Campaign Strategy

Campaign Strategy
All politicians understand that unless the election is going to be a landslide, ultimate
victory lies not just in mobilising their own voters, but in realising the swing. Where
traditional polling and research will tell a candidate what the current political or
electoral status quo is, SCL Elections Campaign Strategy informs them how they
can change it.
We combine advanced methodology developed by the Behavioral Dynamics Institute, with technical ability and a wealth of
practical experience gained over many years, to provide our clients with robust and tested strategic election campaign
frameworks, designed to withstand the rigors of modern election campaigning.
The following list provides an overview of the core election campaign strategy services SCL Elections has to offer. Some of
these services can be implemented as stand-alone products or combined as a fully comprehensive package, according to
our clients requirements.
Swing Voter Segmentation
The first phase in developing a campaign strategy is to identify the key groups that comprise the swing vote; Such as the
apathetic, first time voters, undecided, uninformed or coalition voters. These groups necessarily extend beyond traditional
social clusters and often span or overlap numerous backgrounds, cultural, financial or societal subgroups. Thereafter, it is
necessary to identify which grouping has the greatest propensity to vote, and for which party, and on which basis. The
critical factor here is not just to identify the most readily influeneable groups, but to ensure that such groups are large
enough to carry the rest of the swing voters with them. (i.e. Nonagenarian might be easily persuaded to vote for an ex-
serviceman candidate, but there might not be enough of them to influence the swing voters at large).
Caste Analysis India Only
For the Indian political market, where caste is so vitally important in influencing the direction of party politics, we also
undertake a targeted form of voter segmentation based on caste. The research about this additional societal subgroups is
factored into the overall strategic findings.
Group Influence Strategy

Swing Voter Dynamics
This is the strategy that allows you to win over the most influence able swing groups. This is achieved by understanding the
dynamics of group, such as the normative affiliation of its members, how strong is their informational reliance and what is
their requirement for social proof. Specifically, we measure the strength of who people listen to - i.e. are youngsters more
likely to do something because their fathers tell them to or because their friends do it already?
Swing Voter Motivation
This strategy enables us to establish how best to realign uncertain affiliations based on issues and party personalities and to
replace them with voter-group specific drivers that really matter. At SCL Elections we understand the power of motivation:
whether it be by aligning attitudes towards common enemies, or understanding reward structures i.e. peer group
endorsement can often be a more powerful motivator than money, or harnessing the power of binaries defining your
opponent in contrast to yourself. We use this understanding to identify the most compelling arguments to win over voters.
Swing Voter Messaging
Most politicians believe that they intuitively know the best slogan for their party or political merchandise. Yet audience
messaging is a vastly complex science that has nothing to do with intuition nor creativity. At SCL Elections we first try to
understand the message appeals of our audience i.e. what messages (outside of politics) do work and why? And then we
explore how to frame messages to increase compliance e.g. if your boss asks you for help you might be more willing to
assist him, than if he tells you to help. We also seek to understand filters the blocks in peoples mind that they will never get
past. Finally we examine source credibility, where it is not simply good enough to have the right message, but you need to
have the right source for that message e.g. a customer might be a more credible source of information about a product
than the products salesman.
Swing Voter Communication
The final phase in strategic campaign planning is message dissemination. Traditional advertising agencies might have you
believe that in most countries television is the best channel to achieve your objective. However at SCL Elections we
understand that channel exposure and channel credibility often dont go hand-in-hand, and that a word-of-mouth campaign
from friend to friend and neighbour to neighbour might have greater compliance than a newspaper or radio advert ever
could. Similarly, understanding the noise of competing media and how it effects your campaign can be critical in determining
your media spend, as is knowing the frequency dynamics of your audience i.e. how often do you need to air an
advertisement for it to resonate?
Campaign Parameters (TAA Light)
Where there are budget constraints, or more commonly time constraints, SCL Elections is able to provide a condensed
version of the standard Target Audience Analysis. Whilst still entirely focussed on understanding the motivations of the key
audience groups, it is limited in only seeking to address the core questions at the heart of a campaign. With this information
we are able to start defining the parameters of the campaign and to understand the scope of communications required to
win-over voters, though from a strategic rather than tactical level.
Campaign Timelines
At SCL Elections we understand that a political campaign can involve up to a dozen different, but complimentary,
communication programmes running simultaneously. For example, it might be necessary to create one campaign to target
specific key issues, another to target a specific audience and another to reframe the candidates personality. Knowing when
to launch each of these campaigns and how to combine them with each other is a highly skilled job. We have extensive
experience at developing timing strategies, that both provide the overall campaigns framework and also help us define the
resource management strategy (see below).
Campaign Fundraising & Budgeting
Raising sufficient funding for an election campaign is a prerequisite. SCL Elections has assisted dozens of political parties
with their campaign financing programmes and has over 20 years of experience in developing fundraising programmes to
ensure that not only enough funding is raised, but that it is raised in a timely manner. Such programmes include presenting
to identified donor groups, establishing grass-roots donors, internet fundraising, SMS/email capital raising, and fundraising
events.
As part of this programme we also provide our clients with a range of budget/resource management solutions. These
research based initiatives can significantly enhance the strategic allocation of all available funding, thus maximising the
effectiveness of an election campaign by concentrating efforts towards the 'battles that need fighting'.

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