As much as I dislike thinking about political campaigns in terms of advertising, marketing, public relations and all that stuff, the P.R. aspect remains very important. Two recent blog entries have helped me rethink my relation to P.R. as it relates to political campaigns.

Richard Edelman asks “Is Public Relations Ready for Discontinous Change?” and Elizabeth Albrycht writes about how ‘Collaboration Requires Contribution’. Both posts bring up important issues for political campaigns that can help make the P.R. aspect of political campaigns more palatable to grassroots activists.

Edelman recommends that “PR should move away from ‘pitching the story’ mentality. We can be part of conversations on line.” It should “Recognize the influence and credibility of blogs” and “Experiment”. As an example, he suggests “We should be working with video clips attached to press materials to make it easier for bloggers in consumer technology to create v-blogs.”

It seems as if this applies strongly to political campaigns. For the sake of our democracy, we must move away from politicians pitching their story to an environment where they become part of conversations. We must return to good old-fashioned ‘retail politics’ and move away from the sound-byte.

Albrycht takes this even further. She says “Both the development of communities and social capital requires reciprocity - the willingness to both take AND give -- to contribute.” She asks, “What do we have to offer to the communities we want to join/build?” Her answer is “If your answer is only ‘information about our company and products’ then you need to head back to the drawing board.” Again, this applies strongly to political campaigns. If the only reason for a campaign website or blog is to provide information about the candidate, then the campaign had better head back to the drawing board. We need to promote greater participation in democracy.

How do we do this? Albrycht goes on to cite McMillan and Chavis’ work on ‘Sense of Community’ [SOC]. “They define SOC as consisting of the following four characteristics: Feelings of membership; … Feelings of influence; … Integration and fulfillment of needs … ; and Shared emotional connection”.

Political campaigns need to learn from the P.R. community how to enter conversations and build community. Otherwise, we will see more emails like this one I received today from a friend who has become disillusioned with a campaign she has been volunteering for:

“I'm still working on the … campaign, although with far less enthusiasm than in the beginning. I look at the web site and wonder what the hell they are thinking. Just like the Kerry campaign, they just don't get it. They talk the talk but that's where it stops. I've given up giving feedback.”

The Internet is providing politicians a chance to re-engage the American people in the political process, and frightening as it may sound on the surface, they can probably learn a lot from forward thinking public relations experts.