Directing Moneyball Public Affairs Campaigns

By Andrew Sullivan and Amber N. Ott

The public affairs industry is dominated by old-school consultants who base their counsel on gut instinct or trade on relationships. We have more data and computing power at our fingertips to inform smart decisions than ever before, yet the industry resists a Moneyball upgrade. It’s a confounding situation.

In our last piece we offered several reasons for this state of affairs, from Mary Meeker’s high-level observation that the government, regulatory and policy sector has more than any other sector of the US economy resisted the impact of the Internet to our view from the front lines that the industry has an urgent data skills gap. In summary, we describe the industry’s problems but did not offer much in the way of solutions.

So that’s what we are setting out to accomplish here. This piece is meant to describe our view of where the industry needs to go, which also happens to be the sort of work we love doing.

Disclaimer: If this sounds formulaic and rigid, that’s the point. For too long public affairs has ignored the scientific method and importantly, business outcomes. That needs to change. Among our many sources of inspiration is Intel founder Andy Grove and his book High Output Management, which he bases on the concept of applying “the principles and the disciplines of the most output-oriented of endeavors — manufacturing — to other forms of business enterprise, including most emphatically the work of managers.” In a sense, our objective is to do the same for public affairs: infuse it with the discipline of the scientific method through the use of data and analytics.

So what does a Moneyball public affairs campaign look like? It’s a five-step process.

STEP 1

Establishing goals: what are we trying to accomplish?

The most effective public affairs consultants start new engagements by taking a step back. This is not a natural act for most of us. When a client relationship is new, creative juices start to flow and people jump to solutions about what to say, whom to say it to and how to say it. The risk here is that personal biases, anecdotes and group-think win the day, when in reality, strategies and tactics should be founded in data. At the very core of Moneyball public affairs are a deep breath and a measured opening act.

Our first task is to determine — in partnership with our client — what it is we are trying to accomplish. Establishing goals is simple in theory but difficult in practice. Most clients (1) set out to accomplish too many things, not all of which are related, (2) get distracted by the problem du jour or (3) have performance goals which are either abstract or not tied to a company’s core business or purpose.

Put simply, a campaign strategy needs to be built upon a mutual understanding of goals. You’d be surprised how often people realize (even after a campaign is well underway) they do not agree on goals. We know because we have been there. It’s why establishing goals at the outset is so critical. Having to build the plane while flying it is far more time-consuming and expensive than doing so at the outset.

STEP 2

Determining the audience: who do you need to engage or influence?

Once agreed on what we are trying to accomplish, we can move on to determining audiences. Who do we need to engage to accomplish our goal? Put another way: who do we need to convince in order to win?

Our clients may know broadly whom they need to engage, but data and analytics allow us to pinpoint who we need to target — ultimately down to the individual level.

For example, if our goal is to help a company that has recently gone public and is trying to strengthen its reputation in the investment community, our target audience might be opinion elites whom investors pay attention to. If our client is a company seeking a regulatory change in order to enter a new market, the target audience would be not just the local regulators themselves but people who are involved in civic affairs. If we are working for a candidate for city office, we will look not just to the people who vote regularly in local elections but also each voter’s “kitchen cabinet” — the friends, family and co-workers they turn to for advice on political affairs. And within each of these groups, we can identify who is receptive to our client’s point of view, who needs to be persuaded and who is unwinnable.

You’ll note the approach is essentially the same for all these examples. That’s intentional. Remember, we’re applying the scientific method to develop public affairs campaigns on the basis of measurable evidence. If we do not identify who we need to engage with to win then even the most effective campaign strategy will fall flat.

STEP 3

Conducting research to understand key audiences

In a previous piece we discuss a phenomenon we have come to call the “expertise trap.” Our clients are so expert on an issue or industry that they lose sight of how people who are less expert think about the issue or industry. This can cause strategic mistakes when a company or candidate assumes a degree of understanding that simply does not exist among target audiences, especially because the solution is rarely limited to presenting people with more information.

The expertise trap is one reason for conducting research to understand our clients’ key audiences better. The shifting landscape of public opinion and behavior is another. Invariably we need to learn more about our audiences’ attitudes and behaviors and why they change — along with the values underlying those attitudes and behaviors. These values are less susceptible to change than top-of-mind opinions, so uncovering them allows us to make more strategic decisions.

There are several methodological tools we can pull from our toolbox to conduct this research. They fit into one of two broad categories: uncovering values and observing behavior.

Uncovering values

The first tool in our analytics toolbox involves using public opinion research — in other words, asking well-designed questions — to uncover our key audience’s attitudes on relevant issues and more important, the values which underpin those attitudes. Why ask questions? There are many reasons but none more important than the fact that in some cases people may not have considered an issue before. Asking questions also allows us to ask “why?” The tools we draw upon to uncover values include surveys, which allow us to generalize the views of a broader population, and focus groups or in-depth interviews, which allow us to probe more deeply into attitudes.

Observing behavior

We have bemoaned the influence of social media dashboards as presenting strategically useless data. But as with any tool, the single most important factor in a dashboard’s usefulness is the human operating it. The truth is there are strategic insights we can gather from observing our key audience’s behavior, whether this involves observation of social media activity or analysis of a consumer database of demographics and online purchase activity.

STEP 4

Developing the campaign strategy and designing tactics

A campaign strategy is an elusive concept, and not just because it is so easy to confuse a higher order plan with tactics, which are the activities an executive or political campaign manager directs each day. We find it helpful to think of a campaign strategy as an umbrella concept that breaks into three components: (1) business strategy, (2) messaging and content strategy and (3) engagement strategy.

Data informs each of these strategic categories, and we choose research methodologies on a case-by-base basis, accounting for the audience we need to motivate or persuade and the goals of the campaign.

Business approach: The most fundamental of strategies. We may want to adjust business operations to appeal to existing audiences in new ways or reach a new audience entirely.

Messaging and content: Research results inform the development of overarching campaign narratives along with specific messages and visual content

Audience engagement: Sometimes we may only want to reach a sub-set of the target audience — for instance, a highly persuadable or influential segment — and research identifies the most effective ways to reach those people.

STEP 5

Executing the campaign strategy and refining as necessary

One might assume that if a candidate or company can navigate Steps 1 through 4, Step 5 will run itself. Our experience suggests quite the opposite. Embracing and sticking to a new strategic approach requires a shift in thinking, broad internal buy-in, long-term discipline and attention to detail.

“Put it all into TV,” is a not uncommon refrain in campaign headquarters in the waning days of an election when decisions are made on what to do with remaining budget. This might be the right call, but our hunch is these decisions are often made on gut instinct and not data.

The good thing is data can give you perspective and keep you honest and focused. When it comes to executing on a campaign strategy, we keep a keen eye on events on the ground through observation, both quantitative and qualitative, so we can course correct as necessary. The most effective campaigns are led by executives or campaign managers who keep themselves and their teams nimble, ready to shift direction when analysis of events on the ground calls for a strategic shift.