"Ask Not What the Voters Can Do For You."

Dear Hillary, Barack, John, Mike, and now Ralph,

The year was 1974. The month was June. And it was the first and last time I met John Kerry who was applying for a job at my firm, Epsilon, a pioneer in building marketing and constituency databases and very sophisticated personalized direct mail.

I interviewed John Kerry to run our political practice, to help politicians use database marketing to raise money and win elections. John spent the entire hour talking about himself with not a single question about me, our vision for the company, or the position. It was a one-way conversation about the effect of the Vietnam War on America and his views for what lay ahead.

Fast forward 34 years and that one-way conversation strategy seems to be alive and well. Each of you five presidential candidates are suffering from "Kerry-itis." Every one of your campaigns is exclusively focused on what Americans can do for you -- not what you can do for us. By the way, we didn't hire John.

The '70s were a time when technology was just starting to be leveraged in the marketing arena. And it was clear, that politicians could benefit from its use with new breakthrough techniques. For the first time in history it was now possible to cost effectively collect individual behavioral data, post it to computer files, and then generate individualized correspondence to thousands or millions of people on high speed computer printers.

Two of the first politicians to use these techniques to sway voter opinion were Kevin White who ran for his third term as mayor of Boston in 1975 and Jay Rockefeller in his first bid for senator from West Virginia in 1984.

It all started when Mayor White's political consultant recognized a vexing problem: Bostonians were tired of White. There was evidence in about a third of the voting districts that many constituents were either not going to vote at all or might vote against White just to have a new face to run Boston. The solution was to energize this sizable group of "fatigued" voters, get them personally involved in White's candidacy, and make each of them feel that Kevin White was interested in their views, their issues, their families, and their dreams for a better future.

Thus began a two-pronged program. White's team organized several hundred volunteers to go door-to-door in selected neighborhoods and ask the occupants to list their top three concerns from a list of ten that included issues like local crime, police and fire services, public school quality, local taxes, and urban development. Each person's responses were put on a special issues database. At the same time the White team ran local radio and TV ads asking people to call a special number and tell Kevin what they thought about the state of the city. People who called were asked the same questions and added to the database one by one.

Shortly after a person was canvassed at home or took the time to call in, they received a personalized letter signed by Kevin who thanked them for their response and then went on to address the specific issues of importance to them. Not one of these individuals had ever received a customized response from anyone running for office. The White camp told me that thousands of people framed the letter or kept it to show friends and neighbors.

Eventually the database grew to 200,000 individuals. Each person on the file received a second letter two to three days before voting day. This letter also addressed the three major issues each voter had originally identified as important to them. The outcome was not unexpected. There was record turnout for White's third bid for mayor and he won by a wide margin.

Later in 1984, Jay Rockefeller's team took the exact same approach to boost his popularity in parts of West Virginia where polls showed Rockefeller was far behind his republican opponent. On Election Day Rockefeller won handily in every district where voters were canvassed for their views and then communicated back to with individualized personalized correspondence from Jay. He still serves West Virginia today.

As database marketing practices continued to reap dramatic results in swaying voter opinion, it became clear that high-level personalized marketing would have a dramatic impact on political fundraising as well. From 1978 through the mid-80s, using many of the same personalization techniques for requesting donations, the Republican Senatorial Committee raised more net dollars each month than the Democratic Senatorial Committee raised in a year. Talk about raising money...

In the late '70s, many of the well-known TV evangelists of the day including Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, Rex Humbart, and Pat Robertson got "religion" and used their computer databases to conduct ongoing personalized dialogue with millions of listeners. Every one of these TV preachers and most notably Oral Roberts built huge constituency databases by corresponding on a one-to-one basis. The pitch was simple. Tell me your personal story -- your hopes, your dreams, your failures, your sins and then I will immediately send you a letter back praying for you and your specific situation. And of course, I will ask for a donation to keep my ministry going and growing. During one three-month period when Oral asked 1.5 million people for a special gift to help fund his new hospital, he raised 30 million net dollars from one letter alone. Probably a record still to this day.

So what does this story have to do with you presidential candidates? Even without the limitless power of the Internet, which clearly didn't exist in the 70s and 80s, these successful politicians and fundraisers masterfully based their efforts on "what can I do for you" as opposed to "what can you do for me." In today's presidential race, with much more sophisticated technology available to all, every single one of your websites continues to solicit help with nothing in return.

You ask for folks to volunteer, send money, and call family and friends, and host parties. While you do explain, in endless mind numbing paragraphs, your stance on the issues of the day, nowhere do you ask what is important to me. What keeps me up at night? What really bothers me as an individual about taxes, or health care, or jobs, or national defense, or why Congress seems incapable of working together for the common good. Sure I get letters from all of you, but they are not personalized to me, not even remotely. They are basically a campaign speech in the mail. No wonder direct mail political fund raising doesn't "work" anymore.

In a few weeks time it will all boil down to two of you, plus Mr. Nader. If one of you three decide to totally rearrange your thinking and ask voters in TV advertising and on your website to tell you what concerns each of them as well as what they think is right with America, the outcome will not be in doubt. And if you continue that true one-to-one communication via e-mail and direct mail, with a personalized response to each of us a few days before the election - you will win. Because you will learn what John Kerry never did back on that June day in 1974. It's not about you. It's about each of us.

Sincerely,

Steve Cone

Steve Cone is the author of the forthcoming book Powerlines: Words That Sell Brands, Grip Fans, and Sometimes Change History