I don’t do political PR, and this blog only dabbles in politics, yet as a PR person I must say I love campaign season.
Particularly when it comes to something as prominent as a presidential election, there is no better time to study communications strategies with the goal of learning about what works well and what doesn’t.
You can learn a lot about candidates by watching how they react to world events of the day, and by considering how they talk about their policies, campaign themes and how they communicate news and milestones.
On a second level, assuming you are behind the candidate, you want to be assured that he or she is savvy in terms of communicating and harnessing all available communications channels, as this will come in handy in governing and carrying out policies should the person win the election. (of course, the opposite applies too; as we have seen, sophisticated communications gambits can also be used to advance ill-conceived policies – see my post Stepford Wonks).
Finally, from a purely technical viewpoint – regardless of how you feel about the candidates and their policies – election season offers a good opportunity to watch a race and see how the candidates’ moves effect media coverage and the polls – and to deconstruct all this so that you can learn and apply these lessons to your field of PR.
The media often helps by conveniently breaking things down, as much coverage these days focuses on tactics and the race rather than the so-called substance (we can debate over whether this is a good or bad thing, but let’s face it, it is a reality).
For example, just today the Washington Post had a great article about the Obama campaign’s extensive use of online and mobile communications channels – see Obama’s Wide Web. And, just a few days ago, the NY Times covered the ups and downs of responding to smears on the campaign trail in the article How to Erase that Smea…, offering a lesson in reputation management.
