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September 2, 2008 by admin Leave a Comment

Hollywood ad man Fred Davis’s creative staff is editing video this week in an 8 x 10 foot room cubicle featuring a cow skull over the door, a deer head on the wall, an oriental rug and five people working around the clock.

One hint politics may be at play is the poster of Barack Obama on the wall smoking a cigarette—and plans to add big photos of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

Another is that editing room sits backstage at the Republican National Convention at the Xcell Energy Center here in St. Paul, Minnesota.

As Republicans cope with the impact of Hurricane Gustav, Mr. Davis, whose Hollywood shop Strategic Perception now does now does most of the ads for Republican John McCain’s campaign—including one recent ad featuring pictures of Ms. Hilton and Ms. Spears—has been tapped as the convention’s creative director.

In that role the veteran GOP admaker known for producing political ads with a lighter twist is restaging the convention. He’s producing convention videos and re-editing them again and again as Hurricane Gustav prompts party leaders to rewrite convention plans.

On Monday he was planning an interview of VP candidate Governor Sarah Palin, and a voiceover by actor Jon Voight for a film to introduce to Ms. Palin’s expected Wednesday night acceptance speech. But plans are in flux for that speech and Mr. McCain’s expected presidential acceptance speech Thursday.

Some of the re-editing reflects the problems of using video produced before the convention and the need to reflect the hurricane. Other edits are part of the normal rush to put finishing touches on elements of a big event.

Mr. Davis was found commanding a small editing room, which had as many as 10 people working at the same time.

“We are right behind the stage where everybody wears suits and ties,” he said Monday. “Needless to say nobody in my group wears suits and ties.”

He said the wall hangings were intended “to make it look a little more creative” while the oriental rug was to give the room a touch of elegance.

“It’s tiny, but classy,” he said.

Mr. Davis said Gustav has brought “dramatic’ changes in convention plans.

“We’ve got these live remotes that were heavily produced. They’ve gone bye bye,” he said. “We had HD satellite trucks all over the country. They were of no use.”

“Everything has changed so much. I still can’t tell you where John McCain will be when he gives his convention speech. He might be right here or he might be in Texas. He might be in Louisiana. We just don’t know yet.”

The hurricane-related changes accentuated the problem of getting the convention assignment just 60 days ago and the resulting rush to produce videos.

Mr. Davis said his aim for the convention is to make sure that viewers know that John McCain understands the nation is in trouble “and we have a convention that reflects the times.

“It’s low key and serious, just like John McCain is,” Mr. Davis said. “Like what this country needs. Do you want a flashy celebrity dude president or do you want somebody low key who gets the job done whose and tough and understands what things are like?” he said.

August 2, 2008 by admin Leave a Comment

In this edition: Ed Rogers, Carter Eskew, Benjamin Ginsberg, William A. Galston, Edward J. Rollins, Tad Devine, Ralph Reed and Jamal Simmons.

ED ROGERS
Former deputy assistant to President Bush and chairman of the BGR Group

John McCain’s celebrity ad was effective. It wasn’t uncontroversial and it didn’t please all the political scientists, but it sure got noticed, and it made Barack Obama overreact. Questions about Obama’s desire for celebrity status will linger. He now has to be very careful about intersecting with Hollywood, pop culture and entertainment. Lee Atwater said the worst thing you can do in American politics is play to your negative stereotype. Well, Obama’s negative stereotype now includes the idea that he may be a little too glitzy. (Speaking of negative stereotypes, when Obama was talking about the pictures of presidents on dollar bills, was he introducing the presumptuous notion that his face belongs on American currency? I wonder whom he thinks he should replace.)

There are signs that Obama is beginning to believe all the hype. So, thinking he would have media cooperation, he tried to preemptively accuse McCain of attacking him because of his race. He forced it, and it didn’t work. Bottom line: If McCain had the celebrity ad to do over again, would he do it? Answer: Yes. If Obama had it to do over again, would he talk about race and presidents’ pictures on the money in our wallets? Answer: No.

McCain broke through this week and helped himself.

CARTER ESKEW
Chief strategist for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign

I once asked a famous commercial advertiser why he didn’t attack his big rival, a competing laundry detergent — say that it “ruins your washing machine!” or “causes hives!”

His answer: “Because I might gain temporary market advantage, but I’d devalue the whole category. Sooner or later, people would stop buying soap.”

That may be the main difference between political and commercial marketing: The political marketer is all about temporary advantage — the field of politics be damned.

We’ve seen that familiar dynamic this week in the presidential race. John McCain’s team has decided, given the gale forces against his candidacy, that he must destroy his opponent. Nine out of 10 political strategists, when faced with his playing field, would probably take this route. Barack Obama is struggling with a more complex strategic question: How does he counter the mud and not tarnish his own brand? A casual attempt this week to flick McCain’s charges off his shoulder dragged Obama into a silly and distracting discussion of race. The ghosts of losers past must haunt his team — will Obama be Swift-boated if he doesn’t strike back hard?

BENJAMIN GINSBERG
Partner at Patton Boggs and a veteran of three Republican presidential campaigns

Given the intensity of the subjects — race, age, hubris and temperament — this week has the potential to help define the campaign.

For the short term, the McCain campaign succeeded in changing the subject from Obama’s triumphant overseas tour. But one good week does not mean victory. Over the next 12 weeks, the McCain campaign needs to reinforce its message, making certain that voters retain the image of Paris-Britney-Obama in one vacuous celebrity breath. They cannot let voters instead remember the Obama counterattack superimposing “old politics” on McCain’s picture.

The injection of race into the campaign (whether by Obama’s unforced error or by McCain’s rapid opportunistic response) can be a game changer. The challenge for the McCain campaign (look what happened to Bill Clinton at the hands of the Obama campaign) is to make certain that this is understood as a smart and strategic inoculation, not a cranky response to an agenda that the McCain camp saw slipping out of control.

WILLIAM A. GALSTON
Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

The Obama campaign needs to think harder about how to respond. The remark about presidents’ faces on our currency was a sloppy unforced error, as the campaign quickly recognized, but also symptomatic of a larger problem. On the one hand, Barack Obama cannot afford to let potentially damaging charges go unanswered, as Michael Dukakis did in 1988. On the other, if he gets sucked into the daily back-and-forth of negative campaigning, he will erode what has made him distinctive and attractive. Besides, he seems uncomfortable in that role. It’s not an easy call, but on balance, he’s probably better advised to stay on the high road while leaving it to surrogates and, if necessary, advertising to answer charges. Getting a vice presidential choice into the fray earlier rather than later would be useful.

But the overriding imperative is to drive home the message that put Ronald Reagan over the top: While I stand for dramatic change, I’m a safe choice for president. There’s nothing Obama can do about his youth, his paucity of experience as conventionally defined, his newness on the national stage or the color of his skin. But he can help the people get more comfortable with him, in part by relentlessly talking about people’s problems in terms they can understand and in settings that emphasize intimacy rather than distance. The message people hear must be, “John McCain thinks this election is about me; I think it’s about you. And in all the respects that matter, I’m one of you.” But that message will be credible only if Obama doesn’t convey the impression, which he sometimes does, that he, too, thinks the election is about him.

EDWARD J. ROLLINS
Head of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign and Mike Huckabee’s campaign chairman this year

An ad man’s dream.

In addition to Obama being compared to the “silly girls,” you also heard he’s going to raise your taxes and make us more dependent on foreign oil. That’s the good news for those on the McCain team. The bad news is they may be diminishing their own great brand: “Straight Talker, John McCain!”

After being attacked in the primaries by Mitt Romney’s relentless negative ads, John McCain refused to respond in kind. The Manchester Union Leader praised him and said McCain has “conviction” and that “Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth.”

I get disturbed when I hear McCain operatives say this campaign is all about Obama and that they have to define the Democrat as “not ready to lead.” This race is also about John McCain. Is he ready to lead? Is he willing to have the courage to move the country in a new direction? The first test will be whether he has the courage to run an honest, “uplifting” campaign. Or will we be going to have more “negative tactics” from the Rove junior varsity.

We need to demand that each candidate look us in the eye and tell us how he gets us out of the mess we’re in and the direction in which he will take the country. If they spend their TV millions doing that, the country will be well served. And, finally, the news media need to be covering the race, not rerunning political commercials.

TAD DEVINE
Principal consultant to Al Gore in 2000 and adviser to the John Kerry campaign in 2004

The celebrity ad and the other attacks are the harbingers of what will inevitably be an incredibly nasty campaign. Will they work? Perhaps. But I believe that Obama will prove to be a more elusive target than previous Democratic nominees, stretching back to George McGovern, who were subjected to the Republican attack machine.

That’s because Obama’s narrative is not one of an elitist, and his rise from a single-mother home almost to the summit of power is obviously the result of talent and hard work, not favoritism and privilege.

Obama’s campaign still must find a way to talk about race — the central fact of this election — without appearing to be injecting it into the political dialogue. And the campaign needs to resist the suggestion that it should have opened up a horse-race lead in an election in which no one will soon move the 15 percent who are hanging out as soft or uncommitted.

RALPH REED
Southeast Region Chairman for the George W. Bush campaign in 2004

Obama’s celebrity has spawned a kind of modern-day Beatlemania, complete fainting fans, Men’s Vogue cover shoots, swooning politicians and an admiring press corps. But with the celebrity ad, McCain has now officially taken that strength and turned it into a weakness. Campaigns are about establishing narratives about one’s opponent, and the narrative about Obama’s hubris and arrogance is compelling because it touches on Obama’s unattractive tendency to cast himself as the deliverer for the nation whose time has come. People like their politicians with a little more humility, especially during a time of war and significant economic challenges at home. Moreover, claims of superior judgment no longer work for Obama, since he was wrong about the outcome of the surge in Iraq.

The best way for Obama to insure that he is not distracted by the race issue again would be to agree to a forum on the topic with McCain. While it is true that he excels speaking from a teleprompter in front of a large and friendly audience, engaging directly with McCain would allow him to show that he is willing to fight to win the office — and doesn’t assume he has it won.

As for McCain, during the doldrums days of summer, in a campaign that features one of the toughest environments for Republicans in decades, an occasional long ball that uses humor and a touch of satire can drive the national conversation and throw Obama off his game. He should keep it up.

JAMAL SIMMONS
President of New Future Communications and press secretary to Bob Graham and Wesley Clark’s presidential campaigns

The negativity of the last two weeks has revealed a change in tone and demeanor from the Arizona senator that undermines the amiable style that reinforced McCain’s maverick mirage. First he charged that Obama would “rather lose a war than lose a campaign,” an attack on Obama’s patriotism that even fellow Vietnam war veteran and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel criticized. Then McCain launched an ad that falsely claimed Obama skipped visiting wounded troops in Europe because he could not bring television cameras. McCain, the honorable war hero, seemed to be dishonorably playing politics with the troops. While the Republican’s strategists must believe that these negative attacks will take a toll on Obama, the greater danger is for McCain, who is proving the Democrats’ point: John McCain is a maverick no more.

May 25, 2008 by admin Leave a Comment

Presumptive GOP nominee John McCain is vastly expanding his campaign media team — bringing in a number of the leading consultants as he prepares for the general election.

The media operation, which will be known as Foxhole Productions, is adding three media consultants — Fred Davis, Chris Mottola and Cesar Martinez to the original group of Mark McKinnon, Mike Hudome, Justin Germany and Mark Salter.

Davis is perhaps the biggest name of the recent additions, having worked for McCain early in the cycle before leaving the effort in late July when the Arizona senator essentially ran out of money. Davis is extremely well-regarded in Republican circles, running a boutique media consulting firm with just a few clients every election. In 2006, he helped Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Calif.) and Sonny Perdue (Ga.) win their reelection races and handled the media for Sen. Bob Corker’s (Tenn.) narrow victory in the Volunteer State.

Mottola was part of the media team for Rudy Giuliani’s failed presidential bid. He has done considerable work in House and Senate races as well, including the 2002 reelection race of Gov. George Pataki (N.Y.) as well as the issue advertising for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the 2006 Virginia Senate race.

Martinez is a director and producer based out of Texas who worked for the Bush-Cheney team in both the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

In addition to the core group of media consultants that comprise Foxhole Productions, a separate group of advisers — known as the McCain Ad Council — will serve as outside thinkers and strategists to the media effort.

That group is chaired by Las Vegas mover and shaker Sig Rogich and Texas-based consultant Lionel Sosa. The MAC — as McCain insiders refer to the Council — includes Jim Farwell of the Farwell Group, Kathy Sosa, Paul Brabender of BrabenderCox, Paul Wilson of Wilson Grand Communications, Jim Innocenzi of Sandler-Innocenzi, Bob Wickers of Dresner, Wickers & Associates, John Gautier, Alex Castellanos of National Media, Myra Adams, Harold Kaplan (a copy-writer who worked with the Bush team in 2000 and 2004) and Richard Price, a senior marketing and advertising official with CVS.

Of that group, Brabender worked with Mottola on the presidential campaign of Giuliani while Castellanos was intimately involved in the ad-making and strategy for Mitt Romney’s campaign. Wickers’s firm handled all of the polling and media for Mike Huckabee in his recently ended bid for the GOP nomination.

Bringing in consultants previously affiliated with other campaigns serves two purposes. First and most importantly, it shows that McCain won’t hold grudges against those who weren’t with him from day one now that everyone is seeking to push the rock in the same direction. Second, it reveals a willingness to go outside of a VERY small core of advisers — a necessary growth process as McCain eases into the role of party nominee.

Of the expanded Foxhole Productions group, McKinnon said, “We’ve pulled together some of the best and brightest creative minds in the business and a structure we believe will help ensure a first-class media effort to elect John McCain president.”

Watch for continued growth in the ranks of McCain’s campaign staff at the national level and in key battleground states in the weeks to come. Some Republicans are already grumbling that McCain is moving too slowly to put the requisite parts in place. These moves should quiet that complaining for now, but the burden is still on McCain to grow his campaign (and grow it quickly) over the next month.

May 16, 2008 by admin Leave a Comment

Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican elected in the face of the 2006 Democratic sweep, understands the panic that took hold in his party this week following its loss in a ruby-red district.

Corker is familiar with the feeling. His readiness to tell his story says much about the alienation of many Republicans from the national party’s stale approach to politics and the limits of negative advertising. It is also a warning to GOP strategists who think that personal attacks on Barack Obama will be sufficient to win the presidency.

Facing a tough contest against Harold Ford Jr., a young, telegenic African American congressman, Corker says he watched his campaign flounder as his consultants ran television ads that tried to paint his opponent, a moderately conservative Democrat, as a “liberal.”

“They were grotesque,” Corker said of his own commercials in an interview this week. “It was just the same old stuff.” By contrast, he said, Ford’s spots were “fresh and refreshing.”

Corker, the former mayor of Chattanooga, called in new consultants and switched to a more positive campaign. “We kept the race about Tennessee,” he said. “We focused on my life, on who I was as a person.” Independent voters who had been attracted to Ford started moving Corker’s way.

Yet the national party almost blew the race near the end, Corker said, by running an ad that many saw as racist. The commercial, aired without Corker’s knowledge, included a young, blonde, white actress declaring that she had met Ford “at the Playboy party.” It ended with her whispering the words: “Harold, call me.”

Corker was furious, and not just because his six-point lead melted into a four-point deficit. The party eventually pulled the radioactive ad, and Corker won narrowly. The senator has advised Republican colleagues in tough races this year to resist national party ads that mention their opponents.

Few Republicans will go that far. But Democrat Travis Childers‘s victory Tuesday in a Mississippi district that had given 62 percent of its vote to President Bush in 2004 caused something of a nervous breakdown in GOP ranks, breeding a crisis of confidence among Republicans about the party’s consulting establishment and national leadership.

It was the third Republican special-election loss in a row, all in House districts that the party had counted as its own. It was the second time in less than two weeks that a big-money advertising campaign aimed at linking a conservative Democrat to Obama had failed.

In a remarkably open rebellion, Republican members of Congress and party strategists decried Bush’s role in bringing down the Republican “brand,” the party’s failure to offer new policies, and the futility of campaigns rooted in the 1980s and ’90s.

Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, who is retiring, confessed to me that if his party “were dog food, they’d take us off the shelf and put us in a landfill.”

Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, said party leaders have “got their heads in the sand. They’ve kept on this track, they keep expecting miracles, and there are no miracles.”

And Corker said voters did not believe the Republicans were “solving the major problems,” notably guaranteeing Americans health coverage. “We just haven’t been responsible,” Corker said. “We deserve to be where we are. I hope we right ourselves.”

The one comfort, said Davis, lies in John McCain‘s ability to run well ahead of his party. “McCain has his own brand. He’s not dragged down by the Republican brand.”

Fabrizio sees McCain as successfully employing Bill Clinton‘s strategy of “triangulation” by “using George Bush and the Democrats to try to define himself by setting himself off against both of them.”

A Post-ABC News poll this week gave partial support to this view: While voters gave the Democrats a 21-point advantage over Republicans as the party better equipped to handle the nation’s problems, McCain trailed Obama by only seven points.

Yet Obama’s still-sizable lead suggests that McCain will have trouble escaping the anti-Republican uprising. Democrats are trying to limit his room to maneuver by linking the presumptive Republican nominee to Bush’s policies. Fabrizio argues that McCain’s urgent need to run as an independent means that “McCain could win in a landslide, and we still lose the House and Senate significantly.”

In this spring of discontent, Republicans are turning on each other because even their best news is bad news.

May 6, 2008 by admin Leave a Comment

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — Sen. John McCain’s campaign has quietly tapped two veteran GOP advertising executives to bulk up the team for the fall fight, one of whom is Fred Davis, who had left last year during darker times for Team McCain.

Mr. Davis, of Strategic Perception, Los Angeles, and Chris Mottola, a Philadelphia consultant, have joined Mike Hudome on the Foxhole Productions media team now headed by Mark McKinnon, vice chairman of WPP Group’s Public Strategies in Austin, Texas.

Mr. McKinnon has said in an interview with Texas Monthly last year that he would step down if Sen. Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination because he was unwilling to engage in the kind of attack advertising that would be needed against Mr. Obama during a presidential campaign.

He said this week he still supports Mr. McCain, but would become mainly a “cheerleader” if Mr. Obama won.

“If it’s Hillary, I stay and blitz every play,” he said.

Messrs. Davis and Mottola worked on the Bush Maverick Media ad team that was also headed by Mr. McKinnon, but the two are better known for work they each did in senatorial, congressional and gubernatorial campaigns for Republican candidates.

Mr. Mottola produced ads for Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., Arlen Specter, R-Pa. and New York Gov. George Pataki. The Specter race included a hard-fought 2004 primary challenge against conservative Pat Toomey. Mr. Mottola also was part of Rudy Giuliani’s media team last year.

Mr. Davis often uses a slightly less serious approach to political advertising and was enlisted by Republicans to successfully right Bob Corker’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in Tennessee in a widely watched race in which Mr. Corker faced then U.S. Rep. Harold Ford. He also handled the campaigns of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. He currently handles the cable industry’s National Cable & Telecommunications Association.

Mr. Davis is making a return engagement to the McCain campaign. He was one of the campaign’s original ad consultants in early 2007, before the campaign started running low on funds and was forced to make major staffing cutbacks.

With no funds to pay ad consultants, Mr. McKinnon was subsequently pressed into service as the campaign’s main ad strategist, working without pay.

Mr. Hudome, the head of MH Media, Alexandria, Va., and former executive director of the Delaware Republican Party, is a veteran GOP advertising executive who handled numerous GOP campaigns when he was with Pintak Gautier Hudome Agency. MH Media has been buying media for the McCain campaign.

Foxhole also includes Justin Germany, a 28-year-old web ad expert, pressed into duty as cameraman and editor; and it has included Mark Salter, the campaign’s chief of staff and speechwriter, doing double duty as an ad copywriter.

December 12, 2007 by admin Leave a Comment

The ONE Campaign is spending $1.8 million on ad buys in Iowa, New Hampshire, and on national cable stations in an effort to get presidential candidates talking about poverty.

The ad campaign starts today and continues through next Thursday. It will be the group’s main ad buy of the primary season, according to the group. ONE will also run newspapers ads in Iowa and New Hampshire related to the TV campaign.

The 30-second spot is produced by Fred Davis of Strategic Perception, which has produced ads for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonny Perdue, and the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign.

“One voice can make a difference,” the ad’s announcer says. “But one plus one plus one is impossible to ignore. Join us to plead as one. To heal and bring hope to the world. Ask each presidential candidate if they’re on the record fighting poverty and disease.”

Separately, ONE has posted an online-only video of the presidential candidates praising the group for its efforts.

November 15, 2007 by admin Leave a Comment

MAURICIO VARGAS, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE
CALIFORNIA GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER TALKING ABOUT THE THREAT OF GREENHOUSE GASES.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — Frustrated with the slow progress of legislation in Washington on energy and global warming, the nation’s governors have created regional agreements to cap greenhouse gases and are engaged in a concerted lobbying effort to prod Congress to act.

ANNE SHERWOOD ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE MONTANA GOV. BRIAN SCHWEITZER TELLING CONGRESS: “DO SOMETHING. ANYTHING. MOVE.”

SCOTT KLEPPER ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE UTAH GOV. JON HUNTSMAN JR. SAID WESTERN GOVERNORS WERE “SETTING AMBITIOUS TARGETS.”

Beginning Monday, three Western governors will appear in a nationwide television advertising campaign sponsored by an environmental group trying to generate public and political support for climate change legislation now before the Senate.

The 30-second ad features Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican of California; Jon Huntsman Jr., Republican of Utah; and Brian Schweitzer, Democrat of Montana, standing in casual clothes in scenic spots talking about the threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions. The nation’s governors are acting, but Congress is not, they say. “Now it’s their turn,” Mr. Schwarzenegger says.

Separately, in Milwaukee on Wednesday, nine Midwestern governors and the premier of Manitoba signed an agreement to reduce carbon emissions and set up a trading system to meet the reduction targets. The Midwestern accord is modeled on similar regional carbon-reduction and energy-saving arrangements among Northeastern, Southwestern and West Coast states.

The advertising campaign is underwritten by Environmental Defense, an advocacy group that is pressing for quick action on a climate change proposal sponsored by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia.

The Lieberman-Warner legislation would cap carbon emissions at 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and set up a system for polluting industries to trade emissions credits to meet the goals. Like other such bills before Congress, it would provide incentives for research on capturing and storing carbon dioxide from power plants and subsidies to help the poor handle the higher costs of electricity in a carbon-constrained economy.

The bill is now before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The committee’s chairwoman, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said she hoped to bring the bill to a vote of the full committee by Dec. 6. There is no schedule for action after that, however.

The governors, who did not receive a fee for appearing in the advertisement, say state leaders are moving to reduce climate-affecting emissions, while the current Congress has so far failed to pass any significant legislation on climate change or energy.

“In state after state, we’re taking action,” the governors say, taking turns speaking. “Now it’s time for Congress to act by capping greenhouse gas pollution.”

In an interview, Governor Huntsman said, “With just weeks left in the legislative calendar, there has been no vote yet dealing realistically with greenhouse gas pollution. We in the West are already wrestling with it and setting ambitious targets.”

He said action on the national level, in the form of the Lieberman-Warner legislation or a similar economywide carbon cap-and-trade scheme, was preferable to the patchwork system that state governments were putting in place.

Governor Schweitzer said dealing with global warming was the “greatest imperative” of this and future generations. “We need to find a sustainable, renewable American energy supply so we will not commit the next generation to fight another oil war,” he said.

Mr. Schweitzer added: “Here’s a novel concept for Congress. Do something. Anything. Move.”

Environmental Defense is spending $3 million to broadcast the advertisement, which will appear in 17 markets in 11 states over the next few weeks, said the group’s president, Fred Krupp. The ad will also appear during the Sunday morning talk shows on Nov. 25.

The Midwestern governors expressed similar impatience with the slow pace in Washington on global warming and energy issues. They have banded together to set up a regional emissions control program, to expand production of biofuels and to cooperate on environmental and energy infrastructure projects, like an interstate pipeline for moving carbon emissions from power plants to underground storage vaults.

Gov. James E. Doyle of Wisconsin, a Democrat who is chairman of the Midwestern Governors Association, said that the individual states in his region were all moving independently toward greater energy efficiency and planned to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that it made sense to work in concert.

“In the absence of a federal plan we have to move forward,” Mr. Doyle said, speaking from Milwaukee, where he was the chairman of an energy summit meeting of the Midwestern governors. “On top of that, this recognizes that, federal plan or no federal plan, the Midwest is uniquely positioned to be a major force in the developing new energy world.”

He predicted that sooner or later Washington would adopt a national cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions, but he was not optimistic that it would act before President Bush leaves office.

“I suspect it will require a new administration to come in,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done to prepare for it. If there comes a national cap-and-trade system, we will have done a lot of the work. If not, we will have one in the Midwestern region on a scale that can work.”

May 1, 2007 by admin Leave a Comment

FRED DAVIS, CHAIRMAN OF STRATEGIC PERCEPTION, INC. JOHN SHINKLE

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Fred Davis III has little use for the trendy liberalism that dominates the Hollywood political scene. After all, he’s a leading ad-maker for the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), busy demonstrating his conservative bona fides to Republican primary voters. And Davis’ longest-standing client is his uncle, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a leading skeptic of global warming.

But when it comes to the lefties’ creative prowess, Davis has only praise. The opportunity to take the best of the entertainment industry’s cutting-edge technologies and apply them to political campaigns keeps this son of Tulsa based in Hollywood while many of the media consulting heavy hitters remain clustered around Washington, seemingly reinforcing conventional wisdom about ad-making among themselves.

“This is a much more advanced creative thinking place,” Davis said. “The technology I use here will be in D.C. any time.”

His firm, Strategic Perception Inc., is among several GOP media consulting heavyweights signed up for McCain’s presidential campaign. The others include the Stevens and Schriefer Group, Mark McKinnon and Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm.

McCain’s campaign probably needs all the creativity Davis can muster to turn around perceptions that it has run off track, plagued by lower than expected fundraising totals during the first quarter of 2007, continuing fallout from his support of President George W. Bush’s Iraq troop “surge” policy and lingering distrust among conservative activists.

That’s where Davis comes in, because he has created some of the more memorable ads of recent election cycles. Consider the 2002 spot that helped Sonny Perdue win the Georgia governorship in one of that election cycle’s biggest upsets. The ad featured a giant rat romping through the Peach State, representing Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes’ alleged imperiousness. The commercial became a breakout moment for Perdue, a little-known former state senator. Though outspent 6 to 1, the “King Roy” ad proved to be the great equalizer in the challenger’s upset victory.

Creation of the ad was a major production and, according to colleagues, vintage Davis. It used set construction in Nashville, myriad special effects, helicopters and a Lear jet mounted with cameras strafing Georgia cities and the countryside, and a $40,000 custom-made rat suit, complete with its own air-conditioning system. (Davis got the cost cut in half to $20,000 by returning it at the end of the year to the Hollywood costume shop that made it.) Production took 45 days.

Davis’ ideas are extraordinarily unique and creative, said Glen Bolger of the GOP polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, who also worked on Perdue’s 2002 campaign. “He’s more willing to take risks than many other consultants.”

Davis also created some of the more talked about ads in the 1994 election cycle, for his uncle, then-Rep. Inhofe, when he ran for the Senate against Democratic Rep. Dave McCurdy. One of the ads used cutting-edge technology to morph McCurdy’s face into that of President Bill Clinton, a very unpopular figure in Oklahoma. Another spot depicted a decrepit family sitting on their back porch in Oklahoma, drinking beer and watching a bug zapper for entertainment; the ad brought to life a statement McCurdy once made in Washington, apparently ridiculing his constituents.

The ads “were instrumental in Jim’s victory,” said Rick Shelby, a political consultant who worked for Inhofe and is now with the American Gas Association. “If you can use humor to take the edge off, it makes them far more effective.”

Not all of Davis’ moves have been winners. In 1996, he worked for the presidential campaign of Republican candidate Morry Taylor, a Midwestern industrialist who made a quixotic bid that quickly sank. Perhaps the ad man’s biggest misstep came in 1998 with a commercial on behalf of Mitch Skandalakis, running for lieutenant governor of Georgia. Mark Taylor, Skandalakis’ Democratic opponent, had acknowledged using cocaine and marijuana in the early 1980s while in his 20s. The attack ad showed the sign in front of the Ridgeview Institute, a Georgia drug rehabilitation center, as an announcer said, “Taylor, of course, has admitted he had problems years ago. And we all wish those problems had been cured.” The ad featured an actor who resembled Taylor dressed in a tattered robe, shuffling down a long hall.

Taylor denounced the ad, insisting he had never been a rehab patient. The spot drew waves of negative attention to Skandalakis. Davis had to admit the source who suggested Taylor’s drug problems continued into the ’90s proved unreliable. Skandalakis immediately sank in the polls and lost to Taylor 56 percent to 39 percent. Taylor was so enraged over the ad that shortly before Election Day he sued Skandalakis for libel. The rivals ultimately settled the case, with Skandalakis agreeing to pay $50,000 to a charity.

Davis, 55, grew up in Tulsa, where his father owned a small PR firm. Davis attended Trinity College in San Antonio, but while he was visiting home at Christmas in his freshman year, his father died of a heart attack. That left Davis to take care of his three siblings. He put school on hold while trying to eke out a living for the family.

“We went from comfortably middle class to ‘Uh-oh, what do we do now?'” he said.

Though Davis had no background or formal training in PR or advertising, he persuaded a couple of his father’s clients to stay with him and found he had a knack for the business. He took advertising classes at night and, by age 21, had expanded the business to more than 50 employees.

While commercial advertising paid the bills, Davis wanted to focus on “things that I thought were important on a deeper level.” The chance to do just that came in 1974, when Inhofe — a state legislator for eight years — ran for governor.

“Jim came to me,” Davis recalled. “He didn’t have any money.”

Inhofe won an upset GOP primary victory but was overwhelmed 64 percent to 36 percent by Democrat David Boren, who would go on to serve as a U.S. senator.

For his work on his uncle’s campaign, Davis got $11,000 and, more importantly, placement on the political map. “He found he had incredible talent,” Inhofe said.

Throughout the next decade, Davis made his living primarily on commercial accounts but continued to experiment with commercial advertising techniques in politics. Inhofe’s periodic campaigns provided plenty of testing ground in what were family affairs. During that period, Inhofe lost a 1976 congressional bid and then was elected Tulsa mayor in 1979, before being defeated five years later. In 1986, he was elected to the U.S. House for the first of five terms.

The year before, Davis had moved to Hollywood for the technological advantages, creative culture and weather. After rising through the ranks of Republican consultants, he made a splash on the national scene in 2004, when he was key ad-maker on the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign. He then worked on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 reelection, which boosted his stock higher. “I had a good year last year, and most Republicans didn’t.”

Soon enough, all the major Republican presidential candidates were calling. Davis decided to go with the McCain campaign after being courted by its lead staffers, spending time with the candidate and speed-reading the senator’s memoir, “Faith of My Fathers.”

“I was really blown away with his background and the depth of his purpose,” Davis said.

Davis said he is unconcerned by McCain’s lagging fundraising totals and the problems he is having because the candidate supports Bush on the war in Iraq. Like the president’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns, a long-term game plan is in place to win despite bumps in the road.

Whatever the outcome, Davis’ ads for McCain, dreamed up high in the Hollywood Hills, far away from Washington, will not likely be cookie-cutter or routine.

November 6, 2006 by admin Leave a Comment

August 27, 2006 by admin Leave a Comment

What a concept: Dusk in America.

Twenty-two years after Ronald Reagan spun out-of-control deficits into “rebirth,” California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has contrived to run the greatest American political ad essentially in reverse, and so to cast his hapless opponent into the ominous gloaming. It’s a cruel masterpiece.

Between now and November, Schwarzenegger can get caught groping Miss Teen Fresno, the California Republican party can make Barry Bonds its chairman and President Bush can declare war on Oregon.

Arnold is still a lock.

This has nothing to do with his performance as governor, which in our opinion has been erratic at best. Nor with the qualifications of his opponent, state Treasurer Phil Angelides. It certainly has nothing to do with a Republican resurgence; the GOP has brilliantly maneuvered itself Out of its so-called permanent majority in Congress and may run third in the mid-terms to the Whigs.

No, credit here goes only to the campaign ads, which began running about five minutes after Angelides got the nomination, and which etched the contest in stone: The Democrat represents a step backward for California.

“It was a time of gray skies, punishing taxes, disappearing jobs, a state near bankruptcy,” says the gravelly-voiced narrator, over gunmetal images of life in reverse. Buildings being deconstructed. Traffic moving backward. Angelides himself dismally moonwalking in super-slow motion. “Will California move backward with politician Phil Angelides, who promises to raise taxes on California families by $10 billion, or keep moving forward protecting the California dream for you and your family? That’s our choice.”

Well, of course, in reality that isn’t the choice. The text is really just boilerplate rhetoric, ignoring the state’s ongoing fiscal and political crises and trotting out the threadbare pieties of the GOP. But that hardly matters because, for one thing, claims that Schwarzenegger has moved California forward are plainly subjective and therefore not demonstrably false.

But more than that, the text is scarcely important. What counts here is the imagery — the indelible imagery — of retreat. The political consultancy Strategic Perception, Hollywood, has taken the stirring optimism of Reagan’s “Morning in America” and found its reciprocal: a grim and pessimistic vision of an Angelides governorship. Talk about gloom and doom. In this quintessential example of campaign noir, sunny Californians are deprived not only of prosperity and progress, but of the sun itself.

It’s bleak. It’s simple. It’s devastating.

Like the “flip-flop” charge that destroyed Stuttering John Kerry, “backward” has defined Angelides from the start and will do so till the finish. Worse yet for the challenger, Schwarzenegger’s 5-1 cash advantage will enable himto drum the definition into the head of every voter many times over.

There is always, of course, the possibility that voters will resist such blunt, disingenuous tactics and carefully examine the campaign’s assertions against the available facts. Perhaps they will parse the “$10 billion tax on families” rhetoric and see that the tax is intended for those earning more than $250,000. Perhaps they will question what, exactly, in Schwarzenegger’s term of office has propelled the state forward. And perhaps the 49ers will go to the Super Bowl.

Except that they won’t.

No, this race is over. For the Democrats, it can only now serve as fair warning for what is to follow in the presidential race in two years’ time. Whoever wins the nomination had better be prepared to face instant branding from the competition. Bush could indeed invade Oregon. But what’s that against, for example:

Hillary=bitch.

~ ~ ~

Review 3.5 stars
Ad: Skies
Agency: Strategic Perception
Location: Hollywood, Calif.

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