I came home to my apartment today and found a number of these fliers strewn across the floor of my lobby, along with many more stacked on this table. Altogether, about seven times as many fliers as there are residents of the building I live in. Possibly more.
Fliers that look like they were run off by a twentysomething temp using Microsoft Word.
Fliers that contain no campaign contact information, no indication of who printed them.
This? Really? Seriously? This?At the moment, I've decided that Bernie Sanders is my preferred candidate in this primary election. But if this is what kind of campaign material the Sanders campaign is producing, it's time for an intervention.
Here's the thing: There are some political campaign activities I just won’t do. I won’t cold-call people. I won’t knock on doors. Essentially, I won’t do anything to anyone else that I don’t like having done to me.
But there are things I will do and have done. I have 10 years’ professional experience as a writer and editor and 25 years’ experience as a photographer. I have mad desktop publishing skills. I can set up good-looking e-mail newsletters in MailChimp. And I’ve used these skills to help out candidates whom I support.
I would have been happy to use them to help out the Bernie Sanders campaign in Illinois, too. But you know what I didn’t find anywhere on Bernie Sanders’ campaign website when I went looking for it? Contact information for my local campaign office. Any information on how to volunteer professional skills. (Checking the website now, it appears that there is now a web form that allows you to do so. Thank goodness for that, at least.)
But seriously, those fliers? Uff. Who thought those were a good idea?
Back in the '90s, I briefly flirted with involvement with the local Green Party in Albany, N.Y. The flirtation was brief because those were a bunch of people who didn't have the first clue about marketing their platform. They were still in the camcorder-footage-of-butterflies stage. To my knowledge, they never advanced beyond that stage, even after they secured a line on the New York state election ballot.
The point is, even if you're a volunteer, even if you’re an amateur, you can still put out something that looks professional. It may take some specialized knowledge, but if you've got something going for you, the people with that knowledge will come to you. You simply have to make it easy for them to come to you. If you want people to do something, you have to make it the easy thing to do. If you make it more difficult than not doing anything, they won’t do it.
Back around the beginning of the year, I volunteered on an aldermanic campaign (for those of you who don’t speak Chicagoan, that’s a campaign for a seat on the City Council). The candidate had a website and a Facebook page. They both said, “To volunteer, contact info@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.org.” I contacted info@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.org. I got an e-mail back a few days later, then a phone call. (I didn’t have to call to follow up on the e-mail.) I ended up editing the candidate's e-mail newsletter and taking the photos for her campaign mailers. Getting involved could not have been easier.
This is a lesson not only for the Sanders campaign but for every campaign at every level of politics. First, marketing matters. You have to look good. Those Microsoft Word fliers? They don’t look good. They look so bad, they might actually repel voters. Combined with the fact that the people distributing them are making no effort to distribute their resources thoughtfully and efficiently, they may in fact be worse than doing nothing. (I have two “Bernie for President” signs in my windows. Four-color, professionally designed, professionally printed signs. I think I can credibly argue that I’m already doing more for the Sanders campaign than whoever dropped off those fliers did.) And second, if you want to attract the talent you need to your campaign, you need to make it frictionless.
It's one thing to be an outsider. Being an outsider can be great. But being an amateur? Kiss of death.
Dear Sanders campaign: The United States of America cannot afford to let you screw up like this.