I’m not a big fan of paper. I don’t like direct mail, flyers, and god forbid a company puts something on my windshield.
So, as I walked to my front door the other day, I was startled to see the 3 – count ’em 3 – flyers placed at eye level, shoved into the crack of my front door. Was it from another overzealous landscaper? Perhaps a local neighborhood insurance guy?
No, I was blessed with three new pieces of literature from Patty Murray.
Now, I’m no Patty Murray hater. And I know it’s election season and the “book” says to canvas liberal neighborhoods like Wallingford and make sure each one of the residents has talking points and material to share in the office. I get the whole thing. And there’s nothing wrong with candidates employing 1984 marketing tactics. Most of these folks, including Murray, are politicians not business majors.
From the headline of the collateral, which was the only thing I read, I learned that these flyers were going to tell me about all of the reasons to vote for Murray. But something suddenly sprang to mind in my head.
After 18 years in the Senate, shouldn’t everyone in Washington be able to name 18 things Patty Murray has done? Heck, let’s say she accomplished ONE thing every TWO years. Shouldn’t I be able to name 9 things? 5? I’m pretty well educated, I listen to KIRO 97.3 and both the right wing and left wing AM stations. I should be able to rattle off a litany of things she’s done, right? After all, I can tell you 10 things Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln have done, so why not Murray?
It suddenly made the idea of Incumbent Marketing so ludicrous. Think about other product purchases you might make every 2-6 years: cars, vacations, furniture, computers, etc… Each time, you can explain in pretty uncertain terms the benefits and weaknesses of the product you chose. Shouldn’t it be the same with politicians? Isn’t an incumbent’s NEED to market with door spam a pretty telling story about how much she grabbed my attention the other 17.9 years she’s been in business? It just made me wonder.
