THE PELICAN APPROACH
The Three Resources of a Political Campaign
Every political campaign has three resources at its disposal: time, money, and reputation. When you partner with Pelican for your campaign, we help you manage those three resources.
CAMPAIGN TIME
Almost every successful campaign runs out of time before it runs out of money. So, from the beginning of a campaign, campaign teams should operate with urgency and in a deliberate manner. Pelican helps candidates and campaign teams sequence and prioritize the many tasks they will need to complete in order to win. We craft a campaign plan that works backwards from Election Day to the pre-launch phase of a campaign, and then we hold ourselves, campaign team members, and the client accountable to the plan.
CAMPAIGN MONEY
When it comes to campaign funding, the first thing any campaign must do is raise the funding. At Pelican, we serve as a fundraising coach for our clients. We work alongside professional fundraisers, the client’s friends and family, key stakeholders and organizations, and, most importantly, the client, to help bring the campaign dollars in the door. Most successful clients raise money on day one, and they don’t stop raising money until the last text messages are paid for on Election Day. While that persistent fundraising can feel daunting, there is a proven process that clients can follow that leads to success. We teach you that process.
There are very few successful campaigns that do not practice good fiscal discipline. As money flows into the campaign, Pelican drafts a budget outlining how campaign dollars should be spent. The campaign budget is one of the primary planning documents of the campaign, and we always produce complete budgets that are line-item specific and detail clearly what we plan to spend during each month of the campaign. As circumstances change during the campaign, we revise the budget to meet those circumstances; however, we only change the budget to address strategic necessities.
CAMPAIGN REPUTATION
At its most basic level, the campaign’s reputation is the same thing as the candidate’s reputation. So, candidates and campaign teams must behave in a manner that increases rather than decreases the reputation of the campaign.
Candidates should communicate—whether in person or through earned media or advertising—in a manner that encourages voters to both trust and like the candidate. And when candidates or campaigns speak, they must be on topic. Candidates must address voters on issues that matter to voters. Only when they do so can candidates demonstrate that they share the same values as the voters they seek to represent.
Running for office can be a disorienting process. Few people get to see themselves from the outside in the same way that candidates do during a campaign. At Pelican, we help clients evaluate objectively their own strengths and weaknesses relative to the voters. We help clients tell the story of their life in a way that connects directly with voters. We also help clients identify the key issues at stake in the campaign, and then we help clients communicate with voters about those issues in a way that is persuasive and true. Once we lock in the campaign message, we stick to it, and we do so in a repetitive, reinforcing way.
Finally, we guide clients through the process of communicating the differences between themselves and their opponents, and we help clients respond to their opponents when the opponents do the same. Most campaigns require drawing a contrast between opposing candidates. When necessary, campaigns should not shy away from this activity, nor should they apologize for engaging in it. Much like a courtroom, our elections process is adversarial in nature. There will be one winner, and the voters are the jury. Campaigns should present a complete case.
