Translator: Harry Patterson Reviewer: Vladimír Harašta
How would you feel if a twelve-year-old girl came up to you,
handed you a bible and an abortion leaflet,
and then asked you if you’re a good person?
If you are pro-abortion, you are murderer according to the leaflet
and also according to the girl.
And this is exactly what happened to me.
I was standing on the street and there were grown-ups and even children
protesting and chanting “Save unborn lives”.
I pushed through the crowd until I got to the old pink building —
the reason for such a commotion.
The entrance was guarded by two elderly women.
Each one was wearing an orange vest with the word “volunteer”.
Probably because every woman who left the building
had to listen to dozens of derogatory insults.
One of the protestors even found one of the women,
wrote to her employer, said that she’s a murderer and should be fired.
No, we’re not talking about Chile under Pinochet’s rule,
but about Jackon, Mississippi in 2012.
And do you know why?
Because that building was the only private abortion clinic in the whole country.
And do you think that those dozens of people protesting there
were just activists?
Some, maybe.
Some of them were deeply religious people,
but some of them were supporters of a political candidate.
And that’s exactly what could be a well-thought-out campaign.
And why am I actually telling you this?
Because even this is political marketing and it has different faces.
The boring definition says that political marketing is a tool
which helps you to understand and accurately characterise voters.
Then force them non-violently to accept ideas and attitudes of the candidate.
But the reality is different.
The reality is that political marketing can destroy any one of you completely,
or get to the top.
And I’m trying to be an ethical political marketer.
Otherwise, what are we going to talk about?
A person just constantly fleeing from their own conscience?
(Laughter)
My name is Alžběta Králová ...
(Applause)
my name is Alžběta Králová and I devote myself to the professionalisation
and cultivation of the Czech, but not only, political landscape.
When I was 24, political marketing fascinated me so much
that it was my dream to fly to America for a campaign
in the super-election year of 2012.
And why only to America?
Because America is the cradle of professional political marketing.
But everyone told me then that it wouldn’t work,
and there was a great deal of administrative hurdles.
But I didn’t give up, because I didn’t want
one “no” to define my life.
So I wrote directly to the elections manager in America,
got 30,000 Czech koruna from my dad,
and flew to America for the campaign.
And then, as the only Czech girl, I worked on the campaign in New York
and this was the campaign that changed my life.
It has been 9 years since this campaign.
And since then I have been dedicated to political marketing
and I’ve done dozens of political projects,
not only in Czechia, but also abroad.
But let’s return to the story of the girl with the bible for a moment.
The two main groups, of which one is “for”
and the other is “against” abortion in the United States,
spent almost two and a half billion Czech koruna on their campaigns
in the election year 2020 alone.
What’s more, dozens of political marketers work on these campaigns
and these campaigns influence the opinions of tens of millions of voters.
And we’re just talking about one form of communication
during one campaign in America.
Such an ordinary campaign has dozens of similar themes.
When we look at how much the presidential election cost
the winning candidate in America in 2020,
it was more than 22 billion Czech koruna.
And the total spent on campaigns in America that year
was more than 308 billion.
Campaign outcomes affect the future and direction of countries for decades.
If we look at ourselves, such political marketing influences
whether we will go to the East or to the West,
or if we will pay for prescriptions at the doctor.
And behind all of this is political marketing.
I decided to reveal to you a part of the invisible backstage,
so that you too could peek under the cover of campaigns.
Let’s leave dry definitions aside
and look at how it works in practice.
Every such campaign is like an iceberg
and five-sixths of it run under the surface
as well as the work of us, political marketers.
Preparations for such a campaign take place even a year in advance.
A good campaign is one which is well prepared and timed,
even months ago than it’s actually revealed to you, the public.
And such a campaign begins by forming a team,
gathering data, analysing the moods of voters
and entering and evaluating various opinion polls,
and then you try to pour all this data into your candidate’s head,
dragging them to various media and other training sessions.
I know, from credible sources,
for one distinctive politician with Slovak roots,
to get him to speak even a little,
it cost hundreds of hours of work for several voice coaches
and teachers of Czech grammar.
And yet we hear about “butterflyes”.
(Laughter)
Such standard political marketing was uncommon in the Czech Republic.
That didn’t happen until 2008, when the field actually shifted,
when one unnamed political party hired the American agency PSB
and flooded Czechia with an orange tsunami.
Even since then, everything to do with professional campaigns in Czechia,
everything is about readiness, prudence and strategy.
But usually you won’t read about it anywhere,
and no one will tell you how it actually works.
Few people have the courage to put themselves on the line with this.
But that’s why I’m here and standing before you,
so that I can reveal to you some of what goes on behind the scenes.
This work isn’t about boring data collection, their application
and actual evaluation.
Sometimes we feel like we’re in MI6 and that we’re really important.
For example, we use fingerprints for entry to the office,
or a Faraday cage is used,
which is a thing that interrupts the signal of all devices.
But when setting it up you have to be careful,
so as to not decommission the secondary call centre.
A few years ago we only removed phone batteries before meetings.
Today this is what we have in the meeting room.
So that our competition cannot eavesdrop on us.
And where the office is concerned, no one, not even from my immediate family, knows
where it actually is — apart from my team and I.
So no worshipper can send me flowers there.
And we have our garbage taken away, so that our competition can’t abuse it.
You drive the candidate around in an armoured car,
which you wouldn’t notice at all in normal traffic.
And a tracking system is also used,
which has the task of monitoring the opponent
and obtaining compromising material on them.
But sometimes it monitors you.
Naturally, not even the elements
we know from detective stories and spy movies
can guarantee you a win.
Because competitors also employ similar teams,
secret service equipment and masters of wagging the dog.
It’s all or nothing game.
You could have everything prepared to the final detail,
and your team can run like a Swiss watch,
but in the snap of a finger, all your efforts
can go to waste because of the candidate themself.
(Laughter)
You see, your candidate is not yoghurt.
Your candidate speaks.
They have many different opinions and they have ...
(Laughter)
they have also emotions.
And you can go wrong with them sometimes.
If we grind into it a bit and look at specific examples,
then you will remember, for example, the unfortunate statement
about the Beneš Decrees,
the live lying of the “non-meeting” in Lány
or how one politician thought so sincerely
until it was crystal clear.
These are the very nightmares of every political marketer.
It takes one wrong statement or one poor strategic decision,
and a year of toil, tens of millions of Czech koruna
and thousands of hours of work from avid volunteers will be wasted.
And then there is that moment when you can make a wish,
because political stars are falling.
And with it ...
(Laughter)
and with it, your candidate heads to a political grave.
So let’s see who didn’t do so well in the campaign.
One relatively new one, a Czech and rather rebellious party,
which used to have a very dynamic and visible campaign,
and so decided to work on their manifesto in 2021.
And, of course, that’s good.
Except that this manifesto had 907 pages in its longer version.
But don’t worry, there was a shorter version too, which had 350 pages.
And I’ll be honest with you.
Even the politicians themselves don’t know their manifesto to the final detail
and they’re not read by students of political science either, or voters.
Although they like to tell you about making the decisions themselves,
precisely on the basis of political agendas.
But they decide mainly on the basis of emotions.
So which ones of you deliberately read your own party’s manifesto this year?
As you see, and even I, even I didn’t read it.
But let’s get back to what didn’t go so well.
This party communicated almost on the defensive
and that determine the dynamics of the whole campaign.
They also managed to shatter the long-term trend.
And the outcome?
Of the 33 million Czech koruna spent, only 4 seats were won.
One seat was for 8.25 million.
And their competing partner? For 480,000.
And how was that done?
Their coalition partner had built strong local structures
and voters also circled their candidates.
And let’s look at the next party.
Now we’re going to talk about a party
which had been building their political brand since 1878.
And then destroyed it fairly quickly when they forgot how to communicate
why they’re actually there, making one illogical decision after another.
They had no strategy, and so waned not only in voters, but also in members.
Just ten years ago this party had 24,000 members.
In 2020 they had half this number.
In the course of four years they changed their logo four times,
party colours three times, and never once adequately explained why.
They elected a conservative leadership,
but their two liberal politicians played a leading role in the campaign.
They lacked a clear, energetic and striking leader.
They were inconsistent and indecisive.
And they themselves didn’t know who they were targeting.
And the voters? Apparently they knew it.
Since 2013 this party has lost 75 percent of the vote.
And so the party which wrote Czech history,
finally ended up in the abyss.
And even if it seems that way, money isn’t everything.
Neither in politics nor the campaign.
An example of this is one American billionaire,
who wanted to become the president of America in 2020.
He broke the record for campaign spending in the primaries
and in just 100 days he spent 25 billion Czech koruna
and one delegate cost him half a billion.
And all of this was for nothing.
Not even a massive investment into TV commercials
could replace the months needed
to build a local campaign infrastructure.
And not even the overpaid people on his team could help him either.
He jumped on the bandwagon too late
and he couldn’t save it anymore.
So here we can see that if you run a strategically bad campaign,
even billions invested won’t help you.
So what can we take from all of this?
Political marketing may be invisible, but it’s an extremely influential field.
And quite often a demonised one.
But it’s worth realising that political marketing is just a tool.
And it’s important for everyone to know who and how this tool is being used.
In and of itself, it’s neither good nor bad.
Whether or not we want it, it’s here to stay
and it’s influence will continue to grow.
And I have a suggestion for you. Don’t be bribed.
And stick to the motto “I don’t want a free discount”
because nothing in life is free.
Draw information from a variety of sources
and look at how a given politican has expressed themselves in the past,
what they said, what they wrote about themselves, what they claimed,
and check these things.
If these politicians are consistent in what they say and what they want ...
And also realise that behind almost every good politician
there is already a political marketer.
And the last thing.
If any of you see me on the street, pretend we’ve not seen each other.
Thank you.
(Applause)