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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Jesse Ventura's ad man talks about how he would sell his next prospective client -- the Green Party presidential candidate.
Jun 5, 2000 | Bill Hillsman's funny, quirky ads in two Minnesota political races -- Paul Wellstone's surprise Senate victory in 1990, and Jesse Ventura's upset in the 1998 governor's race -- made him politics' outside image-maker who seemed to know something the Beltway boys didnt. It's tough to imagine, say, the ad of the Ventura action figure, dressed in a suit, rejecting a dime from "Evil Special Interest Man" coming from a Washington pro.
But now Hillsman's in talks with a presidential candidate rarely described as either funny or quirky: Ralph Nader of the Green Party.
Hillsman won't yet say how he would pitch the earnest consumer advocate to the public. But it will be in a way that's far more Madison Avenue than K Street; more Abercrombie and Fitch than Harry and Louise. "Voters are consumers," Hillsman likes to say, and he draws upon his experience in commercial marketing (the Mall of America is a client). A critic of the heavy-handed, saturation-bombing approach advocated by many media consultants, Hillsman asserts that "most political consultants don't understand media. They could not make a living in marketing and communications if they had to."
Other Hillsman clients this year include Minnesotans Michael Ciresi, who is vying for the Democratic endorsement to unseat Republican Sen. Rod Grams, and Chris Coleman, a Democrat who hopes to succeed Rep. Bruce Vento in Minnesota's 4th District, as well as independent Senate candidate Willie Logan in Florida. Hillsman even met with Warren Beatty when the actor was flirting with a presidential bid. Hillsman says he's hoping to reach an agreement with the Nader campaign soon.
In both races you ran before, you really ran on an iconoclastic, against-the-system angle, and you had strong personalities to base those things off. Do you plan to use the same approach with Nader and Willie Logan?
Certainly with Willie Logan were doing it. With Nader, I dont know. Its premature to speculate.
How important is it for voters to feel a personal connection with a candidate?
Voters aren't really interested in what candidates have to say about the issues until they've come to grips with who the candidate is as a person. I think most of the Washington guys who move right into issue advertising don't really understand the dynamics of how people make a "purchase decision."
Why is it important to know the candidate first?
Because it doesn't matter what you say on Social Security or on education, or on health care or on anything else if people don't trust that you're going to follow through with it. Most politicians go into races with pretty big credibility gaps.
In Ventura's case we had the unique opportunity to start with somebody who didn't have a credibility gap, as opposed to most politicians who had been politicians all their lives or had been in office before. Sometimes the first thing you have to do with those candidates is get them up to zero on the truth meter and sort of build up from there.
