I just treated myself to a Masterclass by David Axelrod and Karl Rove Teaching Campaign Strategy and Messaging . They are good friends.
Over 24 lessons, two masters of the political campaigning craft share their lessons. There is sage advice from the campaign message, getting your message out, to identifying influencers, and a lot more.
I’d buy the course just for Lesson 6 ‘The Campaign Plan’. Karl Rove stresses the importance of having a written campaign plan. It’s something I go on about a lot – many think too much. My own long held view is that without a written campaign plan, you’re going to loose. I now have Karl Rove to confirm my prejudices.
Karl Rove’s advice on the campaign plan
It is worth copying Karl Rove’s words out directly:
“ First come the message and the theme. But, after you have agreed on what the message is, and what the theme is, you then need to sit down and write out a plan.
The length of the plan may be a lot shorter and a lot more concise depending on the type of campaign.
But, you take the elements of the campaign and reduce them to writing and to numbers, and spread them over a calendar so that you have a concrete idea of what it is that you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it, and how much it’s going to cost.
Campaigns that plan tend to be campaigns that have a greater propensity to win because it means that they’ve made conscious decisions about what’s necessary to do, and when to do it, and to make certain that they have the resources in order to execute that plan.
It starts with the message and the theme and you need to take those ideas, what is that you want to talk about, and plan them out, when you’re going to talk about them, and how you’re going to talk about them.
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All of this has to be agreed upon at the beginning of the campaign and committed to paper and then reduced to numbers (how much are you going to spend).
You have to follow through and evolve. … If you have no plan, you will loose.
Your campaign becomes better by putting it down on paper.
If you don’t, you’re going to bounce around and be driven more by the moment.
I love to run against people who seemingly don’t have a good idea of what they’re trying to do and when they’re going to do it.
By having a plan you’re likely to be on the offense.
You can’t plan 9-12 months in advance. But you can have some working assumptions and then modify those working assumptions as you go along by saying, we’re going to have a process and a group of people who are going to examine what we’re doing and decide whether we ought to keep doing it or change”.
Some useful advice from a master craftsman.