10 Elements of an Advanced Campaign Plan
Writing a basic campaign plan is easy. Writing an advanced campaign plan is hard. A basic campaign plan can take as little as ten or twenty pages, while a premium plan for a large race can easily take fifty pages and sometimes even twice that much.
The reason that premium plans can be much larger is because of the number of things which set apart a basic plan from an advanced plan. With some things in life there are only a small number of elements which separate the mediocre from the premium. In football the difference between a high school player and a professional athlete might be hard work and genetics. These things are not simple to implement, but they are few to list.
When it comes to political campaigns, the various elements which separate a basic plan from an advanced plan are neither simple to implement nor few to list. The 10 elements of an advanced plan include:
- Consistent with accepted general theory and best practices
- Customized to the specific campaign context
- Actionable
- Concise and understandable
- Establishes buy-in from and inspires all coordinated parties
- Robust and agile
- Proactive and dynamic
- Self-optimizing
- Measurably effective
- Realistic
There are certain principals that have been proven through research in political science and through repeated implementation in the field. One example of such information is found in the contents of the book "Get Out the Vote" by Green and Gerber. This book is based on a combination of real political campaign observation and rigorous theoretical research.
The book notes a general pattern in which turnout is improved through social interaction. On page 137 of the second edition, the book states, "Mobilizing voters is not merely a matter of reminding them Election Day is near. Prerecorded messages reminding people to vote do little...Mobilizing voters is rather like inviting them to a social occasion. Personal invitations convey the most warmth and work best. Next best are phone calls in which the caller converses with the respondent, as opposed to reading a canned script."
Green and Gerber actually estimate specific comparative effectiveness rates in the book. Gerber notes that robocalls are less effective than in-person meetings with the candidate, but robocalls are also much cheaper than in-person meetings with the candidate. Rates of effectiveness should be multiplied by costs for execution to come up with an estimated cost per acquisition, which would be a turned out vote in this case. Cost per acquisition will directly inform the recommended spending mix.
This is also the place to lean on professional experience. Data from an objective survey is superior to the professional opinion of a consultant, but data from an objective survey is not always available. Professional opinion may be imperfect, but it is immensely valuable because it is holistic and may fill in the gaps where other data is not available. Moreover, professionals can help with the research process itself, improving outcomes and lowering costs.
Customized to the Specific Campaign Context
The element of specific information may seem to contradict the element of general information, but in fact there is no conflict. Instead, specific information is like a house which stands on top of the foundation of general information. The two should always be consistent with one another, but the specific information takes precedent and is more useful.
Consider again the trade-off between robocalling and live calling. If there is some average price for robocalls and live calls around the U.S. then there will be a generally preferred approach which reflects those prices. However, your particular campaign may pay more or less than the average price. This means your preferences and mixes both can and should deviate from the norm accordingly to maximize efficiency.
The same is true with issue advocacy. You may be a Republican, but if you are running in a moderate area the preferences of your particular constituency are not likely to reflect the preferences of the average Republican constituency. It is certainly advisable to weight the views of your particular constituency relatively highly as you form a message plan.
Actionable
This third element is also the last element of any basic plan. An advanced plan must first include everything included in a basic plan and then add the icing. Many campaign plans overemphasize the theory and strategy at the expense of identifying the specific steps which need to be taken to implement that strategy.
A message strategy may identify the economy as the primary issue for message advocacy, but that information alone is not actionable. An actionable plan contains specific tasks, budgets, and timelines.
An actionable plan, for example, would specify that the messaging on the economy will be spread through a direct mail purchase which will be delivered on May 5, an email campaign which will involve weekly emails beginning June 1, and a GOTV television ad which will hit the week before the election.
All of these plans would be further specified with the amounts they will cost, the times at which they must be paid, and the specific vendors which will be used.
Concise and Understandable
There are campaigns with 75 page campaign plans and there are campaigns which should have 75 page campaign plans, but they are not always the same campaigns. A good plan is one which will be understood by all who read it. Part of the cognitive limitation in people is that it is hard to fully take in a very large plan, and it is particularly difficult to suffer reading through an excessive plan when most of the content is plainly irrelevant.
A basic plan will thoroughly describe the execution of a campaign. A premium plan will thoroughly describe the execution of a campaign in a way that is understandable to anyone who reads it and uses minimum space.
One technique to ensure that everyone understands the plan is to meet with the people who have read the plan and go over it. The plan is likely to require some explanation and some revision. The revisions may occur in the form of a whole new plan, but it is often the practice that revisions will be outlined in separate memos instead because this is convenient.
Established Buy-In from and Inspires All Coordinated Parties
A poor campaign will either not have a plan or not stick to the plan it has. A mediocre campaign will have a decent plan and roughly abide by it. A great campaign plan is not complied with because all the actors must comply, but is enthusiastically complied with because all of the actors genuinely like the plan.
A premium plan is created in a way that takes responsibility for incentivizing, not just instructing, the various actors properly. This incentive is achieved in at least three or four ways.
First, the campaign plan must give a plausible and convincing argument that proper execution of the plan will result in the objectives desired by all parties. Usually this is a campaign win, but sometimes it is something more or something else. Perhaps winning is not enough. Perhaps the candidate wants to win by a large margin to prove a point, or they want to garner support on some issue while they campaign.
Secondly, buy-in is established by obtaining input from the coordinated parties prior to the creation of the campaign plan. The campaign plan is usually but not always authored by the general consultant or the campaign manager. Usually the fundraiser is better at fundraising than the general consultant. Rather than instructing the fundraiser on what he ought to do, the general consultant might ask the fundraiser what the fundraiser plans on doing. Likewise, the general consultant should ask the candidate about what they want to do. These thoughts should be integrated into the plan in order to create support for the plan because people support their own ideas.
Thirdly, contracts can and should be structured in a way that creates an interest in winning through the use of financial or in kind win bonuses. This may not result in the enthusiasm which really takes the campaign up a notch, but it can at least guarantee that everyone is genuinely interested in achieving the objective.
The fourth way to create buy in is optional because it does not always work. Depending on the personality of the candidate and other actors, it may or may not be effective for the plan to contain a section appealing to the broad values and ideology of the candidate and the campaign.
This section is visionary in nature. It steps back from the particular campaign and places the campaign in the context of a larger and more meaningful movement, which serves to inflate the perceived costs of loss and benefits of winning the particular campaign in the eyes of certain kinds of people.
Other plans will intentionally steer away from such lofty talk because it may be seen as a sign of wasteful and distracted practices.
Robust and Agile
Every plan is a good plan until reality sets in. We are constantly bombarded by unanticipated changes. The best sorts of plans are resilient in the face of such changes. There are two approaches to achieving resilience, and they can work in combination as well.
Consider that your messaging strategy has identified economic issue advocacy as central to your campaign. Unexpectedly, a national political event occurs which renders your view on the economy disadvantageous for discussion. There are three potential responses.
The first potential response is to go on without changing your messaging. This will result in favorability loss. The next option is to stop talking about the issue and talk about something else. The final option is to continue talking about the economy with appropriately altered messaging.
Now, let's say you had the good fortune to know about this change in advance. In the real world you would be planning for the possibility of such an event, rather than pretending to actually know that the event was going to occur. You could prevent your candidate from discussing the issue to begin with. This would be a robust approach, because your message strategy is not sensitive to the change in question.
You could also instruct your candidate to discuss the issue, but prepare altered messaging in advance as a contingency plan. This would be an agile approach, because the change in question does affect your actions, but the effect is anticipated and dealt with accordingly. In the real world agility and strategic insensitivity should both be used at different times.
The way you can tell which path is most appropriate is derived from estimating the likelihood of the anticipated event, the estimated loss of negative outcome in the case of an agile plan, and the opportunity cost of choosing insensitivity over agility. Sometimes it turns out to be a wash between the two.
Proactive and Dynamic
A proactive plan is one which doesn't wait for the event to occur, and a dynamic plan is one which recognizes that actions should be altered over time. This is similar to but different from the concepts of robustness and agility because those concepts deal largely with unanticipated change, while dynamic change is focused on predictable changes.
When an event is unlikely it may be best to treat it after the fact, but when an event is likely it should often be treated before the fact. An event common to most campaigns which may be anticipated is a bout of earned media at the time of announcement.
The simple concept here is that the campaign can reach out and better equip the media to write the stories they are going to write in a favorable way. The campaign might send out a media packet to a list of media contacts just before the announcement which contains talking points of the campaign, or better yet the campaign might organize a full launch event with exclusive or non-exclusive media invitations.
A dynamic plan will recognize that a budget should be weighted more heavily during GOTV times than other times. A dynamic campaign may begin without a campaign headquarters or staff and add those items at strategic times when funds are available. A dynamic plan recognizes that money comes over time, not all at once, and so on.
Self-Optimizing
Plans change. We have discussed that campaigns may plan the way in which they react to unanticipated and anticipated changes, but a slightly different concept is that the campaign plan itself should change over time. A smart campaign will outline two elements in the original campaign plan which facilitate revision of the campaign plan later on.
First, standard operating procedures should be outlined. It is rarely the case that the plan will be written over and over. Most often, there will be a stream of memos which will go out to the various wings of the campaign to notify them of changes. It is best to have these memos created, recorded, and delivered in a planned way. This is far superior to the usual campaign practice of disorganized email blasting from one person to another, while other parties are unpredictably looped in or out.
It is also a good idea to coordinate these memos with regular campaign meetings. The memo may prepared in advance of the meeting to inform the meeting, or after the meeting to include the notes from the meeting.
The other element of a self-optimizing campaign plan is to plan for research which will inform down road decisions. Traditionally, changes to the campaign plan which come from research findings will be included in memos just like any other change to the plan. In a non-traditional model the campaign plan is never fully written. Instead, working campaign plans are produced regularly as research and events continue to unfold. These working campaign plans look a bit like enormous memos, but the first one looks much smaller than an ordinary plan.
Measurably Effective
The most accurate sign of the competency of a consultant is their willingness to bet on their own success. Likewise, one sign of a top notch campaign plan is the presence of specified and measurable expected outcomes. Many campaign plans will either state or assume without stating that a win in the campaign is also a win for the strategy, but this is not always the case.
Pollsters often mention the concept of a pollsters' victory. The idea here is that a candidate may have lost, but the pollster predicted the loss and so the pollster was validated as effective. Likewise, a candidate may win despite what a poll says. This transparent difference between a pollster and a campaign should apply to every vendor within the campaign.
The campaign plan should be effective enough to specify the predicted outcome. At a minimum this should estimate the predicted vote outcome. Consultants will often retrospectively explain deviation from the predicted outcome as due to any cause other than the performance of the consultant. A really top notch campaign plan will seek to minimize this scapegoat bias by predicting contingent deviation effects as well as the actual expected outcome.
In other words, a poor campaign plan will assume that winning validates the plan. A better plan will specify that if the plan is properly executed the consultant anticipates a certain vote turnout, whether or not that entails actually winning. The best sort of plan will go on to predict what the vote turnout will be if the plan is improperly executed. For example, if the campaign raises $10,000 under its goal, what is the expected turnout?
In some cases this sort of research amounts to over-planning and resource waste, but it may also serve to prove the credibility of the consultant and campaign team. It should also be noted that retrospective analysis by consultants is a good and valuable practice for the consultant and the larger campaign despite the inherent bias involved.
Realistic
If a campaign plan estimates outcomes even when the campaign plan is not followed then you will be able to retrospectively tell whether or not the plan was realistic simply by the error, or lack thereof, in its prediction.
As previously discussed, such research is expensive to do and rarely occurs. In practice, the outcome is often estimated assuming that the plan is followed. The question then arises, was the plan ever realistic? It is easy to say that when I raise one million dollars I will likely win my small town mayoral race, but it is unrealistic to plan on having that much money for such a small race.
Estimating realism before the fact is all about having quality information. Three ways to maximize the quality of information include making sure that the candidate is personally informed as possible, paying for quality data and data services as needed, and attempting to have multiple actors, including vendors and the candidate, independently duplicate conclusions.
Political campaign planning is not an exercise in omnipotence. No plan is ever perfect and errors both in planning and in the field should be expected. With the tips given we can at least ensure that the various actors are aware of and agree to the plan. It will also mean that the plan is as realistic as possible.
Conclusion
The guidelines presented in this article can be leveraged in content creation or in connoisseurship. If you are seeking to create an optimal plan, implement the points that have been made. If you have received a plan and would like to discern whether it is of a high caliber, learn to spot the concepts discussed. If you have something to add, leave a comment. If you found this article in the least bit informative, thank you for reading.