nice." "Do you think it will help us?" "Not at all." "Why not?" "Because it will be mixed in with 15 other pamphlets and cards from other campaigns. People don't like to read. Their eyes will glaze over like a donut." "Well, what would you do?" So I shared with them a sample idea and then started running with it. We looked into pricing for it and discovered that they could do it pretty cheap. They were excited. If they choose to use the idea, I'll blog about it later and the response that they got from it, but really... for all of these campaign consultants who churn out stuff that looks like everyone else's stuff, not only is it unremarkable, but it's not fun. At the 3rd District convention last year, I created the Funk Activity Book, which turned out to be a big hit. It had puzzles and games in it that were relevant to Dave's message, like this excerpt. I had fun making it, and the people who received it had fun reading and working it. Whatever you do in political marketing, it's gotta be fun, meaningful, memorable. Or don't do it. You just waste a lot of money printing stuff that no one will read otherwise. You've only got a few shots to make an impression, and it's hard to unmake an unfavorable impression (see Rick Perry's debates). |