Warning This Manual Cannot Be Directly Applied to Japanese Electoral Campaigns

For more details, please see notes.

Step Five: Developing a Voter Contact Plans#

Once you have decided whom you will be talking to and what you will be saying, the next step is to decide how you will be saying it. In other words, how will you get your campaign's message out to voters?

Before you look at the various methods for reaching voters, there are some important points that apply to all of the methods. First is the rule of finite resources, which means that you must determine how much each method will cost in terms of time, money and people. Second is the interchangeability of the resources and the methods, meaning that you can often accomplish the same task using different resources. Finally, there is the effectiveness of each method at persuading voters, identifying supporters and turning out your vote. It is important to plan well in advance for each phase of the campaign, including turning voters out on Election Day.

The Rule of Finite Resources#

As stated before, a political campaign is a communication process and all campaigns have three basic resources available to accomplish this communication - time, money and people. These resources can come together in an unlimited number of combinations and the trick is to select the best possible combination and use all three resources in the most efficient manner. You want to make the largest impact on the voters for each volunteer hour and each amount of money you spend.

In planning the voter contact part of your campaign, it is critically important to remember that you have finite resources. Every decision to do something is a decision not to do something else. When you have twenty volunteers hand out literature, these twenty volunteers cannot make phone calls at the same time. When you spend money on television, you do not have that money to spend on mail. Time spent greeting shoppers at the market is time taken from going door to door. It is important to budget all three resources - time, money and people - so that you have them when you need them and all three resources are used most efficiently. You want to make the largest impact on the voters while using as few of these resources as possible.

Interchangeability of Resources and Methods#

It is important to remember that you can often use different resources and different methods to accomplish the same objective. Suppose you decide that you need to persuade 10,000 voters to vote for you. One thousand reliable volunteers can go door to door tomorrow and persuade 10 voters each to vote for your candidate (no time, no money but lots of people). By yourself, you can personally talk to 10,000 voters, at 50 voters a day over the next 200 days (no money, no people but lots of time). Or you can contact all 10,000 tomorrow without any help by airing a great television commercial. It will cost you a lot of money (no people, no time but money).

These are extreme examples, but they illustrate how interchangeable the resources and the methods are. You need to first figure out what you want to accomplish and then figure out which of the many ways is best for you achieve your objective. If one method does not seem possible, you can often find another method. This is why planning is absolutely necessary. It is the campaign that does not have a written plan which often finds that it can not raise the money it needs, does not have the volunteers it needs and has squandered its time.

Effectiveness of Your Voter Contact#

Each type of voter contact can accomplish three things to varying degrees - persuade target voters, identify supporters and turnout your vote. These varying degrees determine the effectiveness of your voter contact effort. It is important that a campaign choose methods that, when combined, accomplish all three of these tasks.

Now that you have a clear, concise and effective message, it is important to use that message to persuade your target group of voters that your candidate is the best choice. Voters need to know what your message is and they need to hear it many times for it to register with them. You must repeatedly communicate a persuasive message to people who will vote.

Finally, as the election period draws to a close, there comes a time when you can no longer persuade voters and your efforts should be spent on making sure that those people who support your candidate turnout to vote for your candidate.

In order to do this, you must have some way of identifying who supports you and who has been persuaded through your voter contact effort to support you. Well before Election Day you must have spent time identifying your supporters. It is also important to know how you will reach them in a very short period of time.

Persuade Target Voters#

Most of your campaign effort will go toward persuading your target voters that you are the best candidate and it is in their interest to go to the polls and vote for you. Everything you have done up to this point - all the research, setting the goal, targeting the audience and developing a persuasive message - has brought you to this point. Now you need to decide what is the easiest way for you to communicate with this large group of people and convince them to vote for you. There is no point in having a great message if the voters do not know about it.

People are often persuaded when they hear the same thing from many different sources. If they hear that you are a good candidate from a respected civic organization, meet the candidate going door to door, see some persuasive campaign literature, and read a favorable article in the newspaper, then they will more likely remember the candidate and more likely vote for that candidate. None of these contacts should be left to chance. A well organized campaign will make sure that all of these contacts happen and that the same message is delivered each time so that the message reinforces itself each time.

Get Out the Vote#

It does no good to have spent months persuading your target audience that you are the best candidate if they do not go to the polls on Election Day and vote for you. Individual voters often feel that their one single vote does not matter. They need to know that they are part of something bigger and that their support for your candidate is important. Often a simple reminder - either a phone call or piece of literature - can be enough to ensure that they vote.

The "get out the vote" (GOTV) effort is often viewed as a separate phase of the campaign. In fact, it should be viewed as the final phase toward which everything else in the campaign builds. If you compare a political campaign to a business selling a product, in this case selling the candidate to the voters, then Election Day is the only day in which you can make the sale. It is important that the voters be motivated enough to "buy your product" on that one day. The deadline for all the campaign and particularly the GOTV part of the campaign is the close of the polls on Election Day. Either you are prepared to make that final push or you are not. There are no second chances.

This GOTV effort can be accomplished in many different ways but the various methods differ in one important factor - whether or not the campaign knows who is being contacted.

In areas where a candidate has considerable support - say six out of every ten voters will vote for them - it is not necessary to identify supporters. You will know that the more voters you remind about Election Day and make sure that they vote that your candidate will receive the majority of the votes. In these areas you can organize what is called a "blind pull" of voters or pulling everyone to the polls regardless of whether or not you know whom they are supporting. In these areas where the support is very strong the campaign can put up signs reminding voters about Election Day and encouraging them to vote. They may want to phone as many of the voters as possible to make sure they turn out.

In other areas where support is less sure, you will want to only remind those voters you know support you. It is therefore important to have spent time identifying which voters will support you well in advance of the GOTV effort. Once you have developed a database or list of supporters, it is important to have the resources and the means of communicating with them in the short period of time just before the election. It is therefore important to budget enough time, money and people and have a realistic plan of how you will get in touch with your supporters.

Voter Identification#

Because so much of the GOTV effort relies on having an accurate list of supporters well in advance of Election Day, it is important to know how you will identify supporters starting early in the campaign. You need to spend resources persuading your voters. However, if you only communicate with them, you are relying on them to go to the polls on their own. This can be a gamble that you need not take. You can increase your chances if you know who has been convinced and you have the ability to get them to the polls.

It is often possible to find out which candidate voters support just by asking them. People generally like to be asked their opinion and are willing to tell you what they are thinking. Develop a simple "1-2-3" scale so that a confirmed supporter is labeled a "1", an undecided voter is a "2", and a supporter of an opponent is a "3". As your campaign communicates with voters, try to judge their level of support. You will want to spend most of your resources on number "2" voters in your target audience.

As you identify voters, you will want to have some method of keeping track of them and their levels of support. You can use a simple card file or even better, a computer database that you will be able to continuously update and sort the files to meet your needs.

It is important that this database be as accurate as possible. Do not consider someone a supporter unless they have told you so directly. Often people will not want to offend you or argue with you if they have not made up their mind or actually support your opponent. For this reason, you may not want to bias them by telling them you are calling from the campaign.

Types of Voter Contact Activities#

With all of these things in mind, it is important to ask the following questions as you consider the various types of voters contact.

  1. How much does it cost in time, money, and people?

  2. Do you know what voters are being reached?

  3. Are they being persuaded?

  4. Can you find out if they support your candidate and make sure that they vote for your candidate?

Each of the following types of voter contact meets these various criteria to varying degrees.

Literature Drop#

A literature drop is when volunteers go door-to-door leaving a piece of literature about the candidate at each household. A large number of volunteers can cover a large area relatively quickly and, because you know that the houses are in the voting district, you know that only potential voters are being reached. The volunteers are not talking with voters, so they do not identify supporters, but they can leave a reminder to vote at the supporters' homes just before Election Day.

Literature Handouts#

Your campaign can also hand out literature wherever people gather in large numbers. This could be at markets, factory gates, train stations, metro stops, etc. While this may be a lot easier or quicker than the literature drop at the voters' homes, it is less targeted because you are not certain that the people who take your literature live in the district or can vote for your candidate.

Often this type of activity is targeted around a particular issue that will concern those gathered in that area. For example, you may want to hand out a piece of literature about saving a factory at the gates of the factory, or repairing the metro at a metro stop, or building a new senior center where seniors are gathered.

Mail#

Sending campaign literature to voters through the mail can be very effective at delivering your message and persuading them to vote for you. Depending on what type of list you have, you may be able to target voters either by geography or demographics (age, gender, etc.). For example, you could send something outlining your stand on one issue to senior citizens and send a different piece outlining your stand on a different issue to young women. Again, you will know that those who receive your mail live in the district.

Door to Door#

One of the most effective ways to persuade voters is to go from house to house, apartment to apartment, door to door, talking to individual voters one at a time. You are able to hear the problems they face, tailor your message to meet their individual concerns and gauge the level of support. Often voters are impressed that a candidate would bother to come meet them and you can gain their support just by making the effort.

Obviously, this is going to be a very time-consuming method of voter contact. Depending on the types of neighborhoods you will be walking in, a candidate who is disciplined can talk to approximately 50 voters a night or around 300 voters a week. This is assuming that you canvas for about three hours a night and spend no more than three minutes with each voter (allowing a little bit of time to get from door to door). Now you understand why you have to be able to deliver your message in less than a minute.

Because door to door is so time-consuming, there are a number of things you can do to make it more effective and make sure you stay on schedule. Once again, these things require forethought and planning. You may consider adapting these methods to fit your circumstances.

Voters are more likely to remember a candidate's message if they hear it more than once, so a candidate is more likely to make an impression if they can increase their voter contact at the door from one time to two, three, or four times. This can be done by first having the campaign deliver a piece of literature to the target voters' homes a week before the candidate walks the neighborhood, stating that the candidate will be walking. This can be either mailed or dropped by volunteers and should deliver the campaign message. Then, when the candidate actually shows up, they are keeping their first promise to voters.

The candidate then walks the neighborhood delivering the message both verbally and through a piece of literature that is left with the voter. Finally, if the campaign is able to keep track of who the candidate talked to and who was missed, it will be able to deliver a follow-up card a week later, stating that the candidate was either happy to have met the voter or sorry to have missed them.

The best way to keep the canvass on schedule is to have a trusted volunteer accompany the candidate as they go door to door. This person is responsible for carrying all the literature, knocking on the doors, and introducing the candidate when someone answers the door. The volunteer then moves on to the next door while the candidate talks to the voter, keeping a record of which doors are answered and which not. If the candidate gets bogged down with a voter who wants to talk, it is the volunteer's role to go back and tell the candidate and the voter that they have to keep moving. In this way, it is the volunteer who plays the role of the bad guy.

Phoning#

The telephone can be used to persuade voters to vote for your candidate, identify supporters and remind those supporters to go vote for your candidate. Each of these should be a separate phone call. Most often the phone is used to identify supporters and turnout the vote. Both of these can be relatively short calls.

Phone calls can be made either from volunteers' homes or from a central location with a lot of phones. These central locations, called phone banks, can be either businesses or organizations with a lot of separate phone lines already in place, that allow the campaign to use them after hours to call voters. They can also be extra phone lines put into the headquarters for just this purpose.

Either way, phone banks have a number of advantages over having volunteers make the calls from their homes. First, the campaign can supervise the phone calls at a phone bank and make sure that the calls are being made. Second, the volunteers gain support from other volunteers making the calls. It is often important to share the experience, either good or bad, of the last phone call. Finally, the campaign has immediate control over the process, can deal with problems immediately, answer questions and receive instant feedback. Sometimes the script the volunteers are using when they talk to voters does not work and must be changed. Or sometimes the campaign may want to shift from phoning one district to another quickly. This can be more easily done at a phone bank.

In both a phone bank and having volunteers call from home, it is important to have clear written instructions for the volunteers including the purpose of making the calls and an easy to follow script of what to say on the phone when talking to voters. It may also be important to explain what not to do, such as argue with voters. Volunteers should understand that it is important to make as many calls as possible, as quickly as possible and that arguing with voters will only slow them down and is unlikely to change the voter's mind.

Often when identifying voters that support a candidate, it is helpful if the campaign does not identify itself. The voters will be much more likely to give a truthful answer if they believe it is a poll rather than the campaign calling.

Sample scripts are provided in Appendix F.

Visibility#

Visibility is anything the campaign does to catch the voters' eye. This can be billboards by the side of the road, signs at supporters houses, posters on poles, stickers on cars, volunteers or the candidate waving to traffic, car caravans with decorated cars driving through key neighborhoods, the candidates name on tee-shirts, coffee mugs, etc. While this may raise the voter awareness about the campaign and the name recognition of the candidate, it can only reinforce the campaign message. It is a very poor method of persuading voters. It also reaches a broad audience rather than a targeted audience. People who live outside the district or otherwise cannot or will not vote for the candidate will see the signs. Finally, there is no way of identifying who is supporting your candidate. However, this method can be used very effectively to remind voters in strong support areas to go vote.

Endorsements#

The candidate can meet with various opinion leaders in an attempt to persuade them to support the campaign. These opinion leaders can be newspaper editorial boards or representatives of issue-oriented or community-based organizations. The effectiveness at reaching voters depends on the influence these leaders or their organizations have on the voters. Time is often spent winning this support early in the campaign when voters aren't paying attention to the election but the opinion leaders are.

Coffees#

A "coffee" is the term used to describe small meetings in the homes of supporters where they invite friends to meet the candidate. These have the advantage of face-to-face contact with the candidate, the most persuasive form of voter contact. They can also be used for volunteer recruitment and small donor fundraising. They tend to be labor and time intensive. A good coffee program can be very difficult to organize.

If the campaign decides to organize a coffee program as part of its direct voter contact, there should be one person responsible for finding volunteers who are willing to host the coffees and making all the arrangements. A good program will have at least one coffee per night and often two or three coffees scheduled per night. The candidate can stop in, meet the voters, say a few words and move on to the next event. As with door to door, it is important that the candidate meet as many voters as possible and the campaign should keep a record of those who attend the coffees. In this case the multiple communication takes the form of an invitation, which states the campaign message, literature and a few words by the candidate at the event, and a thank you to those who attended following the event. Because the invitations also deliver the message, you should not hesitate to send out as many as possible. Only those voters who actually know the host will probably show up.

The campaign should consider organizing at least one or two coffees per targeted precinct.

Friends of a Friend#

A "friends" program is when supporters and volunteers in the campaign personally contact people they know and ask them to vote for the candidate. This can be done by having them send a pre-made card to people who live near them or by having them call people they know in the area. It is important that the campaign keep track of who will be making this type of effort on behalf of the campaign and who will be contacted. Organization is the key. Because this contact is often made just before Election Day, this is often considered part of the "get out the vote" effort.

Preset Events#

Preset events are events set up by people or organizations outside the campaign where candidates or their representatives are able to meet voters. These can be as diverse as debates sponsored by outside groups or parades that allow all the candidates to participate. The effectiveness as a voter contact method depends on the audience reached. Because these types of events may offer little feedback from the voters, the importance can often be gauged in the amount of press it will receive.

Created Events#

The campaign can also create events to gain exposure. These may be rallies to motivate supporters or press conferences to highlight the campaigns stand on an issue. Again, the effectiveness for voter contact is often gauged in the amount of press the event will receive. The advantage of created events is that the campaign can control the situation and often deliver a clear message. The disadvantage is that created events often take up a lot of time, money and people to organize. You must make sure that the message is persuasive and reaches enough of the targeted audience to be effective.

Earned Media - The Press#

Politics and elections are such rare and important events (relatively speaking), that they actually receive considerably more press than many other events in the same area (most candidates do not believe this). Furthermore, because the press is a source of information outside the campaign, voters often respect it. Still, the press has its own agenda and many demands on its time and resources. If you use newspapers, television, and radio to get your campaign message out, you need good relations with the reporters, a compelling reason for them to tell your story, as well as an easily understood point to your message. Many campaigns have a press secretary and separate press operations just to deal with all of this. Still, remember that this is just another form of voter contact and should be coordinated with your other forms of voter contact.

The nature of the district and its media outlets will determine the importance of media relations in your district. However, generally speaking it is essential that your campaign establish good relationships with print and broadcast journalists in your region for two reasons.

First, the mass media is (generally speaking) free of cost for the campaign. Every time a journalist prints or broadcasts a story about your campaign, you have the opportunity to get your message out to your target audience at no direct money cost to your campaign.

Second, the mass media is often considered credible. Voters are much more likely to believe positive information about your candidate if it comes from an "independent" source (the mass media) than if it comes from a "biased" source (your campaign).

If you decide that you want to use the press to communicate and persuade voters, then it is important to have a plan as to how you will accomplish this. Many campaigns have a press secretary who is responsible for developing this strategy, building a relationship with the press and communicating the message to the press. One of the press secretary's first tasks is to develop a comprehensive list of all the media outlets in the area, complete with reporters' names, phone and fax numbers, and deadlines.

It is important that you make the job of writing about the campaign as easy as possible for the reporters. Write press releases in the style of a news story, as you would want them to write it. Provide as much backup data and sources (complete with phone numbers) as you possibly can. At the same time, make sure that everything is clear and reinforces your message. You do not want to make it too difficult for the reporter to figure out what you are saying. If you provide a position paper, provide them with a press release that summarizes your position in one page.

Press conferences should be well scripted and be important enough that it is worth the time of the press to come to them. Provide a press packet with a photo of the candidate, their biography, any campaign literature, relevant position papers, press clippings, and press releases. It is important that every communication with the press reinforces your overall campaign strategy. If the press wants to discuss something other than your message - for example, your opponent's message - answer their questions as quickly as possible and finish by restating your message. It is often the job of the press secretary to know what the press will ask before they ask it so that the candidate is not blind-sided by a reporter's question.

All of this is hard work and often takes time. This is called earned media because you have to work for it.

The process by which journalists and editors decide what articles to print or what stories to broadcast can vary greatly. Thus, you must modify your press strategy to fit the realities of your area.

Nevertheless, those with broad experience of working with media have identified several rules that your campaign should take into account:

  1. A very short election cycle will make the mass media absolutely crucial. Unless your campaign has unlimited financial resources, you will need the assistance of the mass media to get your message out in the short period of time allowed for campaigning.

  2. Press relations are often a full-time job. Every medium to large campaign must have a person whose only concern is getting publicity for the candidate. Even in smaller campaigns, this job should go to the campaign manager or assistant. The candidate cannot be his or her own press secretary.

  3. All candidates must stay "on message" at all times. Your candidate will have very few opportunities to appear on television or radio, or to be quoted in the newspaper. These precious opportunities must not be wasted talking about things that your target audience does not care about. Once you have taken the time to develop a campaign message, stick to that message relentlessly.

  4. All candidates should undergo some form of media training or preparation. Again, television and radio appearances are rare and precious. Do not waste them by being unprepared. Before any television or radio appearance, know exactly what you will say and practice saying it.

Internet Web Pages#

The most recent addition to the list of voter contact methods is placing a web page on the Internet. It should be remembered that the Internet is a passive form of communication, meaning that it does not go to the voters; the voters have to come to it. So, while you may be able to get some press from introducing your web site and while it can be an inexpensive way to convey a lot of information to those who are interested, it is not effective at reaching a particular, targeted audience (unless you are going for the nerd vote).

Combining Various Methods#

Different campaigns at different levels will use different combinations of voter contact to reach voters. National political campaigns, which have to reach millions of voters, cannot afford the time of going door to door. They may use a combination of earned media and television ads to get the message out. On the other hand, small local campaigns may not be able to afford the amount of money television would cost to reach a small number of voters. Here it might make sense to have the candidate go door-to-door talking to voters, combined with a direct mail campaign to convey the same message to the same voters again. Following a direct mail program, a campaign with many volunteers may want to set up phone banks to call all the potential voters to identify who supports the candidate and who has been persuaded by the candidate's message.

With the varying resources of time, money and people, the combination of voter contact methods that can be combined is unlimited and no two campaigns will ever be alike. This is why it is vitally important to take all the data possible on the district, the voters, and all the candidates, and then the campaign must develop a workable, written plan to deliver the message.

Worksheet 9: Determining Which Voter Contact Methods to Use#

Use the following chart to help determine which voter contact method your campaign will choose. It is important to be realistic. No campaign should consider using all of the methods listed. This would just spread your resources too thin and insure that you did none of them well. You will want to consider realistically what resources of time, money and people you will have available to you and how much each method will cost. It is also important to pick various methods that, when combined, will accomplish all of the tasks - persuading voters, identifying supporters and turning out your vote.

Make a list of all the methods you have decided to use in your campaign and try to determine in hard numbers how much time, money and people you will need to accomplish your objective.

Effectiveness

Resources

Voter contact task

Persuade Voters

Identify Supporters

Turn-out Vote

Time

Money

People

Literature Drop

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Literature Handouts

Maybe

No

Maybe

Yes

Mail

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Door to Door

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Phoning

Maybe

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Visibility

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Endorsements

Yes

Maybe

Maybe

Yes

Yes

Coffees

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Dear Friend

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Preset Events

Maybe

Maybe

No

Yes

Yes

Created Events

Maybe

No

Maybe

Yes

Yes

Yes

Press

Yes

No

Maybe

Yes

Advertisements

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Web Pages

No

No

No

Creating Campaign Literature#

Many of the methods of voter contact rely on quality campaign literature to deliver the message. It is therefore important that your literature be as effective as possible at delivering this message. When creating literature for a political campaign you must remember that most voters will not read it as carefully as you will or as you would like them to. It is important that you make it easy for the voters to understand your message in the short time that it takes them to decide to throw the literature away.

It is therefore important to quickly get the voters' attention and just as quickly convey your message. In other words, you need to keep your campaign literature simple and make it dramatic. You should tell a story about who your candidate is and why voters should vote for your candidate. Any other information you provide should back up the original message. There are a few techniques that can be used to grab the voter's attention and quickly deliver a message.

Single Topic#

In order to keep the message simple and make sure that it is grasped quickly, it is important that you not try to convey any more than one idea in a piece of literature. For example, one piece of literature may tell how the candidate will fight crime or what the candidate will do to improve the economy but both topics should not be covered in the same piece of literature. The exception to this technique is "palm card" or general piece of campaign literature used to introduce the candidate. Here the theme is why voters should support the candidate and may include very brief statements on where the candidate stands on various issues.

Action Photos#

Too often campaign literature only has a portrait photo of the candidate. This does not tell the voter anything about the candidate and is a complete waste of space. Photos should show the candidate talking to someone or doing something.

Other action photos can both grab the voter's attention and convey a message quicker than words. For example, a picture of someone breaking into a building or pointing a gun on the cover of a piece of literature dealing with crime will mean that voters are more likely to open it to see what it is about. The inside photo should show the candidate talking to police, thereby making the connection between the issue and the candidate. Pictures of children in school can help convey an education message, and pictures of closed businesses or people begging on the streets can convey a message of economic problems that will be addressed. Remember that these photos should convey action. Portraits of the candidate do not convey any information about who they are. Also, all photos should be black and white. Using color photos is too expensive and does not improve on the message conveyed.

Headlines#

After looking at the photos, people will next read the headlines. The whole message should be understood in the headlines, a brief statement or two in large type. Everything else in the piece of literature will only reinforce this brief message. Too often the headlines are only headings and the voter is expected to read on to understand the point. Therefore it is important not to waste the headlines with headings such as "my program" or with useless statements that do not say anything such as "dear voter" or "vote".

Bulleted Points#

When listing a program, a biography or any other series of information, bullet the text rather than put it in paragraph form. This makes it clear that there are five reasons to support the candidate or six things the candidate will do to improve the economy. These bullets can have headlines as well but the headlines should use action words such as "fighting crime" or "improving your economy".

Be Specific#

Without making promises that cannot be kept, it is important to be as specific as possible in offering solutions to the problems people face. The candidate "supports legislation that will..." does not mean that the legislation has to pass or accomplish the goal but it still conveys a stand on an issue.

Brevity#

In campaign literature, less is more. Say whatever you want to say in as few words as possible. Between one hundred and three hundred words total should be the maximum in a single piece of literature. Remember that voters will not read long text because it requires more effort than they are willing to spend on something that does not immediately affect them. With this in mind, statements like "dear voter" can be eliminated because voters know that when they get a piece of literature they are the ones being addressed. These phrases are extra, unneeded words.

Common Language#

Use language that simply and clearly states what you want to get across. It is less important to impress voters with big words than it is to get your message across in language all voters will understand. In an election campaign, you do not have enough time nor is it your role to educate voters.

Stay on Message#

All campaign literature, no matter what the issue being discussed, should stick to the basic theme of the campaign. It is important that the same message be reinforced over and over, no matter what the issue. The campaign may even want to use the same phrases or slogans on all the literature to bring the point home to voters.