Inside Political Campaigns: Expert Strategies and Insights with Matt Krayton of Publitics

Unlock the secrets behind successful political campaigns with our special guest, Matt Krayton, founder of Publitics. Get an insider look into how Matt’s firm crafts powerful message strategies that resonate with voters. Host Peter Woolfolk talks to Matt  as he breaks down the tactical elements that determine a campaign's success from television ads to digital outreach. Discover the importance of understanding voter sentiment, and learn how to frame messages based on comprehensive research.

Ever wondered what it takes to manage the nitty-gritty details of political events? Matt shares his firsthand experiences of working with local officials and the meticulous planning required to ensure campaign events run seamlessly. From building crucial relationships with mayors and governors to the unsung heroism of advance teams, Matt’s stories shed light on the complex logistics and attention to detail behind the scenes.

Gain invaluable lessons from the high-stakes world of political campaigning. Matt reflects on the intense, fast-paced nature of managing presidential and statewide campaigns, highlighting the necessity for rapid adaptation and coordination. Explore how these experiences provide a rigorous training ground for future endeavors. Don't miss Matt's insights on public relations trends and his inspiring journey in establishing Publitics. This episode is packed with expert knowledge and practical advice for anyone passionate about political campaigns and public relations.

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Transcript

Announcer: 1:11

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now here is your host, Peter Woolfolk.

Peter Woolfolk: 1:32

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world. Now, this podcast is ranked by Apple as being among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide, so let me say thank you to all of our guests and listeners for making this a reality and if you enjoy our podcast, please leave a review. Now question for you, being in the thick of this 2024 presidential campaign how does one actually run a campaign? What issues do you focus on? What are some of the actions you must take and actions you must avoid in campaigns? Now my guest today can answer that and other related questions.

Peter Woolfolk: 2:10

He is the founder of Publitics, providing counsel to campaigns at the local, state and federal levels, as well as to clients in the private and public sectors. He has worked on special projects during President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign and he's also served as an adjunct professor at Centenary University's business development teaching in their social media program. Prior to founding Publitex, he was staff on Farley Dickinson University's Public Mind Poll and later adjunct instructor teaching freshman seminar public science students. So joining me today is Matt Krayton from Caldwell, new Jersey. Founder and principal at Publitics. Matt, thank you so very much for joining the podcast today.

Matt Krayton: 2:56

Thank you for having me.

Peter Woolfolk: 2:59

So look, give us an overview of what you do for clients in politics as far as campaigns are concerned.

Matt Krayton: 3:09

Sure, absolutely. This is a fun question. This is one of those things that you get from family around the dinner table, right? It's like?

Announcer: 3:16

what exactly?

Matt Krayton: 3:17

do you do for a living? I get that a lot and you know it's not immediately clear because I think you know this job is so varied. You know there are a number of things. So at its most basic level, we help our clients develop message strategy and then help them deploy that message and strategy in a political campaign to reach voters, persuade voters and then mobilize voters that you want to get to the polls on election day. So from a tactical perspective, our firm focuses on the communication side of campaigns. So we do a lot in a lot of television advertising, digital direct mail, so the sort of traditional stuff you would do in a campaign, plus polling research and then overall message development and in general political counsel.

Peter Woolfolk: 4:14

so you know we, like you've noted before, you know we work with candidates at all different levels to build out their campaigns, their strategies, and then we fill different roles with within each, each of those campaigns, depending upon the needs mm-hmm, let's talk about about when you say you're doing polls, in terms of developing the questions to ask, because that winds up being key what sort of information are you trying to extract from the folks that you talk to when you're doing your polling?

Matt Krayton: 4:44

Sure, yeah, that's something that I think is of interest to a lot of people right now. You know, as we're in the middle of a pretty historic, you know, presidential cycle, you know everyone's got their eyes on the polls, the horse race, who's up, who's down in any given week. So what you typically see in the public eye are polls that do measure the horse race right, like which is ahead, uh, or, and it's really a snapshot in time, right. So polling, I should note, uh, especially the stuff that you see publicly, is not meant to be predictive of an outcome at the end of the day. It's just what is happening right now, in this moment that we're taking the poll, uh, and so so you know again, what you see publicly is the horse race, which candidate is is up, which candidate is down.

Matt Krayton: 5:32

Sometimes you see a little bit of issues polling, so like what issues are important to folks, what issues are less important. And then you know some of the public polls try to get into. You know what's driving voting behavior or vote choice in that moment. Now, when we're doing the polls for a campaign, that looks a little bit different, now, when we're doing the polls for a campaign that looks a little bit different. So you know we do a lot of the same things in terms of measuring who's up, who's down, but we also try to figure out how to frame specific messages in a given campaign and in a given electorate and in a given electorate.

Matt Krayton: 6:15

So you know you ask questions, that that you try to dig in a little bit deeper into what people are feeling and then how to talk about issues that are most important, important to people, and oftentimes we'll poll, I mean we'll combine polling with more qualitative research, like focus groups and some other online tools that help sort of mimic focus groups where you can really dig into the why of what people are feeling, and then you try to measure that at scale in a poll. So typically in a poll you know you get some measurement of you know where the candidates, how the candidates are performing, and then you introduce a battery of messages, some positive for your candidate, some negative against your candidate, some positive for the other candidate, some negative on the opposition candidate and then you measure again who's up and who's down to try to stimulate movement as if you were communicating during the campaign. So those are the sort of things that we try to dig into In addition to on the public affairs side of things when we're doing issues advocacy, how people feel about particular issues.

Peter Woolfolk: 7:23

I think that's all it is to say that some of that is very, very important information, because you can't just sort of, as they say, wet your fingers, stick it up in the wind. That does not bode well for folks who are, you know, going to do something like that, that you have to ask the people that you want to vote. What interests you? What is it that you like? What is it that you don't like? Why is it that you don't like this, that or the other? And that's the kind of thing that helps people determine, I guess the policies that are going to be put together.

Matt Krayton: 7:56

That's right. That's right. And one of the interesting things, too, is you could be fundamentally you know, fundamentally hold the same position as the majority of voters. So, as a candidate, you may have the same position on a particular issue, but it's really a question of how you talk about that issue too. That makes a big difference in how people perceive it. So, you know, it's a really interesting process to see, again, how to frame those messages specifically for particular targets in the electorate. So like, how do young voters, for example, respond to this type of communication or that type of communication, this type of message, that type of message? How do rural voters, you know, respond to a particular message around different pieces of a you know candidate's agenda?

Matt Krayton: 8:43

And then also, too, another thing that we have been exploring a lot more of within our research, both internally and for clients, is also testing messengers too. So like, the message is very important, but you also need a credible messenger to deliver that message right, because if you I mean you could, you know, pluck anyone off the street, tell them to say the magic words, and you would hope that that would convince the electorate to vote one way or the other. But the issue is, you know, people tend to respond to other people they perceive as having the same experiences as them, same lives, similar lives to them. So it's important to figure out who those credible messengers are on those particular issues. So that's another thing that we try to measure as well when we're looking at the polling and the numbers.

Peter Woolfolk: 9:35

Yeah, I think that's a huge point because, you know, sometimes it's not the messenger but the messenger that can get people to pay attention and take some actions. You know, in the sense that you want them to take action either for or against something.

Matt Krayton: 9:53

That's right. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, a lot of our political discourse actually has become more stylistic, and it's always been that way to some extent, but it's not. You know again just what you say, but it's kind of how you deliver the line as well. So it's the stylistic way of I mean you could have two candidates who you know match up like 99.9% on different policies, but one of them is able to deliver the message in a different way, a more exciting way, a way that resonates with other people and sort of that actually ends up becoming a more important piece of the puzzle as well.

Peter Woolfolk: 10:35

Have you had, let's say, had circumstances where you might have misjudged the messenger and the fact that they did go out and said what they had to say did not work the way you expected it to? Have you ever had anything like that happen?

Matt Krayton: 10:59

Yeah, I mean, I think anyone who's ever worked on a campaign has had that happen to them at one point or another, and that's for a variety of reasons, right?

Matt Krayton: 11:03

So, like I think the first is sometimes you know, if you work on campaigns, you only have a limited amount of resources at your disposal to get the job done. So you know you don't have an unlimited pool of people that you can dig into to help your candidate deliver that message. So sometimes you have a candidate who is good in some ways but also imperfect in other ways, and that can definitely create some issues. And you know, sometimes you have candidates who are again very good overall and would be very good at governing, but not necessarily the right temperament or the right presentation for the moment that you're in too. So some of it's about meeting the moment as well. And so, yeah, that happens not infrequently. I mean, you see it in a lot of primaries, right. When you have, you know, crowded presidential primaries, you'll see a lot of candidates up there and many of them will share policy priorities and agendas, but stylistically, how they deliver, that makes a huge difference in who people end up getting behind and who they don't get behind.

Peter Woolfolk: 12:23

So you know I think that's another important issue that, for lack of a better term, some sort of preparation sort of preparation that when you're getting a speaker or enlisting a speaker to speak, or the candidate themselves, some sort of training they need to go through as to how to handle themselves in front of an audience. You know what to say, not to say, uh, you know being friendly, or hand gestures, how you speak, the tone you speak and those kinds of things, so that that message does get over, like you want it to.

Matt Krayton: 12:53

I'm glad you mentioned body language, because that is a huge community. I mean, people are able to take in a lot of information from body language, so not even just the words that you're saying, but how you physically eat, like your physical presence on a stage, physical presence on TV, and you see it a lot. When people have sort of a stiff, you know kind of delivery, they don't seem especially, you know, like they're having a good time, for example, like I think it's important for candidates to look like they're having a little bit of fun out there as well. If you look like you're losing, no one's going to want to vote for you, right? So you do see that in body language sometimes.

Peter Woolfolk: 13:35

So you're 100% right about that Right.

Matt Krayton: 13:37

And don't look at your watch like you've got somewhere else to go. Yes, like hurry, let's hurry this up, let's get through it. That's right. We've all been there, right, right?

Peter Woolfolk: 13:45

You know one of the other things I learned, as I mentioned to you, I worked, I lived in Delaware for a couple of months during the upcoming second administration for Bill Clinton, and getting to manage if you will deal with people at the levels of governor and lieutenant governor and mayor and so forth and so on is another skill that you need to come up with. Governor and mayor and so forth, and so on is another skill that you need to come up with, because they are people who are used to having things done for them a certain way and you know, in campaigns you're not the leader. There you are trying to get other people to do something that you want them to do, and that's not an authoritative position for you to be in, as you're trying to get them to do that.

Matt Krayton: 14:31

Yeah, oh, 100%. I mean, the hand-to-hand political aspects of some of these campaigns can be very challenging, Like you noted. Going into a town and you're trying to get the mayor to endorse or deliver a message in a particular way, you're on their turf when you're coming in, especially if you're talking about a big national campaign or even like a statewide campaign. In some cases You're coming in and oftentimes you're coming in uh, and, and oftentimes you're coming in a little cold. Right, I mean, you would hope that that you have, uh, you know a little bit of uh, you have some relationships, and most times you do, but you are coming in a little cold in some of these cases and you have to figure out, okay, what is what is the local style here? What is what is uh, what are the perspectives of of the local elected officials? You know, do they have a different idea about things? And, look, I mean, the interesting thing about running a campaign is, you know, you ask 10 different people about what you should do and you're going to get 10 different answers sometimes and that can be very hard and you do run into that.

Matt Krayton: 15:32

You know, on the ground, uh as as well, uh, but there's also a lot of value in listening to folks who are on the ground, because they're there 365 days a year.

Matt Krayton: 15:44

They're on the ground, they're listening to their constituents.

Matt Krayton: 15:48

They have a sense of like there is actually still I mean, I'm a believer in this there is still a place, I believe, for gut, you know, kind of gut feeling, especially when you're talking to local elected officials, right, because they have a good feel for what's happening in their specific area.

Matt Krayton: 16:11

So it's really interesting, like in 2016, I think we saw a lot of this where you know, if you've lived in certain places, right, like people had distinctly different feelings about what, what was going to happen. So, like a lot of folks who lived in more democratic areas, I think, felt pretty confident that Hillary Clinton might win. And then, you know, for folks who lived in more mixed areas or, you know, even even more Republican areas, I think there's a real sense on the ground that there was something else going on there. There was some undercurrent that wasn't quite being picked up in the modeling, in the polling, in all of the analytics that the campaigns were running. So there is value to really putting your ear to the ground and saying, hey, what's going on in your community? Tell me about it.

Peter Woolfolk: 17:01

You know, one of the things that I also got out of, particularly when I was in Delaware and I had to deal with the Secret Service and the advanced teams that a lot of people have a tendency to overlook sometimes, is details.

Peter Woolfolk: 17:14

I don't think I'd ever been faced with so many questions about details from both the Secret Service and the advance team, about who, where, how, when, all those other sort of questions how many steps, which doors, who's on the stage, all those other kinds of things and what that happened. What that did for me was to carry that on to other areas, because details are important. The smallest detail can cause a major problem if it's not attended to as the way it should have been. So, I think, details and then dealing with people having to deal with a governor, lieutenant governor, the mayor, and how do you handle them and to make sure that you know they come on board doing what it is you're asking them to do it's those kinds of things. So managing people at certain levels and a lot of attention to the details for whatever the project happens to be.

Matt Krayton: 18:06

Oh, 100%. I mean hats off to all of the people out there doing advanced work. I mean there are very few things. It's sort of an unsung. There's the unsung heroes of campaigns and even in government right, because there's a lot of advanced work, you know, at the higher levels of government that go into, you know making sure that different events or things like that go off without a hitch. So I mean like hats off to the advanced people. They do a really, really tough job.

Matt Krayton: 18:44

And to your point about details, I think you know any political practitioner that's not necessarily involved directly with the advanced work can learn a thing or two about being a little bit more detail-oriented and making sure all the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed. But you know, some of the most important work you know in these campaigns are the folks who come out you know several days, several weeks early to make sure that everything is set up properly, that everyone is reading from the same you know book and same script, and you know so. There's nothing quite like good advance work. I think that's a huge, huge bonus. But yes, I think a lot of folks could probably learn from really solid advance teams on these campaigns because they do really good work and very important work too.

Peter Woolfolk: 19:35

Well, as I said, having been up in close personal to those sort of things, I've seen the slippage when people don't do that, having been in some meetings and they're doing the planning and so forth, and then they say, okay, well, fine, here's what we need so-and-so to do here, give that to them. Well, some of those people maybe should have been in the room, because perhaps that small thing that you're giving to them is not being done in the right way, because there are certain procedures that need to be taken care of. You don't know that. You did not invite them to the room to ask them those kinds of things. So if they get it and the implementation, they don't have time to correct it and the implementation is right around the corner. You could have a big mess on your hands. So my other point is that any and everybody who's involved in planning some event needs to be at the table at the same time.

Matt Krayton: 20:24

Oh, absolutely. I mean you do not want surprises on the day of. I mean that is the absolute worst thing no surprises on the day of. And when you do get a surprise on the day of, it is an unpleasant experience for anyone who's been in that situation.

Peter Woolfolk: 20:39

So, matt, what other things do you think that our listeners should know about planning campaigns and what needs to be done and the timelines and the amount of time that's required, those sort of things and the people involved in planning campaigns?

Matt Krayton: 20:55

Yeah, I mean, I think it's the public. Oftentimes you watch the campaign through the lens of social media or you're watching news, network news or cable news and reading newspapers, reading articles about it, and I would say that only captures a tiny fraction of the work that goes on below the surface, with the in some cases, hundreds, thousands of people who are making the wheels turn every single day. I mean, in a presidential campaign, really, what you're talking about are 50 separate campaigns right in each state. You have an apparatus in each state. You have staffers dedicated to making sure volunteers are coming into the office and getting out and knocking doors and communicating with local media. And you know it's a big, it's a big, wide country. So so it's, it's. It's a tough. It's a tough job because conditions change every single day. There's always something to react to, there's always something going on. So it's, it's. It's really in terms of of teaching lessons that can be applied elsewhere, whether it's in the boardroom or in some other context. There is no better training ground than a campaign. I don't think. And there are so many, again, different facets and details, and you know pieces of strategy and then implementing that strategy, execution of that strategy, is so important and you know there are so many people doing that work. You know that you never hear about but are extraordinarily important to the effort. So and you know not to mention on some of these larger campaigns again, statewide, national, you know even some of the congressional districts you need to have the team working together well, the different pieces. So, again, on the communication side, you need the pollsters to communicate clearly with the television vendors, with the direct mail consultants, with the digital consultants, to ensure that everyone's rowing in the same direction on this stuff. So the campaigns are extraordinarily complex operations.

Matt Krayton: 23:06

On the smaller side, sometimes you have a really, really small team doing all of these different functions and in some cases and I'm sure you've been in this situation too if you've ever done certain local campaigns they can be extraordinarily hard to run and demand a ton of time and energy and effort and present its own set of challenges. More so even in some of the larger campaigns, because you're on the ground with a smaller team working through a lot of the same challenges. It's a smaller electorate, but that doesn't mean that you don't have to react just as quickly or try to plan ahead in the way that you would for a much larger campaign. So it's definitely, you know, a very instructive experience for folks who are in the communication space like us. I mean, that's, you know where we got our start and you know I've learned a ton. You know, every day is some kind of crisis, you know, whether it's big or small. You're you know figuring out how to react and keep cool and try to respond in the most productive way possible.

Matt Krayton: 24:17

So that's, yeah, so it's definitely an interesting thing, is really sort of awe-inspiring in some ways, because I mean, you saw, over the last, you know, couple of days here, you know switching over a whole presidential campaign to support Vice President Harris on the Democratic side of things. I mean, like you know, I don't think people outside of the campaign world will ever fully see how much of a Herculean task that was and yet, and yet they got it done in a big way. You know branding. They switched the branding. They, you know, were scheduling the vice president, getting her out to. You know different events, setting up speeches. You know making sure that the campaign team was in place. You know the political work of managing the endorsement process. I mean it's a lot of moving pieces there. So, like, really, you know. A hat tip to those folks too who were able to turn that ship around really quickly.

Peter Woolfolk: 25:21

You know, let me just say in terms of having worked in campaigns, both, as I said, at the statewide level, several states. In Delaware there were two of us. I was the communications director. You had the other guy who was doing other things and on occasion I had to go with the governor or the lieutenant governor to a radio station to have some background information on the side. So if a question came up that they didn't have the answer to, I had to write something down. I had to write quick to give it to them so they could respond to that. Or if we were in Wilmington, which is the largest city in Delaware, that was one thing. But if I'm down in South Delaware, which is a small rural community, that's a whole different animal to deal with down there.

Peter Woolfolk: 26:03

So in terms of, as you said, being prepared, the second opportunity I had was somewhere out in Ohio.

Peter Woolfolk: 26:07

You have surrogates that are working for the president and you have to go from one city to another busload of folks and you get off and you get on and so kind of, and you have to deal with the media in each individual city. So there's a lot of things that you have to be prepared to do from my perspective as a communications person, and these things were vital to me as I moved on, because when I went into after the Clinton administration was done and you go into other places, you find out how different in other words, when it comes to details how much they overlook. You can ask people questions about their own job, but they don't have answers to them and nobody ever asks them about that. So I advise anybody who has the willingness to do so if you can get into a political campaign, get in there, because you're going to do a lot of work, but you're also going to learn a lot of things and it will move you and help advance you in a lot faster fashion.

Matt Krayton: 27:06

Oh, 100% You're right. It is like an accelerator for learning everything that you would need to know in the communication space and in strategy space. And there's really nothing better than running a campaign, that is for sure, and you know I value every minute that. You know. We've fortunately been able to work on some good campaigns with some great people, great candidates, and you learn a ton. You learn a ton every day. It's a learning experience.

Peter Woolfolk: 27:36

And it's a door opener too, because some of those folks go on to get some very heavy-duty jobs and if they know you and the work that you did, that sort of eases the pathway maybe not to a job but at least to getting the door open for you to get in there to see them.

Matt Krayton: 27:54

And who knows, where that can take you. Oh for sure. Yeah, it definitely opens doors. You know, and I think people do intuitively understand you know when they're looking for someone to support them outside of the political sphere, support them in a crisis situation, or they're trying to make sure that their viewpoint is being heard on a particular policy, or even just positioning a brand or an executive or public figure in a specific way. I think there is some intuitive sense that if you worked on a campaign, you know you could probably get the job done, because you know it's all of that, but compressed into a very tight timeline with very, very little margin for error.

Peter Woolfolk: 28:37

Well, you know, and I certainly tip my hat to you for saying that because I've actually been in the room when I've seen some PR people who did not know a lot of things and they, you know, without some sort of guidance they would have had a great big mess on their hands. So the experience that you get from a political campaign I'd urge anyone to get in there if you've got the time and willingness to put up with the long hours and low pay and eating hot dogs and Chinese food most of the time.

Matt Krayton: 29:04

That's right. You don't have to do it forever, but I would do it.

Peter Woolfolk: 29:08

You know at least once. Well, Matt, you provided us with an awful lot of information here in this brief period of time. Is there anything that you think we should know that we didn't cover?

Matt Krayton: 29:22

I think we covered a lot of it. I mean it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting. I hope the audience is able to take a look at this cycle, this campaign cycle, with a fresh set of eyes, perhaps going into the next couple of months, which are going to be pretty crazy. So I hope that this provides some context for what happens behind the curtain and certainly sharing your expertise as well. For what happens behind the curtain and certainly sharing your expertise as well, I'm hoping folks have a new appreciation for what goes on in these campaigns. So I appreciate you having me on.

Peter Woolfolk: 29:56

Well, you know. The other thing I think is important too is that that campaign experience is useful everywhere, wherever you happen to go, because meetings are meetings and projects are projects, and if you don't have everything you need in place at the right time, then the wheels can come off and you'll have a big problem on your hands. So, being campaigns particularly, as I said, working with the secret service and advanced team the details are hugely important to them and that really, really helps people prepare. So if, in fact, you're listening, you have some ideas about what it is you'd like to do. If you get a chance to work in a political campaign, I certainly urge you to go and, you know, spend the time to get that done. You'll be surprised how much you learn in a short period of time. In some cases, it's graduate school work when it comes to communications. That's right.

Matt Krayton: 30:44

That's right. Better than a PhD. That's right, that's right?

Peter Woolfolk: 30:52

Well, matt, let me say thank you so much for coming on the Public Relations Review podcast today. I believe that this is the kind of information that people really listen to the podcast for, because it's something that's usable, that they can put into action, and it actually will help them perhaps get ahead in what it is that they do in their daily job or upcoming profession. So let me say thank you again for taking the time to come on to the podcast.

Matt Krayton: 31:19

I really appreciate you having me on. Thank you.

Peter Woolfolk: 31:21

And to our listeners again. My guest today is Matt Creighton. He is the founder and principal of Publitics. Matt Creighton, he is the founder and principal of Publitics and if you'd like to hear more, well, listen to the podcast and you can get more from mattpoliticscom and you can look him up and maybe give them a call. And, again, if you've enjoyed the podcast, we'd certainly like to get a review from you and, of course, share the podcast of this particular episode with your friends and don't forget to tune in to us for the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.

Announcer: 31:55

This podcast is produced by Communication Strategies, an award-winning public relations and public affairs firm headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Thank you for joining us.