Posted By
Denny Hatch
POLITICAL FUNDRAISING:
Joe Biden Talks Dirty to My Wife
Joe Biden Talks Dirty to My Wife
“Mommy,
what’s BFD?”
“It’s ‘BIG FUCKING DEAL,’ darling.”
This is sloppy marketing.
On March
23, 2010 at the White House Health Care Law signing ceremony, Joe Biden
introduced Barack Obama to the attendees and then shouted in the president’s
ear for the world to hear, “This is a big fucking deal.”
BFD is
now standard digital shorthand along with OMG, WTF and ICYMI.
This is smartass old-boy locker room banter—har-dee-har-har—that
has no place in serious public political discourse. The debate over healthcare—is is it a right or a privilege?... is "Medicare for All" viable?... can the Affordable Care Act be improved?—is vital for so many Americans.
The idea
that Biden allows anonymous campaign underlings—who call themselves “Team Joe”—believe
it’s a good idea to commemorate this lapse in decorum is appalling.
Wrong Message to Us
Peggy and I are seniors.
I turn
84 tomorrow. Peg is 10 years younger. Obamacare does not have a direct impact on our lives. We struggle with such questions as:
—
Are we
guaranteed no cutbacks in our Medicare?
—
Will the
economy tank?
—
Will our
savings outlast us as we have planned?
—
Will we pay
more for prunes?
Flouting Direct Marketing Rules
Today’s political campaigns are so desperate for
money the smarty-pants political operatives—many of whom know nothing
about testing or intimate messaging—slam out daily pleas to their entire
universe screaming for cash without thinking through what they are saying to
whom.
About Political Fundraising
For four years in the 1960s-70s I worked as a
copywriter/account exec in the vineyards of the tiny Weintz Agency. The grand
Pooh-Bah, mentor, strategist and copy chief was the Godfather of Political
Fundraising, Walter Weintz.
His
account of inventing the science and art of generating votes and raising political
money in the 1950s is fascinating. While his work was in the field of direct
mail marketing, the rules and techniques Weintz discovered and perfected are
directly applicable to e-marketing and the digital world.
I’m
pleased and honored to give you the legendary Walter Weintz:
How the National Republican Party's
Winning Fund-Raising Program Was Built
By Walter Weintz
From “The Solid Gold
Mailbox” by Walter Weintz
(John Wiley &
Sons, 1987) Reprinted with permission of Todd Weintz.
Once the basic
principles and techniques of mail-order promotion are understood, they can be
applied in the most unlikely places, and for unexpected products. Although my
own initial mail-order experience happened to do with magazines and books, the
same rules would have applied had I been working on a correspondence course in
accounting, the mail-order sale of Christmas hams or Chesapeake crabmeat,
securing leads for Ford cars, or, indeed, getting political candidates elected
or fund raising for a political organization like the Republican National
Committee.
As it happens, I
discovered through personal experience how effectively mail-order procedures
can be applied to politics. So, in this chapter I'll go through the story of
the development of the National Republican Party's elective and fund raising
program, which I helped develop and execute. I believe that the procedures we
set up for the Republicans can be applied to any good mail-order product.
The Beginnings
To the best of my
knowledge, the Republicans started using direct mail on a scientific, mass
basis back in 1950. At that time, Senator Robert Taft [R-Ohio] was running in a
desperate race for re-election.
The big unions had
announced that they had earmarked a war chest of several million dollars for a
campaign in Ohio to defeat Taft, because he was coauthor of the Taft-Hartley
Act, which gives the Federal Government the power to halt strikes that hurt the
interests of the nation. At the time, the Taft-Hartley Act was a tremendous
political issue. The big unions considered the Act an outright attempt to kill
unionism in America, and Robert Taft their mortal enemy. They believed they had
to get rid of him!
In those days, Reader's Digest had well-established conservative leanings, and the Digest had published
articles on certain conservative issues by Senator Taft. Senator Taft was a
friend of DeWitt Wallace [Digest founder and owner] and Al Cole [Digest
business manager].
So the Digest
volunteered my services to do a direct mail campaign to help get Senator Taft
re-elected.
Senator Taft was
convinced that he should take his stand on the Taft-Hartley Law, and, of
course, we tried to talk him out of that, because we knew that blue-collar
workers would be against him on the basis of the Taft-Hartley Act.
But Senator Taft
argued that the big issue of his campaign was, obviously, the Taft-Hartley
Act--and therefore he had to stand or fall on the merits of that Act. So we had
to do a mailing, he said, built around the benefits of the Act for the ordinary
working man.
Fortunately, in direct
mail you are able to test almost anything, including political appeals. We
mailed out, as I recall, several different letters, each one putting forward a
different central idea on why the recipient of the letter should support
Senator Taft.
We needed some way to
measure the effect of our different appeals, so in each mailing we included a
"contribution card," keyed to the letter it went with. That is, we
put an inconspicuous letter of the alphabet in a corner of each card: A. B, C,
and so on-depending upon which letter the card originally went out with. In
each case we said, "Send us some money to help re-elect Senator
Taft." When contributions came in--each with a keyed card--we were able to
count returns from each letter and tell which pulled the best.
Keying: an Essential Element
We sent out about
20,000 copies of each letter. I was astounded when the letter (written by
Senator Taft), which was built around a positive presentation of the
Taft-Hartley Act, was far and away the most successful.
We subsequently mailed
hundreds of thousands of Taft-Hartley letters into the blue-collar worker
sections of the industrial cities of Ohio: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, and so
on. The blue-collar workers responded by voting overwhelmingly for Taft against
the urging, advice, and $3 million campaign fund of their union leaders.
In addition, much to
our surprise, we received a substantial number of small contributions, which
helped us finance the direct mail campaign. Indeed, the campaign paid for
itself!
Subsequently, in 1952,
when Taft and Eisenhower were rivals for the Presidential nomination, I was a
Taft partisan because of my previous experience working for Senator Taft. I was
very disappointed when Eisenhower got the nomination.
Eisenhower-Nixon
A few days later, Mr.
Cole called me into his office and said, "How would you like to take a
leave of absence and run the direct mail campaign for Citizens for
Eisenhower-Nixon?"
"I wouldn't like
that," I said.
"Good, I knew you
would," Mr. Cole answered. "I told them you'd be down there this
afternoon."
So in 1952 1 went to
work for the Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon, and I might add, I quickly became
an enthusiastic supporter of General Eisenhower.
We decided that the
experience we had had on the Taft campaign gave us a beautiful model for doing
direct mail on behalf of Eisenhower and Nixon.
At the start of
Eisenhower's campaign, he didn't have a clear-cut political theme, and he was
burdened with all kinds of conflicting advice from well-meaning, self-appointed
experts.
The politicians who
surrounded him implored him not to say anything, it being their philosophy that
campaigns are won by not taking a stand on anything. They suggested his theme
should simply be, "It's time for a change."
Others were incensed
over the "deep freeze" and "fur coat" scandals, which had
plagued the Truman Administration. In the latter days of President Truman's
Administration, various accusations about political graft involving some
prominent Democrats had surfaced, and our Republican political advisors
suggested that a simple, dignified phrase like, "Throw the rascals
out" would make a good mail-order theme that would hit home.
And, of course, the
war in Korea was much on everybody's mind.
Al Cole asked me to
write 10 letters, each based on a different campaign appeal.
The Tests
With these letters, we
reasoned, we could test different campaign appeals and find out exactly what
issues really did arouse the voters. Were they really upset over corruption in
Washington? Was it inflation and the high cost of living that troubled them
most, or government regulation (a favorite Republican issue, even in those
days)? We would ask for money, just as we had in the Taft campaign, to check
the relative effectiveness of various appeals. We would then mail millions of
letters, using the most successful appeals, and the mailing would be at least
partially self-financing, because it would pull for contributions.
The letters, besides
making money, would reach millions of people, with strong arguments in favor of
Eisenhower and Nixon. Most importantly, we would then have hundreds of
thousands of small contributors who had "bet on a horse"--given small
sums ranging from a dollar up to $25 or so to support Eisenhower's campaign.
We reasoned that
anyone who contributed money for a candidate would be much more likely to go
out and vote for that candidate on Election Day.
We sent out an initial
test of 10,000 of each of 10 letters, and in each case we said, "If you
would like to see Eisenhower elected President, please send back the enclosed
contribution card, together with your contribution and your name and
address."
The cards were keyed,
so we were able to count results.
The letter--which
concentrated on foreign policy--would seem, on the face of it, to relate less
directly to the voters' strong personal interests and problems than did some of
the other letters. They concentrated on high taxes, inflation, big government
interfering with the little voter's rights and privileges, and government waste
dipping into the voter's pocketbook. In reviewing the 10 letters we put out, I
did not particularly expect [the foreign policy] letter to be the big winner.
But that's what testing is all about; it replaces guesses with facts!
The Surprising Winner
Nine out of the 10
letters pulled almost exactly the same. The tenth letter, "Coddling the
Russians," which talked about Korea, and the seemingly never-ending war in
which America had gotten embroiled, pulled about 2-1/2 times as well as any of
the other letters.
It was a striking,
clear-cut proof that the war in Korea outweighed every other political appeal
Eisenhower could make.
The results were so
conclusive that we put together a report, and Walter Williams, Chairman of the
Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon Committee, got on a plane and hurried out west,
where Eisenhower was campaigning, and showed him these results. A few days
later, Eisenhower made his famous "I shall go to Korea" speech, and
suddenly his campaign was off and running.
I can't say that it
was the direct mail results alone which convinced Eisenhower that Korea was the
important issue, but Walter Williams told me that it was decisive in helping
Eisenhower make up his mind. Certainly, the tests proved overwhelmingly that
the war in Korea was the most important issue in the public's mind.
The Roll-Out
Sidney Weinberg was
the financial manager of the Citizens for the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign, and
when I told him that a big mailing would pull the same percentage of returns as
did the original test, he was full of suspicion. Sidney was a Vice President
and partner of Goldman, Sachs, and he was accustomed to financial projections
that were based on 100-page business analyses--not a skimpy page of mailing
test results. The whole thing smelled like Madison Avenue flim-flam to Sidney.
Very reluctantly, he gave his permission to roll out with a huge, major
mailing, but Sidney was prepared for the worst.
Fortunately, the big
mailing pulled exactly as the test mailing projected that it would.
We mailed out some 10
million letters based on the Korean issue. And the interesting thing is that,
in addition to getting 10 million messages out to voters, we were able to get
some 300,000 voters to send us a contribution. These were 300,000 votes that we
could pretty well count on.
The contributions were
small. They averaged only $5.00 or so. But the $1.5 million that they
represented easily paid the cost of our 10 million campaign. Thus, we had
harnessed a powerful self-financing force.
And equally important,
we had that most precious of all mail order and political properties--a list of
Eisenhower supporters--people who had voted for Eisenhower with their
pocketbooks. We had their names and addresses. We could go back to them again
for future contributions, for campaign activities, for vote-getting and voting.
As it turned out, the
mailing not only paid for itself, but also brought in thousands of dollars over
its actual cost. Sidney Weinberg then declared that this raised a moral issue.
We had asked for contributions to help elect Eisenhower. Now he was elected,
and we had money left over. Therefore we were obligated to refund the excess
contributions.
For some time after
the election, therefore, Sidney's staff was busy figuring out a pro rata refund
on every contribution, and making out thousands of refund checks which were
sent to our innumerable small contributors. Everyone got a refund, even if it
was a check for only 69¢!
The 1956 and 1960 Campaigns
This isn't the end of
the story, however. Years later, when I came back to working for the Republican
Party after a considerable absence, the Party was still getting contributions
from those original 1952 contributors! And this was a "secret weapon"
which the Republicans had in subsequent elections that the Democrats didn't
possess.
The names of our 1952
Citizens for Eisenhower-Nixon contributors were put in a "bank" for
future use. In 1956, when Eisenhower and Nixon ran again, we wrote to these
same people and asked for additional contributions, and they gave generously.
The contributions were
small, and the contributors were certainly not "fat cats." On the
contrary, they reminded me of the slogan that is posted in the children's zoo
in the Bronx, over the guinea pig colony, "We are small, but we are
many."
Together, these small
contributors represented a very important part of the Republican fund raising
in 1956.
Spencer Olin
Again in 1960, Spencer
Olin, who was then the Finance Chairman of the Republican Party, turned to
direct mail to solve his Party's financial problems. In the spring of 1960, the
Party was almost literally broke.
Mr. Olin asked me
to “put out a letter and raise a million
dollars." We mailed approximately one million letters, and we cleared the
million dollars that Mr. Olin asked for. We were able to do this because we had
amassed a list of dependable contributors to whom we could turn in our hour of
need, and because we were able to make an emotional appeal on a very personal
basis, which offered the reader an opportunity to do something nice and be
somebody important!
Unfortunately, Spence
Olin's tenure as Chairman of the Republican National Committee presently came
to an end, and he was replaced by a new "expert."
This man came from the
old "fat cat" school of fundraisers. His first act on assuming office
was to call his staff together and deliver a challenge.
"The only way to
raise money is eyeball-to-eyeball solicitations of large sums from big
donors," he announced. "Direct mail is wasteful and expensive and
only brings in piddling little contributions that are not worth fooling with.
If anybody here thinks I'm wrong and he's right, speak up. No takers? OK—from
here on, no more direct mail."
And that, for the time
being, terminated my active relationship as a fund-raiser with the Republican
Party.
Takeaway Points to Consider by Walter Weintz
* We discovered that
we could make such tests, and subsequent rollout mailings, self-financing.
* We had found a way
(in the guise of fund-raising) to influence
millions of voters, through self-financing mail order appeals.
* We had evolved a
method of getting many voters to "bet
on a horse"--that is, contribute money to a candidate--which made it
much more likely that those voters would indeed get out and vote for the candidate of
their choice as well as persuade friends and family to get out and vote.
* And, finally, we'd
established a way to secure the names of hundreds of thousands of
supporters--people who could be counted upon to contribute to our cause in response to future appeals. We had that
most precious of all mail order possessions: a list of customers!
* The final Eisenhower
letter, which I wrote, put all these elements together, and produced the
desired effect: $1 million in contributions. With established mail order basics at our service, raising that $1
million was a simple matter. It took only one letter!
Walter Weintz spent World War II as a junior officer aboard a minesweeper in the Pacific. He
began his career as a copywriter, working on accounts like Book-of-the-Month Club,
Charles Atlas, and Doubleday. As Circulation Director for
Reader's Digest, he created some of the most successful promotions ever mailed,
including one which mailed over a hundred
million pennies as an attention getter. He formed the Weintz Corporation in
1958 and served clients like the Boys' Clubs of America, Rodale Press, Harvard
Business Review, Time Inc., the Republican National Committee, American Express, the
New York Times Magazine Division, World Book Encyclopedia, Prudential
Insurance, and many others. Walter Weintz was active in both local and national
direct-mail industry affairs over almost half a century. He died in 1996 at the
age of 81.
Web
Sites Related to Today’s Edition
Walter Weintz
Obituary, New
York Times, December 25, 1996
“The
Solid Gold Mailbox: How to Create Winning Mail-Order Campaigns By the Man
Who’s Done It All,” by Walter H. Weintz
P.S. Read Denny Hatch’s Political Thriller, THE FINGERED CITY: How the Mafia Marketed a Candidate To Become
Mayor of New York City. Kindle, $9.99.
###
Word count: 2991
