The following is a true story. The names have been changed, not to protect the innocent, but because the guilty are litigeous weasels that would like nothing better than to sue me for telling the truth.

Some time ago, I was the Creative Director of an in-house agency for a software publisher. We’ll call them…um…”MacroGraphics.” I ran a group of creatives known internally as the Creative Services Group.  As the company grew, internal politics reared it’s ugly head. As in many companies, when sales don’t meet projections or expectations, the first people to get blamed are the marketing guys. At MacroGraphics, this took the form of certain people in the sales department suggesting that the company hire an external agency. (I say this with absolute certainty, because one of the directors of sales was a golfing buddy of Stan Richards – head of the Richards Group – and had them come in to do a dog and pony show for the company…without giving me any advanced warning.)  After the Richards Group pitched us, I suggested that if we were really interested in outside help for Creative Services, that we shop around for the best shop to work with. I brought in Seth Werner (the guy that came up with the California Raisins Claymation spots) who was running the Dallas office of Bloom. (Might as well start at the top, right?) While I was busy setting up other meetings, the CEO of MacroGraphics asked me to interview a guy they’d worked with before, who ran a very small Dallas agency. We’ll call him “Jonathan Ricotta.”

Ricotta’s first company had been the first agency-of-record for MacroGraphics back in the day. He’d sold out to one of the big, multi-national agencies, and moved away. When his non-compete was up, he moved back to Dallas, and started a new company. Keep in mind, I was in my late twenties at the time, and did not have any agency experience – especially in regards to agency politics. Ricotta was, shall we say, adept at playing politics as a blood sport. Positively Machiavellian.

Ricotta and I met, where he informed me that the CEO wanted him to consult with Creative Services, giving feedback and critical comments on a new ad campaign. Frankly, I was cool with that, simply because I wanted to see what a “real” agency thought about our work. Ricotta asked me to have my group come up with a dozen or so concepts. We did. He then selected the four best, and asked us to riff off those, expanding and refining the ideas to more polished concepts. We did. I was proud of the work we’d done. I thought we had some good concepts. In fact, we were so confident, we even did a gag ad – a parody of the famous “this is your brain…this is your brain on drugs” ad that the Ad Council had done.

After hours, I quietly made the rounds of my peer group, and the guys in the head office. I showed them our ads and explained the concepts. They were receptive, but wanted to wait to see what Ricotta had come up with.

Ricotta met with me a couple of days before the scheduled dog and pony show to the suits. What he told me made me realize I’d been had – and had no moves left to counter his real agenda. He said “I like your ads. They’re good. Really good. But my team has been working on some ads, too. My guys’ work is better. So here’s what we’re gonna do. At the meeting, you’re going to present my guys work as your own. That way, you’ll show the best work, and keep everybody happy [read: keep your job safe]. I was flabergasted. I refused, flat-out, to do that.

The next morning, the CEO called me into his office, and explained that, since Ricotta felt I wasn’t cooperating with the outside agency/inside agency cooperation, I had been “relieved of my command.” They didn’t fire me, but I was abruptly moved from head of the Creative Services Group to “minister without portfolio” within the company. I asked if I would be allowed to attend the ad meeting, as I was keen to see what was so much better than what we’d come up with.

As the meeting started, it quickly became the kind of exestential experience that would lead you to believe Rod Serling would pop out just any second, doing the Twilight Zone open. Ricotta stepped to the front and explained that his team had come up with some great concepts he was ready to recommend. He explained that he was going to show six different ideas. And then he began to systematically perjure himself, as he revealed the six concepts created by me and the Creative Services Group. He presented our work as his own. None of the ads he showed had been created by his team. At all. None. I sat there, speechless. As I recovered my composure, I thought “Hey, wait…I’ve shown all these concepts to the suits…they’ll know that this is not his work but ours. He’s toast.” Nope. They loved the concepts – so much so in fact, that they showered him with praise. One of the suits actually had the balls to tell him, “This stuff is MUCH better than the concepts that we’ve seen from Creative Services!”

Right.

But the pièce de résistance was still to come. Pulling a page from the Steve Jobs playbook, he said, “I’ve saved the best for last. This concept is so hot, you guys are gonna go nuts.” (His actual quote was crude and sexual in nature…I’ve cleaned it up so as not to offend any of my readers.) He pulled out concept number seven. I thought, “okay…maybe this is it. His guys came up with one concept, and he just used our stuff as a stalking horse to set up his big finish.”

Nope.

The spot he revealed as his “best of the best” was…”This is your brain…This is your brain on our software.”

I’m not kidding.

Nope. Ricotta used our gag ad as his personal “Best of Show.” Never mind that it was not even derivative…it was an out-and-out rip-off of the Ad Council classic.

The suits loved it.

Soon, Ricotta revealed his REAL agenda. Turns out his agency was failing. What he really wanted was my job. And he got it. I was eventually reassigned to the development group, where I became the in-house user interface “evangelist,” charged with trying to improve and unify the look and feel of our many applications. Ricotta went on to take over the CSG, and run it into the ground. He got himself promoted to head of the marketing department, and subsequently got himself fired for sexual harassment and spending great gobs of company money at strip clubs, entertaining friends, vendors, and others.

So what’s the lesson in this? If you’re a creative, you’re probably focused on creative things, and care nothing for politics and climbing the ladder over the bodies of your co-workers. That’s a pity, because there will always be any number of people that are less talented creatively, but immensly gifted in the art of politics. Ignoring office politics will not insulate you from it’s effects. You can generate the best creative in town, and still get shot down by those with an agenda. It happens. But when it does, and you’ve been guilty of being tone-deaf politically, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself.

Karma, I can tell you, is an unfeeling, cruel mistress. I learned a lot from the experience. It made me much more aware of politics. But Karma cuts both ways. Some years later, I received a phone call from a company who was interviewing the recently-fired Jon Riccota for a VP of Marketing position. He has put me down as a reference. The HR person was doing their due diligence, and asked me if Ricotta was a good manager and leader.

“Jon Ricotta is the best guy I’ve ever seen at direct mail,” I said.

“Yes, but is he a good department manager? Would he make a good VP of Marketing?”

“Well, Ricotta is great at direct mail.”

“Fine. We’ve established that. But how is he as a creative leader? Can he run a marketing department?”

“Did I mention he’s really, really good at direct mail?”

“Oh. Okay. I get it. You can’t say anything bad about him, for fear of a lawsuit, so instead of saying something bad, you’re choosing to say nothing.”

“Um…if you’re looking for an expert at direct mail, Ricotta’s your guy.”

“Thanks…you’ve been a huge help.”

For the record, he didn’t get the job. I like to think I did my part. And thus began my education in the art of politics.

Thank God. 

No matter how the election turns out, I look forward to watching television broadcasts bereft of ads slinging mud, making unsubstantiated claims, and generally boring me to death. (Whoever came up with the idea for DVRs gets to jump the line into Heaven, in my book.) I can’t think of a more important election within my lifetime – or one that I’m more eager to see done and over. 

I voted over a week ago. I’m not alone…a staggering 46% of Texas Panhandle residents voted early. (By comparison, that’s close to the total number of ALL the people that voted in the last Presidential election – early voting, absentee voting, and regular voting combined.) 

The time for bending people’s ears about who’s the better candidate – and who will lead us down the road to destruction – is, mercifully, over. If you haven’t already voted, I encourage you to do so – no matter who you support. Voting is a precious right in America, and we should never take it for granted. Whoever is elected (fair and square, I hope and pray) faces some huge challenges – perhaps bigger challenges than any President in history will confront. I pray that God watches over this election and guides us all to vote for those who will put country before party, and what is right before ideology, working not as politicians, but as statesmen (and stateswomen) and servants of We the People. 

Now go vote and let’s get this thing over with, so the nation can begin to heal from this long, divisive campaign.

In politics, the story – the narrative is everything. The candidates want to control their own story. At one time, the media was both a conduit for enabling the candidate to get their story to the public, and a watchdog that monitored the candidates story for veracity. Today, the media has largely put both those roles in the background, and taken on the dischordant roll of kingmaker.

Let’s look at that premise against the background of the ’08 election. Early on, most of the ‘mainstream’ media showed a preference for Barack Obama. While most of the public thought the nomination was Hillary’s to lose, the media was in the tank for Obama early on. The media fell in love with Obama’s story, and judged it superior to Hillary’s. They positioned themselves as the distribution agents for Obama, Inc., and looked at the other candidates’ stories as competition for Obama’s.

On the Republican side, the largely liberal media always favored McCain – the closest thing the GOP had in the race to a liberal. In the early primaries, McCain was all but finished, yet the media’s trumpeting him as the only Republican with foreign policy bona fides (in the aftermath of the Benazir Bhutto assasination), McCain’s candidacy rose from the grave. With the other Republicans running lackluster campaigns (my fave, Fred Thompson), pinning hopes to a winner-take-all strategy (Rudy Giuliani), telling a story that didn’t quite match his persona (Mitt Romney), or trying to be the fringe candidate “little engine that could” (Huckabee, Paul) McCain simply outlasted his competiton – with the media’s help.

Now we come to the ‘finals’ – where we distill the stories down to their essential parts. Obama’s mantra is “change.” McCain’s is “maverick reformer.” The media still likes Obama’s story better. The public? Maybe…maybe not. If the public liked Obama’s story as much as the media, he’d be up by 40. As it stands today, he’s neck and neck with McCain.

In every story, there are strengths and weaknesses. Obama’s big weakness is a lack of foreign policy knowledge. (I’d say ‘experience,’ but he really has none – I don’t call voting “present” 130 times as experience.) McCain’s weakenesses are his lack of significant domestic policy knowldege, and his age. Both picked VPs that would shore up their own weaknesses.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Biden was a ‘safe’ pick. He probably has more experience in foreign policy than any other Democrat. (That’s not saying much. In foreign policy, the Dems tend to emulate the French, who’s idea of a foreign policy is ‘we surrender.’)

McCain’s pick of Palin was a masterstroke. Her story is compelling. She is a proven reformer, a maverick willing to take on not just the Dems, but her own party. She is authentic, and brings a lot to the ticket – energy policy experience, executive experience, she’s a great speaker, and may appeal to the disaffected and disenfranchised women who once supported Hillary.

Problem is, the media HATES to be surprised, and they are genuinely panicked as to what to do about Palin. Her story is so compelling, so interesting, they have no way to stop it. And stop it they must, for she is the Anti-Obama – a walking, talking poster child for how someone with traditional American Values can tell a story more compelling than their guy.

In the two months remaining, it will be interesting to see how the narratives change. The media is largely in lock-step with Obama, more cheerleaders than reporters. However, they are doing their best to take McCain’s and Palin’s narratives and change the facts to suit their own purposes. To the extent they fail or succeed, so will go the election, because it’s not the man – or woman – it’s the story they tell, and how much you believe them.

So what does this have to do with your marketing? Most marketers don’t face the competition found in political contests – after all, most products are not a “winner take all” situation. But because of the requirements of campaigns – in both time and the finality of the results – political marketing sets the bar high for marketing. Watch the campaigns between now and November. See how they respond (especially in the age of Instant Messaging) to challenges. Watch and learn – then try and apply the lessons learned to your own marketing efforts.

Obama is the “New!” “Fresh!” “Improved!” candiate.

McCain is the candidate for those who value “Different,” “Independent,” and “Maverick.”

Hillary was the “Traditional” candidate, with “Liberal” and “Progressive” values.

Only it’s all a lie. A big fat marketing lie.

Obama comes out of the political machine of Chicago. Chicago politics and corruption go together like mac ‘n cheese, salt and pepper, or Abbot and Costello. If you can get past the media’s love fest, you can start to see that he’s made some really bad choices in associates and friends (Tony Rezko, Reverend Wright, etc.). He talks a good game, but he’s at his worst when pinned down to talk specifics. There’s nothing ‘new,’ ‘fresh’ or ‘improved’ about socialism, which is what Obama’s pushing.

McCain is a RINO (Republican In Name Only). He’s (at best) a moderate. At worst, he’s a compromiser in situations where compromise is NOT a good idea – say, for instance, on torpedoing the only chance the then-Republican majority had in the Senate to force that body to take an up-or-down vote on Bush’s federal judicial nominees. You say “independent,” I say “unpredictable.” You say “maverick,” I say “loose cannon.”

Hillary’s marketing was the worst. She tried to be the “experience” candidate, when her only real experience was in being First Lady. Then she padded her resume, got caught, denied everything, and finally admitted to her sins. You might agree with her politically, but you can’t really trust her. Obama’s “change” mantra played well, especially as it allowed him the luxury of being a bit vague on the details. “Experience” is something that begs specificity.

The rest of Campaign ’08 will depend on how the two candidates market themselves. Can Obama keep his “change” message resonating with the people, once he has to explain exactly what “change” he’s talking about? Can McCain talk the conservative wing of the party into backing him, if for no better reason out of fear of a President Obama. We’ll see. My guess is that the narrative each candidate tells will have to have some kind of resonance with reality, or that guy will be the big loser in November.