The media link is a given. After all, what is politics without an audience?

 People running for political office depend primarily on various forms of media to draw attention to their candidacy, sign up volunteers, poll opinions, solicit requests for funding, solidify their base and sway the undecided to (a) vote, and (b) vote for them or their cause.

Just as entrepreneurs with a new idea or product must break through the clutter of the massive numbers of messages everyone sees, reads or hears daily, drawing attention to your candidacy is an uphill battle for those new to politics who want to enter into public life and serve their region’s constituents.

There are numerous ways to increase recognition starting with mainstream methods, such as radio, television and print ads, posters, stickers, buttons and flyers in the mail. There is a fiercely contested race in Northern Virginia for an open Congressional seat vacated by Tom Davis. Voters have been bombarded by the contenders and their supporters with mailings—oversize postcards and letters—for several months. Since the primary election is today, this deluge of mail will finally stop.

On the national level, candidates have found and embraced the Internet, with Obama leading in drawing younger people to register to vote and in fund-raising. At the very least, each candidate must now have a website. The use of social marketing websites, discussed in previous articles, has been immensely successful and has changed the political media-mix forever. Recently heard on one of the cable channels was a remark from a young voter in response to a letter one of the presidential candidates wrote—why didn’t the candidate just use email?

Let’s delve into the use of another method to reach eligible voters—telephone calls and their effect on the public, and the implication for entrepreneurs who launch new products. In the past two weeks, calls related to that  vacant Congressional seat in Virginia have mushroomed, coming both from live volunteers who support a candidate and from machines with recorded messages, known as robo calls. Although not a scientific sample, some two-voter households have averaged three calls a day for the last week in the run-up to the primary. More than half of these have been robo calls. A strong argument can be made for saying that at best, these calls are ignored by the voting public, and at worst, they are turning people off and decreasing voter turnout. 

There is a national effort to eliminate or at least reduce the use of robo calls. Shaun Dakin, a colleague and friend, is the entrepreneur spearheading this effort. Check out the website www.stoppoliticalcalls.org. Visitors to the homepage are welcomed to the “hall of fame (or shame).” This organization is asking politicians to publicly pledge that their campaign will not use robo calling. Voters can also register on this site and join the cause. Membership is growing exponentially and should continue to grow once the fall presidential campaign is fully underway. [This annoyance mirrors the Federal Do-Not-Call program and has implications for marketing researchers, since legitimate surveys, just as political calls, are exempt and the public is unaware of this fact. More on this in the future.]

Another area where political candidates borrow from the marketing guide book is the use of testimonials. Years ago marketers used well-known public figures extensively. Have you noticed that this is now done less frequently?  Why is this?  It’s because many companies got burnt.  Today’s star may be tomorrow’s bad publicity (think O.J. Simpson and Hertz or Britney Spears and several products that dropped her endorsement). Just a quick search backs this up (see the article “Companies Ditch Celebrity Endorsements” on http://advertising.about.com/cs/advertising/a/endorsements.htm and the white paper “Celebrity Power: Can Less be More” by the marketing research firm MillwardBrown on  http://www.dynamiclogic.com/na/research/whitepapers/docs/MB_POV_Celebrity_Power_December_2006.pdf).

For political candidates, association with unsavory characters is particularly taboo—hence, Obama’s rejection of Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement and McCain’s rejection of Reverend John Hagee’s endorsement. The candidates are making public pronouncements and taking other action such as returning campaign contributions or sending them to charities to separate themselves from these individuals. In today’s Virginia primary the two leading candidates have had many endorsers—the senator, governor, state officials and many others. When the “mud slinging" is intense and creating confusion about who to believe, it is tempting to vote for a candidate based on the character of the endorser.

There are many lessons for entrepreneurs to be learned from political campaigning about promoting your new product or service.  One lesson is that too much publicity can have the opposite effect among your potential customers—you may annoy them and turn them off or away. An obvious lesson is to use the medium that is best at reaching your target market.  Also, achieving recognition alone is only part of what is important. Equally important is to prevent your competitors from drawing negative attention to you and putting you on the defensive. For politicians, it is most important that you click with voters so that they will remember you, support your message, register to vote and then actually go to the polls and vote. The same is true for entrepreneurs, when potential customers decide to make a purchase, they must know and respect your brand, remember the name of your product and its benefits and select it above all other competing products. Citizens vote with their ballot. Your customers and clients vote with their pocketbook.

And now, I must end this entry and go vote!