Creative for political campaigns

​How to remain apolitical while working as a hired gun
 
It’s that time of year again. Granted, this is a smaller election cycle than, say, the four-year presidential one, but it’s still time when lots of races start to gear up. 
 
What’s this have to do with a posting about “creative services” from Copel Communications? 
 
Glad you asked. 
 
As a creative, you might find yourself tasked, from time to time, to work on something political. It may be something pretty tame. Or it may be highly provocative. It might align with your own beliefs. Or it may fly in their face. 
 
So what do you do? 
 
Setting the ground rules
 
First off, you need to have your own boundaries. You need a bright shining line which you refuse to cross, professionally. And you need to get the fastest possible understanding of the potential project in order to make that go/no-go decision, ASAP. You don’t want to waste that client’s time, hemming and hawing. And you don’t want to waste your own time, either. 
 
Sometimes (albeit rarely), this will be easy. You might be handed an assignment that’s so polarizing, or so, well, offensive that not only does it run counter to your own ethos, but even if you were to try and take it on, you’d do lousy work. You couldn’t possibly approach it dispassionately. 
 
Notice we said “rarely”? Because, as a rule, these will be tougher calls. We worked on a project recently for an agency that represented a big business concern. Oooh: “big business.” The Evil Empire, right? 
 
We’re not against big business, but we needed to bring in another resource who might’ve been. They were cagey about joining the project. 
 
But guess what? The aim of this big business group, in part, was to help low-income people. (From a political standpoint, this was a matter of lobbying for direct vs. indirect assistance for these people. In other words, do you help them with lower prices [what the business wanted], or a government subsidy funded by taxes [what the opponents wanted]? Either side could claim the high ground; both were, ostensibly, “looking out for the little guy.”) 
 
Seen in this (hugely parenthetical!) light, our partners were happy to come on board. 
 
Incidentally, this was a “high-ground” campaign we were working on. That is, “Look at all the benefits! Wouldn’t this be great?” It wasn’t a smear campaign of the opposition. We’d likely have passed on that one.
 
Hitting it out of the park
 
Not long ago, we were handed an interesting creative assignment for one of the country’s leading new-economy companies, courtesy of their agency. (Can you see how we’re bending over backward to anonymize this??) They wanted a certain legislative initiative passed, and were actually targeting the policymakers themselves. 
 
This might sound like a “lobbying” campaign, but this client has such deep pockets that they were going all-out in all media: television, radio, outdoor, social, transit, you name it. We can see the logic of the media spend: If the creative were done right, it would also induce a good warm-and-fuzzy feeling among the very constituents who voted for those policymakers. Get it? 
 
We’ve said this a zillion times in these articles, and we’ll say it again: Know Thy Customer. In this case, the “customer” was the policymaker. We needed to know what was on their plate. What kept them up at night. What their biggest concerns were. Only then did we consider what the big business was proposing; otherwise, our appeals would have been tone-deaf. 
 
We developed a number of overall multimedia creative concepts, which really took an emotional approach to the seemingly sterile legislation. It was all about how it impacted underserved people (detect a common thread here among these political players?) who would benefit, if the policymakers went the way the business preferred. Our reasoning was akin to “Why did you want to get into politics in the first place?” Or, to use a phrase that politicians prefer to use, “Why did you want to get into public service in the first place?” See the difference? 
 
A parting shot
 
Politics, and political campaigns, are potential landmines for any business. The above examples are about actual election-cycle campaigns. Here at Copel Communications, we’re officially apolitical. You have no idea where we stand, left or right, red or blue. That’s intentional. 
 
We advise the same for all our non-election-cycle clients, too. Put it this way: The instant you get political in any of your messaging, you effectively alienate half of your audience! Some companies, such as Nike (and, to a lesser extent, Apple), are willing, indeed proud, to stick their necks out thus. But they’re the exceptions. For everyone else, it’s good politics to remain apolitical. 
 
Need help with that next campaign, whatever it may be? Contact us. We’d be delighted to put our experience to work for you.

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