Episode 917: Bass ackwards

Zain 0:02

This is a Strategist episode 917. My name is Zain Velji. With me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what's going on?

Corey 0:09

I'm dancing. That was a real nice dance, yeah. I'm dancing. It's a real nice dance. You know, this is a podcast, right, Carter? You know what? We

Carter 0:16

We can do video. You're doing this for no one.

Carter 0:17

Right? If you would pony up the extra money, we could do video. Squadcast does video now.

Zain 0:23

Carter, we don't want to be disappointed by the lack of views that we get. This is why we don't do video. Listen, if

Carter 0:28

if people watch that ugly fucker, Ryan Jesperson, they will watch us. Jesus Christ. I will tell you right now.

Zain 0:34

Corey is upset by the amount of airtime we're giving up. And now I am adding myself to the mix. What the fuck, Carter? What are you doing?

Zain 0:43

Corey, how are you? You're wearing a shirt with a collar, which is not allowed in this pandemic. Yes, well, I am an adult who occasionally has to

Corey 0:51

to go to work. So that would be an example of one of those things. I don't really know why a collared shirt denotes business time and a t-shirt says not business time, but that's the way the world works, Zane. It's just one of the many mysteries that we'll have to unpack on our other podcast, The Sartorialists, which

Corey 1:08

releases every Friday. Which

Zain 1:09

Which is pretty much just Corey on his own talking about multiple collar styles. Carter, you, of course, guest appeared once. Disastrous episode. We don't need to remind the listeners

Carter 1:22

I've yet to be invited. I've yet to be invited. The Notorious

Corey 1:25

Notorious Tuck It Into Your Underwear episode.

Zain 1:31

Carter, any other intro comments before we move it on to this episode? To the meat of the matter, I should say.

Carter 1:38

I never have anything of interest to say, as you know.

Zain 1:41

Good. So it's just that dance and nothing else. Let's move it on to our headlines. Guys, are you ready to cover off our Thursday headlines? Oh, so many goodies. And we have to start here. year this one comes to us from vice but it could have come to us from fucking anywhere else this morning it sure looks like ted cruz went to cancun while texas freezes and starves i mean jesus christ uh i'll let you just react to the citizen journalism on the plane by it seemed like half the plane taking pictures of ted cruz yeah emming every reporter in texas and in dc about the fact that this guy was going all the way to and i've got another headline here in a second but we can burn it right now. Republicans who say Ted Cruz is a hero for flying to Cancun as Texas freezes to death. Friends of the GOP like Dinesh D'Souza, who says, quote, I'll let you speak, but I need to get this out of the way. What could Ted Cruz do if he were here in Texas? I'm hard pressed to say if he's in Cancun, that means he's not using up valuable resources of energy, food and water that can now be used by someone else. This is probably the best thing he could do for the state right right now this

Corey 2:51

this train of thought is amazing because that also would be equally true if he just dropped dead i

Carter 2:55

i was just thinking the exact same thing which many people

Zain 2:58

people would be open to well like

Zain 3:01

there's a there's an openness to that i'm

Carter 3:03

i'm not allowed to say that anymore after last episode so i'm not calling for anyone's death in this episode that's

Corey 3:09

that's great yeah it's a step forward your growth as a human being is an inspiration really inspirational

Carter 3:13

inspirational to everyone but

Corey 3:15

but it's more than that you would think that uh ted cruz maybe would have paid a little more attention to the politics in his hometown of Calgary, Alberta. I was going to say,

Carter 3:22

if anybody ever thought that we have real reach outside of Canada, we really don't, right? Like, we

Carter 3:29

we just went through this, and we have exactly zero reach in Texas, even with the political class. So this tells us everything we need to know.

Corey 3:39

Well, it's in general, no Americans ever cared about anything that's gone on in Alberta, or really any Canadian province. It's tough enough to get them to know that our prime minister's name is not jean putin so that's just the reality that we deal with as canadians a certain asymmetry and information about the two nations but yeah

Corey 3:58

yeah the uh the uh what we learned here in alberta i think is quite telling what we learned in all sorts of canadian jurisdictions is quite telling turns out people don't like you to fuck off when there's an emergency going on and the contrast is really profound because beto o'rourke is running phone phone banks, calling, making sure people are

Corey 4:15

Seniors, do you need anything? Meanwhile, the guy who actually has authority, who is actually an elected official with a staff, with apparently, you would imagine, like a political party with some real heft. We're talking about the Texas Republicans. You

Corey 4:30

can't do anything. You can get on a plane to Cancun. That's about it. That's what he's doing. Now, I've

Corey 4:35

I've said all of this, but I also have to say, I'm not really sure Ted Cruz would be doing anything useful at

Corey 4:41

all. And is the world a the worst is texas a worst place without ted cruz in it probably not still it seems like bad politics that's judging

Carter 4:50

judging judging from the other republican statements i mean was it rick perry who said that texans would proudly die rather than taking government handouts i mean this

Zain 4:58

this is true perry says people know rick perry said texans would would are willing to suffer the blackouts if it means to keep the feds out of their power market uh so you know it's give me death uh or Or give me regulation. Yeah,

Carter 5:13

Yeah, I mean, this is interesting.

Carter 5:16

Texas is interesting, and it's an understatement, my friend. Well,

Corey 5:18

Well, I meant their electricity grid. It's separated from everyone. It's an island unto itself. Which

Carter 5:23

Which is one of the reasons that they are an island unto itself in darkness.

Zain 5:27

is true. You got it all out of your system, Carter? I don't know. Yeah, Carter? That

Carter 5:33

That wasn't my rant. That was Corey. Corey was the upset one. I just added a little color commentary.

Zain 5:38

okay, Corey? It's good.

Zain 5:39

Yeah, it was nice. It was

Carter 5:41

Here we go. Moving

Zain 5:41

Moving on from one Texas politician to another, this one comes to us from CBS. Texas mayor resigns after telling residents desperate for power and heat, only the strong will survive. I have not read a more Texas headline or a more character of a Texas headline. But this mayor, of course, going out on Facebook, saying that only the strong will survive, that this is a crisis that we are in together but kind of are not in together because only those of the few that are not meek will live through it. Carter, you've advised mayoral candidates and mayors. Is this part of the key messaging handbook when an emergency strikes upon a city?

Carter 6:25

You know, it's a fine line between everybody should do it on their own and only the strong will survive and don't be a Nenshi noun. I mean, these things are relatively close. That means nothing to

Corey 6:36

to anybody outside of Calgary.

Carter 6:38

Are you kidding? We're going to get huge Twitter traffic on this.

Carter 6:41

Tweet me at Carter underscore AB if you think that Corey's wrong. And I'm right. Just tweet it at us. We're always reading the Twitters. No, I think that, you know, this is probably one of the worst statements I've ever seen by a mayor. I honestly didn't think he'd have to resign in Texas. Looking what Ted Cruz isn't going to necessarily have to resign. But the outrage was real. And you got to think, I read the article, I read a lot of the quotes the guy said. As I was reading it, I was honestly thinking, this is a guy that doesn't want to be the mayor anymore. This

Carter 7:13

This is a guy who's done being the mayor. And I'm pretty sure that any criticism would have been seen as an opportunity for him to step down.

Zain 7:21

Corey, only the strong will survive is, of course, a rejected campaign slogan for many campaigns I've tried to run. Has it been part of key messaging handbooks for you in the past? No,

Corey 7:31

No, I've used the other part of his quote, which is crying and looking for a handout as my campaign slogan.

Corey 7:38

The city that he is the mayor of, Colorado City, I don't think you'd really call it a city. It's about 4000 people. Texas is a big, weird place. There are a lot of big, weird places in the world. You know, the real unfortunate thing – I mean, and the governor of Texas and Rick Perry and Ted Cruz, they're not exactly painting a great picture here. But he is going to become an emblem of this Texas libertarian republicanism, and I think that's part of the reason why this was such a story. It just ties into that stereotype of like this Texas live free or die attitude. And as a result, I think it will live on for a while. It's one of these things that will probably grow in notoriety 40 years from now. Now, it'll be remembered as the mayor of Dallas said this or something stupid like that. But the whole post was just an absolute legend. This guy is a total unit. He's saying, sink or swim, it's your choice. The city and county or any service owes you nothing.

Corey 8:36

Let me hurt some feelings while I have a minute is how he started the post. Yeah. No,

Corey 8:44

Snowflakes. It's art. It's performance

Zain 8:48

well done carter i appreciated the word play no

Zain 8:52

cory didn't get it i

Carter 8:54

it got it cory just you know what he's just not appreciated it was funny yeah no yeah he doesn't yeah it's

Zain 8:59

it's a higher bar for cory we try to meet it sometimes let's let's move it on to our next headline not to be outdone florida this one comes to us from the hill florida governor desantis threatens to to divert vaccines from communities criticizing vaccine distribution.

Zain 9:19

I don't know why I'm laughing. I'll tell you.

Zain 9:23

Why is Corey laughing? Let's get into the psychology. Because I think this

Carter 9:26

this is something that goes through every politician's head when they're getting criticized on something. You want to see bad snow removal? I'll show you bad snow removal. We're going to go and remove the snow over there, you fuckers. But we never say it out loud. And that's where Governor DeSantis is a little bit different than the rest of the politicians that Corey and I might work with.

Zain 9:48

He is a special breed. We know that. Corey, any reaction to hearing the illustrious Governor DeSantis with his not so subtle threat?

Corey 9:58

I mean, there's no subtlety in that at all. It's basically if you don't shut up and just deal with it, I'm going to take it away. You don't like – you complain about the roads in your neighborhood, you're going to start tearing those up too. It's not exactly a –

Corey 10:12

there's supposed to be this idea of small government and representative government where you are responsive to your citizens on matters like this and you're supposed to take the criticism. The

Corey 10:22

The Republicans have sure moved away from that, haven't they?

Zain 10:25

No, yeah. Yeah. I mean, listen, if the government owes them nothing, they can sink or swim. They're just getting handouts. I mean, that's just what they're all about. Do you remember when

Corey 10:36

when Ronald Reagan said, the buck stops here, and if you don't stop complaining about the Iran-Contra scandal, I'm going to start sending armies into all sorts of other Latin American countries? See how you like it then?

Zain 10:49

Classic Reagan quote. Yeah, it was a great quote. You

Corey 10:52

You only ever hear the short version.

Zain 10:53

version. A little wordy in its long form, but

Zain 10:56

but still a classic.

Zain 11:00

Thank you, Corey. Let's move on to our next headline. This comes to us from our favorite publication, Newsweek. I know Newsweek has faced some sharp elbows on this podcast in the past, some criticism. And amidst a, what I'd say, a very quiet Newsweek, nothing going on, they decided to make this an actual headline. line and sometimes i just need to bring headlines to the table that you're like what the fuck how is this real joe biden playing as luigi wins in mario kart race against granddaughter at camp david so

Corey 11:37

so i've got a question yeah

Corey 11:40

playing as luigi got some pretty nice real estate there like it's in the headline yeah is that relevant to the story in

Carter 11:46

in any way shape or form was

Corey 11:47

was it like But he was

Zain 11:47

was continuing to lose? It's relevant to the story as much as Newsweek is relevant to the American media. Okay,

Carter 11:53

Okay, yeah, that makes sense then. Thank you. But

Corey 11:56

But the only way this makes sense to me is if he was playing as Mario for years and he's like, I'm going to switch it up to Luigi. I

Carter 12:02

I don't think it makes sense

Zain 12:05

During the weekend retreat at Camp David, Biden and his granddaughter played the racing video game and he won.

Zain 12:12

That's it. That's pretty much the first sentence. And then it talks about this whole article is based on an Instagram post by his granddaughter and how he won as Luigi. Well,

Corey 12:20

Well, you know what? If he plays as Waluigi, stop the presses. But just regular Luigi? Come on, get out of here.

Zain 12:26

Carter, any commentary on the legendary video game or the president of the United States playing the legendary video game as hell freezes over in Texas and the governor of Florida tries to punish his constituents?

Carter 12:38

Well, if Ted Cruz doesn't care about the people of Texas, then I can't imagine why Joe Biden would. But playing

Carter 12:43

playing video games with his granddaughter is a great way to keep him out of the mess. So, I

Carter 12:47

I don't know. I mean, I've never played that video game. What is it? Mario Kart? Mario? Oh,

Zain 12:51

Oh, Jesus Christ, Carter. Come on. How old are you? Yeah. Come on, Carter. Come

Carter 12:55

Come on. Seriously, I played the Atari games.

Carter 12:58

Asteroids was great. Space Invaders was fun. I had Pac-Man for a while.

Corey 13:04

Until you got it taken away?

Carter 13:05

My mother took it away because she loved playing Pac-Man.

Carter 13:09

She wouldn't give it back.

Corey 13:12

this is this is our this is our best episode yeah

Zain 13:15

yeah this is going really well i mean these are not the anecdotes i i hope for but i'll take what i could get uh let's move it on to our next headline let's come back here to canada with the toronto star liberal mp apologizes to voters after his office emails their information to conservatives that is correct

Zain 13:36

that is correct An elected Ottawa area MP apologized to his constituents on Thursday after his office sent private information about hundreds of voters to a mailing list of conservative staffers. But Liberal MP Chandra Iyer will not face any sanctions for this privacy breach. So yes, you heard that correctly. A Liberal MP somehow had a conservative staffers list, and he sent a bunch of voter information to those people. Who said that politics in Canada was not more civil, Stephen Carter? Well,

Carter 14:06

I'll tell you something. It's times like this when you really want to be exempted from all the privacy legislation. And that's

Carter 14:12

that's just a really good thing, right? Like, because that would have been very bad if politicians weren't exempted from the legislation.

Zain 14:20

Corey, what do you think?

Corey 14:23

I think that I have so many further questions, and I'm going to do a bit of a deep dive on this later. But why are you even emailing around lists of people? That doesn't

Carter 14:31

doesn't even make sense. Yeah. Yeah, it's

Corey 14:34

it's it's not a great way to port these things around to begin with. There's a lot of considerations here.

Carter 14:39

Corey's asking the big questions, really. These

Zain 14:41

These are the big questions. Corey, just a quick update for you. Concordia University professor has not come back to life. Still dead. Still dead. We're just going to keep doing that check every single week. I just wanted to insert that one there. Let's move it on to our next headline. This comes to us from CBS. CBS, DoorDash spent $5.5 million to advertise their $1 million charity donation during the Super Bowl.

Zain 15:09

usually leave off with an article that I want to do a little bit of discussion on, and I don't know if this is the one, but sure, let's do it. DoorDash, like many companies during the past Super Bowl, decided that they were going to donate to causes and community organizations. This was something that Planters and Pepsi and Budweiser and other organizations and companies also decided to do during their Super Bowl ad spree. Rather than placing ads, they purchased maybe smaller slots or they gave that money to charity. But DoorDash seems to be on the outside in the sense that they are now spending money thereafter to advertise the $5.5 million – sorry, to advertise the million-dollar charity donation that they have made. Stephen Carter, from an advertising perspective, from a strategy perspective, from a PR perspective, what do you make of this?

Carter 16:01

I'm not the least bit surprised. I'm surprised it's a story. All

Carter 16:04

All the time companies make donations

Carter 16:06

donations or some sort of active sponsorship or will match up to $2 off every pizza sold will go to this charity. And they make more money or they spend more on advertising than the actual value of the donation. This is not unusual. Unusual. What's unusual is that it's come out and it's a story.

Carter 16:27

Poor DoorDash getting caught doing

Carter 16:29

doing things that every other corporation that

Carter 16:32

makes donations to charity. I mean, how many corporate, what

Carter 16:36

what are they called now? Corporate social responsibility campaigns? CSR wings.

Carter 16:40

Yeah. I mean, how many of those are, you know, the promotions around them or the staffing costs around them? I mean, there's all kinds of costs associated with those things, and they often add up to more than the CSR itself. Like, it's just, I'm not the least bit surprised that a company would advertise more than they gave.

Zain 16:58

Yeah, Corey, you know, Carter makes a good point around the scaffolding around charitable contributions or community responsibility and how a lot of the marketing dollars that corporations get inserted into this. You know, we've all worked on strategy files and marketing files. What do you kind of make of this story? Do you agree with Carter that this is something that's a common practice and the bad part is that it just got out? Or do you feel like this is kind of perhaps like strategically offside in some sense?

Corey 17:25

Yeah, listen, I could go on a long rant about this. I could take the rest of the episode on this particular topic. I don't believe in corporate citizenship. I don't. I believe in PR. And I think if you want all companies to act a certain way, you make it a law because corporations aren't good. There's no such thing as a good corporation. And I'm not saying that means corporations are bad. I'm saying they're a vehicle for creating profit. And as profit-driven organizations, depending on the market segment they serve or the interests of the employees they want to retain, they may feel it's in their interest to make such donations, but they're not doing it because they are good. And I just think that people who look at corporations say, oh, they're such good citizens or have these kind of warm fuzzies about these corporations.

Corey 18:07

I just don't buy it. I don't ever buy it. I think these things are always to drive other corporate interests underneath it, and their correlation

Corey 18:15

correlation with good behavior is accidental in many cases. Now, there is a whole school of thought that says that corporations have to do more of this because people have so much more information these days. If you

Corey 18:26

want to find out if a corporation is good or bad, you Google, you find out if they've made a donation. And so the audiences they serve, the market segments they serve, are

Corey 18:34

are hyper aware of this. And because that makes

Corey 18:38

makes them more or less likely, even incrementally, to purchase from one company or another, it's in the interest of companies to make these contributions. But it's all a fucking game.

Corey 18:47

They're going to do it as little as they can, and they're going to leverage it up the best way they can. And that's the brass tacks. That's the facts. act. Make a law.

Corey 18:55

You want corporations to act better? Make a law because there'll always be one racing to the bottom, which will put pressures on the others. And they will only do as much of it as they need to while still keeping their shareholders happy.

Zain 19:04

And by the way, that's not bad.

Corey 19:06

That's what a corporation is supposed to do. Let's set the playing field for them. Let's make the rules a little

Zain 19:13

little higher. Corey, just so I understand, bold take, make a law around what? Just so I can understand what you're saying there. Well,

Corey 19:19

Well, basically, if you think that corporate If corporate behavior is deficient, change the law to make it more efficient. So you think that they should be putting more towards social good? Raise their fucking taxes. You think that they should be purchasing things onshore? Make that the rules. Don't expect people just to do this out of the goodness of their heart, because there'll always be more corporations than not finding ways otherwise. wise right

Zain 19:41

carter bold take i need you to to respond maybe not directly if you don't have a uh but at least on cory's overall take around you know legislating it rather than um you know perhaps expecting it and then the first part of cory's statement around you know corporations and perhaps their inherent motives i

Carter 20:00

i totally agree with cory i think that legislating it makes sense and i think that his first point about taxes makes the most sense um there is this kind of long-held idea that in some fashion, private donations or private action will is better than government action. And I don't see any evidence of that. I don't see any evidence that first of all, corporate action. I

Carter 20:22

I mean, we've reduced corporate taxes in Alberta significantly. Are we seeing an uptick in

Carter 20:26

in corporate action in our social sector? Absolutely not. If

Carter 20:30

If you want to have good social services for everyone, then you have to participate. You have to have a strong taxation system. A

Carter 20:38

A strong corporate social responsibility program is great for public relations. It is not great for society.

Zain 20:46

love it. Let's leave that there. And let's move it on to our first

Zain 20:48

first or next first segment because the headlines don't necessarily count. But we're doing a deep dive and we're doing it around campaigns. Our first segment, there is no I in team. Guys, I want to talk about campaign teams. I want to talk about campaign team structures. I want to talk about campaign team design, what's changed over the course of the last half decade. You know, we get so many questions, whether it be on Twitter or personally, around what a campaign looks like, what the inside of a campaign looks like, how you structure a team, how you kind of find your team, how do you source talent, where does the talent go, perhaps how is the talent compensated? These are questions that I think, you know, are largely left in a black box for those that don't have the experience just yet to jump into it. So I want to try to, you know, perhaps pull the curtain on some of these to try to expose a bit and maybe educate a bit on how these are done. But Stephen Carter, maybe I'll start with you. And I'll start with the most basic question, which is, how does one go about putting together a campaign team? Let's say and put you in a scenario today. day. You're asked by someone to run their campaign. You're asked by them to put together a campaign. Let's get beyond the point of you saying, yep, I'm in, I'm interested.

Zain 22:12

Are you coming into the conversation with a team in mind? How have you cultivated what that looks like? Are you handed a team when you work with a candidate? What does that look like if you're at the top of a political sort of hierarchy on a campaign in terms of team structure and kind of of accumulating the human capital, the human resources to get a campaign going. And then we'll go from there and kind of color in the lines, so to speak. Sure.

Carter 22:34

Sure. So I'm going to ask what type of, well, I'm going to ask or figure out what type of campaign we actually want to run.

Carter 22:41

So I'm going to kind

Carter 22:42

kind of generally outline three different types of campaigns. There's an air war campaign, where you are primarily interested in advertising, putting up, you know, big events, those types of things that gather media attention. mention. So the best example of an air war campaign is probably a federal campaign. A provincial campaign would also be a pretty good air war. Mayoralty campaign. These

Carter 23:05

These all tend to be towards the air war side. That

Carter 23:08

That would dictate one type of campaign structure where you're going to be looking at people who have media relations experience, event experience, advertising experience. Another type of campaign is more of a ground game, right?

Carter 23:21

right? So a ground force game game is

Carter 23:23

is going to be an MP, MLA, councillor,

Carter 23:25

councillor, people who are going to be door knocking, who aren't going to have the same type of access to money. And they're going to be putting together

Carter 23:36

voter lists and trying to do voter identification structures using kind of labor,

Carter 23:41

labor, if you will, because you can also do voter identification in an air war campaign using different techniques. Anyways, that's a different type of campaign. And then there's a hybrid where you're doing both. You're doing and you need to have kind of everybody on one's team and and

Carter 23:57

don't think for example that a federal campaign does that. I think that a federal campaign has an air war team and then they have lots of ground force games. And it looks coordinated because it's

Carter 24:08

it's all under one part.

Carter 24:21

campaign is the easiest one to staff because you need all of the different disciplines. And that means that you have to have You have the air game and the ground game together. And those types of campaigns, you

Carter 24:34

you know, you'll see them. I think mayoralty races may be the best example, but you

Carter 24:40

you see them at congressional races really in the United States quite frequently. But in Canada, they're a little harder to see, although you will see them in places like Vancouver

Carter 24:50

Vancouver with their citywide aldermanic system or councilor systems. systems.

Zain 24:56

Okay, so those are the three structures. Corey, I want you to chime in on that. Because my question was around how you source the folks on your team. But let's before we do that, I think Carter, you've probably laid out a good sort of structure. Corey, do you agree with that more broadly? Or is there another model? Or is there some tweaks to the model you'd like to you'd like to or models plural, I should say? Well, look, I see, I

Corey 25:16

I see things a little bit different. I think that the there are no, no limit to variance on campaigns, certain campaigns will have some elements and not other elements. There will be money for advertising or not. There will be the choice to take on certain tactics or not. And that will really color the type of talent that you need to have on board. Say, for example, you were running, there was a time you could run a campaign in the Maritimes and depending on your riding, you might actually never door knock because there's such an ingrained understanding of, well, that's Bill and Bill's a liberal and that's Charlie and Charlie's a conservative. And there was a quote unquote gentleman's agreement just not to harass people with these door door knocking campaigns but um the

Corey 25:57

the way the way that carter's described it i think does talk about some of the fundamental campaign skills you need to have i would i would describe it a little bit differently i would say there

Corey 26:07

there are skills you need to run what are almost central campaign functions and you have more of those on campaigns like mayoral campaigns province-wide campaigns things of that nature and there is there

Corey 26:18

there is almost just an army of people you need for certain ground game functions,

Corey 26:22

it's working the phones, working the doors, and that really requires logistics and coordination and maybe not as much specialized talent, right? Yeah,

Corey 26:32

And so there are different considerations as to both the sourcing of the talent you need to manage those campaign functions, but

Corey 26:39

whether it's talent at all in some cases, or whether it's just a warm body who can follow a script and do what's being asked.

Zain 26:45

Carter, when you're proposing your models, let's just use that for a second, are you dictating to the candidate what type of campaign you're running are you recommending or is this co-created and from your experience well

Carter 26:55

well you're co-creating based on the whole scenario like how much money do you expect to raise right like cory's right um if you can't raise a certain amount of money you're not doing advertising um if you can't raise a certain number of friends you're not doing door knocking uh

Carter 27:08

uh so you have to have um certain groups of uh certain decisions are going to be laid out for you and then you fit it in and then you go and acquire the talent that you need to fit those roles and so some roles you need someone who's done it before so you i've had media relations you're not just pulling someone off the street you need a media relations professional advertising you need an advertising professional um those types of things are relatively easily sourced um finding someone who can

Carter 27:38

can figure out the logistics of doing a brochure drop to 85 000 people is

Carter 27:44

it requires a special type of person and not necessarily necessarily someone who's, you know, like, I don't know of professionals who organize mail drops outside of Canada, outside of Canada Post, which you would pay for. But, you know, if you're using volunteers, there's all kinds of different strategies and all kinds of different ways that a person could tackle it.

Zain 28:04

So Carter, tell me this, Corey, I'm going to come to you in a second. You get the gig, you're greenlit for it. What is a Stephen Carter approach in a 2021 world right now? You get a, you get a gig, you're, you're, you're working on campaign. Are you, first of all, writing strategy? Are you finding a deputy? Do you have a deputy? Is the candidate handing you resources? What does it kind of look like? What are the things you need right after that first meeting saying, done,

Zain 28:29

done, we're doing this? My

Carter 28:31

My very first thing is to write a strategy. I don't know what I'm staffing until I know what I'm doing.

Carter 28:37

So the strategy needs to be written out. It needs to be agreed to.

Carter 28:40

Invariably, the candidate has key advisors that are outside of the campaign management or parents, husbands, wives. wives, you know, there's all kinds of different advisors that are going to be advising the candidate on what needs to happen. But once

Carter 28:57

once you get signed off on the strategy, then you can start to acquire people. I do like to find a deputy if I can find one. They're hard to find, especially

Carter 29:05

especially in Canada, because there's not a lot of money

Carter 29:08

money to go around. So when we're looking for deputies, we're often finding someone a little later who

Carter 29:16

you know, kind of a young star. are. You

Carter 29:18

You know, there's lots of young stars that come out on campaigns. I mean, I remember a young star named Zane Velji working on the Donna Kennedy Glance campaign that captured the attention of a number of campaigners back in the day, you

Carter 29:31

you know, and you do about as good a job of choosing candidates as I do. So well done, my friend.

Zain 29:39

Oh, God, we could do

Zain 29:40

special episodes, Carter. Yeah.

Carter 29:42

Yeah. So that's how I kind of do it. I mean, strategy first, then starting to staff the key roles.

Zain 29:48

Corey, same thing for you?

Zain 29:50

not same thing for you. I

Corey 29:51

I take an entirely different approach when when building a campaign. And I appreciate that Steven starts with the strategy. I don't. I am. You know, I take what could probably be called like an effectuation approach where I look around and say, Who do I know? What do I have? And I use that to help determine what my strategy will be. Now, in some cases, especially if you've been in this game longer, you're not really limited by skill sets, you're probably more limited by dollars and resources of that nature. but for me the first thing on any campaign is starting with a group of people who are going to get you to the finish line uh you i

Corey 30:23

i think it's better to have smart dedicated people who understand how to figure out how to do things than it is necessarily to have experienced people now it's best to have both if you have the option of doing so but the reality is campaigns change so much over time that it what gets you over the finish line more often than not is not that you've you've done it before. It's that you're smart enough to figure out how to do something for the first time. And so you get that group of people together, you see what you have at hand, you see what the candidate has, does the candidate have friends? Is the candidate shameless about fundraising? Is the candidate actually just, like, brutally good with a quip, and you want to get that out through the media as much as possible. And you try to build around that. And you say,

Corey 31:04

how do these parts fill into a campaign? What are the gaps I have? What gaps do I believe I can fill? And from there, you say, what do I need? What is absolutely essential to run at a high level? What's okay to run at just an average level? And what you absolutely must have at a high level, that's who you start paying for. That's

Corey 31:23

you start putting money around and you prioritize your spending as such. Again, really depends on the campaign because the more national the campaign gets, province-wide campaigns, bigger campaigns, you're probably actually just going to have experience. And at that level, experience matters a great deal more because you can't just walk into a provincial war room and know what the fuck's going on. You're not even going to know where the bathroom is for the first couple of weeks. And there is nothing like having done it before, seeing the traps that have occurred before, seeing how things have played out in other jurisdictions is very useful. That is a different game. But when you talk about campaigns more at a local level,

Corey 32:01

starts with a group of people at a table making a decision that they're going to go all the way. Carter,

Corey 32:05

Carter, jump in here.

Carter 32:07

Well, I want to add one thing to what Corey's saying. I mean, it's a little different than what I do, but I think that there is a common thread through this, and that is also looking at the people that you trust. Generally speaking, it is easier to hire and bring on board people that you know that they do a good job. You've worked with them in the past. One of the things about campaigns is we work at a different frequency. Decisions get made faster. You don't have as much information. You just move through campaigns. Even at the beginning of a campaign, when it appears you have lots of time, you don't have as much time. So you want to see experience in campaigning, not just an experience of, you know, I've hired agencies to do advertising for a campaign. And it's excruciating because they go through 36 different iterations to land upon something that they think is good.

Carter 32:55

when in a campaign, you're probably working off second or third iteration because

Carter 32:59

because you're moving on to the next concept and next idea so very quickly.

Zain 33:04

Yeah, Corey, jump in here. And then I'm going to add some more structured questions around sourcing of the team, because that's what I want to spend the majority of our time on. So Corey, go ahead.

Corey 33:12

Well, you're completely right, Carter. Campaigns are designed to last for 28 days, 35 days, a couple of months, maybe in the most extreme cases, six months or more. They are not designed to last forever. And because of that, that there's a certain slapdashness to it, which is also one of the challenges with bringing in professionals who are not campaign professionals but just professional professionals. You bring in a professional ad person, they are going to lose their mind in a campaign setting where it's, yeah, we came up with an ad idea this morning. We need to do a version of it by this afternoon, right? That is not the way they like to work because that cuts so many corners, and that's just not the way you're supposed to do it for 100 different reasons. We talk about campaigns. We've mentioned before, I think last week, that that's military terminology. People use military terminology in campaigns a lot because there are so many commonalities. And one of the commonalities that I want to throw on the table here is this notion of battlefield promotions. So sometimes you have somebody just drop off a campaign or you have a vacancy and you just point to somebody and you say, okay, you're in charge of this now. And

Corey 34:12

can tell you from my own personal experience, the first time I think I got a serious job in politics is I was sitting around a table and another campaign, it was a The leadership campaign had released a list of all of these, you know, eminent people who were doing these eminent roles. And the chair of our campaign, who had been around for a while, he said, well, this isn't my first rodeo. And he literally looked at the dozen people in front of him and he just pointed to us. And he's like, you

Corey 34:38

you are the logistics director. You are the operations director. And just happened to point to me. And I was the communications chair from that point forward and actually started a career in communications that way. Campaigns have a weird way of – and I'd love to say that's because he saw something in me. I just think I happen to be the third person, and communications was the third thing he thought of. But that's how these things tend to work. And then if you can show yourself in those roles, you can turn those battlefield promotions into something permanent.

Carter 35:06

Well, I mean that's how I started in 1997. I was carrying John Charest's luggage, making sure that his newspapers were folded just the way he likes them when

Carter 35:14

when he wakes up in the morning and picks up his newspapers. That's

Carter 35:17

That's how I started that campaign. When I was done that campaign, I

Carter 35:20

I was managing communications for a large swath of Calgary. And

Carter 35:27

put together the very first internet-based campaign

Carter 35:31

campaign press conference. You know, Charest was in Montreal and we had the press all lined up here in Calgary. And that was my first exposure to

Carter 35:40

to communications and to working

Carter 35:42

working in a campaign and to doing things. And

Carter 35:46

And it all was, unlike Corey, my

Carter 35:48

my battlefield promotion was based on talent, whereas

Carter 35:51

whereas his appears to be dumbass luck.

Carter 35:53

But, you know, it worked out. It worked out for both of us. So, you know, that to me is also the great strength. And every campaign that I go into, I'll

Carter 36:03

I'll tell you something, there is no way that the campaign team, I don't care how long it is, the

Carter 36:07

the campaign team you appoint at the beginning of the campaign will

Carter 36:11

will not be the campaign team at the end of the team.

Carter 36:14

Someone will fall off, someone will get promoted, someone will excel, someone will fail. And that's also part of the joy of being involved in a campaign.

Zain 36:23

Corey, how are you sourcing talent for a campaign? I love that you guys shared your stories of being plucked and promoted in your first sort of iteration of this. But now, if you're running it in 2021, how are you sourcing your talent? Is it partially your own team? Is it a combination of your own team and folks you know in the past and folks that you're willing to roll the dice on? What does that ratio look like? I'm kind of curious how you think about these things from an operational standpoint.

Corey 36:57

start by saying if you're standing alone in a field, that doesn't make you a farmer. And one of the things about building a campaign team is it should be done by people who have worked on campaigns and know people who work campaigns. They can work their Rolodexes. They can get those individuals forward who have some of that capacity, have some of that skill, even if it was at a lower level. Maybe you're just incrementing them up a notch. Maybe you've had some great conversations about ideas they've had if they just had that next level up. But you start by reaching out to your network and seeing who might be interested in getting along with the ride. This is the extension of the comment that I made earlier. But then in any campaign, many

Corey 37:33

many if not most of the people you interact with by the end will be people who have come in through a friend of a friend or just through the door one day wanting to help out because they liked your literature. And I can't tell – I mean I can't tell you how many friendships I've gotten from those random connections over the years. And really I go back to a lot of what you're looking for in those situations is just sort of a can-do-it-ness. Like there's no shortage of people who show up on campaigns and there's no shortage of people who show up and say, I

Corey 38:01

I want to work in comms or I want to be a strategist, right? Well, I work in comms and I am a strategist and I didn't get my start doing either of those things. I walked in the door, and I offered to do databasing and logistics, and for many, many years in the city of Calgary, I

Corey 38:18

I would run an E-Day. Like, if there was an election, I'd probably run at least one E-Day. That was my thing. I've been an E-Day chair so many effing times, you wouldn't believe it. But the point is, you find a skill that needs to be done, you

Corey 38:30

you become very good at it, and your value gets you to the table that gets you to those other jobs and those other considerations. operations.

Zain 38:37

Carter, is it the same for you? Audit the network and then keep some, is it, you're actually keeping slots open for walk-ins or are you actually like courting? No, this is interesting, right? Yeah, yeah. So are you courting new talent? And if so, how are you courting new talent? So like you're searching inward, right? So your first call is to Corey and I, and we both say we never want to work with you. So then, you know, you go to your second, you know, circle of friends who also reject you uh but but for example you you you you get some gold with your network how are you then adding the additional pieces are you are you scouring are you looking for talent how does this work and and how does maybe if i can layer another question on carter how does the candidates recommendations work here as well are they feeding you people and saying find a slot for this person and that person and how that kind of works oh

Carter 39:26

oh yeah i mean candidates have all kinds kinds of people that they want to add and it doesn't come in. This is the other thing that with campaigns, it's not like on

Carter 39:32

on the first day you've got your full talent list and everything's going to work itself out.

Carter 39:37

There'll be hundreds of people that wind up working on an average campaign. Sometimes thousands of people will work on a bigger campaign. And each

Carter 39:46

each person comes at a different time. So you don't necessarily get the best person on the first day. You get the person there on the first day. And so what will happen is, you

Carter 39:57

you know, you develop teams that come together and they start to, you know, people come through the door. One of the rules I have is

Carter 40:03

is never say no to someone coming through the door.

Carter 40:06

So if someone comes through the door, you say yes to them.

Carter 40:09

But the trick is, you can't necessarily put them where they want to go.

Carter 40:13

There are three common places that they wish to work. They wish to be strategy, they

Carter 40:16

they wish to be policy, and they wish to be communications.

Carter 40:19

And there are limited numbers. Why do you think that is? Why do you think everyone

Corey 40:23

everyone they're the they're the ones people perceive as glorious although i will tell you the

Corey 40:27

far better jobs and campaigns are the data jobs are the logistics jobs these are the things that win campaigns or not logistics

Carter 40:32

logistics is everything i mean in no good there's no such thing as someone who is perfect is trained in logistics either like you figure it out that's

Corey 40:40

that's entirely untrue no

Carter 40:43

you know what no one's job is to figure out how to marshal 250 volunteers for a door knocking day like

Carter 40:49

like i don't find that experience in my regular corporate world i

Carter 40:53

i do find that experience being required in my in my i mean there are people like you cory who've done e-day every day you know every damn election and they get pretty damn good at running e-day every election but they're not running e-day as a professional in canada um as one of their their corporate

Carter 41:10

corporate entities right like managing an e-day exercise for for a mayoralty race or even a counselor race In a council race, you're running probably 75 different volunteers, maybe 100 if you're counting, depending on what your door-knocking structures and things like that look like. There's a tremendous number of logistics details that need to be put in place, which is why eDay, which

Carter 41:32

which sounds hilarious, it's just a day. It's not a day anymore. eDay is now two weeks, two and a half weeks of actual execution and up to six months of planning to

Carter 41:43

to put together what the actual eDay looks like.

Carter 41:46

So, you know, people want, they come in thinking they're going to have the most influence if they're talking about policy or communications or strategy, and they want to be impactful. But if you really want to be impactful on a campaign, you're in data, you're

Carter 41:59

you're in logistics, or you're recruiting

Carter 42:04

And you're managing, I mean, campaigns at the end of the day are the giant pyramid scheme, right? Like, you know, you bring in three volunteers, and then those three volunteers each bring in three volunteers. And that's how campaigns grow. And

Carter 42:14

And managing all of those volunteers and managing the logistics around them, making

Carter 42:19

making them all feel like

Carter 42:21

like they've contributed to the success of the campaign, that's

Carter 42:23

that's ultimately the most important role. role. I

Carter 42:26

I sometimes think that the most important role is that office manager, you know, that unsung office manager hero that just welcomes everyone. Alison Redford's mother was my first volunteer, you know, like the office manager mom, that when you met her, you

Carter 42:43

you just wanted to work harder on the campaign. And

Carter 42:45

And she made you feel like you were doing a great job.

Carter 42:48

And I was so low on

Carter 42:51

the terms of the hierarchy that

Carter 42:52

that people just could

Carter 42:54

could skip right over me. But Helen was always there letting

Carter 42:57

letting me know that I was valued and

Carter 42:59

and my contribution mattered. And

Carter 43:01

And that kept me going through difficult points of a campaign. It's amazing how much influence a volunteer like that can have.

Zain 43:09

Corey, how are you sourcing talent to that same question I asked Carter, which is you've got your network, you have them, they say yes to you. How are you finding some of your other their slots. And I do want to at some point get back to this distinction between smart and inexperienced. I think it's a very good one, but I'll pause that particular element for now. But where else are you kind of finding talent in and how do you go about doing it?

Corey 43:29

It is, Carter is exactly right. It is a pyramid scheme fundamentally. It's you tell a friend and they tell two friends and they tell two friends and before you know it, you've got a campaign. And that office manager persona, I have flashbacks to the best one that I ever worked with. Ruth Ruth Huber is her name, and she would work the phones, and she would browbeat you, and she would say, like, okay, so I'm going to – she wouldn't even give you the options. She'd say, hey, I saw you. You volunteered here, so I'm going to put you down for door knocking on Wednesday. Oh, Wednesday's no good for you? Okay, I put you down for Thursday. Oh, Thursday's no good for you? And would just ultimately force them to come in, and when they did, she treated them so nicely and made sure they came back again. And retention

Corey 44:08

retention is such a huge part of that part

Carter 44:11

part of your job,

Corey 44:11

job, right? Making sure that they do feel that moving forward. So, Zane, I think actually many people stress that how do I get people to come in? They should be thinking as much about how do I get people to stay? Because you'll always have

Corey 44:23

people coming in, kicking the tires, friends and neighbors. You have to think about how you maintain them. And to that point, whether it's somebody walking in off the street for the first time or the 15th time, you need to make sure they have something to do that matches what they want to do or that makes them feel valued. as a contributor so i'm putting on the campaign organizer hat someone walks in the door first that you you got to have a stack of of

Corey 44:45

of essentially sheets ready to go great go door knocking in the neighborhood you keep the ones near the campaign office ready to go we're going to get you working right now there's these open phones right here maybe you know you want to make sure all of your phone lines are being operated um but if you are the volunteer coming in when that person hands you that thing if you want to move up in a campaign you want to find your place in that that campaign, say, great, I am on it. And when you come back, say, do you need help entering this data? Hey, do you need help sorting these lists, making this thing look a bit better? Hey, I'm here anyways. You want me to help start sorting all of these things for a lit drop that are going on? Volunteer, make yourself active, actually deliver on the small things that you promised that you would do. And people are going to find you valuable. And when you're valuable, you get invited to more meetings. And then all of a sudden you are a strategist. All of a sudden you are a communications consultants who are telling like, I don't know about this piece. And hey, did you know this piece of literature when I was dropping it off? It doesn't fit in door, you know, the doorknobs very well, this door hanger doesn't fit quite right. And you become a valuable contributor to the campaign. And people are going to remember you and they're going to call you and all of a sudden, when it's time for one of those battlefield promotions, guess what?

Zain 45:53

Carter, what's changed in the 2021 environment versus the let's say, 2010 environment, and I circle 2010 on the calendar for a specific reason. And that's one of the, you know, not one of the for your first campaigns, but one of the most notable campaigns in 2010 when you were the chief strategist for Nahed Nenshi and his Merrill Wynne here. What's changed campaign structurally, people wise, philosophically between now and then? What are some top line sort of things

Zain 46:19

things that you've noticed that you feel like would be, you know, interesting for our listeners? I

Carter 46:24

I think there's three things. I think obviously there's

Carter 46:27

there's more money in politics right now than there was in 2010. You know, 2010, Nenshi's campaign didn't raise very much money at all in the first six months. There seems to be more money floating around in politics. That ties directly to the TPAs or the PACs. So, you know, there are PACs in the United States and Canada, there are TPAs, third-party advertisers. In our quest to drive money, big money out of politics, politics we have in fact encouraged big money in politics by creating formal

Carter 46:58

formal structures for them to come in and and those tpas have become more important and then i guess the third thing and and this is uh hopefully very temporary but it very much is an issue is covid um which

Carter 47:15

is kind of the elephant in the room when you're talking about campaigning now because if you're running you

Carter 47:20

know a council race um

Carter 47:22

um when do you start door knocking um

Carter 47:25

know so much of a counselor's campaign is is voter identification and uh

Carter 47:30

sadly in my mind because it's so inefficient but uh

Carter 47:33

uh the the best way is still to send out a team of of

Carter 47:36

of five people with your candidate to uh to door knock um

Carter 47:40

um that team is going to be more effective than probably a team of five callers so you

Carter 47:46

you can't send them out if there's a if there's a pandemic so I think that those are probably the three biggest things if I was in

Carter 47:52

in 2021 assembling the structures I'd be thinking about those things Corey

Zain 47:56

Corey same question for you the the changes that you've seen over the last half decade or decade in campaign structure or campaign teams from your perspective yeah

Corey 48:05

yeah I you know in some ways I realize I've been guilty of kind of a nostalgia trip with some of my last answers here because the reality is in 2020 like i talk about data entry what a fucking cliche you do that shit on your phone these days it's instantaneous you you don't go out with a list you go with an app um there has been this uploading of some of those coordination and logistics functions to central campaigns if you work for a political party so all of a sudden if you're working for the liberals or the ndp or the conservatives you're you're going to be using the infrastructure even if you're a campaign and driving it forward and that does mean that in many cases you are more plug and play on a local And it is less about some of those back of house functions. That said, they still matter a great deal. And I think because they have been uploaded, people don't tend to appreciate exactly how much power the parties have given to go through those lists, understand things, code things more accurately, and look at the information that you have on hand to inform your communications challenges. But really, the big

Corey 49:05

big things for me, I don't disagree with anything Carter said, but are the centralization of local campaigns, the digitization of all campaigns, and the kind of commodification of that resource where it's so much more turnkey. you've got these scripts you've got these apps you do these things um and that has changed the campaign dynamic and i think not you know again the

Corey 49:29

the olden days were so great says everybody over a certain age but i don't always think for the better because here's

Corey 49:36

here's the thing about campaigns we

Corey 49:38

we have gotten ourselves into a weird place between the way political parties have evolved and the way political operations have evolved where everybody thinks they should have a voice on policy and communications and

Corey 49:50

nobody has a voice on logistics anymore like these things have been moved around so you get this weird mix of being a volunteer where you show up you want to give your opinion you're asked instead just to go door knock and

Corey 50:00

and you've been conditioned by your political party to believe everything should be a vote everything should be a conversation and yet the operations have all been so heavily centralized that's

Zain 50:08

that's a very interesting point you know carter i want to talk to you about this this sort of like broader changes that we have seen seen uh in the political sort of uh campaign structure both from apps and technology but maybe i'll kind of go to this point before i i i double click on that because i've got a few other things i want to hit off here which is a simple question uh

Zain 50:29

uh but maybe has a very complex answer campaign titles how important are they uh

Zain 50:34

uh and and how do you look at campaign titles and campaign org chart is

Zain 50:37

is is the is is how do you what's your philosophical take on that is there only one one person at the top? Are you doing a flat structure with two or three people so that if your deputy kind of papers off some of the things that you're not good at, they get to get to be at the top there? How important are titles? How do you kind of look at those? How do you sense the motivation of folks and what they're looking to get out of campaigns? And a lot of what people are left with are anecdotes and the title that they had. So how are you kind of structuring that conversation?

Carter 51:08

I don't like titles.

Carter 51:10

Titles put me in a place where that, you know, like Like Corey going through his example of your logistics chair, your communications chair, you know, whatever the other operations chair, whatever the pieces

Carter 51:24

That's very scary because that person who is appointed or made chair may

Carter 51:28

may or may not work out.

Carter 51:30

And so you've got a hierarchy in the title structure that

Carter 51:36

very, very challenging to get through if someone's not doing what you need them to do. In

Carter 51:40

In the Redford campaign, everybody

Carter 51:42

everybody was a campaign specialist

Carter 51:44

specialist or something like that. I can't remember exactly the title, but we had kind of like the

Carter 51:50

the Mao's army. Everybody's a private in Mao's army. I was going to say,

Corey 51:54

say, did you all wear matching fatigues

Corey 51:56

fatigues as well? We

Carter 51:57

did. We all wore the same outfits,

Carter 52:01

it allowed us to make the pieces more interchangeable. While everybody had unique roles, a leadership campaign ultimately boils down to selling memberships. So selling memberships becomes a deliverable that you can track for efficacy. So, you know, not everybody had selling membership as their primary tracking mechanism, but a lot did. A lot of the people who were on our staff, because that was a heavily staffed campaign. We had a tremendous number of people who were actually paid versus the average campaign that I work on where people are more volunteers.

Carter 52:37

volunteers. volunteers so if if people are volunteers then sometimes they're only coming for the title you know like they want to be the communications chair and that's why they're coming um and that's okay others are like we

Carter 52:50

we give them the communications chair title and they're like holy shit how did i get a communications chair title like i don't know what i'm doing and i'm like you're

Carter 52:56

you're doing great just have fun so i mean the the titles are less important to me but they are far more important to the people who get them.

Carter 53:05

But having clear understanding of what the responsibilities are is super important.

Carter 53:09

What are you responsible for? What do I expect from you? And I create multiple hierarchies. So I'll create a strategic leadership team, which is a euphemism for fundraising. I'll create a cabinet structure, which is basically anybody who's effective. And

Carter 53:24

And then I will create an executive, which are the leaders of the campaign that meet on a daily basis to have a discussion about how the campaign unfolds.

Carter 53:34

And to be honest, most of the people who get onto those structures like the status of being on the structure more than they like the status of a title. Because those structures each come with their own implicit structure.

Zain 53:51

Yeah, yeah. Corey, how are you thinking about campaign titles? How have you handed them out in the past? Have you been judicious? Have you been pretty freewheeling with how you've given them and the level of responsibility or at least perceived responsibility with those associated titles? Yeah,

Corey 54:08

I'd like to say I've been judicious, but often I have not been. The reality is titles are cheap, and sometimes that's the best way to get somebody to do a role. Right, right. But if you are going to give somebody a title, they

Corey 54:22

they are responsible. Do not give a title without deliverables. And if you are given a title, do not accept a title without deliverables. Know what you're responsible for and what you're actually given authority to do. Do you write

Zain 54:34

write job descriptions for all your posts and stuff, like at least at the higher

Corey 54:38

level? Well, it really depends on the campaign. I probably wouldn't on a local campaign that's 28 days, to be honest, Zane. That's a lot of artifice.

Corey 54:46

Certainly, if it was a central campaign, there would be an understanding of those things. And there are exceptions in all cases. He says if it's a paid gig, you're probably going to want a job description that's written out. But again,

Corey 54:57

again, these things are really quite dependent on the situation at hand. Yeah,

Carter 55:01

Yeah, because they also don't go black and white with, you know, this

Carter 55:04

this is this group and this is this group, right? Like when you're working with data and websites and communications,

Carter 55:11

communications, those things may seem like three separate and distinct areas. All of them blend through the course of the execution of the campaign. So

Carter 55:19

if you don't start saying, well, this team is actually responsible for the backend data structure. This team is responsible for the landing page functionality. And this team is for making sure that it works. It

Carter 55:30

looks the same and it's got the branding structures. You

Carter 55:32

You kind of have to give the

Carter 55:34

the responsibilities to each team and

Carter 55:36

and it needs to be clearly articulated. And then you have to really, I think, articulate the

Carter 55:42

the interrelationships between the teams. This is one of the reasons I love the cabinet

Carter 55:45

cabinet structure. So let's say you have 50 people on a cabinet at the middle of a campaign. It seems like a lot, but

Carter 55:54

but that's where all of the interrelationships get shared. prepared because if you're the campaign strategist or campaign manager, you can't take all the information from your communications team and hand it to your data team. And you can't take all of the information from logistics and hand it to volunteers. They all have to communicate together. And so giving them that structure to do it. And that's one thing that COVID will mess with that,

Carter 56:18

that, that, that was the joy of the in-person meeting is that everybody would, you know, The Nenshi campaign, we

Carter 56:23

we would have these huge cabinet meetings and then there'd be –

Carter 56:28

the cabinet meeting might last 45 minutes, but the meetings that occurred afterwards would last for two, two and a half hours and would often go into drinks and snacks and food and people would –

Zain 56:41

Build a sense of community. Yeah.

Carter 56:43

Yeah. And that connection and that responsibility to one another drives

Carter 56:48

drives the campaign in a way that responsibility

Carter 56:50

responsibility to the candidate or responsibility to the campaign manager never

Zain 56:56

could make this a three hour episode. I don't want to do that. I've got a few things I want to power through before we kind of close here. You know, okay, so we've been talking primarily about the core campaign team, how one kind of finds themselves at the core. So there's two things I want to talk about. Number one, one more question on the core, regarding perhaps the stickiest issue in Canadian politics, which is compensation. And then secondly, I want to talk about the expanded campaign team. You guys talked about the pyramid scheme of volunteers, etc. I want to talk about that for a second. But as we stick with the core team,

Zain 57:25

Corey, maybe I'll start with you. The conventional wisdom is in this country that people on campaigns, it's a commitment of passion. It's a commitment of giving back to your community. It's a commitment of wanting to see civic change. You don't get into this business to get rich. You don't get in this business to even get paid. That's been the conventional wisdom, and there's many reasons why, especially as we compare it to our friends down south, and we're campaigning in politics as an outright business in many ways, not just for practitioners, but for vendors and technologists, etc. How have you kind of, you know, from a high level, reconciled this approach of campaigns and how they, you know, compensate people?

Corey 58:09

Well, if it's a central

Corey 58:11

central campaign, it's probably a paid gig. I've not actually worked on any central campaign where the real jobs there are not paid gigs. And there's a lot of reasons for that, not least of which is you don't get the option of them not showing up one day as a volunteer. You need their time. It's got to be their full time. um there

Corey 58:29

there are a lot of considerations on local campaigns as to why somebody gets paid or not and you there's i mean it's so fascinating how when you define these rules you just change all of these realities here because one of the big ones is spending caps during a campaign period in this country you can only spend so much money in most jurisdictions right and so you find out that you often find campaign managers almost have their compensation front loaded right

Corey 58:55

right outside of that campaign period? Is that within the spirit or even the letter of the law, depending on your jurisdiction? Great question. Not really well policed, but people

Corey 59:04

people don't really want to spend money on staff during campaign periods because that's money they can't spend on lit drops and advertising online and other things that you can't get volunteers for, but you can get a volunteer for a staff position. Now, if we're being kind of rational about this, we always look at the marginal benefit and say, what is the marginal benefit of this paid professional over this volunteer I can get off the street who's pretty good, but not as good as them. But people tend to lean on people and say, come on, man, if I pay you, that means we could lose this campaign because I can't spend money on my third lit drop. So it

Corey 59:41

it becomes a question of strategy in a way that's beyond how much money do I have, I guess is the point that I want to make. And as a result, It really kind of pushes the professionalization to the margins. It pushes it to that time outside of the campaign periods. It pushes it to those third-party advertisers that Stephen was talking about earlier. It pushes it to organizations that are campaign adjacent and have access to Grind. And so that's an unintended consequence, but that's a real one in this country. And so you're finding that the professionals are almost fighting proxy wars with campaigns now, And they're getting their paychecks and they're getting their points outside of the campaigns proper, at least outside of the local campaigns. The provincial, national, regional bodies, those are usually paid professionals.

Zain 1:00:27

Carter, let's maybe snap it into focus with a more particular example. Let's say it's a campaign locally, right? Let's say it's a hybrid model, to use your earlier sort of classification. How many people do you think are getting paid on a campaign? How are you kind of structuring that from your standpoint? And maybe to ask it from a different dimension, if I'm someone jumping into a core team, should I expect to get paid in this country?

Carter 1:00:54

Well, I mean, if you're on a national campaign, maybe. If you're on a provincial campaign, you would probably have to be in the top five,

Carter 1:01:02

five, ten people to get paid. No, way

Corey 1:01:05

way more than that get paid these days.

Carter 1:01:08

I don't know. I don't know, Corey. A lot of our people that were professionals were taking the 20 days off. Okay, that's a fair point. That's

Corey 1:01:16

very fair point. They're

Corey 1:01:18

vacation from their political

Carter 1:01:20

political staff. They're working at the ledge, whatever they're doing, and all of a sudden they get 28

Carter 1:01:24

28 days of vacation and their payment comes from someone else. Which is part of it. I mean, Corey, I'd love to do a deep dive on all of the unintended consequences of our Bass Ackwards campaign financing. dancing and... Did you just say

Zain 1:01:39

say bass backwards? Yeah,

Carter 1:01:40

Yeah, I did, because that's how

Carter 1:01:40

how old I am. That's how old I am.

Zain 1:01:42

No, but it would be really clever if you said, yeah, I did that on purpose because you wanted

Carter 1:01:46

wanted to say... No, I did do it on purpose. That's a thing.

Zain 1:01:47

thing. That was a thing.

Carter 1:01:48

thing. That's a thing that old people say.

Carter 1:01:50

Young man. Wait, what? I've never heard this. Bass backwards.

Carter 1:01:53

Is that a real... Okay. Yes,

Carter 1:01:56

This is going to be the name of the episode now because you fucked this up. But anyway... I didn't fuck it up. I learned something. There you go. This is the first thing you've learned. I'm always humble. I don't...

Carter 1:02:07

So, yeah. Yeah, there's not a lot of people who get paid. So on a mayoralty campaign, you know, you're not going to see maybe more than three to five people getting paid. You may get there will be people who get paid stipends, right, or honoraria or, you know, like not a full time salary. But there's very few people that will get a full time salary. and

Carter 1:02:29

and in fact even if you're paying like a designer you're

Carter 1:02:32

you're probably going to the designer and saying you

Carter 1:02:36

know you're going to have to cut your rate because

Carter 1:02:37

because we're not going to be able to afford a full rate because every time you pay a person to cory's point earlier you're

Carter 1:02:45

you're taking a product off the off the you know communication off the the shelf right you

Carter 1:02:51

pay someone five thousand dollars well five thousand dollars is fifty thousand pieces of literature that's

Carter 1:02:56

that's landing on people's doors. So you

Carter 1:02:59

you don't want to pay someone $5,000. You need 50,000 pieces of literature. So that's the trade-off all the time is how much do I need this person to be paid? Or could I find this through volunteer resourcing?

Carter 1:03:13

Most often in Canada, you're finding it in

Carter 1:03:17

free labor. And I might put free in quotation marks. Well,

Corey 1:03:19

Well, and part of the reason for that, though, is we have less of a professional political class. So the difference between free labor and a quote-unquote professional is often not huge because maybe they haven't done a campaign for four years. And as we've already talked about, campaigns change a lot. All of a sudden, you find yourself on a podcast talking about bingo sheets and E-Days of Yore instead

Corey 1:03:40

of the apps that we use these days. But there is kind of

Corey 1:03:45

of a professional class that exists in a country like the United States because of the frequency of elections too. And so if you have somebody who does it that frequently, the difference between a volunteer and them may be worth that $5,000, might be much more valuable than those 50,000 pieces of literature. Right.

Zain 1:04:02

I'm glad you guys carried that last segment. I'm actually four pages deep into Urban Dictionary looking up back-ass words. This is very illuminating for me. me. Last thing I want to talk about. Okay. We've, we've covered a lot of train, but I want to talk about the broader team. And, and that really is when we talk about free labor, we talk about volunteers. These are the people who say, I don't have time to be on your core team. Frankly, it's not even my ambition to be on your core team. Uh, but I like the values. I like what you're up to. I like what you guys are doing. I've got three hours a week. I got four hours a week. And I think one of the challenges we face, um, and I'd say we collectively as we've run campaigns is

Zain 1:04:39

sometimes you don't get those people when you need them and sometimes you have too many when you don't really have anything for them to do so how have you kind of managed the the ebb and flows of of volunteers and and people who you

Zain 1:04:53

know everyday people saying i've never done this before i've done it once or twice i can knock on doors i'm like i'm talent for however you need me how are you managing that how are you keeping them engaged and and maybe i'll kind of expand the question how How are you keeping them engaged in a community sense in a COVID time, Carter, when a lot of why people do something is, of course, the candidate and the values. But often, as I think we can all agree to, and I'm putting words in your mouths, is they do it for each other. They do it for the sense of the other people that they know our values align that they might touch base with or get to meet or get to interact with in a campaign. pain. So rules

Zain 1:05:31

rules and advice on the broader team or structures on the broader team and how you think about that. Carter, I'll go to you first. I know it's a loaded question, but your thoughts on that would be helpful. Well,

Carter 1:05:39

Well, first of all, at every at every victory party, you run into dozens

Carter 1:05:44

dozens and dozens of people that you've never heard of, who worked on the campaign. And they're at the victory party like, who the fuck are you? And what did you do? Because I don't remember you. And I I've met just about everybody on this campaign. Sure. And that's fine. But I'm a big believer in what I call the one-third, one-third, one-third rule of volunteers on campaigns. One-third of the people who sign up are going to do everything that they're asked to do and more. They're your backbone. They are unbelievably important to the campaign. They sign up for shift after shift. They show up every day. If they're not there, it's because they actually are sick or something bad happened to them. You know their names. They know your names. you know

Carter 1:06:24

know they they take care of you and they are that group that is there for each other they are there for you they you are there for them and they are the basis of that lifelong friendship that that cory has referred to then

Carter 1:06:37

then there's one third of the volunteers that just something happens to them in the course of the campaign they get fired

Carter 1:06:41

fired they get pregnant they get busy they you know there's a million different things that can happen to

Carter 1:06:46

to people in the course of of a campaign. We've all been there. We've all been this third of the population.

Carter 1:06:53

And it's just, there's nothing you can do. You can try and get them to help, but they're just not going to be able to.

Carter 1:06:58

And there's just one third that you're never going to hear from.

Carter 1:07:00

They're going to submit their form. They're going to sign up. You're going to call them.

Carter 1:07:04

And they're always going to, you know, Corey was going through that example of the volunteer office

Carter 1:07:08

office manager who called them. There's always going to be a reason why they can't come out and volunteer. And none of them are good. none of them are real reasons. They just, they're one third of the people who never come out. And

Carter 1:07:19

when you start to work your lists, those people find their way to the bottom of the list all the time, because you know that if you get to that part of the list, you are getting 65, 75, 85% rejection from your own volunteers. And by the end of the campaign, you're not even sure that they voted for you.

Carter 1:07:36

So that's my experience with

Carter 1:07:42

I really spend a lot of time focusing on the first third.

Carter 1:07:46

They tell you who they are right away and

Carter 1:07:48

you just have to take care of them like they are your siblings, right? You take care of them. They are your brothers and sisters and you're going to go through the battle with them to steal that wartime analogy again.

Zain 1:08:04

Nicely done, Carter. Corey, any overarching philosophy in how you deal with the extended team, the vital volunteers that come into the fold?

Corey 1:08:13

Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I feel like you're asking, how do I run a campaign? Because that is the magic of it. When you're talking about a local campaign, it's how do I get people? How do I keep people involved? How do I curate that ecosystem that's there for each other?

Corey 1:08:26

Candidates get the shine, but the reality is they get there on the backs of hundreds. And that campaign is a living organism in its own right. So I

Corey 1:08:36

I don't have much to add to what Stephen said here. it's really about identifying the people who are going to be there for you who will come out more frequently and we've touched on most of the other things when somebody volunteers if you don't want them to be in that last third because often people will volunteer they'll do it online and then they'll be like oh god that actually sounds dreadful knocking

Corey 1:08:55

doors or working phones you've got to get them to do it right away because a good chunk of them will actually really feed off the adrenaline it's so funny like door knocking is not an unpleasant experience door knocking's kind of fun you know you go door to door you are going to find supporters of yours it's kind of exciting nobody's that mean to you in person generally speaking because we're humans and we're we're we're not super shitty in person we're also not brave enough to be super shitty in person right even if you're feeling it and people kind of want to do door knocking last but i see it as any campaign you work on you should say well i owe three door knocking shifts before i do anything else almost consider it the fee you've

Corey 1:09:34

to pay and get participating in other ways

Corey 1:09:37

or phones like if they don't want to work doors put them on phones but the fact is get you know get their feet wet get them realizing it's not as bad as they dread when it's just a conceptual thing to them get them doing it once once they've done it and they're coming off that adrenaline of having run through it and been worried about what someone's going to say at the door or on the phone and there's an excitement and a positivity that comes with that when you finish the shift sign them right up for the next shift make sure you've got a way to get them there if they've got a friend who brought them in get that friend to come with them on the next shift shift get a buddy system going but you know we're really getting into the tricks of the trade here and it's it's it's really just about creating a sense of community really when you get right down to it carter

Zain 1:10:16

carter you put your hand up finish us off here on this well

Carter 1:10:18

well i just want to say give them opportunity to share the stories too because

Carter 1:10:21

because it's the stories that ultimately are going to hold everybody together you know when a door knocking team comes back and they've seen the naked guy um because there's always a naked guy right like there's always a naked guy there's always a naked Right.

Corey 1:10:33

And so I can't believe the number of people who have answered their door naked, buck naked. So there's a buck naked, buck naked, buck naked, sometimes high out of their tree.

Corey 1:10:41

What's going on? Oh, there's an election going on. Oh,

Carter 1:10:45

yeah. So you got to let them have their stories. And the stories are, are again, what keeps us all together as that family that's working on the campaign.

Zain 1:10:54

That is excellent insight. And maybe I'll close this segment off with a story of mine. Corey, you talk about Battleground promotions. And one that I feel like was really fun during the Nenshi campaign, the last one, was less so a promotion, but more so because I didn't run a tight ship. We had a person that Carter and I, and I think, Corey, you know pretty well, and I won't name them on the podcast, who stepped into the campaign office, which was located in downtown at around 5 p.m. or so. And this person was incredibly well-dressed, well put together. And the assumption made by myself and the office manager slash volunteer coordinator in the office was that this person was here for the 5 o'clock policy meeting. turns out that they were definitely not there for that but were more so inquiring about the campaign uh turns out that we thought they were here for the policy meeting no one wanted to admit to anyone else that who invited this person they sit down at the policy meeting and they just start contributing to policy this is the third meeting of the policy committee and the first one where the candidate is attending and the candidate is just like i don't give a shit who this person is This person has some really good ideas. Long story short, they come up with the acronym that defines their policy for the campaign.

Zain 1:12:13

I'm not going to name the person, but there we go. A battleground promotion of very different kinds for our campaign. I'll tell you offline. That's the story as I was told for our campaign. But we're going to leave that segment there and move on to our final segment, our over, under, and our lightning round.

Zain 1:12:33

Guys, are you ready? Ready to close this marathon off. This has been fun. I like these deep dive episodes. We get to go into some of the nostalgia territory, talk about some of the things we're passionate about as process. But Stephen Carter, I'll start with you because I think I know Corey's answer on this. It's the dichotomy he presented. If you had to choose one or the other, if you had to choose one or the other on a political campaign between smart and experienced, which would you take?

Carter 1:12:57

Smart every time. The experience, it turns out that most of the time we're not doing rocket science here. we're running a campaign and trying to talk to people. So taking someone who's smart is almost always the best choice.

Zain 1:13:11

Corey, give it to me again, smarter experience. We are taking smart, I think.

Corey 1:13:14

Yeah, these things change so much. Smart is worth its weight in gold. Unless when we're saying experiences, they literally every month do a different campaign. It's smart.

Zain 1:13:23

Yeah. Corey, I'm going to stick with you for our next one. Overrated or underrated hierarchy on a political campaign? Overrated or underrated in your mind? Oh, hierarchy

Corey 1:13:33

is overrated. Structure is underrated. I don't think you need to have big pyramids where everything flows, but you do need to know who's on what base and who's responsible for what. And I think campaigns often hand wave around that stuff. And often the biggest mistake they make is give two people roughly the same responsibilities, which creates tensions in that community you're trying to create. you do need to know what you are accountable for and you need to make sure other people know what you're accountable for that sharing of what everybody's job is is more than just titles it is you know let's say zane's the policy director that means he's ultimately responsible for the final draft of the policy document but he's going to take the input of the policy committee or it's zane holds the pen he writes the entire policy but you've got to be clear on that because if you're zane and you think you hold the pen and it turns out you're the copy editor you're going to get frustrated. Everyone's going to get frustrated. You're going to have a bad time.

Zain 1:14:26

Carter, same question to you, Corey. I appreciate the distinction between hierarchy and structure. Carter, hierarchy, overrated, underrated?

Carter 1:14:33

Overrated. No one wants to join a campaign at the very bottom rung of the ladder. They all want to feel valued and they all want to feel like they're making a contribution and they are. So even that, you know, Corey talked about the door knockers. I mean, voter

Carter 1:14:47

voter identification, it may look like it's the the bottom, but it's actually really close to the top. So making

Carter 1:14:54

making it hierarchical is just a huge mistake.

Zain 1:14:57

Carter, I'm going to stick with you on this one, overrated or underrated campaign titles.

Carter 1:15:02

I think they're completely overrated. I mean, I was media boy on Joe Clark's campaign in 2000. That worked for me. It defined my role, told me what I needed to do, and

Carter 1:15:12

and also gave me a relative sense of where i stood so

Carter 1:15:15

so i was happy it was i gave myself that title um realistically you can call yourself whatever you want as long as you do your job cory

Zain 1:15:24

cory same question to you campaign titles overrated underrated oh

Corey 1:15:27

oh i do think they're completely overrated that's not to say that they don't have their place as i've already talked about here but i think some of the campaigns i've had the most fun on some of the campaigns i've been most senior on i haven't had a title i've I've been that guy in the back, you

Corey 1:15:42

in the shadows just saying, hey, we're going to do this or we're going to do that. And that's not so bad either.

Carter 1:15:47

Yeah, the real power often is that person in the back with no title, with

Carter 1:15:50

with no defined role that everybody just kind of looks to. And if they nod, then

Zain 1:15:56

Member without portfolio. Corey, last one to you. I'll start with you on the last one. Overrated or underrated Mario

Corey 1:16:05

Underrated. It's an iconic game. I remember when I got it for the Super Nintendo as a teenager, and it just had like Mode 7, I think it was called. It was this ability to kind of 3D move around the map.

Corey 1:16:18

Every version of Mario Kart Sense has blown my mind, just blown my mind. What a great game.

Zain 1:16:22

Carter, give us the one fact, the one fact, Stephen Carter, overrated or underrated Mario Kart.

Carter 1:16:28

Well, I'm a really big fan of Solitaire.

Zain 1:16:32

Thank you for bringing that energy.

Zain 1:16:35

Yeah, with a performance like that, the

Zain 1:16:39

the podcast might just be called Solitaire featuring Stephen Carter.

Zain 1:16:44

We'll leave it there. That's a wrap on Episode 917 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.

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