NYT Magazine - Marketing Candidates

[Dover]

The Very, Very Personal Is the Political

By JON GERTNER

Published: February 15, 2004


Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you are called into the boss's office and asked to help sell the citizens of the United States on one of two presidential candidates in the 2004 campaign. Hard work, but what makes it especially tough is that you've been directed to try something experimental, something that's never been done before in a national election. Instead of creating a traditional political narrative for your candidate -- one that highlights charisma or character, for instance, or one that hews to a message on taxes or Social Security -- you've been told to focus on nothing but the people who might be persuaded to vote. In other words, forget about your candidate's nuanced ideas for space exploration or ending the conflict in Iraq. Forget about TV commercials, forget about radio, forget about debates, forget about the ups and downs of the news cycle. Think voters -- just voters. And don't think only in terms of big demographic groups like senior citizens, middle-class white men or young single women; don't think about them only in terms of geographical areas like districts or precincts or even neighborhoods. Think about what they like, what they do, what they consume. Think about them one by one. Name by name, address by address, phone by phone.

These are the customers you have to get to buy your Brand A over Brand B. So who are they? Where are they? Are they rich, with three kids and a jumbo mortgage? Do they own fly rods and drive minivans? Do they go to church or temple? And maybe most important, who among them has never voted, or rarely voted, or voted in ways that may deserve the special status of swing voter? To do the job right, of course, to really win this thing, you've got to find them, woo them and get them to the polls. Where to start?

These days, the first stop is a comprehensive database of U.S. voters. There are fewer than half a dozen of them. One, named Voter Vault, belongs to the Republican National Committee; another, named Datamart, belongs to the Democratic National Committee. Over the past few years, thanks to technological advances and an escalating arms race between the parties, Republicans and Democrats have gone to great lengths to make campaigning more like commercial marketing. ......cont'd

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/15/magazine/15VOTERS.html