Homework: Campaign Development
Background:
In this class, you learned about the various steps of a political campaign. From social media strategy to turning out voters, a political campaign is very difficult to execute. If you choose this type of homework, you will pretend to be a campaign manager for a chosen political campaign (the type of campaign is up to you). In this homework, you will illustrate the steps of what you would do for every main phase of the campaign.
Instructions:
You will choose a political candidate that you would the run the campaign for. The political candidate can be any candidate who is running in 2020 in any political office in the US (local, state or national level). For this homework you will have to do some preliminary research on your chosen candidate (from what is available in the news and other online sources) and write a 6 page campaign memo explaining the various steps of your campaign (except fundraising, which is not at the core of what we learn in this class).
-Campaign Memo
Explain the various steps for the campaign (a few sentences for each step).
1) Describe your candidate and what office they are running for in a few sentences
2) Describe your candidate's opponent in a few sentences.
3) Who are your main target markets in your campaign? Why do you think that focusing on this target market would be effective?
4) Develop Message
a. What are some of your candidate's positive attributes?
b. What could your candidate be attacked on?
c. What are some of the competitive advantages of your candidate compared to their opponent?
5) Communication
a. Paid Media
o What are some media outlets that are you planning to buy your ads in?
o Describe the message of at least one ad that you are planning to run.
b. Earned media
o Describe the content of at least two press releases you would send to journalists OR describe the content of at least two free social media posts you might write.
o Are you using any other type of communication, beyond mass media? Which one?
6) Structure of organization
a. What are some of the roles that would be important in your campaign? (social media manager? Strategy?) You can be creative and create roles that are particularly important for your campaign.
7) GOTV (Go to vote initiatives)
a. What GOTV initiatives are you planning to put in place during your campaign? Why do you think they are important for the success of your campaign?
Format your homework according to the following formatting requirements:
(1) The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
(2) The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the homework, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
(3) Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.