Political Campaigns v Lobbying

Political campaigning and lobbying are not the same thing. Their sometimes proximity around the drinking fountain of public policy and laws, does not equate to sameness.

Political campaigning is, by its nature, limited in scope in a policy focused city like Brussels. There are mechanical devices in place to limit vast changes in European Public Policy and laws. Better Regulation and the simple procedure of tabling a proposal provide a barricade that only a few intrepid political campaigners have the insight and experience to leap over.

Many lobbyists will spend their whole career without running a genuine political campaign. Likewise, many a campaigner will only ever dabble in lobbying.

MEPs will go through a political campaign every 5 years to get elected. But, even then, the real work is before a ballot has been cast. It is securing your place on the Party list. And, the Party machine will take care of most of the election campaign.

I’ve been fortunate to work for political campaigning organisations (IFAW) and those who have mixed both campaigning and lobbying together (WWF) and for clients (Baltic Sea 2020). I learned a lot canvassing for Labour Party candidates. I think it is one of the best ways to learn delivering a door step message.

The mindset and skills you need for campaigning are not the same as you need for lobbying.

A campagning organisation will need a lobbyist to help them get once their issue is on the policy/political agenda. They’ll need someone to get their issue taken through the machinery of government and passed by the legislative  machine.

Many a campaign fails because whilst they get public and political attention about their issue, they fail to get the solution to the problem incoporated into long term governent thinking and into law. Without this step, the campaign will have failed. They’ll have garnered political and public support, but it will amount to little other than that.

There is a naive view that those who benefit from the status quo won’t oppose the change. You’ll need your lobbyist to defend the case for change from within the decision making process.

This is why many campaigns for public policy/political change fail. They get very far, but fall at the last steps, thinking what got them so far, is what is needed to get them over the finish line.

I think there are four  reasons you’d start a political campaign.

First, you start a political campaign if you want change and , second, you don’t have the political power/influence to bring it about.

Third, your efforts to date to bring about the change are not working, or that the change is not happening fast enough.

And, finally, you finally realise that the most effective way for you bring about change is to change the public policy/law that is currently impeding progress.

The 4 conditions are often found together.

The most important is you want to bring about ‘change’ from the status quo. There are campaigns that use the slogan “what do we want, the sameness, when do we want it, forever”.

If you have influence, and don’t want change, you don’t need to campaign. If you are forced to, you likely don’t have the mindset, skills and resources to do it effectively.

The organisations I’ve worked on campaigns for only ever turned to it  because this was the best way to deliver on their core goals, e.g. conservation.

For example, if you wanted to bring back Blue Fin Tuna from the brink, and you found out that political and policy decisions were contributing to the stock collapse, alongside greed, the Marseille Mafia, the Ghaddafi family, you had two choices. Hope things would sort themselvesd out by themselves (unlikely to ever happen). Start a politivcal campaign to bring awareness of the issue to the public and via them, bring pressure to bear on the limited number of politicians and officials who had the power to bring about change. Lobbying came in only at the end to help bring about the support of a French President, make sure the right media coverage comes on the right day, and that the policy asks land with the right people, at the right time, with  the right language, the right evidence, and harnessing the right procedures.

I had the pleasure to see some of the few people who could do both political campigning and lobbying at the highest level, the late Tony Long and Simon Bryceson. They were rare breeds.

Campaigns are by their nature public. Lobbying prefers the shadows.

Successful political campaigns are expensive and need to bring real financial resources to the table, often for many years, and across a number of countries. Lobbying budgets are often accounting errors in contrast.

Campaigns tend to work with the media, run visually compelling ads, and host memorable events and stunts that persuade decision-makers to switch sides. A political campaigns position papers will even be punchier and use visuals. Banner ads on internet news sites ‘issue pages’ is a niche issue ad. A full page ad in the FT is a political campaign ad.

Both campaigns and lobbying have a high percentage of issue experts. They are the ones who think logic and data are the only means to persuade. It is vital that the evidence that you use is accuarate and that the solution you propose is viable.

Some commercial interests have tried it. Most come across as lacklustre and stale. Some have tried with disastrous short and long term consequences to their credibility in a policy heavy city. I suspect emulating what they thought campaigning involved, with little to no understanding of it. None have ever read and understood Chris Rose’s ‘How to Win Campaigns’.

Chris Rose, How to Win Campaigns