Phyllis Spinelli Campaign

In 1999 I created a political marketing campaign that was a local and, possibly, a national landmark.

Tired of deeply-corrupt Hudson County political practices, and wanting to test my marketing theories, in 1999 I approached a perennial also-ran Hoboken 'reform' candidate. I promised to give her, at no charge, a political message that would lift her City Council campaign into contention. My only price was that the campaign materials be created as I saw fit. Short on cash and ideas, and up against a mayor so deeply-entrenched that few ran against his (Anthony Russo's) chosen candidates, Phyllis Spinelli agreed to my terms.

The campaign stunned Hudson County. It did not win, but the independent campaign beat a well-funded local Democrats' campaign to unseat the mayor's candidate, and took him to a runoff. Emboldened by this attempt, another candidate asked me shortly afterwards to provide him with a message to take on another Russo-backed candidate. This campaign won, and shortly after that I created still another campaign that took down the mayor (who was indicted shortly after being forced from office).

The campaign may have been significant for another reason. Before this well-designed and well-written campaign was launched, political messages were ugly. In fact, I met resistance from the very people on whose behalf I worked because my work did not look ugly enough. It did not look the way a 'real' political campaign was 'supposed' to look. But I did notice, in the wake of my work, that the look of political campaign messaging began to improve rapidly, reaching a peak in the first Obama campaign. I cannot say if these ads changed anything, or if I merely happened to be ahead of the curve of a larger trend that was forming anyway.