From polis to agora the marketing of political consultants

Political campaigns have borrowed from the latest in advertising, public relations, and marketing, especially since the 1952 Eisenhower campaign. There has been a tendency for those who have honed their expertise in the trenches of campaigning for elected office to offer their services on behalf of clients in the business world. Firms accustomed to working on campaigns now provide a range of services to businesses, including polling, television production, and the buying of advertisement time. Consultants assist corporations in writing op-ed columns, scheduling television interviews with business spokespeople, and placing advertisements in local markets to target the desired audience. This article addresses the shift in politicalconsultants ' working with businesses and corporations, considers specific cases of their involvement with private clients, and offers some thoughts on the blurred distinctions between private businesses, corporations, public relations, the campaigns of elected officials, and politicalconsultants.

The locally oriented, multimarket, regionally based approach to political campaigns, which has prevailed since the late 1980s, is now desirable to corporations that want to move beyond traditional government relations efforts narrowly targeted to Washington, D.C. " The occasional print ads aimed at opinion leaders or legislators in Congressional Quarterly, the National Journal, Roll Call, or the Washington Post as part of a lobbying campaign, " writes Advertising Age's Ira Teinowitz, " have turned into much more sophisticated efforts" (1997: 28). Utility, pharmaceutical, tobacco, and long-distance telephone companies have all expanded their budgets for advertising, media buys, and polling by political consulting firms.

The convergence of public relations, advertising, and political consulting is marking a new chapter in the history of political campaigns in the United States, which James Barnes of the National Journal refers to as the " privatizing of politics" (1995: 1330-1334). Pollsters accustomed to assisting candidates on the campaign trail spend their afternoons and evenings convening focus groups, testing advertisements for products, helping to craft commercial spots, or searching for just the right wording for public relations materials. Experienced campaign staff and campaign consultants now regularly contract with some of the nation's largest corporations. Some well-known politicalconsultants have left politics altogether to work exclusively with business clients in a field whose potential for growth was recently described by one observer as " endless, " as more businesses turn to consultants to run their advertising, marketing, and public relations (Persinos 1995: 35).

During the past several years, subsidiary or in-house operations have been created by firms in the political consulting industry to work with corporations. The change has been dramatic. In 1995, National Media, a longtime Republican firm, decided, in the words of its president, Robin Roberts, to become " semi-autonomous" from political campaigns and to pitch its services to businesses.(n1) Its staff now devotes a larger share of its work to producing television advertisements for corporate clients, buying time to air these advertisements, and tracking them through satellite and local market analysis. The partnership of Shandwick/Murphy, formed by Republican consultant Mike Murphy and the public relations firm of Shandwick Public Affairs, is one of the latest examples of this merging of political consulting with business-oriented advertising, lobbying, and government relations. Many of the leading Washington-based consulting firms now have their own subsidiary outfits that specialize in bringing their expertise to bear for businesses in a variety of ways.