2006 Election Post Mortem Part III - Field Materials for PAS' Youth Campaign

Crossposted at Young Philly Politics

Once I knew that I would be doing outreach at concerts and on campus i started to pull together the materials that I would use to help with outreach and persuasion. When I first talked to Ray and Jen I had an idea of what types of materials would work in the environments that I'd find myself and towards the youth demographic that I was targeting. The main thing that I wanted was to make a series of youth oriented issue cards, similar to Music for America's issue cards (see below for some examples). These cards would have been co-branded between Philadelphians Against Santorum (PAS) and a few of organizations that we were either partnering with or that we felt exemplified the Left's stance on one or another issue. The idea would have been to have a series of cards that provided talking points for our volunteers, educated the people who read them, and gave a sense of the broad coalition that makes up the Left.

But once I got the job (in mid-September) and started to take a cold hard look at the calender, I realized that there was simply no time to create a series of my own materials, that I would have had to come up with the text and, given PAS' limited budget, either design them myself or find a designer that would do the work both quickly and cheaply/for free. And so, with only a month left to register people in PA, I decided to improvise, and I began to scrounge together whatever materials that I could from friends and allies around the state and nation to supplement the field materials that PAS had developed.  This post is a look at the materials that I ended up using at Concerts and on Campus during the 2006 Senate Race in PA.

As I noted, we mainly turned, to organizations that we were allied with, or whom I knew personally, to come up with materials. That said, these are the things that I was looking for as I pulled together my field materials:

• Variety - As I noted above, I wanted the materials I used to give an idea of the broad spectrum of issues that liberals/progressives/Democrats stand for & I also wanted to make sure that we had a diverse enough set of issue based materials so that people whom we talked with could "self select" the issues that we talked to them about.
• Design - Very often I find that left leaning political people have little to no understanding of communications design (I definitely am), but it is not hard to see the effects that well produced literature has (makes it more attractive, makes it simpler, makes it more professional, etc). Music for America's materials are always well designed and attractive, but the Partisan Project posters (see below) were probably the simplest, and most effective communications tool that I had in my "field chest" in 2006, and they will be the #1 thing I will use in 2008!
• Content - As the cards served as both talking points and as communicative tools, we needed to be clearly written & talk about what progressives/liberals/Democrats stand for while keeping the information as compact and to the point as possible.
• Appeal - Young people like posters, buttons, and stickers, and as such I sought these out the most (these were, by far, the main items that we gave away at shows and on campus).  The more attractive the materials, the easier it is to attract people to us (instead of going up to people's doors, or even tapping them on their shoulder at a show), which generally makes people much more receptive to our spiel(s), which makes us much more effective. And when you give people something that they want for free, they are much more likely to be receptive to what you have to say.

In the end we only used materials from a few organizations besides our own. Here's a look at what we used:

Philadelphia Against Santorum Field Materials

PAS' materials were mainly aimed towards an older audience, and they weren't, in general, extremely well designed.  That said, they were a lot better received than I had expected and they were pretty good at illustrating the differences between Bob Casey and Rick Santorum.

PAS - Sticker

This was, predictably, the most popular item that we handed out. And while it does not contain much information about the organization, it proved a very useful branding tool.


PAS - Flyers

This is a flier (click on it for a PDF version), that PAS produced, comparing Santorum and Casey on the issues. The side by side comparisons of Santorum and Casey was extremely useful, as many people ask the same question: "Aren't they both the same." The answer was a resounding no, and this helped show that we weren't just "saying it" for partisan reasons. The two biggest problems with the materials were the lack of design touch and the size (MFA's materials are much easier for people to stick in their pockets). For most of the campaign we also printed these in black and white on normal paper, though at the end of the campaign we switched to a blue on white on glossy paper, which was a bit better looking.

The blue "volunteer" fliers we used were a bit less useful than the side by sides, but they were a bit better designed and a good deal smaller (the big ones were 8.5"x11", while I would guess the smaller ones were half that), and so I think we gave away a lot more of them.

PAS - Window Signs
We didn't really give a lot of these away, but I felt they looked good and they helped to show people who came to our tables that we weren't just "against Santorum," as many tried to criticize us for being.

Partisan Project Posters!
These were, by far, the most popular item we gave away- I swear, whomever thought of this is a damned GENIUS!!! We would tape up these large posters, provided free to anyone who wanted them (if you e-mailed them they'd send you the entire series in a big pack of double sided posters),  to our tables, and ask people as they walked by and laughed: "hey, want a free poster?" I can't tell you how much easier it is to tell people about how awful Rick Santorum is when you have wonderfully funny posters to help make your point! These things were like the pied pipers pipe, and every organization should hire the person/people responsible for this as consultants for the next election (If you want to win, that is. Bwah Ha Ha Ha!).

Here are a few of the most popular posters. For the overly PC, these may offend, which makes them especially effective for younger people! :

Music for America - Buttons

These small buttons are hard to read, but they sure do get people interested in what we were up to.
  
Music for America - Stickers

Here are the stickers that we gave away, also very popular:

Music for America - Issue Cards

These are Music for America's Issue Cards, a prime example of exactly how to design effective youth outreach media. I'm sure I'm biased, since it was the original cards were the ones that started me on my way into politics, but the oldest cards (esp. the retired RAVE Act Card), were the best. After Mike Connery (founder and former Communications Director) left MFA there was a noticeable drop in the quality of the cards (mostly on the content end, Nica Lorber is a progressive design rock star, and her designs ALWAYS kick ass), and thus I really didn't think that I'd have much use for MFA's cards when I started. But when I took a look at MFA's latest cards I was extremely pleasantly surprised. Not only were the cards much more well written, but they also were co-branded with the bands that the kids we talked to loved. As with our association with R5 Productions, nothing says "we're down" like partnering with cultural leaders.

Justice Through Music - Rock Your Rights DVD

We got these from Music for America, and though I don't know a ton about the organization, they seemed cool/progressive enough and so we gave away these very popular items.

Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) Materials

Next, we have IAVA's materials. IAVA is an amazing veterans organization that helps disprove the idea (in my mind) that progressives are soft on security. The first of the pics is an "issue" card (the same size as the MFA cards), the second is information about the IAVA Action Fund, and the third is a picture of IAVA's grade of Rick Santorum. Though I could only get the last item as a printed web page, I still always kept it handy for the few dumb assholes we encountered who tried to pull the "Democrats are soft on..." line. It usually helped "correct" them.

Food & Candy

The say that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and boy oh boy is it true. Candy was good at only one thing (the same as our cute volunteers)- attracting people to what we were doing (whether that was working at a show, on campus, or at the polls on election day). People sometimes seem to think that it is somehow morally wrong to win people over with "cheap" tricks like buying them food, but I really don't see how buying ads is any more morale. Either way, food is EXTREMELY effective in getting people to come up to you and persuading them to listen to your spiel for a few minutes.

Anyway, these are the materials we used. In the future I think that it would be best to do what I originally wanted to do (co-branded issue cards) combined with a good dose of giving away free cool stuff, but that depends on having enough preparation time and finding enough people with money who are smart/care enough to help make these materials available.

Update
I don't know how I forgot these, but we also handed out these stickers, mostly when we were closer to election day: