Shotgunning Doesn’t Work In Agency PR or Politics. A Targeted Strategy Gains Better Results
(Author’s Note: This is the sixth in a series of occasional political columns that I’ll be writing for CommPRO.biz until Inauguration Day, January 20. Previously, I wrote 17 political columns leading up to Election Day. FYI – My first public relations job was with a political firm, where I worked on local, statewide and presidential campaigns. In this column, I write on why none targeted campaigning hurt the Democrats in the 2020 election.)
Arthur Solomon
In PR parlance, shotgunning is a strategy of sending a similar pitch or press release to numerous journalists at the same time, without investigating their areas of interest, hoping that one of them might respond favorably.
Doing so is a tactic used primarily by practitioners who can’t think creatively or who are desperate for a “hit.” In my opinion, it should never be used and I prohibited people who reported to me from shot gunning for a few reasons:
- It upsets journalists when they receive PR material that has nothing to do with their beats.
- It shows print and TV journalists that the PR person doesn’t know what the publication or TV show covers.
- Wasting their time is a sure way of not establishing a relationship with a reporter or producer.
- To me, it’s a sign that a practitioner has stopped trying to get a meaningful hit in a major news outlet.
The better way is to target only people who have shown an interest in the subject you are promoting. This means doing research and tailoring pitches to a specific audience instead of sending a one size that doesn’t fit all pitch.
Shotgunning also doesn’t work in politics. And the Democrats, who campaign in a shot gunning manner, are a good example of why it doesn’t work.
In the 2020 presidential election Democrats did poorly in the congressional, legislative and gubernatorial races. A major reason was that instead of targeting different constituencies with varied messages, the Democrats nationally used a one-size-fits-all message. It worked for Joe Biden, but not in contests that needed different messages addressing regional and local concerns.
In the years of FDR’s presidency, (1933-1945), which I call the modern Democrat dominance era, (which ended when Lyndon Johnson refused to run for a second term because of the unpopularity of his Vietnam policy), the Democrats campaigned mostly on three topics, regardless of what their convention platform said: They were “we ended the great depression;” “we provided safety net legislation, such as social security, labor laws and other programs that helped people neglected during the Hoover administration,” and ‘we defeated Nazism and fascism.”
True, there were other spurts of Democrats winning the White House – Bill Clinton, who ran as a conservative Democrat, as did Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama, who won because of his appeal to African-Americans, who didn’t turn out in sufficient numbers to vote for Hillary Clinton because of the color of her skin, although Obama couldn’t have won without the support of white voters.
The shotgunning approach to Democratic campaigning accelerated after the Japan surrendered in September, 1945. Instead of zeroing in on a few topics that could appeal to all Americans, there wasn’t a social, racial, human rights or political issue that Democratic candidates didn’t campaign on, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere. And that was largely the reasons that Al Gore and Ms. Clinton lost their elections, even though they won the popular votes. (The efficacy of campaigning on a few targeted issues was validated in the 2018 election, when the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives by emphasizing the need for health care legislation. Now even that message has been fragmented. Instead of one unifying message, Democratic candidates continuously attacked each other because of differences in their health care plans, all of which is much better than what Trump is trying to do.)
Instead of coalescing under a few topics in 2020, many Democratic office holders campaigned in a verbal shotgun mode all over the political map, speaking out about their pet issues, (as well as setting up a circular firing squad when attacking other Democratic presidential hopefuls during the primary season). This gave the impression to voters of a party in disarray. It is the type of story that the sensationalist yellow journalism cable networks thrive on. And they hyped it many times a day.
Republicans, on the othjer hand, have for decades had a targeted four-prong plan – winning control of local school boards, electing U.S. Senators, appointing Supreme Court Justices and over turning Roe V Wade. They have succeeded in the first three of their objectives and are slowly eviscerating Roe V Wade.
President Trump was a practitioner of picking a few targets and zeroing in on them – immigration, bringing jobs back to America and trade policies. Regardless of the constant criticism he has received because of his stance on these policies he has stood by them, even though thus far they have been far from a success. But it helped him win in 2016 and if he had behaved as a normal person since then he probably would have been re-elected.
In our business, I’ve noticed shotgunning is practiced mostly by account supervisors who attain their positions because of factors other than PR acumen. These include office politics, being good at bean counting and new business presentations (or having a parent who is a high-ranking executive at a big budget client or who runs an agency).
If you report to such an individual who was promoted because of office politics, I feel sorry for you. Because when the promised results to clients don’t materialize, your supervisor will not be able to help because many are unqualified for heir rank. Instead, as I’ve witnessed for many years, the lowly account people will be screamed at, badgered and threatened with dismissal if the results don’t get better. And if the account is lost because of poor results, you can bet the farm that the lowly A.E.s will be blamed, not the higher-ranking executives who were responsible for crafting an unrealistic, unworkable program, because as my C.O. told me during my military days, “Rank has its privilege.”
My first PR job was with a political PR agency, where I worked on local, state and presidential campaigns. The individual who owned the agency was a believer that most PR tenets should be discarded; everyone should try and bring original thinking that fits the situation. He believed creativity in all aspects of PR was more important than following the PR book of rules that were written decades previously. I still believe that’s true today.
Try thinking creatively when crafting a pitch. Write it your way, not the way the PR professors and their texts suggest, and you may never have to shotgun a pitch again.
About the Author: Arthur Solomon, a former journalist, was a senior VP/senior counselor at Burson-Marsteller, and was responsible for restructuring, managing and playing key roles in some of the most significant national and international sports and non-sports programs. He also traveled internationally as a media adviser to high-ranking government officials. He now is a frequent contributor to public relations publications, consults on public relations projects and is on the Seoul Peace Prize nominating committee. He can be reached at arthursolomon4pr (at) juno.com or artsolomon4pr@optimum.net
