By the end of next week, the presidential candidates from the major political parties should be set. At that point, election news coverage will focus on two key activities: the run-up to each party’s convention, and fundraising activities.
But nestled within the more serious election coverage will be a series of small items on solicitations made to inappropriate targets. These stories aren’t new: Both the Democrats and Republicans offer sterling examples within the past decade.
One involves a solicitation for the Clinton legal defense fund sent to Bernard Lewinsky, father of the intern who was a key player in the whole impeachment mess. His quite understandable reaction was, “You must be nuts to send me this!”
Another is a fairly recent GOP fundraising call made to Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was exposed as a deep-cover CIA operative by senior Bush administration officials. Wilson’s reaction was as unsympathetic as Lewinsky’s. As he told the caller, “Ask Ed Gillespie [chairman of the Republican National Committee] who I am!”
There isn’t a reporter in the world who doesn’t love reporting on these gaffs, and I’ll include myself in that lot. But the direct marketing industry doesn’t have to hand the media these screw-ups on a silver platter.
At least some of these mistakes might be avoided if mailing list professionals assemble a cooperative database of party officials or politicians along with their top staff members and spouses, and bump fundraising efforts against it. Much of this information is public record. (I leave it to individual marketers to determine whether to treat spouses and opposite party operatives James Carville and Mary Matalin as being within a "unified household". Perhaps the industry could toss out these two as psychographic outliers, for political solicitation purposes.)
This list would be available for merge/purge purposes only to any direct marketer working on a political campaign. Call it a pro bono effort to stop ourselves from looking foolish in front of the folks who are legislating restrictions on us.
I don’t advocate automatically suppressing these names, but rather setting them aside for further scrutiny. There will be party members who want to cross-donate. But these should be recognized with special messages – and certain hot-button names, such as Barbra Streisand or Rush Limbaugh, should be given a twice-over.
The last step would be for the industry to establish a universal response for when things go wrong, which they inevitably will. It should be funny, it can’t be defensive, and it shouldn’t reflect badly on the client – or the vendor. This kinda rules out my first inclination, which is “Well, what did you expect with the data restrictions you put into place?
If DMers are going to be included in this year’s political coverage, let’s try to orient the stories so they reflect our value to candidates, not our follies.
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact rlevey@primediabusiness.com
