Let us acknowledge at the outset there are times when we take direct hits from activists, media, labor or government that require resounding, immediate and substantial action in return. At the same time, the modern mode of issues management—learned from too many loud mistakes in the last 20 years—is to react more with conciliation and moderation than with “warfare.”
Still, there is a time to do one or the other—it would be a mistake to consider warfare entirely outmoded—but we sidestep that discussion and look instead to the total, always-applicable strategic question that should precede any action, period:
“How much damage or danger does this assault really represent?”
Pick your fights
In lobbying adage, it amounts to: “Pick your fights (and don’t try to fight them all).” In strategic adage, it amounts to: “When we own the battleship and the hull is being hit with BBs, should we care?”
This is not only a crucial question, but the crucial question. And it must be addressed not only at the onset of a campaign but constantly, throughout.
To mismatch the response and the assault can be the very strategy our opponents hope we adopt, and it is often their only hope. To fall into it can find us playing their game and not ours.
Keeping strategy from being simply reflexive is really what we are talking about here. In this case, reflexive strategy usually comes not from jaded inattention but from over-attention, anger and ego. (Defusing that reaction is one of the greatest contributions of a public-affairs agency, as third party.)
An example: During an arduous— eventually successful—quest by a utility for government approval of a major capital project, a quasi-government “citizen watchdog group” canvassed metropolitan areas door-to-door, seeking contributions and petition signatures. The rehearsed presentation by the usual student activists was so onerous and blatantly untrue that it incensed not only the client’s executive management and its lobbyists, but also the majority leader and speaker of the state legislative chambers. Both legislative leaders volunteered to be quoted in any counteraction our client chose to take. Did we have the resources for a radio-and-print campaign and perhaps also TV? Yes. Were the stakes of the project high enough? Yes. Were management, lobbying arm and even government allies calling for immediate, effective counteraction? Yes.
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Take another look
But let us assess the situation carefully: Canvassers were making absurd claims door-to-door, but in media interviews they were—and had to be—more reasonable and factual. Canvassers could only reach a small number of households daily and, clearly, would canvass only over the summer with cheap student labor.
Misinformation was being spread daily, but slowly. More important, the issue was hardly so incendiary for the common household as to cause any political action other than to contribute a couple of dollars, sign the petition (by which the signatory unknowingly was claimed as a group “member”), and shoo the canvasser from the doorstep.
Instead, through a (still proprietary) means of intelligence by which we knew where canvassers were operating and where they would operate next, we executed direct-mail drops confined by even tighter specifications than ZIP code, preceding canvassers wherever they went.
The direct-mail piece prominently featured the photos and quotations of the speaker and majority leader, as well as summary information refuting all underpinnings of the canvassers’ canned presentation. Anecdotal evidence from utility employees and their neighbors was immediate, and it continued: Pre-informed homeowners were turning away canvassers, often brusquely, upon opening the door.
Further inside intelligence weeks later reported on a canvassing force, discouraged and rudely treated, prepared to present but not to rebut, quitting the work force and mistrustful of their own activist “management.”
The media, stimulated as expected by the citizen group’s cry of “foul,” reported on our client’s reaction, but it was a measured story of a measured reaction—an almost non-news event with a positive hint of admiration for not having undertaken carpet bombing of an annoyance.
Stories, and decisions, such as these are legion within even one campaign, let alone all of them. They are junctures that dictate eventual success or the nasty feeling of having walked into a trap being sprung. To create responses commensurate with the risk, and to have a head cool enough to do it, prevents needlessly creating controversy, which is seldom our friend.
Furthermore, since we almost always have the greater resources, it prevents us from falling into the trap of playing on the wrong field. All the world loves an underdog. And activists are counting on it. |
